On the recordOctober 8, 2013
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this bill because people do need a paycheck. They need to be able to plan their expenses based on their income, and we have disrupted that income flow, so it makes sense to say, let's get the pay schedule back on track. But I want to say something in a broader context that, after offering the Senate three different compromises on keeping the government open-- three different compromises that were rejected--and then a fourth offer to let's immediately, last Sunday, go to a conference and start negotiating our differences, all of those were rejected; but even in that context, we have found a few things that we can agree on: the military pay bill, which not only included the men and women in uniform but the civilian support staff that they had. As Mr. Moran has pointed out, recently we came together again for the furloughed employees to be able to get back pay for the time in which they're out of work. Then we tried the other day to pass--and did from the House--the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, which passed the House floor on an overwhelming bipartisan basis; and we're looking at other programs that have passed, again, on a bipartisan basis, such as WIC--the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program--Head Start, Impact Aid, and we have a number of others. Why, Madam Speaker, are those important?…





