Amy Klobuchar: “today marks the fifth day of the shutdown. I come to the Senate floor once again to call on the House of Representatives…”

“today marks the fifth day of the shutdown. I come to the Senate floor once again to call on the House of Representatives to take up the Senate bill. It is a simple bill. It has no bells and whistles. It simply says, Let's open the government again. Let's open all the monuments. Let's open up the research that is going on at the National Institutes of Health which is important to save lives. Let's put our intelligence employees, who every day are putting themselves at risk trying to gather intelligence data, back to work. And then let's take those 6 weeks to do what the Senator from South Dakota was talking about, which is to negotiate a bigger deal, a budget deal. One of the things I have been concerned about is that the Senate has, in fact, passed a budget, the House has, in fact, passed a budget, but our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will not let those two budgets go to conference committee as they are supposed to do so we can work out the differences and have a long-term solution. The solution is not to shut the government down. What has happened? The Senator from Maine, the Presiding Officer, did a good job of reviewing what has gone on over the past few weeks.…”