On the recordOctober 7, 2013
I think we are all in a state of shock that we are entering the fourth day of a government shutdown with no movement in sight. I wanted to go home to California to see how the Affordable Care Act is going in California since that is the reason the Republicans have shut down the government. I want to report that people there cannot understand why on Earth the Republicans want to stop the Affordable Care Act. They can't believe that just as Californians are on the brink of getting millions of our citizens insured and small businesses are getting affordable health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, Republicans not only have shut down the government, but they are threatening default. And they understand that default would lead to economic chaos. It has never happened before in American history. I tried to explain to my constituents exactly what has been going on here, and I did it in the best way I could, and I think I was fair. The first thing: In order to keep the government open for 6 weeks, they wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They tried 43 times. That never worked, so then they said they would defund it, which everybody understands that if you don't fund it, it is the same thing. But we told them they couldn't defund most of it because most of it is not appropriated funds. They didn't care. They put that forward. That went nowhere. Then they said: We won't repeal it or defund it. We will delay the Affordable Care Act.…
