Barbara Boxer: “I so appreciate my friend, through the Chair, interjecting his thoughts. I have listened to him and to Senator Mikulski…”

“I so appreciate my friend, through the Chair, interjecting his thoughts. I have listened to him and to Senator Mikulski throughout this ordeal. The Senator is right. I have been on the floor quite a lot. The reason is clear. We need to make a record so that this never, ever happens again. There is a reason we had not had a shutdown since the last one when Newt Gingrich and Republicans brought it to us in the 1990s--because it was horrible. They got hurt by it. We begged them not to go down this road. They went down the road. Why? Because they didn't like the fact that there is an Affordable Care Act. They didn't like it, so they stamped their foot and said: We are shutting down the government because we don't like it. We begged them. We said: That is not going to help your cause. This Affordable Care Act--85 percent of the funds do not come from appropriated funds; they come from a separate stream of funding, and the bill and the law are going forward. They would not listen. Now they have changed their tune and decided it is about cutting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. That is their new thing. My friend is right. It would be so easy to end this. Open the Government, pay our bills, get to the budget negotiations, where we will have Senator Murray, Senator Sessions, Paul Ryan, and his counterpart begin regular order. I want to continue about this contractor employee. What he said is so moving--actually, I think it is a she.…”