[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 214 (Tuesday, January 2, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S19328-S19329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     EXTENSION OF MORNING BUSINESS

  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are in morning business until 12:30, is 
that correct?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 
minutes as if in morning business and have the time for morning 
business extended.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

[[Page S19329]]


                            END THE SHUTDOWN

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I come from a town of 400 people in 
southwestern North Dakota, a very small community, a community probably 
like most other small communities in this country. Good people live 
there, thoughtful people, people who help others. Oh, the community has 
a few hotheads like most communities have, a few freeloaders like most 
communities have.
  My home community is probably not unlike the Congress; 535 people 
serve here in the U.S. Congress, mostly good, thoughtful, hard-working 
people, Republicans and Democrats who love their country and care about 
doing the right thing for their country. And we have a few hotheads 
here and we have a few hot dogs here, I guess.
  We find ourselves today in a most remarkable position, one that I 
think causes all Americans to scratch their heads and wonder, what on 
Earth can they be thinking about in the U.S. Congress?
  We have a disagreement over a 7-year budget plan. The disagreement is 
not over small issues; it is over some very significant issues. And 
there is a good reason that there would be disagreement over large 
questions, such as a $245 billion tax cut, a $270 billion proposed cut 
in Medicare spending, and a range of other things. There is good reason 
that there would be very substantial disagreement about those issues. 
And yet we know from two centuries of history that in a democracy you 
find compromise; you reason together; you find a way to come together 
and reach common solutions.
  This year, however, it has been different. There is a disagreement on 
the 7-year budget plan. There are talks now ongoing at the White House, 
and I have been involved in some of those talks over this weekend at 
the White House, and I shall not talk about the merits of the balanced 
budget issues because I have been a part of those discussions. But I 
did want to say that because we find ourselves at this junction, we now 
have a partial shutdown of the Federal Government by some who want to 
use that shutdown as leverage to try to get what they might think they 
can get in this 7-year balanced budget negotiation.
  It does not make any sense to me that we use a partial shutdown of 
the Federal Government as leverage. There is no connection. It does not 
make any sense.
  Can you imagine the city council of my hometown or your hometown, a 
city council that says we, as a city council, cannot agree on a budget, 
so you know what we are going to do? We are going to decide that city 
workers will not come to work, or we are going to have half of them not 
come to work and half of them come to work, and to those we prevent 
from coming to work we say, you stay home, we will not allow you to 
come to work and when this is over, we are going to pay you for work we 
will not allow you to do. To those who come to work we say, you come to 
work because that is your responsibility, and when you get here we are 
not going to pay you, but we will pay you later when we resolve this 
dispute.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. This would be nurses at a veterans hospital, security 
guards at the prisons, and so on.
  Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DORGAN. Many of whom work from paycheck to paycheck and live 
paycheck to paycheck. And that is who we are telling in this 
circumstance that they should bear the brunt of this dispute.
  I would be happy to yield for a moment.
  Mr. SARBANES. Very quickly. The Washington Post in a recent editorial 
said, and I quote them, ``Can you imagine a Fortune 500 company 
operating like this, if they had a dispute between their board of 
directors and their President and they sent everybody home.''
  It is a coercive bargaining tactic that ought to have no place in the 
picture. As the distinguished Senator from New Mexico said, the regular 
operations of Government ought to be able to continue while we try to 
thrash out the very tough questions involved in this 7-year budget 
projection.
  Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the Senator's comments. I might say Senator 
Dole has been in the Chamber and he has made the point several times 
that it is not his desire to see this shutdown continue.
  I think and I hope very much that we will be able to pass a clean 
continuing resolution to end the shutdown. I know the previous Senator 
who spoke this morning said, well, we--meaning people on his side--have 
proposed to bring the Government workers back to work but we have 
objected.
  Well, that sort of paints a different picture than exists. We have 
over 2 weeks now proposed clean continuing resolutions that people come 
back to work and be paid for coming back to work, and they have been 
objected to.
  Aside from what has happened in the past, we ought to today, on 
Tuesday, all of us, decide that this is the day to end this shutdown, 
end this bizarre impasse, and pass a clean continuing resolution to 
have the Federal workers come back to work, to be paid for coming back 
to work, and stop this nonsense.
  It does not make any sense to dangle those Federal workers at the end 
of a chain here and say, you are the ones who will be used as a pawn in 
this budget issue. That is not fair to them. I wonder, if we were 
talking about CEO's or Wall Street investors, whether someone would be 
saying, well, we would like to dangle you; we would like to use you as 
bait here in budget negotiations. I do not expect you would see people 
using CEO's like that or Wall Street folks like that. It is just the 
Federal work force that people think they can use like that.
  My hope is that at the end of the day we in the Senate, Republicans 
and Democrats, all of us who understand this makes no sense--the 
Presiding Officer in the chair has made that same point--my hope is all 
of us can decide at the end of the day, at least with respect to the 
Senate, we will pass a clean continuing resolution, send it to the 
House and urge that they do the same. Then we should move on to 
honestly and aggressively negotiating an end as well and a solution as 
well to the 7-year balanced budget plan.
  It can and should be done and, I think, will be done, but this 
shutdown really makes no sense. It pokes the American taxpayer in the 
eye and dangles Federal workers as bait or as pawns in a circumstance 
that is terribly unfair to them.
  In an hour--in a half hour, for that matter--we could, it seems to 
me, pass a clean appropriations bill to continue funding and end this 
shutdown, and I hope that will be the case this afternoon.
  Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
  Mr. SARBANES addressed the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized 
for 5 additional minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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