Barbara Boxer: “I came over here because the American people keep hearing: Government shutdown. Government shutdown. What is going to…”

“I came over here because the American people keep hearing: Government shutdown. Government shutdown. What is going to happen? The opinion of Congress is the lowest of all times because we are not doing our job. We are not doing our work. We are facing three possible shutdowns. The first one is the possible shutdown of our entire transportation program, and that has 22 days left. On this one, I want to praise the Senate because we stepped up, Democrats and Republicans together, and we said: We are not going to let this happen; we are going to work together and get a bill. I am going to talk about that in a bit. The second date we face is in early November, when, if we don't raise the debt ceiling so we can pay for the programs everyone here voted for, the government will shut down and we will become, frankly, the people who have overseen for the first time a bankruptcy. We have to raise the debt ceiling. As Ronald Reagan said very eloquently--I don't have his exact quote, but he said something like this: Even the thought of not paying our bills, even the thought of not raising the debt ceiling should be avoided. But we face that made-up crisis. The third one is December 11, where all of our budget has to be looked at and we have to come to some agreement on the fair level of spending for both defense and nondefense and all the things we do.…”