Providing for Consideration of Excepted Employees' Pay Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. WOODALL. I thank my chairman for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I have to say I saw my chairman get on his feet when the gentleman from Michigan began to speak. It's not often that the dean of the House comes down to speak. It's a treat for me, too. I've been here 2 1/2 years, but I've been watching the process a lot longer than that. I do think there's a lot that we can learn from history and a lot that we can learn, as Chris Matthews put it on his show the other day, from when politics worked.

There is no shortage of shrill voices in Washington, D.C., and when I get back home to the folks in the suburbs of metro Atlanta, rarely do I hear somebody say, Rob, I wish there were more angry people in Washington. I wish there were more folks pounding their fists and yelling and screaming, because I really think that's how solutions can be brought about.

That's not how solutions are brought about anywhere. It's not how they're brought about in business. It's not how they're brought about in politics. It's not how they're brought about in kindergartens around the country.

I have a chart here, Mr. Speaker, that says that the Democrat Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, who presided over some of the most trying times in our Nation and some of the biggest deals in our Nation, was often in conflict with the President of a different party. While Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House, the government shut down 12 times.

I say that, Mr. Speaker, not to say that a government shutdown is okay. It's not. I didn't want it to happen. It doesn't need to happen. I'm glad we're bringing more bills to the floor to reopen the government--we are already more than 50 percent of the way there with the bills that have come to the floor. But it is happening, and it's not happening because Republican this and Republican that.

I commented earlier to some of my Democratic friends about what great party discipline they have displayed in never talking about a government shutdown but in always making sure it's a ``Republican government shutdown.'' I suppose you get points for that in terms of party unity, but it's just not true; nor has it ever been true in the history of our Republic that when legitimate policy differences come about, driven by our constituents back home, that the best way forward to solve those is to make sure you demonize the other guy and make sure folks know who to blame for it.

In these 12 times that the Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, was leading this institution--the people's House--and the government shut down, it wasn't because Tip O'Neill was a bad man. It wasn't because he lost control of some liberal faction within his party. It was because the House of Representatives, the closest voice to the American people in our Republic, had legitimate policy differences with the President of the United States, and that's where we sit today.

What's surprising is not that we have legitimate policy differences with the President of the United States. What's surprising is that we bring a bill to the floor to fund Head Start, and that becomes complicated. What's surprising is that we bring a bill to the floor to make sure that our men and women are getting paid, and that creates the controversy. What's surprising is we bring a bill to the floor to fund nuclear security across the country, and that's what brings controversy.

There is so much that we agree on, and I am certain we're going to find the pathway forward; but I am equally certain that that pathway forward is not going to be found more quickly in depending on how much we can embarrass and marginalize our political opponents. It's going to be found when we agree that there is more that unites us than divides us, and it's okay that we have some serious policy differences.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank my chairman.

Mr. Speaker, the chairman is actually the one who appointed me as the rules designee to the Budget Committee, and I'm grateful to him for that because it really gives me an opportunity to express what, for my constituents, is commonsense budget reform, Mr. Speaker. They know you just can't keep spending and spending and spending and never have to pay the bills. The bills have to get paid.

But I would say that the funding level that the United States Senate has agreed on is absolutely in no way a compromise. It's the law of the land. The law of the land, if this Congress were to dissolve itself tomorrow, is that for fiscal year 2014 we're only going to be able to spend $967 billion. The Senate wants to spend $986 billion. The law of the land is not going to let them spend that much. That's just the law of the land.

Now, we don't have to like it. We can try to change that, but to characterize that as somehow moving to the middle is to misrepresent, Mr. Speaker, what the facts of our budget are.

As my colleague from North Carolina said so well, the House has adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. So we moved to the middle and adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. So we moved further to the middle, adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. Then we said, Let's just sit down and talk about it to find that pathway forward.

My friends on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are talking a lot about a budget conference. I suspect we'll continue to hear that. I even read about it in the National Journal--apparently, that message is being sold well--but as my friends on both sides of the

aisle know, a budget conference has absolutely no force of law whatsoever. Zero. We can conference a budget until we're blue in the face, Mr. Speaker, and we will never change one penny of Federal spending.

Now that's different from the conference that this House moved to go to with the Senate. The conference that this House moved to have with the Senate--where we could actually change the law, where we could fund the government, where we could deal with the debt ceiling, where we could focus on priorities that each one of us has for our families back home--the conference this House moved to create, Mr. Speaker, can change the law.

Let's do something that matters. Let's do it today.

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