[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 11 (Thursday, January 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S275-S277]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we are at a pivotal moment. If the
Congress does not get its act together by tomorrow, there will be a
government shutdown. A government shutdown will be extraordinarily
destructive to the people of our country, millions of whom depend upon
government services. It will be destructive to millions of Federal
employees who keep their families going with a paycheck from the
government. It will be destructive to the U.S. Armed Forces, men and
women who put their lives on the line to defend us. So it seems to me
that we have to do everything we can to prevent a government shutdown.
As everyone knows, we have a Republican Party that controls the U.S.
Senate, a Republican Party that controls the U.S. House of
Representatives, and a Republican who is in the White House, President
Trump. We are now 3\1/2\ months into the fiscal year, and the
Republican Party has yet to give us an annual budget.
The U.S. Government is a $3 trillion operation. There is no business
in this country of any size that can run week to week, month to month.
We need an annual budget, and now the Republicans are coming back,
asking for a fourth continuing resolution. You cannot run a government
like that. It is unfair to the American people, unfair to the Armed
Forces, unfair to all of us.
Three and a half months have gone in the fiscal year; yet the
Children's Health Insurance Program has not been reauthorized. This is
a program that has existed for decades with bipartisan support. How can
we not reauthorize the CHIP Program?
Three and a half months of the fiscal year have come and gone, and we
have not reauthorized the Community Health Center Program, which
provides primary healthcare, dental care, mental health counseling,
low-cost prescription drugs to 27 million Americans
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in every State in this country. If legislation were brought to the
floor of the Senate today, the Blunt-Stabenow bill reauthorizing the
community health centers, I suspect, would get 70, 75 votes; yet
Republicans, after 3\1/2\ months, have not been able to reauthorize the
CHIP Program or the Community Health Center Program.
When we talk about the budget process, we are talking about three
major issues; there are more, but there are three major issues. No. 1,
will we continue to have parity in spending between defense spending
and nondefense spending? Since 2011, in four different budgets, there
has been a bipartisan agreement that for every dollar spent on defense
is a dollar you will spend on the needs of a struggling middle class,
millions of people who are struggling every day to keep their heads
above water economically--a dollar here, a dollar there. That has been
agreed upon on four separate occasions, but several weeks ago, the
Republican leader, Senator McConnell, came to the floor and said: We
want to do away with that parity. We want to be able to spend more on
the military and less on the needs of working families.
We have a middle class that is shrinking. We have people all over
this country working two or three jobs. We have the highest rate of
childhood poverty of almost any other major country on Earth. We have
millions of elderly people who can't make it on $12,000 or $13,000 a
year. We have a crisis sweeping the Nation, hitting my State of Vermont
very hard. We have infrastructure that is crumbling. We cannot ignore
the needs of the working families of this country and spend huge
amounts of money only on the military.
Some of the things we have to do as we come together, as we must, for
a bipartisan agreement is, of course, reauthorize CHIP and, of course,
reauthorize the Community Health Center Program. The Stabenow-Blunt
bill has nine Republican cosponsors. Every Democrat will support it. We
have the votes. Let's do it.
We have to deal with the pension issue. One and a half million
American workers are about to lose 50 to 60 percent of the pensions
they were promised by the U.S. Government. That cannot be allowed to
happen. We have to stand with those workers.
I went to a meeting earlier today dealing with the Social Security
Administration. The Social Security Administration provides a process--
the administrative arm makes sure that the elderly, disabled, and
people who get Social Security benefits get those benefits in a timely
manner. For years now, Republicans have underfunded that
administration, and today there are simply not enough employees to do
the work that has to be done. Amazingly enough, over at the House they
are talking about massive cuts to the Social Security Administration on
top of all the cuts they have already received.
The Washington Post wrote an article a few weeks ago--unbelievable--
and what they said is that over the last year, if you can believe it,
10,000 people with disabilities who had applied for Social Security
benefits died while waiting for those claims to be processed. They were
not processed in a timely manner because the Social Security
Administration does not have the workers it needs and has been
significantly underfunded. For the sake of the senior citizens of our
country, for the sake of the disabled, any budget agreement when we
have parity must supply sufficient amounts of money for the Social
Security Administration so that they can do their work.
Every Veterans Day, every Member of this body talks about how much
they love veterans. The Veterans' Administration today has 30,000
vacancies, which means that our veterans are not getting the quality
and timely care that they must be able to receive. We have to start
filling those vacancies. Any budget agreement must include increased
funding for the VA.
In my State of Vermont and all over this country, there are millions
of young people who went to college, went to graduate school, and have
left school deeply in debt. Because of high interest rates, some of
those people now owe more money today after paying off, year after
year, their debts than they did when they took out the debt. We have to
address the debt crisis facing some 40 million Americans.
In Vermont and all over this country, if you are a working person,
what do you do if you have a 3-year-old or a 2-year-old? Well, you look
for decent, quality childcare. But all over this country it is
extremely difficult to find that quality childcare. Any serious budget
agreement we reach must include increased funding for childcare so that
working people in this country know, when they leave their kid at a
center, that child will receive quality care at a cost that is
affordable. Every dollar we invest in early childhood education is a
dollar very, very well spent.
All over this country, in this, the wealthiest Nation in the history
of the world, we have infrastructure--roads, bridges, water systems,
waste water plants--which is crumbling. In many parts of rural America,
including the State of Vermont, we do not have high-quality, affordable
broadband or cell phone service. How do you maintain a community, how
do you bring business into a community, how do kids do their homework
if you don't have decent broadband or cell phone service? We have to
invest in rural America and make certain that every community in this
country has broadband and the kind of infrastructure that it needs in
order to prosper.
One of the tragedies taking place in this country today is resulting,
unbelievably, in a lowered life expectancy rate here in the United
States of America. Our life expectancy rate is actually in decline, and
one of the reasons for that is the tragic opioid and heroin epidemic,
which claimed some 60,000 lives last year. We cannot ignore that
problem. We have to invest in prevention. We have to invest in
treatment. We have to help States all over this country and the
families who are struggling with this issue.
My point is, we need parity, not for some abstract, inside-the-
beltway reason; we need parity in spending because we need more in this
country than just a strong military. We need a strong middle class. We
need a strong working class. We cannot turn our backs on tens of
millions of people who are struggling.
The second issue that we have to deal with here in the Congress is
the issue of DACA and the need for clean Dreamers legislation. In
September, President Trump initiated a very serious crisis. What he did
is rescind President Obama's Executive order providing legal status
through DACA to 800,000 young people. These are young people who were
raised in the United States of America. These are young people who
today are working. They are in school; they are in the military. This
is the only home they have ever known. This is the only country that
any of them or many of them can even remember. The idea of simply doing
away with the legal status that they have, subjecting them to
deportation, subjecting them to being taken away from the only country
they have ever known and loved is literally beyond comprehension and
unspeakable.
In September, when Trump initiated this process by rescinding Obama's
Executive order on DACA, he said to the Congress, the Republican
leadership in the House and Senate: You fix it. Get legislation.
Well, there are people right now--Senator Durbin, Senator Graham, and
others--who are working on legislation, which doesn't go as far as I
would like it to go, but they are working on serious legislation in the
House. The vast majority of Democrats and many Republicans understand
that we cannot turn our backs on these young people. That is not just
what we feel here in the House and in the Senate; it is what the
American people want. Poll after poll shows that 70, 75, 80 percent of
the American people say: Provide these 800,000 young people with legal
status. Provide them with a path toward citizenship. Very few people
think that we should turn our backs on these young people, let DACA
expire, and subject them to deportation. Let us do what the American
people want us to do, and let us pass a strong Dreamers Act.
Last but not least, we had some terrible hurricanes some months ago.
They brought a lot of disaster to Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the
Virgin Islands. Months have gone by, and we have yet to pass the kind
of disaster relief that communities in those States and territories
desperately need.
We cannot continue to kick the can down the road. We cannot continue
to
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run a $3 trillion government on a month-by-month basis. It is unfair to
everybody. We have to sit down and negotiate a serious budget
agreement. And what Republicans must understand is that, yes, they have
a 51-to-49 majority here in the Senate, but you need 60 votes to pass
this type of legislation. You need 60 votes, and that means you cannot
do it alone. You cannot give the Democratic caucus a fait accompli and
expect Democrats to say: Oh, yes, sir, we are going to follow you. This
requires bipartisan discussion on the parity issue and domestic
spending and bipartisan discussion on DACA.
We have a strong majority of Members of the Senate who support a
Dreamers piece of legislation and a path toward citizenship. We have a
strong majority of the American people and a strong majority of Members
of the Senate who want disaster relief. This should not be a difficult
problem. The American people want a resolution, and they want it done
in a bipartisan way. Let's do it. Let's not kick the can down the road.
Republicans must understand that they must negotiate in a bipartisan
way.
With that, I yield the floor and 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. SHELBY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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