Tim Kaine: “I rise to follow my colleague from Washington and talk about the effects of the shutdown. If I am really fast on a given…”

“I rise to follow my colleague from Washington and talk about the effects of the shutdown. If I am really fast on a given day, I kind of have a mind-meld with her. I kind of have a little bit of a mind-meld now because I want to talk about the effects on America's national security. I was on the floor last week talking about the effects on Federal employees, so many of whom live in Virginia. I had a roundtable on Friday in Alexandria, where they came out and talked about having to reschedule medical appointments, worrying about missing their mortgage payments, and withdrawing monies from their IRA and having to pay a penalty to do it to cover their bills. These Federal employees all share how passionate they are about serving the public. That is all they want to do. They shared the hardships that are visited upon them and their families by not getting a paycheck. I heard another, different story today that is not about a Federal employee but a dentist in Alexandria who shared with our office how many of her patients are canceling their appointments. People don't have copays--people are worried about whether they will have copays, so they are canceling and postponing. So now it is not just the Federal employees, but it is also this small business woman who runs a medical practice who is seeing the effect of it. I want to talk about something different tonight. I want to talk about national security.…”