[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 11 (Thursday, January 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S283-S286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT

  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, Republicans control every level of the 
Federal Government. They hold majorities in the House and the Senate. 
They have the Presidency. Yet the very people--the Republicans--who set 
the agenda in Washington and have majorities in both the House and the 
Senate are desperately trying to convince the American people that a 
government shutdown should be blamed on anyone else but them. Give me a 
break.
  Nobody wants a shutdown except, maybe, the President, who seems to 
relish a government shutdown as a way of ``shaking things up,'' 
regardless of who gets hurt. Members of Congress should know better, 
and Republicans should get down to business and negotiate with 
Democrats in good faith.
  Republicans in the House and Senate have brought us to the brink of a 
shutdown because they are terrified of the ideological extremists in 
their own party who reject even the most reasonable bipartisan 
compromises. They are terrified of a mercurial President, who changes 
his mind on a whim, who explodes at even the most minor slights, and 
who has repeatedly said that maybe we need a good government shutdown 
so he can get his vanity wall. Donald Trump and the Republicans will be 
held responsible for any government shutdown. They have created this 
situation, and the American people will hold them accountable.
  Democrats have been open and transparent about the things we are 
fighting for. We are fighting to reauthorize the Children's Health 
Insurance Program, CHIP, so 9 million kids across the country can 
continue to access the lifesaving healthcare they need. We are fighting 
to restore funding to community health centers that serve millions of 
underserved Americans in rural communities, whether they live in 
Kansas, Ohio, or any of the other States Trump won. We are fighting to 
protect the Dreamers who could be deported to countries they know 
little of because the President unnecessarily and cruelly ended the 
DACA Program. We are also fighting for parity in funding for defense 
and domestic spending in any budget deal.
  These are not partisan Democratic priorities. If one were to put each 
of these priorities up for a vote, they would all pass with bipartisan 
support in the House and the Senate. In fact, we could have passed each 
of these bills a long time ago. Yet, instead of doing something that 
would actually help people, the Republicans spent months working as 
hard as they could behind closed doors to give the wealthiest 1 percent 
of the people in our country and corporations huge tax cuts. Now they 
are trying to convince the other 99 percent of the American public that 
this tax bill was a good deal for them, but that is another story and 
is another example of misplaced priorities.
  In getting back to the matter at hand, which is the urgency of 
preventing a government shutdown, the House is trying to pass another 
short-term spending bill that only includes a reauthorization for 
children's health and not the other important priorities we need to 
support. The Republicans in Congress are trying to pit communities, 
children, families, and Dreamers against one another in an attempt to 
divide and conquer. They are hoping we will support yet another 
government funding bill that kicks the can down the road because they 
will have funded children's health, even as, in their bill, they 
abandon the Dreamers and the rural communities that depend on community 
health centers.
  We cannot allow this cynical Republican ploy to succeed. We need to 
keep fighting for children's health, for community health centers, for 
Dreamers, and for parity. I will not vote for any government funding 
bill that does not include all four of these important and urgent 
priorities. We cannot leave anyone behind because it is clear Donald

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Trump will not keep his promise to protect those we call the DACA kids.
  I was at the White House last week when the President looked us in 
the eye and said on national TV that he would sign a bipartisan 
compromise on the Dreamers. He barely waited for us to leave the White 
House before reneging on that promise. Then we all know what happened 
last week during the meeting with Senators Durbin and Graham at the 
White House when he was presented with a bipartisan compromise.
  We cannot let the President's irresponsible behavior stop us from 
fighting for Dreamers who deserve our support and protection, Dreamers 
like Getsi from Beaverton, OR, whom I met late last month when she 
traveled to Washington, DC, to fight for the passage of the Dream Act. 
Getsi's parents brought her to Oregon from Mexico when she was only 4 
years old. The journey was long and hard, and Getsi's sister was left 
behind.
  While growing up, Getsi's parents warned her not to talk about her 
immigration status because even mentioning it to the wrong person could 
result in their deportations. She lived in constant fear. While growing 
up, Getsi's parents always emphasized the importance of her obtaining a 
higher education, and while her mom and dad only completed the 5th and 
12th grades, respectively, they instilled a love of learning in their 
daughter and a deep desire to go to college.
  After working hard in high school, Getsi enrolled in Western Oregon 
University, where she is studying to become a gerontological nurse. 
Getsi works incredibly hard. She is taking 20 credits a semester. I 
remember, when I was in college, 15 credits was a lot. She is taking 20 
credits a semester, is working full time at an assisted living 
facility, and has recently become a certified rock climbing instructor. 
Getsi is scheduled to graduate a year early, in May, from Western 
Oregon University. After graduation, she is planning to enroll in an 
accelerated nursing master's program so she can realize her dream of 
becoming a gerontological nurse practitioner.
  When I asked what inspired her to pursue such a selfless career, 
Getsi talked about wanting to care for people like her grandmother back 
in Mexico and for her parents as they got older. Without the 
protections DACA provides, Getsi will lose her work authorization, and 
if she is not able to work, she will not be able to pay for school and 
will be unable to pursue her dreams.
  When I asked her why she traveled for days to come to Washington to 
share this message with Congress, her response was very moving. She 
said:

       I have so many dreams and aspirations, and I urge people 
     here to understand how much these Dreamers have to give to 
     the U.S. We were brought at such a young age, we don't know 
     anything about our homelands. I want to be able to stay in 
     the U.S., to stay with my friends and family--my nieces and 
     nephew--everyone who is looking up to me. I want to prove 
     that my parents' sacrifice meant something.

  This is a pivotal moment for Congress. Are we going to do more than 
pay lip service to Dreamers like Getsi by doing our jobs to protect 
them and provide healthcare to millions of children and families across 
the country or are we going to bend to the whims of an unpredictable, 
mercurial, and unreliable President?
  Rather than waiting for the President to make up his mind, I call on 
the majority leader to recognize that as a separate branch of 
government, Congress should be a check on the excesses of the executive 
branch. It is about time the majority leader and Republicans in 
Congress stepped up to do their jobs.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, most people who are watching TV or who are 
watching C-SPAN know we are at a very important place here. We are in a 
position wherein, at midnight tomorrow night, if Congress doesn't act, 
we will shut down the government. What does shutting down the 
government mean? It means a lot of things.
  It means there are going to be a number of employees who will be 
wondering when they will get their next paychecks or whether they will 
get repaid, depending upon whether we make a decision to pay them for 
time worked.
  It means people who need desperately needed services may be wondering 
whether they will be able to get those services, and--if, for no other 
reason, even if the money is there--is the distraction going to slow 
down badly needed services to a number of people who rely on the 
Federal Government as their safety net?
  It is going to mean our military will wonder whether America will 
really be behind them anymore because the games we are playing in the 
Senate are more important than the work they are doing to protect the 
Nation and to protect our allies. It is going to mean a lot of very 
negative things that should be avoided. I am going to talk a little bit 
about it.

  What I first want to do is to summarize what we are trying to do--
people like me who are going to support the continuing resolution. Now, 
to be honest with you, I hate the whole continuing resolution process.
  When I was younger, there was a time when our family was struggling. 
My father was doing construction work, and he literally had to borrow 
money to pay for the materials he needed to actually do the job so that 
he could pay the bills for the family. The way he did that and the way 
you still do it today, in struggling families, is that you get these 
90-day notes. You go to a banker, you tell them you have a project to 
work on, and you prove to them that you can pay the money back in 90 
days and then you pay them back.
  Well, that is how we are running the business of the most important 
Nation that has ever existed. A 1-month CR, a 3-month CR, or a 12-month 
CR is not the way you run the greatest Nation on the face of the 
planet. It has a number of problems with it, not the least of which is 
that you can't give the military any certainty to know what they can 
invest in for the next new generation weapon or defense system, because 
they simply don't know if the money will be there for them to make that 
investment. It means that we are getting far less production for our 
dollar, we are inefficient, and we are sending a message to the world 
that we are not serious about the long-term investment that we need to 
make for our safety and security.
  It also affects a number of other agencies, but I think this is very 
important in these times with all the heightened threats across the 
world. If we send a message that we are not here for the long term and 
we are not willing to make those long-term investments, that is a bad 
message to send. That is the problem with CRs versus what we call 
regular order--to sit down, negotiate appropriations, pass 
appropriations bills, and give the men and women in uniform, give the 
government employees, and give the people who rely on our safety net 
some certainty. That is our job.
  That is why I support a bill that Senator Heller is proposing. It is 
called the No Budget, No Pay Act. I think the Senate Members and the 
Members of the House should not get a paycheck when they fail to do 
their job. Doing their job means they pass appropriations bills, they 
pass a budget, and they actually do the job they swore they would do if 
they won a race for the Senate or the Congress. I hope that bill gets a 
debate on the floor. I look forward to supporting it when it does.
  Let's go back to the CR. The CR is simple. It is 4 weeks long. All it 
really does is to make sure that we have funding for our 
servicemembers. It makes sure we have funding for our veterans. It 
makes sure we have funding for the CHIP program. It actually authorizes 
it for several years. It gives certainty to States and to people who 
need support that it is going to be there. It also provides funding for 
small business loans and funding for the National Institutes of Health. 
It does a number of other things, but those are critically important.
  We have some Members who are trying to negotiate a deal for the DACA 
population. DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It is a 
program that President Obama put into

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place in 2012. It is actually something that I have been working on 
since we filed the bill in August--and long before that--to try to get 
reasonably minded Members on both sides of the aisle to come up with a 
solution that makes sense. But now we have people who actually want to 
shut down the government because we haven't reached a bipartisan 
agreement that I think is not that far away. The problem that I have 
with that is that I think it is going to create a toxic environment in 
Washington, DC, that is not only going to provide all the uncertainty 
that I talked about on the prior slide, but it is even going to 
alienate people who are coming to the table trying to negotiate a 
bipartisan agreement. Now we are at a point where we are trying to 
figure out if we can fund the government either through a vote sometime 
tomorrow or if there will be a shutdown tomorrow night.
  I have only been here for about 3 years, and I have been in politics 
for 12 years. I find it interesting how things change overnight, how 
things that were untenable or awful just a couple of months or a couple 
of years ago are justified today based on the disagreement we have on 
the DACA deal, which I am convinced we will get done before the March 5 
deadline, and I hope sooner than that because there are a lot of good 
kids who came to this Nation through no fault of their own, through a 
decision made by an adult, who deserve a path to citizenship, who 
deserve the respect of this Nation, and who should be welcome because 
there are a lot of good kids.
  I will keep working on a solution, but now we have people who want to 
distract us, not only to distract us from trying to negotiate a 
reasonable outcome for DACA but adding the distraction and creating the 
toxic environment that shutting down the government will cause.
  If we go back, what is amazing to me is that the very people who are 
now saying we should shut down the government made these kind of 
statements in the past. This is from former Speaker Pelosi in the 
House: ``Not too long ago it was an unthinkable tactic to use in a 
political debate.''
  There is a long list of people.
  Senator Nelson: ``You don't hold the country hostage.''
  But that is exactly what they are proposing today.
  Senator King: ``. . . the constant hostage-taking situation to get 
something in that process that you couldn't get through the normal 
process.''
  It is a hard quote to read, but the point is that now they want to 
take hostages. Now they want to do exactly what they thought, not long 
ago, was inappropriate, unkind, unfair, and uncompassionate.
  Then we have Senator Heitkamp: ``It is really bullying behavior when 
the small minority does this.''
  I think it will be a minority that will oppose funding the 
government. So now people who didn't like the bullying behavior are 
trying to rationalize that somehow that it is OK.
  The other issue we have here is that we have been getting close on a 
funding discussion, and we have been getting close on DACA. I don't 
know. I can't speak to you all directly, but if I were speaking to the 
pages, I would ask them whether or not they saw the ``Peanuts'' 
cartoon. There is a common theme that we talk about with Lucy and the 
football. The scene is where you are running down the field and you are 
about to kick the football, and just at about the time that you are 
going to do it, there is a group of people who want to pull the 
football away. That is what they are doing again.
  Honestly, it gets tiring to see us come so close, to have so many 
reasonably minded people. Guess what. There are unreasonable people. It 
is a bipartisan situation we have here. I have friends. They are 
friends of mine, but on certain issues they become unreasonable. They 
are not part of the solution. All of a sudden they create these 
coalitions, and they are the Lucy taking away the football from those 
of us who actually want to score, want to make progress, want to fund 
the Government, and want to provide a solution for the DACA population. 
Now we have another Lucy and the football scenario on both the spending 
bill and also the DACA bill.

  I also have to talk about the CHIP program. The CHIP program is 
something I wanted to reauthorize in September of last year. September 
of last year was the month before the program technically expired. 
However, there was sufficient money in reserves for the States to 
continue to run the programs. Those States are starting to run out of 
money, including States like mine, North Carolina. Now we have an 
opportunity to reauthorize for years, to provide certainty to this 
child population for years, and we are going to hold it hostage because 
we have an honest disagreement over things I think we can work out with 
the DACA Program.
  We have seen what people have said in the past. In fact, one of these 
Senators actually had a countdown on how many days we failed to 
reauthorize DACA. It may very well be that when we take the vote 
tonight, that very same Senator will vote against a multiyear 
reauthorization for the CHIP program. That doesn't make sense. It is 
irrational. It doesn't solve anything. It creates a bigger problem when 
it comes to the funding discussion and when it ultimately comes to a 
reasonable outcome for the DACA population.
  Finally, we can talk about the words of the Democratic leader. Again, 
it is amazing to me how things have changed.
  So did you believe what you were saying then? Or is who we see now 
and what position you are taking now who you really are? People need to 
come to the floor and let me know. Is this what you meant or is your 
new position what you meant? You can't have it both ways. In politics, 
people try to, but you need to say something and stick with it. They 
need to defend which is their real position. If those are their 
positions in the past, let's pass the spending bill, let's work hard to 
get DACA done, and let's stop this theater that is not helping anybody. 
All this is doing is making people who work and rely on government 
funding worry, and it is making people who rely on government funding 
and the DACA population even more worried. Every day they think they 
are 1 day closer to having an illegal status here.
  We see speeches on the floor about the Dreamers, the people who are 
doing well. Most of them are going to school, working, or serving in 
the military. I believe every single one of them. There are tens of 
thousands and hundreds of thousands of more examples. That is why I am 
so motivated to come up with a solution. That is why I am so frustrated 
with those playing these games when we are so close.
  So let's talk about DACA. There is the so-called gang that is putting 
together a bill. Let me back up and talk about a meeting that I 
attended in the White House last Tuesday. In the prior meeting I 
attended the previous Thursday, Republicans met with the President. We 
said: Mr. President, the way for us to get to a solution is to call 
Democrats and Republicans into a room, Members of the House and Senate, 
have us air our differences and then agree to a timeline for 
negotiating a deal that we can bring to the American people and solve 
this problem.
  The President responded by calling a meeting on that Tuesday. Some 
people may have seen it. There was about 50 minutes of press coverage. 
Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who just 
came in here, was a part of that meeting. We all felt great about it. 
We aired our differences. We knew there were differences we needed to 
bridge. We agreed to four different pillars that we would use as a 
basis for negotiation. Come up with something that the DACA population 
needs, something compassionate--something very similar or maybe 
something between the bill that Senator Lankford, Senator Hatch, and I 
proposed, the SUCCEED Act and the Dream Act--and bridge the 
differences. We were making progress. We also knew that we had to deal 
with things like the diversity lottery, border security, and what some 
of our colleagues call family reunification, which has been abused and 
needs to be fixed. Others call it chain migration.
  At the end of that meeting, we agreed that what we needed to do was 
to have the leaders, the whips of the House and the Senate--the 
Democrats and the Republicans--agree to a timeline and a schedule and 
then get together and work out our differences. I, for one, think those 
meetings should

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be open to the public because then the public would realize, I think, 
that we are not that far apart. Unfortunately, we are a week and a half 
later, and the parties have not even reached an agreement on a schedule 
to begin the negotiations. Now we have another group of people that 
say: We have something that is pretty close and we may file a bill, or 
you need to get on to the bill.
  Let me tell you the problem I have with that bill or the concept of 
the bill. No. 1, has it been introduced? No. So it is ``thoughtware.'' 
None of us can talk about the specific provisions because we don't have 
something we can score, look at, or understand the benefits and risks 
and issues associated with it and whether or not we can get the votes.
  The question is, Does the bill have the support of the President? 
Well, I think you saw what was vetted on Thursday, which was not a 
specific provision, and that meeting last week didn't go too well on 
several different levels. We don't have an agreement.
  The other question is, if you don't have an agreement with the 
President, you have to understand the process of the Congress. If the 
President were to veto the bill, and we are struggling to get 60 votes, 
now we would have to get 67 votes. Does anybody here honestly believe 
we will get 67 votes to withstand a veto override? So we have to get 
back to this one, to get the President behind it, because that is not 
going to happen. Even if that could happen, then we have to go to the 
House. It is not about a simple majority of the House Members. We have 
to think about a supermajority of House Members that would override a 
Presidential veto. Right now, based on the number of Members who are in 
the House--there are a couple of open seats--that is 288 votes. That 
isn't going to happen. That is not a very good scorecard. It is not a 
recipe for success.
  I am one of the ones who want checked boxes next to a bill that the 
President supports, that the Senate will get 60 votes on, and the House 
will get more than half, so that we can solve the problem for the DACA 
population.
  Things happen quickly here, and, hopefully, this is another example 
where they will. I hope my Republican colleagues recognize that voting 
against the funding bill is a bad idea. How do you work out of a 
shutdown? Almost certainly it will not end well. So I hope my 
Republican colleagues will vote for the spending bill, and I hope a 
majority or a good number of my Democratic colleagues will, so that we 
get the spending issue off the table. Then I hope that same group of 
people will come together and recognize that the gaps are not that hard 
to bridge for the DACA solution, that the border security measures are 
reasonable, that the changes in the elimination of the diversity 
lottery and a more reasonable way to allow merit-based immigration 
makes sense. We can deal with underrepresented countries to make 
absolutely certain that good hard-working people in those countries who 
want to come and live and work in America can do it. This is not a 
difficult thing to do.
  It is almost as if people are going in the backroom trying to figure 
out how to make this more difficult than it needs to be.
  I am telling and imploring the Members of the Senate, whether you are 
Republican or Democrat, vote for funding the Government. Vote for our 
soldiers. Vote for our veterans. Vote for the children who require 
these programs who are desperately in need of certainty. Then, quickly, 
get on DACA and vote for the Dreamers who need our support. Vote for 
border security so we can know who is coming across this border and we 
can make the Nation safer. These are commonsense, rational, and 
reasonable expectations, and if we lower the temperature here, if we 
treat people with respect, and if we actually not let the polar 
opposites impact what those of us in the center want to do, then we can 
avoid this crisis and we can do great things for millions of people.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, before I speak--because Senator Perdue 
wants to speak right after me--I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Perdue, assuming he shows up before I am done, be the next one in line 
to follow me.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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