Default Prevention Act of 2013 - Motion to Proceed - Continued

Floor Speech

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Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I come to the floor today to add my voice to the voices that have spoken since 11:00 our time about the importance of opening this government and sending a strong signal that the Congress will not default on its debt; that we will pay our bills and we will honor the commitments we have made not only to bondholders outside of our country but to our own constituents who hold Treasury bonds in their pension funds and their 401(k)s, who use it to balance their investments in their businesses because they know they can count on those notes being paid. Until just a few days ago it seemed as if that would happen.

Recently, in the last 48 hours, there is a real question as to whether a small group of Republicans in the House understands how high this cliff is and how close we are to it. This problem is completely manufactured by a group of people elected to office to do this exact thing--shut the government down at any expense and, as the Senator from Virginia just said, burn the whole house down with the children inside. They came here with that express purpose. They are wrong, and they are pushing this country to a terrible place.

Leader Reid has explained it. Senator Schumer from New York has explained it. Mark Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, who is literally one of the finest Governors we have had in the last 50 years in America--and I say that respectfully and honestly; we all know what a great Governor he was--he is now joined by another great Governor from Virginia, Governor Kaine--these men are Senators, but they understand our Governors now are at risk, every Governor, Republican and Democrat, and all the leaders of the State governments and the thousands of cities and villages.

Yesterday we received a letter signed by the Governors Association, Democrat and Republican Governors, saying open the government. Do not let the government default. Why? Because in our system of government, which is the best in the world--it is not perfect, but it is the best in the world ever created by men and women. We are frail human beings. We make a lot of mistakes. We made so many mistakes in the creation of our country and we still continue to do it, but we are trying to build a model of democracy, the best the Earth has ever known.

There is a group of people in the House who decided that for some reason they do not like the democracy. I do not know what they want to go back to, but it has taken us 230-plus years to get here. I don't think anybody wants to go back to a place where the world had no democracy.

There were elections. People won those elections. President Obama won his election. He did not carry my State, but he won his election fair and square. He campaigned on providing middle-class families for the first time in America a way to purchase health insurance--not a single-payer system, not the government system--to purchase health insurance so they would not be one accident away from financial ruin. ``Shame on President Obama. Shame on him for suggesting something so radical that moms and dads could go to sleep at night knowing that if an accident happened the next day they would not have to take bankruptcy or choose between a child disfigured or a child who needed to go to college. Shame on President Obama. How dare he suggest such a thing.''

If they do not like the bill, they can change the bill. We did not wake up one morning and declare this the law. The people of the United States declared this through us as their Representatives. If they do not like it, they can unelect us. Believe me, they will have a great chance because I am up for reelection right now. They will be able to do that. But that is the way you do it. You do not threaten to shut down the government.

I am going to run for reelection. I am standing in this election as a supporter of the Affordable Care Act--not because it is a perfect law but because it is much better for all the people I represent than what we had before--the wealthiest people, the middle-class people, and the poor people.

We argued and fought in public, in meetings for 40 years on how to do this. This was not a last-minute, behind-the-scenes deal that nobody read. Have they lost their minds? We debated this for 40 years through every kind of President you can think of, conservative, liberal, different kinds of Congresses.

I know we have devoted 10 minutes, and I know other people want to speak, but I will take just a few minutes.

Contrary to popular belief and what FOX News said, people here read the bills. For 40 years we read the bills. But we did not have to read the bills; all we had to do was look at the faces of kids dying of cancer who had no way to get cured. All we had to do is talk to people who came to our office every day who said: Senator, can't you do something? My insurance is going up. I can't afford it. I want to get out of my job. I worked for GE my whole life. I have a better idea. I want to get a better job, but I can't leave because my wife has cancer.

I don't need to read a bill. I listen to my constituents. That is what this is about. Then when they decide they are going to shut down the government because they can repeal this law--now they are deciding that did not work so well. That is not making a lot of sense to people. Now we are going to negotiate on we don't know what, but we have to get something out of this. How dare they? How dare this group of radicals, led by the Senator from Texas--how dare they take the greatest democracy on Earth hostage? Who gives them that right? Do they think they are divined by God? They are not--none of us here are.

God could run this world perfectly, but he doesn't run it. He is in Heaven. Until then we, as imperfect as we are, have to figure out His will through the democratic process. But they have decided that is not good enough.

I don't know anything on Earth that is better. Maybe they can figure it out in the next 48 hours. People have been thinking about that for 6 or 7 or 8,000 years or longer. I don't think 48 hours is going to help them.

Anyway, we are here today. What I would like to say is that I agree with everything my Senate colleagues have said. I urge our colleagues to vote to open the government, to not hold the U.S. Government and the world and all the kids in the world, all the adults in the world, all the businesses in the world hostage over their antics. In Louisiana, let me say, we have 400,000 people who need us to fix flood insurance. They are truly hurting. We have 200,000 people who live in Houma who have been waiting for a levee around their city for 25 years. Then they were told by the Corps, yes, they will build it. Then they didn't; yes, they will build it. Then they didn't. I need to get on that.

We have permits in the Gulf of Mexico, I say to Senator Boxer. I see my friend from California. I am going to turn it over to her. We have a little different view on this, Senator Boxer and I, but people in Louisiana would like to drill for oil. We would like to get our permits to do that. But because this ideological group has shut down the government, there are no permits being issued to produce the oil and gas necessary to keep our country strong. I could go on.

Let us reason together. We can find many issues to negotiate about. I am open to many negotiations, as are the Democrats, but to threaten the core of this democracy, fought for so long and hard over decades by men and women, is beyond the pale.

I yield the floor.

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