Michael Bennet: “I wanted to take the floor for a few minutes to talk about where I was supposed to be today, which is Denver, CO, not on…”

“I wanted to take the floor for a few minutes to talk about where I was supposed to be today, which is Denver, CO, not on this floor, because we were hosting a townhall meeting in Denver, Mark Udall and I were, to discuss our long-term deficit and debt problems. We had invited Senator Simpson from Wyoming--my colleague from Wyoming just spoke--a great Republican Senator, the co-chair of the President's Deficit and Debt Commission, to Denver for this session. He agreed to come. The former head of the Office and Management and Budget got on a plane, flew to Denver, they agreed to come, and some others. More important than that, we put this out to the public, and it was almost immediately oversubscribed so many people wanted to get in, to have a real conversation, an authentic conversation, about what we were going to do finally to dig out from underneath this incredible deficit and debt we face. I inconvenienced a lot of people inviting them to Denver. But they are happy to do it anyway because they are so committed to this set of issues, and they think having a conversation in the center of our country, in our Rocky Mountain West about these issues may allow some common sense to prevail. But the inconvenience they suffered by traveling to Denver is nothing, nothing compared to the inconvenience, to say the least, that the American people are going to suffer if this government shuts down. It is not just 850,000 Federal employees.…”