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Floor Speech

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Mr. BENISHEK. I want to thank my colleague from Texas. I feel a great affinity for my Texas colleagues, and I'm an avid fan of western swing, especially Bob Wills.

I didn't know how we would end up in a shutdown. I never really wanted to have a shutdown in the government. I wanted to reach a compromise with the Senate and have business go on. The problem is that, in the House, we've passed four different pieces of legislation that would have prevented a shutdown. I mean, I can see, for example, the first thing that we sent to the Senate was a plan to fund the government and defund ObamaCare. Okay. I can understand that the Senate isn't going to maybe significantly budge on that, but maybe we would get out of the Senate some votes. Maybe some Democrat Senators would vote for it. We would see what kind of support we would have on the Democrat side in the Senate.

So then we sent to the Senate a piece of legislation which simply delayed the President's health care law for a year. The President had already delayed components of his law for some people or for some time. So let's try this. Maybe we would get Democrat votes in the Senate to support that. Well, those two propositions, they weren't even voted on. They were tabled in the Senate. They voted to table them and not have any debate about the merits of those two proposals.

So then we sent to the Senate a proposal not to defund the President's health care law but to continue to fund the President's health care law, but to change the law so that it affected all Americans the same. The President, by executive order, changed his own law. Contrary to the law, he wrote an executive order to change the nature of the law so that employers were exempted from their mandate. In other words, the law mandates that employers provide insurance for their employees or suffer a fine. The law also demands that individuals buy insurance or suffer a fine. Well, the President saw fit to change the law so that major employers don't have to pay a fine, delayed the enforcement of that part of the law for a year, despite the fact that the law doesn't go for that.

And when is the President allowed to change a law by edict, by his signature? We change laws in this country by statute. Should we allow a President to change the law at his whim?

Another aspect where the President changed the law is he changed the law to give special privileges to Members of Congress, that the Members of Congress who have to go to the exchange would be afforded a subsidy--unlike anyone else who has to go to the exchange. So how is the President changing the law to give special privileges to Congress something that the American people should be for?

I think that the American people want the law to apply to everyone the same.

The third thing that we asked for from the Senate was simply change the law so that the law applies to the Congress, to the President, and to the Vice President, the same as it does to every other American, and to afford individuals the same delay in the law that the President granted to his big manufacturers, some of his favorite unions--not all unions got it. Why not all Americans?

So that is what we asked for in the Senate. Not even to defund the President's health care law, but simply to make the law abide with all Americans.

How is it that we have become a country where the law applies only to certain people--that the President by a written statement can exempt certain people from the law? Is that what this country is becoming? Is that the United States of America that we grew up in? I don't think so.

I think what we asked for, which funded ObamaCare and simply changed the law to apply to everyone, was certainly a reasonable compromise from our initial piece of legislation. And they tabled that.

Our fourth effort to keep the government open was simply to ask the Senate to come talk to us. So if you won't agree to make the law the same for everyone, will you at least come to us and talk about what you will accept? That is why we are in this impasse we are today.

We have taken steps to reopen the government. We have passed targeted pieces of legislation that will fund critical portions of our government--FEMA, national parks, WIC, Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, the National Guard. We even passed legislation that furloughed employees will be paid once the shutdown ends.

The Senate and the administration have given exceptions to their allies, big businesses, and some unions. Why shouldn't the American people be given the same kind of treatment?

We have heard a lot about a clean CR. I don't know, I don't see how it is so clean when it allows the President to change a law by edict. I don't see that as a clean piece of legislation. I think that is a piece of legislation that allows unfairness in the law to continue. To me, it is rather unclean.

I am willing to talk to the Senate to come to some sort of agreement, but it just strikes me as really, really disingenuous to call what they are calling a clean CR ``clean'' when in reality it is allowing the President to change the law at his whim. I think that the administration and the Senate certainly should come to the bargaining table and talk to the House. The ``power of the purse.'' We have the power of the purse. Shouldn't our consideration be taken into account? Shouldn't we have conversations to make sure that the country stays open?

I just wanted to explain to you, Mr. Speaker, and to those listening, how I feel and why we are here. I would ask your support in that.

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