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




             THE OBLIGATION TO KEEP GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONING

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we are now in the 18th day of the 
longest Government shutdown in the history of the Nation. Serious 
negotiations continue on the budget, but still the Republican majority 
in Congress refuses to pass legislation to fund the normal function of 
Government; that is, a clean continuing resolution. This persistent 
refusal to provide funding for normal Government operations is 
irresponsible. It is irresponsible conduct by the Republican majority, 
particularly in the House, which must originate appropriations bills 
regardless of which side may be right or wrong on the policy issues in 
the budget negotiations.
  Any time the negotiation occurs, each side begins by assessing its 
own as well as its opponent's strengths and weaknesses. Each side 
determines the actions that it can take to put pressure on the other to 
reach concessions.
  In these negotiations over the budget, for the first time in our 
Nation's history the Republicans who are controlling Congress have 
determined that they have the right to shut down the Government and 
they can use that right as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with 
the President. They do not see the obligation to keep Government 
functioning as a shared obligation. They do not see it. They do not see 
it as an obligation of both the executive and the legislative branches 
as previous Congresses have. Instead, they are quite willing to assign 
that responsibility exclusively to the President while, for their own 
part, keeping the Government closed as a bargaining ploy. This is a 
profound change in the way Congress views its responsibilities. It is 
simply wrong to see this is as more business as usual, more of the 
traditional bickering that characterizes Washington politics.

  In November, we had the longest shutdown in the 207-year history of 
the Republic, and it was 6 days long. Now we are at 18 days and 
counting in the second shutdown of this Congress.
  When our Founders embarked on the task of bringing to life the 
constitutional system, they devised in Philadelphia in 1787, it was the 
legislative branch of the Government which they called on to commence 
proceedings under the Constitution.
  The Congress met in New York in 1789, organized itself, provided for 
the counting of Presidential electoral votes and the inauguration of 
the President. The Congress then passed legislation to establish the 
great departments of the executive branch, to provide for the 
organization of the judicial branch, and to furnish appropriations to 
enable all the branches of our new national Government to perform their 
constitutional functions.
  It would be, frankly, unimaginable to our Founders that our branch, 
the first branch of Government whose duty it was to bring to life the 
Framers' plan, would ever think that it was within its purview to 
disable that plan by refusing to perform the Congress' primary 
constitutional responsibilities.
  It would be unimaginable for the new Congress to have decided not to 
complete the work of setting up the Government that the Constitutional 
Convention contemplated. In fact, it would have precipitated a major 
constitutional crisis for a radical majority in the first Congress to 
decide not to set up a particular department or not to fund a 
particular department just to get the bargaining leverage with a new 
President. Such a step then might have doomed the future of our new 
constitutional Republic.
  My Republican colleagues argue that it is not they who are acting 
irresponsibly in causing Government to remain closed. After all, they 
passed appropriations bills and the President has chosen to veto those 
bills. They are right; the President has exercised his veto. He has 
done so as provided in the Constitution. He has returned those bills to 
the Congress, also as provided in the Constitution. But when the 
President uses the veto, the Framers of the Constitution contemplated 
that Congress would either muster the two-thirds majority in each House 
needed to override the veto or make the changes necessary in the bill 
to satisfy the President's objections. When time has been required to 
resolve differences between the President and Congress on spending 
bills, all previous Congresses, 103 of them, have enacted continuing 
resolutions to maintain the normal functioning of Government.
  When this Congress and this Republican majority came, that all 
changed. For the first time in our Nation's history, the majority in 
Congress is refusing to perform its primary constitutional 
responsibility to maintain a functioning Government. It is abusing its 
power under the Constitution. This refusal, this abrogation of 
responsibility, this abuse of power is being explained away as a 
natural consequence of policy differences between the President and the 
Congress. But there have been many times in our history when policy 
differences between Congress and the President were great and were 
strongly held. Never before has Congress approached the negotiations of 
those differences with the view that responsibility for maintaining a 
workable Government rests exclusively with the President and the 
ability to keep the Government closed is a bargaining chip that 
Congress brings to the negotiations.

  If this Republican view is accepted with respect to a partial 
Government shutdown, why should it not also apply with respect to 
increasing the debt limit and extending the full faith and credit of 
the United States? If it is OK to shut down the functioning of 
Government to force the President to accept the Congress' negotiating 
position, why would it not be just as acceptable for the Congress to 
refuse to increase the debt limit for the same purpose? Why would it 
not be just as acceptable for the Republicans in Congress to say it is 
the President's responsibility alone to ensure the full faith and 
credit of the United States and he has to do it by agreeing to whatever 
we in Congress demand?
  This view by the Republican leadership of Congress is as radical as 
it is wrong. The Founders of our Nation provided for a government in 
which responsibility as well as power was to be shared. If the Congress 
will not hold itself responsible for maintaining a workable government, 
then the people who elect the Congress will surely do so.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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