Al Franken: “first I wish to associate myself with Members who came to the floor this evening to talk about the CR. I will be voting…”

“first I wish to associate myself with Members who came to the floor this evening to talk about the CR. I will be voting against it. This isn't about shutting the government down. This is about the House putting forward a bill really without consultation with Senate Democrats--there was some, but at first there was none--and then leaving town. I feel that we could easily do a very short-term CR to hash out a few of these matters--the health care for miners and their widows being foremost in my mind. That easily could have been done. It is not as if we worked in this body too many days this year, and I think we could have worked next week to iron this out, to hash this out. I will be voting no because if we really care about the working people in this country, we really ought to be protecting their pensions and their health care. Remembering Captain Luis Montalvan Mr. President, I rise today to honor a very special man and friend of mine, CPT Luis Montalvan, one of my personal heroes. On Monday I received the news that Luis had died last Friday. This has been a difficult week, and I am grieving Luis's death. Luis deserves to be honored because he dedicated his life to helping other veterans cope with the same struggles he faced after returning from war. I hope to do him justice because his story deserves to be told. I met Luis in January of 2009 at an IAVA event--Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Luis was there with Tuesday, his service dog.…”