On the recordOctober 2, 2013
My colleague in the Rules Committee earlier said if we could just get a few of us together around the table we could sort this out. I believe that. I absolutely believe that. If we could just sit down around the table and talk to each other, get together on the facts, we could sort this out. But we're not even together on the facts, Mr. Speaker. My colleague just talked about how we're taking away 250 years of American governance with this government shutdown. I don't celebrate this shutdown. I wish the Senate would have come to the table so we wouldn't have had a shutdown. But the truth is, Mr. Speaker, in the 16 years that Republicans have controlled this body, this is the third shutdown that has the great misfortune of occurring. I came along in the Carter administration. I'm from the State of Georgia; President Carter is from the State of Georgia. You go back to the Carter administration, come 16 years forward, Democrats controlled this institution, shut the government down 15 times. In the Carter administration, Mr. Speaker, it was all Democrats--Democrats in the White House, Democrats running the U.S. House, Democrats running the U.S. Senate, shut down the government five times for more than 50 days. I don't celebrate that, but I do recognize that when people refuse to sit down and talk to each other that is sometimes the outcome. It didn't have to be the outcome this time, but here we are.…
