Leahy, Sanders react to Senate agreement to reopen government and prevent default

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) offered their support today for a Senate-brokered deal to end the federal budget crisis, as they voiced unvarnished reaction to the process.
President Obama ultimately signed the measure just after midnight Thursday morning. The House had approved it 285-144 against it around 10 pm Wednesday, with 87 Republicans voting for it. Vermont's Peter Welch voted for the bill as promised. The Senate passed the bill 81-18 shortly after 8 pm.
In a statement, Leahy said: "As the ripples of the Tea Party shutdown have cascaded through every community and across the nation, they have hurt families, workers and businesses everywhere. If this extremist faction had been able to push the United States into default, our economy could have been thrown back into a deep recession.
"Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed in the Senate today. Now we can finally vote on the path forward that President Obama and congressional Democrats have long urged, to get past these manufactured crises and engage in meaningful negotiations without the threat of economic Armageddon hanging over the nation. The extortionist tactics that have forced the nation to lurch from one needless calamity to another are corrosive to our economy and our system of government. These tactics breed uncertainty and cause real harm to real people.
"The Democratic Leader and the Republican Leader in the Senate came together and the bipartisan deal they struck will reopen the federal government and avoid a catastrophic default. It also buys time for negotiators from the House and the Senate to work out a longer term budget to move us beyond these made-in-Congress disasters every few months.
"This budget deal again illustrates -- and as have several recent legislative efforts I headed like immigration reform, patent reform, and reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act ‘ that both parties can come together for the good of the country. It takes a willingness to forge solutions and consensus. After weeks of House leaders cowering to a radical faction in the House, hopefully that can happen on this budget agreement and on many other pressing issues facing the country. Will the lessons of this wrenching experience be learned by those who wage these tactics? For the good of the nation, let us all hope so"
Senator Sanders said in a statement:
‘I have heard from people in Vermont and throughout the country including veterans worried about their disability benefits and Social Security recipients concerned about how they would survive,’ Sanders said. ‘I have heard from dedicated federal employees working without pay. It is clear to me that this nightmare must end, that the government must reopen and that the United States must pay its bills.’
Sanders warned, however, that the short-term agreement to fund the government at $988 billion through January 15 will have serious ramifications.
‘According to the Congressional Budget Office, this sequestration-level budget will result in job losses for hundreds of thousands of American workers. Continuing the across-the-board cuts also will cause very serious pain for working families and some of the most vulnerable people in our country, including the elderly, children, the sick and the poor,’ he said.
Sanders also said that a new round of House and Senate budget negotiations that are called for by the agreement must not focus on even more harmful spending cuts.
‘At a time when the middle class in America is disappearing and wealth and income inequality is greater than at any time since the Roaring ‘20s, we must not balance the budget on the backs of the weak and the vulnerable,’ Sanders said.
‘At a time when corporate America is enjoying record-breaking profits, serious budget negotiations must end the absurdity of one out of four major corporations paying nothing in federal income taxes."
"While we must continue to focus on deficit reduction," Sanders said, "it is important for Congress to pursue priorities that create millions of good paying jobs, raise the minimum wage, and protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from being cut."
Representative Peter Welch stated before the vote:
‘The House of Representatives has put this country through a spectacle these past few months. And it is a spectacle that was based on the proposition that it was legitimate to actually have a discussion about whether we had to pay our bills.
‘Mercifully, we are on the threshold of a bipartisan agreement whereby, number one, the Affordable Care Act will be the law of the land and the debate in the future is not about its repeal, it's about improving it, it’s about facing the challenges of implementation.
‘Number two, we are repudiating as legitimate tactics to get your way by any faction--it could be Democrats in the future--the use of tactics that do damage, threatening to default on our obligations and shutting down the government and inflicting pain on innocent people.
‘So this struggle has damaged the institution, but the principles that were at stake are now resolved. One, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. Two, you cannot use the tactic of shutdown or the tactic of default as a way to get your way on your agenda.’
Source: Leahy, Sanders and Welch offices. Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013