[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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