Default Prevention Act of 2013--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Durbin, the assistant majority leader, for his speech. One of the privileges of this job, as the Senator from Connecticut knows, is the learning experience, if you will, of sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair and listening to Senators speak. We hear a whole range of talks, a whole range of discussions, from a whole range of talents in this body. Sometimes we hear Senators with great charisma delivering very impressive political speeches and appealing to patriotism, and other times we hear Senators who just focus on the substance and the importance of an issue, bringing us down to Earth about what really matters. The speech of Senator Durbin was exactly that regarding what this health care law means.

We can talk about repealing ObamaCare, and that sounds good to some crowds back home. But think of the tens of millions of Americans who will now have health insurance in Connecticut and in Ohio and Illinois and all over this country, through Medicaid, through joining the exchanges--so many of them have full-time jobs and have never had insurance.

I spoke to a woman in Youngstown who was speaking at a townhall meeting. She said, I am 63 years old, I work two jobs, I have never had insurance. This was before we passed ObamaCare. She said, I just want to stay alive for the next year and a half so I can be on Medicare and have insurance. Imagine that a person's goal in life is to stay alive so they can have health insurance.

This new law, as it is beginning to take effect, as people started signing up 3 weeks ago, means people such as the woman in Youngstown will have insurance--maybe Medicaid or maybe exchanges or some financial assistance. It may mean the $7,000 tax that Senator Durbin talked about, the $7,000 that all of us pay as a result of those who go to a hospital and can't afford to pay, get treatment, get care, and somebody has to pay for it and it is spread around to those with insurance.

It means in my State about 100,000 people who are in their late teens and twenties are now able to sign on to their parents' health plan. It means close to a million seniors in Ohio have already gotten preventive care such as osteoporosis testing, diabetes, whatever preventive treatment, with no costs, no copays, no deductibles. It means all of that. It means more of our premium dollars will go to health care, not to executive salaries, not to marketing, not to insurance company profits. All of that is good news.

While it may not sound as exciting as speaking to a Lincoln Day dinner or people at a political rally holding Confederate flags, we do know what it is going to mean to millions of Americans who may not be going to those rallies but who have worked hard all of their lives and are rewarded for it.

I wish to make a couple of comments about how important the news is today that we can finally reopen the government. America is going to honor its debts and pay its bills as we have every day, every week, every month, every year for more than two centuries. We are finally going to do the right thing, and that is good news to people from Gallipolis to Chillicothe to Toledo and all over my State.

It means that after this vote is done this evening in the Senate, and I hope later in the House of Representatives, the President will sign this law to pay our bills and reopen the government.

It means we need to focus on what matters in this country. What matters in this country is jobs, and that means investing in infrastructure, whether that infrastructure is Sinclair Community College in Dayton or Owens Community College in Toledo, or whether that infrastructure is a water and sewer system in Napoleon or Bowling Green, or whether that infrastructure is a health care clinic in Zanesville, or a whole host of things that matter long term to the future of this country.

I was speaking to Senator Coons from Delaware earlier today about the importance of manufacturing. We are working with a number of our colleagues on bipartisan legislation which focuses on manufacturing and infrastructure. Twenty years ago, thirty years ago in this country--these numbers are not precise but estimated--about 25 percent of our GDP was manufacturing. Manufacturing was about 25 percent of our GDP. Financial services was less than 15 percent of our GDP. That has reversed in this country.

We know what it means to cities such as Springfield and Mansfield and Lima in my State where manufacturing jobs have shut down far too often and those jobs have gone overseas. We still give tax breaks in this country, believe it or not, to companies that outsource, that shut down and move overseas. So a company that shuts down in Ravenna or shuts down in Portsmouth and moves to China gets tax incentives to do that. That has to stop. We have to work on that.

We can support a whole host of legislation I have been working on with Senators Blunt and Collins and Graham and Sessions and Burr to deal with the issue of the Chinese gaming the currency system. That will mean literally hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country that can return or that will not be lost because they are gaming the currency system.

On job training, the so-called SECTORS Act will match up skills locally determined by workforce investment boards and community colleges and local businesses and local labor unions with the needs of those businesses--match up the job skills with the needs of those businesses.

Last, with Senator Blunt, I am working on a national network manufacturing proposal that will help companies and universities and technology come together in a way that can spur industries regionally in this country. We know that, for instance, glass in Toledo--the fact that Toledo has been, for decades, a major glass manufacturing center--not just providing a lot of jobs in a variety of different kinds of glass, including everything from plate glass to windshields to drinking glasses, but it also evolved into the job-creating industry of solar panels. We know how that can work. This will be a partnership between Senator Blunt and myself and others, as well as with the administration, on how, in fact, we can help with manufacturing and continue to lead the world the way we have for the lifetime of myself as well as the lifetime of the Presiding Officer.

We know what we have to do today to pay our bills and reopen the government. We know what we need to do in the weeks and months ahead. I look forward to working on those issues with my colleagues.

I note the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source