[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
[[Page S284]]
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
[[Page S285]]
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
[[Page S286]]
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.
____________________