[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S214-S215]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, before I get into the substance of 
my remarks, let me just answer the majority leader. What leads to 
problems in this place? What leads to a government shutdown? It is one 
side deciding everything and then saying to the other side: You must go 
along.
  The proposal has been sent over--here is what it doesn't do. It does 
not give help needed for our veterans who wait in line for service. It 
doesn't fight opioid addiction, the scourge of America. It doesn't help 
our pensioners. I would say to my friends on the other side of the 
aisle and our defense hawks over in the other body, it doesn't give 
defense what it needs either. It is a loser in terms of the things this 
country needs.
  We could easily sit down and come to an agreement that would get the 
support of a majority of both sides, and it is the intransigence, 
frankly, of so many who say don't talk, don't negotiate, just do it our 
way or no way that has led to gridlock, that has led to the fact that 
the first year has been largely unsuccessful and leads to the 
partisanship America decries.
  Democrats have shown, time and time again, we want to work in a 
bipartisan way, most recently illustrated by the proposal put together 
by my friend from Illinois, my friend from South Carolina, my friend 
from Arizona who is on the floor. We eagerly await his remarks, and I 
will try to be brief.
  Leader McConnell, in this instance, as in many others, says: Our way 
or no way. That is wrong. We will do everything we can to avoid a 
shutdown. We will do everything we can, but the needs of opioid 
addiction and helping the veterans and Social Security and rural 
infrastructure and defense and, of course, the Dreamers remain hanging 
out with this proposal. If, God forbid, there is a shutdown, it will 
fall on the majority leader's shoulders and the President's shoulders. 
We all know what the President has said. He wants a shutdown. So you 
can twist words and twist facts any way you want, but the truth is, 
this is a purely partisan effort--a purely partisan effort--and that is 
what leads to the trouble in this place.
  Let me say a few more things.
  Despite the leader being totally partisan on this issue, we have seen 
some rays, some sprouts of bipartisanship. In the House, Republican 
Congressman Will Hurd and Democratic Congressman Aguilar have a 
proposal on immigration, on Dream, that garnered 20 Democrats and 20 
Republicans. The Goodlatte proposal, the McCaul proposal, has not a 
single Democrat. I say

[[Page S215]]

to the Acting President pro tempore, you have made a proposal that, in 
the words of Lindsey Graham, will not get a single Democratic vote. It 
can't pass. At the same time, the Senators from Illinois, New Jersey, 
Colorado, Arizona, South Carolina, and Colorado are painstakingly 
putting together a proposal where both sides give quite a bit.
  So there are sprouts of bipartisanship--more than sprouts--that could 
save us from eyeball-to-eyeball and from a shutdown. My hope is that 
the President will understand it because the bill that was put together 
here in the Senate was painstakingly pieced together to meet what the 
President said he needed. It protects the Dreamers; includes President 
Trump's full budget request for border security--far more than I would 
want to do--including funding to build barriers along the southern 
border; deals with family reunification--they call it chain migration--
for the Dreamers.
  I know that some have said: Let's do it for the whole immigration 
bill, and let's talk about the 11 million, not just the Dreamers.
  If you want to do comprehensive, let's do comprehensive, but first 
let's get DACA done.
  And, of course, they even got rid of the diversity program, which, as 
the President noted, I was the author of and which has brought millions 
of people to this country who are working hard and are good citizens 
now.
  So it is almost everything the President requested in his televised 
Tuesday meeting, which got such good reviews from one end of the 
country to the other.
  This bill is certainly not how Democrats would have written the bill 
if we were in charge, and it is not how Republicans would have written 
the bill if they were the only party in America. If they were, they 
might go for the proposal from the Senator from Arkansas. But it is on 
the hard right. Seventy percent of America is for Dream and DACA--I 
think 80 percent now. Most Americans are for a comprehensive 
immigration bill that does all these things. So if we want to get 
something done, we ought to compromise in a bipartisan way.
  For those on this side and in the other body who say we need defense, 
the way we are going to get it is through bipartisan compromise. This 
side does not object to increasing defense alongside of other needs 
that are just as important, in our judgment. A parent whose son or 
daughter died of opioid addiction because they couldn't get treatment 
doesn't think that opioid addiction should play second fiddle to any 
proposal.
  The majority leader dismissed the urgency of solving the fate of 
Dreamers. He calls it a manufactured crisis. It was manufactured by the 
Republican Party. President Trump rescinded the DACA Program, not a 
Democrat. It was the majority leader's decision to kick the can down 
the road for months while bipartisan majorities would have likely 
supported something close to the Dream Act. It was President Trump who 
turned his back on a bipartisan solution last week and used vulgarities 
to demean the ancestral homelands of so many Americans. And almost no 
American doubts that the President used those terms. Nobody doubts it--
hardly anybody.
  As I said yesterday, a very fair, bipartisan deal remains on the 
table. Senators Durbin and Graham will release the text of their 
legislation today. My Republican colleagues, I hope, will consider it. 
And I recommend we get on the bill, and then we can solve the problems 
that some on one side see--needs for defense--seen on both sides; some 
of the problems this side sees; some of the problems that side sees; 
and not do the kind of bill that leaves out or kicks the can down the 
road for many more problems.
  I challenge President Trump: Step up to the plate and take yes for an 
answer. Democrats have met you halfway, Mr. President. You meet us 
halfway. The time for political posturing is running short.
  Bipartisan groups of Senators and Congressmen are fervently working 
towards a deal. President Trump ought to get on board, or Congress will 
move forward without him.

                          ____________________