Sad Day for the American People

Floor Speech

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this shutdown was totally brought about by the Republican leadership. If you listened to our Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, when she spoke earlier, she made it quite clear that there wasn't any real disagreement with regard to the budget or the continuing resolution to keep the government going.

The fact of the matter is that last night, the Republican leadership could have simply passed the clean Senate bill to keep the government running, at least for a short period of time, if further negotiations were necessary. But that's not what they wanted to do. They wanted to shut it down in the name of repealing or defunding the Affordable Care Act.

We've already been through that. We had an election. The Affordable Care Act was passed 3 years ago. Those 30 or 40 million Americans who have no health insurance can actually sign up today. We should not be going through that exercise again for the 41st or 42nd or 43rd time.

Do not believe the Republican leadership. They wanted to shut this place down. They have shut it down. And I don't see any effort to try to reopen it. It's a sad day for the American people.

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