Sam Farr: “I would just like to take a few moments and put some of this in perspective. I've been here 18 years now, and I've seen…”

“I would just like to take a few moments and put some of this in perspective. I've been here 18 years now, and I've seen a lot going on in government, and I've had the experience in the State legislature and also in local government before getting here. This is nothing but a ploy to shut down the government for ideological purposes. It has nothing to do with running the greatest Nation on earth and trying to be a responsible government, trying to teach democracy to countries around the world, that if you copy our system you may have a freer and more open system. This is about shutting down the entire United States Government over use of birth control. It's also the party that has a history of shutting down government. The last time government was shut down it was shut down by the Republicans. And after they shut it down, what we did, before that, is we enacted taxes to pay off the debt under President Clinton. And guess what? That was a tough vote. Not a single Republican cast a vote for that. That was probably one of the greatest economic votes ever cast in modern Congress because it put the country back on foot. We didn't have a deficit. We removed it because we earmarked those taxes to pay off the debt. Along came President Bush. The first thing he did was repeal all those taxes. The question was, well, how are you going to pay for this? Oh, no, no. We don't have to pay for this. Well, Mr. President, you are about to go into a war.…”