[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 204 (Thursday, December 14, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8018-S8019]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Funding the Government

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on the year-end negotiations, they are 
making headway--that is good--but many issues still remain to be 
resolved.
  We need to provide funding for community health centers, CHIP, and 
areas that have been hit by disasters. We need to pass a bipartisan 
deal to pair the Dream Act with border security and pass a budget deal 
that fully funds both our national security and our economic security, 
in the common parlance known as ``parity.''
  If we don't lift the spending caps for defense and also urgent 
domestic priorities--jobs, the economy--both will come under the 
specter of sequestration. Lifting those spending caps in equal measure 
has been the basis of successful budget agreements going back several 
years.
  There has been parity between defense and nondefense for the last 
three

[[Page S8019]]

budget negotiations. That is how it ought to stay. That is what brought 
us to good agreements. That is what averted shutdowns. Unfortunately, 
it appears that the Freedom Caucus in the House, which doesn't 
represent the mainstream of America or even the mainstream of 
Republicans, is trying to derail another successful parity agreement. 
Unfortunately, Speaker Ryan, as he is doing far too often, to the 
detriment of the country and his party, is just following its lead.
  Last night, the House posted what is called a CRomnibus--a very 
short-term extension of funding for jobs and economic development that 
will lead to cuts in those areas but a long-term extension and a large 
increase of funding for defense. This is merely a ruse that is designed 
to slash funding for education, healthcare, infrastructure, and 
scientific research--all things the Freedom Caucus doesn't want the 
government to fund--against the will of the overwhelming majority of 
Americans.
  At this late hour, it is also an unfortunate waste of precious time. 
Earlier this week, 44 Senate Democrats sent a letter to our Republican 
colleagues that explicitly warned them that Democrats could not support 
such an approach. Because 60 votes are needed to advance a spending 
bill here in the Senate, House Republicans should have known not to 
waste everyone's time with a partisan spending bill that could never 
pass in the Senate.
  The CRomnibus is nothing but a spectacle--a charade, a sop--to some 
militant, hard-right people who don't want the government to spend 
money on almost anything. It is a perilous waste of time as the clock 
ticks closer and closer to the end of the year.
  It is time for our Republican colleagues--especially in the House, 
where the Freedom Caucus is like the tail wagging the dog--to get 
serious about working with Democrats toward a real parity agreement. 
Every hour that the House spends on the CRomnibus is an hour that could 
be spent on our working on a deal to avert a shutdown and solve the 
many pressing issues that Congress must grapple with before the end of 
the year.
  If Speaker Ryan decides to press forward with a CRomnibus, it will 
quickly fail in the Senate, and we can get back to negotiating a real 
bipartisan agreement that will provide certainty and full funding to 
both our national defense and the middle class. Speaker Ryan has gone 
along with this approach three times in a row--or the House Republicans 
have. I think Ryan was the Speaker for two of those three and was the 
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee for the third. Right now, 
Speaker Ryan is pursuing a dead-end strategy. Instead, we urge him to 
continue working with Democrats on a bipartisan, long-term agreement 
that will keep the government open and fund our major priorities--
defense, with jobs and the economy on the other side.
  By the way, even on the other side of the ledger, the things that 
affect our security, like the border and the FBI, are funded on the 
nondefense side, and you have to have security in every way in this 
terrorism-ridden world in which we live.