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Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I rise to discuss the current dilemma before the Senate with regard to whether to vote on the motion to close debate and go to the debate and final vote, if you will, on the House-passed version of the CR which put in the language that defunds ObamaCare.
I will vote yes for cloture so we can go to the vote I have promised my constituents in my State 57 different times in other votes I have cast in the Senate in favor of defunding the ObamaCare legislation because I believe there is a better way to do it.
We only have two options before us. One is to end debate and go to a vote on legislation passed out of the House that will continue the government and defund ObamaCare, understanding the leadership will have an amendment to strip out the defunding. I will vote against that amendment because I want to be consistent with the other 57 votes I have taken.
But the other alternative is an alternative not to shut off debate, to continue the debate, which means we come up to Monday night, midnight, when the fiscal year ends and the government shuts down. Government shutdowns are a bad idea. They are bad for the people who send us here to this body to represent them. They are bad for seniors on Social Security. They are bad for those whose husbands and wives and sons and daughters are fighting in harm's way in Afghanistan and
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other parts of the world. It hurts our military. It hurts our health care system. And it does not do anything to stop ObamaCare.
What a lot of people do not realize is, if you shut the government down, you are not shutting down ObamaCare. A great percentage of that is mandatory funding. If you shut the government down, you are actually encouraging ObamaCare and discouraging our government to function as it should.
I will not vote to shut the government down. I will vote to end the debate. And I will vote in the way that I have promised every citizen of my State since the ObamaCare legislation came before us.
Look, I am on the HELP Committee. We did the markup on the Affordable Care Act in 2009. Like almost every other Member of the Senate, I was here on Christmas Eve 2009 and voted against the ObamaCare legislation on the final vote. Since that period of time we have had a plethora of votes and challenges and opportunities, and I have remained consistent. I am not going to all of a sudden, in a debate, change my consistency and vote to shut down the government and continue ObamaCare. I want to be consistent with the way I voted. I want the Senate to take up its responsibility. I want us to be sure we do not shut down the government for our people. I want to be sure everybody in the Senate has the opportunity to cast their vote, both on the continuing resolution and on whether ObamaCare stays or is defunded. That is the question before us--not whether we shut the government down.
So while I respect and appreciate everybody's position, I think it is irresponsible for us as a Senate to knowingly and voluntarily shut down our government and extend ObamaCare when we have the opportunity to have the debate, have the vote, strip out the funding for ObamaCare, and move forward as some of us have tried.
I do not know how it will end up. I think I know. But I know one thing: Inaction and not voting is wrong. The people of Georgia sent me here to take action, not to avoid action. They sent me here to run the government, not to shut down the government. In fact, I got to the Senate and the House because of a government shutdown, and I want to tell that story.
In the 1990s, when President Clinton was President and Newt Gingrich was Speaker, many issues came about on fiscal spending, and the Speaker and the President and the majority leader of the Senate, Bob Dole, got in a conflict over whether to extend the budget. The Republicans took the position: We will shut the government down rather than yield to what President Clinton wants to do. So the government shut down. About 3 weeks later, the government was brought back. The Speaker, Mr. Gingrich, came back and capitulated. We reopened the government, but he lost a lot of ground. Two years later he was reelected by a narrow margin but was not reelected Speaker and resigned. I replaced him. Be careful if you shut down the government. You might get another me.
So that is what happens when government happens. The voters speak out. The voters make sure we are accountable and responsible. It cost us a Speakership. It cost us leadership in the House, and politically that is unsustainable and something we should not do.
I want to be a part of doing my responsible action, voting like I have told my voters I am going to vote; instead of shutting down the government, having the vote we need to have to see which way we are going to move forward as a country.
I yield the remainder of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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