Chris Smith: “Mr. Speaker, this vote presents us with an immediate opportunity to reopen a large and important part of our Government.…”

“Mr. Speaker, this vote presents us with an immediate opportunity to reopen a large and important part of our Government. If the House and the Senate votes to override the President's veto, we can have our embassies and our passport offices and our freedom broadcasting operations back at full strength tomorrow morning. In all of the publicity about the Government shutdown, what gets lost is that many of the most essential Government services, the ones that Americans miss the most, like national parks, museums, passports, VA mortgages, are suspended, even though the Republican Congress has passed various appropriation bills to keep them open. President Clinton vetoed each and every one of these bills, complaining that the multi-billion-dollar spending levels were too low. In the CJS bill, provisions covering the State Department and related agencies, only two major items, international organizations and peacekeeping, are substantially lower than the 1995 figures.”