Providing for Consideration of Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children Continuing Appropriations Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, we are here on a Friday. The government has partially been shut down for some 4 days now.

Republicans have tried to be reasonable. Many of us did not like ObamaCare. Some folks, like myself--my family didn't have health care at certain times. And I thought we had a responsibility to help people who had preexisting conditions, help some of our young people. And we disagreed with the other side. They passed it. They said you'd know what was in the bill after we passed it. After we passed it, and it became the law, we saw what was in it. The President, some 17 times now--many times in contravention of the law that was passed--changed the law.

Now when we came a few days ago, October 1, there wasn't money to run the government, but there was money to run ObamaCare. Still, many people were left in the lurch after many exceptions were made for special interest folks, even business. And I admit to being pro-business. They gave them a waiver.

We said that Members of Congress and also the White House staff and others should be under ObamaCare, and we said that the individual should also have a break here.

This is a system that some Democrats said was a train wreck. We didn't say that. But we should have the opportunity to make some changes. And we offered three opportunities to make changes--some of them minor--that we thought were fair.

But when you go out golfing the Saturday before the government is about to run out of money, when you don't show up for work on Sunday, and you come to work on Monday, as the United States Senate did, you can't negotiate. When you send people to the White House and sit there and say, we won't negotiate----

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. COLE. I yield my friend from Florida an additional 1 minute.

Mr. MICA. But our leaders, in good faith, went to the White House.

As a staffer, I used to get calls. I was a staffer for Senator Hawkins, and Ronald Reagan would ask me to help work with my boss and others to get things done.

I voted on this floor to impeach Bill Clinton. And Bill Clinton came back and worked with us. We balanced the budget.

Remember, after we had the last shutdown, '95, within 2 years, we balanced the budget. We reformed welfare. We balanced the budget. Actually, the debate here on September 11, just before September 11, was what to do with the surplus. So some good can come out of this, good people working together.

But when they won't negotiate, when they call you to the White House and they won't talk, when they go to Maryland, as they did, or wherever it was in the region here, and then tell folks that we're holding a gun to their heads, that's wrong.

Let's negotiate. Let's get this done for the American people.

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