On the recordOctober 4, 2013
I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I had the honor of attending the annual awards dinner of the Partnership for Public Service, the so-called Sammies Award. These are awards that are given each year to outstanding public servants. Last night's awardees had touching, inspiring stories of the work they had done within the Centers for Disease Control in polio eradication, the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Missing and Exploited Children--an agency we know very well in Homeland Security. The Central Intelligence Agency, story after story of devoted public service--public service, I must say, that has taken place in recent years in an atmosphere where public service is often denigrated and public servants often have their pay frozen by virtue of the budget nonsense of the sort we are witnessing here this week. Half of those awardees last night were on furlough. What a disgrace. What a commentary on the honor that we should be paying to those who serve our country so well. So we're asking today, it would take about 30 minutes; there would be a bipartisan majority easily in this body for ending this shutdown and opening the Federal Government. And on the issues before us--the budget, health care, whatever--you know, you live to fight another day. But we have no business in this body demanding a ransom for doing our basic job, which is to keep the lights on, keep the government running, and to pay our country's bills. I reserve the balance of my time.
