[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 26 (Friday, February 9, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S847-S849]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING HOMETOWN HEROES ACT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I call for regular order.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the pending 
business.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       House message to accompany H.R. 1892, a bill to amend title 
     4, United States Code, to provide for the flying of the flag 
     at half-staff in the event of the death of a first responder 
     in the line of duty.

  Pending:

       McConnell motion to concur in the amendment of the House to 
     the amendment of the Senate to the bill, with amendment No. 
     1930, in the nature of a substitute.
       McConnell amendment No. 1931 (to amendment No. 1930), to 
     change the enactment date.
       McConnell motion to refer the message of the House on the 
     bill to the Committee on Appropriations, with instructions, 
     McConnell amendment No. 1932, to change the enactment date.
       McConnell amendment No. 1933 (to (the instructions) 
     amendment No. 1932), of a perfecting nature.
       McConnell amendment No. 1934 (to amendment No. 1933), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, what we have experienced today is a long 
debate about how we should spend our money, and I have said repeatedly 
that this is a terrible, rotten, no-good way to spend your money. It is 
a terrible way to budget your money.
  It is a terrible thing to sort of lurch from deadline to deadline. 
Basically, Congress lurches all the way to a deadline. We approach 
midnight, and we are either up or down on some bill that is decided by 
a few people but not by the vast majority. So Congress basically 
lurches from deadline to deadline, and then Congress waits until the 
last minute and then gloms all of the spending together in one enormous 
bill. When that bill comes forward, though, at the very last minute, we 
are told that we don't have enough time to debate and amend the bill, 
so no one really is allowed to participate in the process other than a 
few folks behind closed doors. The consequences of this have not been 
good, I think, for the country.

[[Page S848]]

  All day long, what we have been requesting and what I have been 
asking for is simply 15 minutes to have one amendment, and my amendment 
would have said that we should live within our means, that we should 
live within the budgetary caps we have set and try not to add too much 
debt. We were denied this amendment even though we have had plenty of 
time. We probably had time for 40 or 50 amendments today had we 
actually allowed this to happen.
  But make no mistake--the result of this bill today is a bipartisan 
looting of the Treasury. We are going to now have a bill that will 
expand spending across the board and will lead to trillion-dollar 
annual deficits. But it doesn't have to be that way. I think the 
Senate, if it actually tried harder, could do the right thing. If we 
were passing individual appropriations bills, no one Senator would ever 
stop anything, would ever be able to shut down anything. If we had done 
our job, the appropriations bills would have already been passed or be 
in the process of passing for the following year, and I think it just 
takes willpower to do it. Everybody you talk to says: Oh yeah, we 
should do it that way. Everybody sort of quietly says: This is the last 
time I am voting for a CR or for one of these enormous spending bills. 
Yet we are on our fourth one this year.
  Even though I have great complaints about how much debt is going to 
be added with this, I think we also are finding that we will have 
another one of these in a month. So really I think that is what is 
disconcerting to a lot of us, is that we don't go through the process 
of actually looking for waste in government, going through the 
committee process, and spending the money more wisely.
  Earlier today, I went through a series of wasteful projects that are 
out there. Many of them are very similar to wasteful projects that 
William Proxmire had started noticing in the late 1960s and early 
1970s. Yet we still have many of that same waste that goes on and on 
and on.
  Only four times in the last 42 years has Congress actually passed all 
the appropriations bills, but it is not impossible even in our modern 
era. This year, the House actually passed all 12 appropriations bills. 
Yet we didn't have time, somehow, to take up any of that or do any of 
the work on our side. But there are real consequences to what happens, 
and one of the consequences here is that we are accumulating new debt 
at about $1 million a minute. We have for some time. The new estimates 
actually are closer to $2 million a minute. It is going to be about $1 
trillion a year.
  When you look at the debt that was accumulated for the last 17 years 
or so, George W. Bush doubled the debt from $5 trillion to $10 
trillion. President Obama doubled the debt from $10 trillion to $20 
trillion. And now we are on course to exceed $30 trillion in the next 7 
years or so. So there really are signs that the budget process is 
broken in the sense that we are always doing these short continuing 
resolutions, but there is also evidence that we are not being very good 
stewards of the money in putting all the spending together in one bill 
at one time.
  I think the vote tonight is a vote about many things. It is about 
whether you favor a government accumulating so much debt. It is about 
whether you can reckon that with your conscience when you--many of us--
complain for years and years about the trillion-dollar annual deficits 
of President Obama. And it really is also a litmus test of 
conservatism, because some of us have maintained for years that we are 
fiscally conservative, and we go home to our States and say we are 
holding the line. Yet it only appears sometimes that we are 
conservative when we are in the minority, and that is really a good 
question. Are we to be conservative all of the time or only when we are 
in the minority?
  Some will say we must govern, and my question about governing is, 
Does governing mean abandoning one's principles? Does governing mean 
that we are just going to be senseless and spend and throw money at 
every problem?
  Some said this is a great deal because it is bipartisan, but really, 
in some ways, it is a bipartisan compromise in the wrong direction. 
Both sides have come together and said: We will spend more money on the 
sacred cow that each side wants. But in reality, the person who gets 
shafted is the taxpayer and the next generation that is going to be 
burdened by this debt.
  There are some procedural ways we could try to avoid this. We could 
all just do the right thing, but that hasn't seemed to work for decade 
after decade.
  There are ideas, such as the Government Shutdown Prevention Act, and 
what it would do is it would say that if the appropriations committees 
don't do their job--if they have 12 months to actually come up with an 
appropriations bill and then the deadline comes and in 12 months they 
haven't done their job--what would happen is, the government wouldn't 
shut down; the government would continue spending money, but it would 
be at 1 percent less than they have been spending money.
  I think you have to have that hammer. You have to have some kind of 
punishment for not doing your job, and the punishment here would be 
that we would slow the rate of growth of government--slow it down, 1 
percent cut. It doesn't sound enormous, but if you actually had a 1-
percent cut annually in the balance, you actually would balance your 
budget within about 5 years. So a 1-percent cut would actually be 
pretty dramatic and actually going in the right direction.
  For those who don't want to cut spending, the 1-percent cut would be 
an incentive to do their job, to actually process the appropriations 
bills and have them come out.
  Even if we only did 6 out of the 12 appropriations bills, only one-
half of the government would cut down. So every appropriations bill 
that is actually brought through committee and brought to the floor is 
one step in the right direction. It makes it less likely that we would 
have a complete shutdown.
  I think that drawing attention to how much debt we are accumulating 
is important. Some will say that it was a mistake to have this debate 
today. This debate could have been shortened and could have been 
finished by noon today had we been granted 15 minutes to have one 
amendment.
  So I think part of the process is, even if we were going to do the 
appropriations bills the way many of us would like, I think they should 
come to the floor and we should have a week or two of amendments. It is 
the most important thing we are supposed to be doing. Why couldn't we 
have amendments? We do sort of the opposite now, and we wait until the 
very last minute. So we have waited all week long to put this at the 
end of the week and let it expire toward the end as people get tired, 
and then everybody says: Well, you don't want to shut down the 
government, do you? And I really don't. My intention has never been to 
shut down the government, but my intention is also not to keep it open 
and borrowing $1 million a minute. My intention is not to vote for 
bills that are always just keeping it open, bills that actually spend 
so much money that I think they endanger our security.

  There have been those who say that the greatest threat to our 
national security is actually our debt. I think that is true. And I 
think if we don't rectify this, if we don't fix our broken system, if 
we don't show the American public that we can function in a way better 
than lurching from deadline to deadline, I think eventually the 
American people are going to catch on that maybe they need some new 
people if we can't do it in an appropriate fashion.
  I see no reason, on the first day of the legislature, that our 
leadership couldn't sit in the chair and say to everyone: We are going 
to do all 12 appropriations bills individually. We will spend 3 months 
in the committee on all of them, we will bring them to the floor, and 
we will do a week or two on every bill.
  That would be the primary thing we did during the entire year, but we 
would review all the spending to make sure we are not wasting the 
money, to make sure there are not programs in there that are wasteful.
  Right now, we are going through a Pentagon audit. Instead of actually 
enforcing things on the Pentagon to spend better, we are actually just 
giving the Pentagon a pile of more money. So the recent audit had $800 
million that was missing or lost. That is a large amount of money. The 
recent audit also says that there is over $100 billion that actually 
was spent in a

[[Page S849]]

wasteful manner. I would think we would want to take something like 
that, go through the appropriations process, and try to fix the 
spending.
  But you will never get less waste if you give people more money. So 
really the bottom line is, you have to give people less money. If you 
give people more money, they will continue to waste it at the same 
rate. You can say we are rooting out waste, but if you are always 
increasing the amount of money you give people, there will be more 
waste. There are some Departments of government that should be 
completely cut out, eliminated.
  I think there is a lot that can be done, but none of this is 
happening now. When we glom all the spending together in one enormous 
bill, there is not enough time to read it, and if there are no 
amendments, there is no way or no process to go through and try to 
reform government.
  I think this has been a very useful debate, and my hope is that those 
who mutter and say ``Gosh, why are we having to do this so late at 
night?'' will say ``Why do we do it at all this way? Why can't we do it 
in a better way next year? Why can't we begin to do the process of 
actually sending bills through committee and debating them in a normal 
fashion?''
  So I, for one, think that this is an important debate and that the 
future of our country hinges on how much debt we are accumulating. I 
hope those who look at this bill who actually truly do believe that 
debt is a problem will consider saying: Enough is enough, and I am not 
voting for more debt.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Flake). The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we begin the 
cloture vote at this time. I believe we are only about 2 minutes away 
from the scheduled time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Cloture Motion

  Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending 
cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment with a 
     further amendment to H.R. 1892, an act to amend title 4, 
     United States Code, to provide for the flying of the flag at 
     half-staff in the event of the death of a first responder in 
     the line of duty.
         Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Chuck Grassley, Tom Cotton, 
           David Perdue, Thom Tillis, James Lankford, John 
           Kennedy, Roy Blunt, Richard C. Shelby, Lisa Murkowski, 
           Susan M. Collins, Steve Daines, John Boozman, John 
           Barrasso, James M. Inhofe, Orrin G. Hatch.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 
1892 with amendment No. 1930, offered by the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. 
McConnell, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 73, nays 26, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 30 Leg.]

                                YEAS--73

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Cruz
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--26

     Bennet
     Booker
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Corker
     Crapo
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Flake
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Harris
     Hirono
     Johnson
     Lankford
     Lee
     Markey
     Merkley
     Paul
     Risch
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Toomey
     Warren

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     McCain
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 73, the nays are 
26.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  Cloture having been invoked, the motion to refer with instructions 
falls.
  The majority leader.


                           Amendment No. 1931

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I know of no further debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
  Hearing none, the question is on agreeing to amendment No. 1931.


                      Amendment No. 1931 Withdrawn

  Mr. McCONNELL. I withdraw the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  The amendment is withdrawn.


            Vote on Motion to Concur With Amendment No. 1930

  The question is on agreeing to the motion to concur in the House 
amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 1892 with further amendment.
  The yeas and nays have been previously ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 71, nays 28, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 31 Leg.]

                                YEAS--71

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Cruz
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Jones
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--28

     Bennet
     Booker
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cassidy
     Corker
     Crapo
     Daines
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Flake
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Harris
     Hirono
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Markey
     Merkley
     Paul
     Risch
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Toomey
     Warren
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     McCain
       
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

                          ____________________