[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 201 (Thursday, December 20, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7962-S7963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           GOVERNMENT FUNDING

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, last night, the Senate agreed to pass a 
short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open through 
early February.
  With less than 2 days to go until the appropriations lapse, if we are 
to avoid a shutdown, the House must pass this continuing resolution and 
President Trump must sign it. If President Trump vetoes the short-term 
spending bill, he would no doubt compound the serious errors he has 
made throughout the budget process. It is already indisputable that a 
shutdown would fall on President Trump's back. He has been demanding it 
for months, and, of course, when Leader Pelosi and I went to the White 
House, he demanded it in front of all the American people.
  Now, compounding that--vetoing the last train out of the station, a 
CR--he would be doubling down on his responsibility for a Christmas 
shutdown, and every single American would know it. Most importantly, it 
would not move the needle an inch toward the President getting his 
wall.
  I mention these points because several Members of the Freedom 
Caucus--the hard rightwing in the House--and hard-right voices in the 
media are openly encouraging the President to veto any CR that doesn't 
have his money for the wall. These are the same voices pressuring the 
House leadership to refuse to put the CR on the floor. The voices of 
the hard right--both in the House and in the media--give no strategy at 
all--simply, shut the government down. But none of them have detailed 
any path to get their wall.

[[Page S7963]]

  Let me just walk my friends in the House through it. Democrats are 
not budging on the wall. We favor smart, effective border security, not 
a medieval wall.
  A Trump shutdown will not convince a single Democrat to support 
bilking the American taxpayers for an ineffective, unnecessary, and 
exorbitantly expensive wall that President Trump promised Mexico would 
pay for.
  I hear Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows say: This was a campaign promise. 
They are only mentioning half of the campaign promise. The promise 
throughout the campaign was this: We will build a wall, and Mexico will 
pay for it.
  Furthermore, there are not the votes in the Republican House for a 
wall. There are not the votes in the Senate for a wall--not now, not 
next week, not next month or beyond.
  If Speaker Ryan refuses to put the CR on the floor or President Trump 
vetoes it, there will be a Trump shutdown, but there will be no wall. 
And if President Trump or House Republicans cause a shutdown over 
Christmas, on January 3, the new Democratic House will send the Senate 
a clean CR bill. Based on passage of the CR last night, it is clear--
and to their credit--that Senate Republicans don't want a shutdown.
  What is the endgame here? What is the endgame of those who are 
demanding the President not sign the CR--that the House not pass the 
CR? It seems, unfortunately, that the Trump temper tantrum is spreading 
like a contagion down Pennsylvania Avenue to the allies in the House.
  Trump's allies in the House can pound their fists on the table all 
they want, but it is not going to get a wall. They can--having caught 
the Trump temper fever--jump up and down, yell and scream. It is not 
going to get a wall. And neither Mr. Meadows nor Mr. Jordan have 
outlined any conceivable plan on how to achieve what they say they want 
to achieve.
  I would say this to my less frenzied friends in the House. Go ask Mr. 
Jordan and ask Mr. Meadows: What is your plan? What is your endgame? 
What is your path to getting the wall?
  I suspect that anyone who asks them will find that they don't have 
one. They are just angry and mad, and so they pound their fists on the 
table. They have caught the Trump temper tantrum, but they have no 
conceivable plan, and so their anger will result in a Trump shutdown, 
but not a Trump wall. Frankly, their anger will result in further 
discrediting the President whom they support.
  Amazingly, Representative Meadows said yesterday that the American 
people will support President Trump shutting down the government over 
the wall. I don't know what evidence he has for that or whom he speaks 
to, because every public poll that I have seen shows that the American 
people are not only strongly against a border wall, but they are even 
more strongly against a shutdown to get the wall. Imagine how strongly 
they would feel as he ties those two things together.
  When Mr. Meadows says the American people are for it, he must think 
the American people are only conservative Republicans. If he widened 
his horizons a bit, he would come to the understanding that shutting 
down the government over President Trump's wall is futile, self-
defeating, and has minimal support among the American people. Even a 
quarter of President Trump's shrinking base does not support shutting 
down the government over the wall, and among the vast majority of other 
Americans who are not part of President Trump's base--and those are the 
majority of Americans--the strong majority are totally against it.
  We need to get something done here to keep the government open over 
Christmas. We need to tell the hundreds of thousands--millions--of 
workers that they will get paid over Christmastime. The House needs to 
come to the same sensible conclusion that the Senate came to--that we 
should not hold millions of innocent Americans hostage to demand 
something they will never get.
  The Senate has produced a clean bill. There are no partisan demands, 
no poison pill riders. We could have demanded lots of things in the 
bill that we want. It is just a clean extension of funding. If House 
Republicans and President Trump refuse to pass it, then we will have a 
Trump shutdown over Christmas. The choice is theirs.

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