Matt Cartwright: “I would hope that, but my hopes have been dashed before. We have seen this story before in different aspects. In fact…”

“I would hope that, but my hopes have been dashed before. We have seen this story before in different aspects. In fact, we are approaching the 8-year anniversary now of what happened when I was a freshman Representative in 2013. It was October 1. The government shut down. At that time, the debate of the day was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and there was the demand by the Republicans in the Senate that we repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and if we didn't, they were going to shut the government down. Madam Speaker, they did shut the government down. They shut it down for 16 days in October. And I can tell you, when they do these things, they do damage the economy and they did damage the economy in 2013 in the fall. In fact, in my own district, we actually measured how much damage was done to the economy in northeastern Pennsylvania. We have this marvelous asset, the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, that had to shut down because of that government shutdown. Now, this happened the first 16 days of October, which always is a very lucrative tourist season in northeastern Pennsylvania. The people are out to see the beautiful resplendent colors of the fall in northeastern Pennsylvania. Because the national park had to shut down for those 16 days, leaf peeper season went out the window.…”