Tom Harkin: “here we are, it is October 14, and the government has been shut down for 2 full weeks. We are about 3 days away from a…”

“here we are, it is October 14, and the government has been shut down for 2 full weeks. We are about 3 days away from a debt ceiling deadline. I keep hearing rumors that a deal is close. I certainly hope that is true, that we do make some breakthroughs and we get through this impasse, but I have some observations on that, and I thought I might take a moment to set the record straight based on what I have been hearing over the weekend on some of the talk shows and some things that came out over the weekend. In the last day or so there was talk about Democrats putting ``a new issue'' on the table, that Democrats are now putting sequestration on the table in these talks. Well, I don't know how anyone could think this is a new issue. In March the Senate approved a budget that replaced sequestration with a mix of entitlement reform and revenue increases. In April the President put forward a budget that replaced sequestration with again a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases. Throughout the spring and summer the Appropriations Committee, on which I serve, debated and passed bills that conformed to the budget resolution replacing sequestration. Republicans in the House and Senate have taken part in this debate. Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee responded with a letter objecting to our policy of replacing the sequestration cuts. The House passed its own budget, the Ryan budget, which also takes their position on sequestration.…”