My Fellow Americans -
Today marks the second business day that the federal government is unable to function due to the absence of a continuing funding resolution. In plain English this means that your govenrment has no power to spend money. Your governmental offices are closed. Government payments like social security checks, medicare reimbursements to doctors and hospitals, tax refunds are not going out. Only bare necessities, like law enforcement and military actions remain ongoing. You cannot get a passport or a government permit today. VA hospitals are short staffed and defense manufacturing has been drastically reduced. On Monday, the Dow Jones fell by 1,100 points. Today as I speak, it is down another 560.
This is due to the failure of Congress to agree on spending levels for the rest of this fiscal year. But more specifically this is due to the refusal of our friends in the Republican Party to negotiate in good faith to reach an agreement on spending cuts, cuts at levels that the Democratic Party has been willing to make that are far beyond anything the have agreed to in the past.
Let me recall some recent history for you. When the Republican Party became the majority in the House of Representatives, they proposed federal spending cuts totalling 30 billion dollars. Then, certain members of their party demanded more cuts so their demands increased to 60 billion dollars in cuts to "discretionary spending." During the course of negotiations the Democrats in Congress agreed to immediate cuts totalling 10 billion dollars to prevent a government shutdown for about 4 weeks. Ultimately over the last two weeks the Democrats agreed to a total of nearly 60 billion dollars in spending cuts, the amount that the Republican Party demanded and nearly twice what they had originally asked for, but this too was not enough. The Republicans now are demanding 70 billion dollars in cuts plus symbolic resolutions called riders, prohibiting funding of Planned Parenthood and the like.
For this they are willing to disrupt the lives of hundreds of millions of people, put seniors and the sick at risk, and put our economy in jeapordy. Economists have estimated that 60 billion in cuts will cost at least 3 million jobs. Government shutdown in all likelihood will restart the recession that we have just barely gotten past. Not surprisingly the people's confidence in their government is plunging. And that is the reason I am speaking to you today.
We have had enough of a faction representing a small minority of our voting population holding the American people hostage to their demands. Everyone knows that I have bent over backwards to accomodate their requests, to the point of disappointing and even alienating members of my own party. But enough is enough.
I am not going to give up one more spending dollar. I am demanding that both houses of Congress to hold emergency sessions around the clock until this crisis is resolved. And I am calling upon you the American people to let your feelings known to your representatives. Write, call, email. Go to Washington. Let them know that we need our government to be open and serving the American people. We have seen what people in Wisconsin and Ohio and Michigan can do when they awake to the fact that destroying government helps no one.
For myself, I am enlisting the full power available to the Executive to make sure that essential government services remain open. I cannot send out social security checks, but I can ask members of our military forces including the national guard to open offices that provide essential government services. And I too will be meeting with members of congress, around the clock if necessary, to reach an end to this crisis. This country is too great and too strong to let the whims of a few bring it harm.
God bless you and God bless the United States of America