[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 170 (Tuesday, November 29, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6540-S6541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         CONTINUING RESOLUTION

  Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I am here to speak on another topic, 
actually, and that is what we are about to do with respect to 
appropriations.
  This Congress was told by the majority leader that the Senate would 
return to the regular order, and I have no doubt he intended to make 
good on that promise. I know he is an appropriator. I know he is an 
institutionalist, and he really wanted to get back to the regular 
order. We were given assurances that keeping the government funded 
would be an orderly and bipartisan process, and it was true at the 
committee level, but that was then, and today we are far from that 
promise.
  Today the Republican leadership, led by House leadership, has refused 
to complete funding bills for the current fiscal year. And what is so 
confounding for the folks who pay attention and who believe in the 
appropriations process, who believe in our constitutional prerogative, 
our constitutional obligation to hold the pursestrings and to use that 
authority to be a proper check on the executive branch, is that simply 
kicking the can down the road and passing another short-term CR doesn't 
result in anything conservative at all.
  Many in this Chamber talk passionately about the need to eliminate 
government waste, fraud, and abuse, and yet a CR does exactly none of 
that. It does the opposite. It means programs that should be eliminated 
altogether will keep getting funded and programs that are working well 
and are critical but are in need of additional funding will remain 
underfunded. A CR puts the government on autopilot, stopping us from 
shifting investments to the most critical areas and decreasing funding 
for programs that are not working or are no longer needed. For example, 
the CR does not support accelerated counter-ISIL operations in Iraq and 
Syria; it defers work on the Iron Dome, delaying protection for Israel 
from long-range Iranian missiles; it underfunds the DOD's basic 
operations and maintenance account by $12 billion; and it delays cyber 
security efforts led by the Department of Homeland Security. The CR 
also delays critical funding needed to address the opioid crisis--
something I know the Presiding Officer cares passionately about. Both 
House and Senate bills provide large increases to fund drug abuse 
prevention, but the funding will remain flat under the CR.
  We are on autopilot. We are not doing our job. We are abdicating our 
oversight role in the appropriations process.
  There are actually two problems here. One is that things that need to 
be funded are not funded and things that should be eliminated or funded 
less are still funded. I don't see what is conservative about that. But 
the other result in a lot of ways is more insidious from the 
perspective of the Constitution and from the perspective of this 
institution, and that is, to the extent and degree that members of the 
administration, regardless of party, listen to members of the 
legislative branch, it is because we hold the purse strings. It is 
because we hold the purse strings. And every time we fail to do an 
authorization, every time we fail to do an appropriation, we are just 
shifting authority and clout to the executive. There is nothing 
conservative about that.
  There is a mistaken assumption that running up against our funding 
deadline will somehow pressure the Congress into doing its job. What is 
crazy to me is that we have now 5 or 6 or 7 years of proof that doesn't 
work--this idea that what we should do is take difficult decisions and 
have them coincide with other difficult decisions and coincide with an 
even bigger difficult decision and then wrap it all up in a bow and do 
it at once. There may have been a time in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s 
where we could create these omnibus solutions, where we could get to 
these grand bargains, but what we need to do

[[Page S6541]]

now is to hit a few singles. We need to do a few rational things.
  The idea that what we should do is take the debt ceiling and the 
expiration of the CR and put them together just doesn't make any sense. 
It was proven wrong by the government shutdown of 16 days in the year 
2013. The administration estimated that had up to a $6 billion impact 
on the economy. NIH studies were delayed, national parks were 
shuttered, transportation and energy projects were postponed, and FDA's 
routine food safety inspections were pushed back. This is not fiscal 
conservatism. This is not any kind of conservatism.
  The idea of being a conservative, as I understand it--and I will 
grant you that I am a progressive, so it is not totally clear to me--is 
the idea that what you do may have unintended consequences and that 
whatever changes you make ought to be incremental and ought to respect 
the institutions that have gotten America this far.
  This is not a conservative result, to kick the can into the next 
spring, when we have no idea whether we are going to be able to solve 
multiple problems at the same time. If we want government to work, 
piling up all these issues and leaving it to a new administration to 
deal with in the spring will likely not work. We should finish the work 
we were elected to do and complete the funding bills for this fiscal 
year.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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