Continuing Appropriations

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, pending before the Senate is a unanimous consent request on H. Con. Res. 58, a bill to urge the Department of Defense to allow military chaplains to perform duties during the shutdown.

Earlier today, I objected to this bill because I misunderstood its purpose, and I would like to withdraw that objection at this time.

The bill will urge the Department of Defense to allow military chaplains, including contract personnel, to perform religious services during the shutdown and permit services to take place on property owned by the Department of Defense.

Today, just as the Department of Defense and the administration solved the
problem with military families and their death benefits upon the loss of one of their loved ones serving our country, I urge, and I know others will as well, the DOD to ensure that all active-duty members are able to exercise their First Amendment rights and participate in religious ceremonies while they are serving. So that is something I hope we can resolve.

I also want to raise some issues that relate to the shutdown. I raised some earlier, but these are additional concerns I have with regard to the shutdown.

The impact of this shutdown is being felt across the board, across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and, indeed, across the country. It is felt by small businesses, States and municipalities are feeling it already and anticipating much more of an impact as time goes by, and, of course, families are feeling it very acutely. Yesterday I sent a letter to Speaker Boehner emphasizing the detrimental impact the shutdown was having on my constituents in Pennsylvania.

Just by way of a couple of examples that apply to Pennsylvania and to the Nation, domestic violence programs across the country have been impacted directly by the shutdown. The offices that oversee grants under the Violence Against Women Act have had to shut down and are not able to issue grants or provide reimbursements to local programs.

I would say parenthetically that it took many months for the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization to go forward. There were a lot of problems along the way, a lot of objections. Fortunately, we have the program reauthorized, but now, because of the shutdown, we are having problems with women who are victims of violence getting the services they are entitled to.

We are hearing as well from folks in our domestic violence shelters--shelters that rely upon Federal funds and that have already been impacted by the sequester--the across-the-board indiscriminate cuts that have been in effect since March. These shelters may have to further reduce services to vulnerable victims of domestic violence.

In the words of one State advocate: We are hanging on by our fingernails.

Meaning they are hanging on in terms of just being able to provide services, with funding either limited or funding being jeopardized.

Women trying to escape abusive relationships should not be hampered by the failures here in Washington to end this shutdown.

In terms of Social Security, we know Social Security checks are going out, fortunately, but in Pennsylvania, on average, 2,900 new claims are processed each week. That is the typical weekly total for new claims. This means Pennsylvanians who have reached retirement age and have paid into the system their entire careers are now forced to wait for benefits.

You have to ask yourself: Why should a domestic violence center, with people who work to help domestic violence victims, have to wait for a political dispute where one wing of one party engaged in an ideological exercise allows a government shutdown, and, therefore, that domestic violence center doesn't get the help it needs, and the women, mostly women who are impacted, don't get the help they need.

The same could be said of someone who reaches retirement age and expects, and has a right to expect, their Social Security eligibility will be processed. Why should they have to wait for Washington?

In Pennsylvania alone, when it comes to small businesses, 30 loans, on average, are made each week by the SBA, for a total of $13 million each and every week. The loss of these loans is hindering

entrepreneurs from growing their businesses and from obtaining much-needed capital. Again, why should a business owner--a small businessperson who gets help from the SBA and has an expectation of getting that help--and, remember, we average 30 of those loans every week in Pennsylvania amounting to $13 million--why should that all be stopped because someone in Washington has an ideological point to make? It makes no sense, and it is an outrage.

The shutdown is also impacting infrastructure in public lands across the country. Until the government is open, the maintenance of our Nation's basic infrastructure is impacted. In Pennsylvania, a lot of that basic infrastructure involves our waterways--the locks and dams. That whole system which is in place for Pennsylvania and many other States, the maintenance of those locks and dams, is deferred. We all know what happens when you defer maintenance on something as fundamental as infrastructure.

I have been informed that repairs that were scheduled to take place on locks along the Lower Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania are suspended. If you have a problem with those, with a lock--and locks and dams generally, but in particular focusing on the Monongahela River--you stop the flow of commerce or you slow it down substantially. When you slow down or stop the flow of commerce, that affects jobs and the economy of southwestern Pennsylvania. If just one of these locks were to fail, it could have a detrimental economic impact on the whole region.

How about national parks? We have heard a lot about that topic this week and last week. The closure of national parks is negatively impacting Pennsylvania's economy. According to the National Park Service, the communities and businesses surrounding Pennsylvania's national parks and memorials are losing up to $5.7 million in spending by nonlocal visitors for each week the government remains closed. That is just national parks and just in Pennsylvania--almost $6 million--and that is just the beginning of what could be a much more substantial and detrimental impact to the State's economy.

I would go back to the point I made several times--and all of us have made these arguments in different ways--and that is that we know for sure there is a very simple way out of this predicament for Washington but, more importantly, for the country, and that is for the Speaker to put on the floor a bill which both parties now agree will pass. It is a clean funding bill. All it does is fund the operations of the government, albeit at a much lower level--$70 billion less--than our side wanted.

We compromised greatly at the beginning of this process, despite what some have said. So we have compromised to make sure we can fund the government. It is about time for the Speaker to put this bill on the floor. They can vote on it very quickly, and it would pass very quickly. It is only 16 pages long. And that is the key to resolving and ending this tea party shutdown.

I urge the Speaker to do that. I have urged him, as we all have in various ways, and we respectfully suggest that could happen tomorrow. Thursday would be a good day to end all of this so we can get people back to work, we can have the functions of government operating to such an extent the economy can grow, and we can have a lot of debate and discussion about how to fund the government long term or what to do about our fiscal challenges--what to do about a whole range of issues. But it is time for the government to open, and it is time for the House to act to do that.

It is also time to make sure we pay our bills.

Thirdly, it is important we continue to negotiate, just as we negotiated a long time ago, many weeks ago, to reach the point where we can have a bill that would fund the operations of the government.

Some people in the House chose to take a different path which led to the shutdown. It is about time we get them back on the right path, which is to open the government, pay our bills, and then have negotiations and discussions and compromises to move the country forward.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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