[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 7 (Monday, January 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S182-S186]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GOVERNMENT FUNDING
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, over the weekend, as you may have heard,
our government set a new record. It wasn't for the number of roads
being built or repaired in this country. It wasn't for higher math
scores or graduation rates for kids in the United States of America. It
wasn't for passing the most bills or investing the most dollars in our
future. It wasn't for paying attention to the next generation of
Americans. It was for the longest shutdown in the history of the United
States--a selfish act taken by partisan politicians that is an
embarrassment to our country and to our future.
It has been 24 days. We have Federal employees all over the State of
Colorado and I am sure the State of Alaska, the Commonwealth of
Virginia, as we heard before, who are out of work because of what
Washington has done to them. It is nothing they have done. They have
fulfilled their end of the bargain. But because we have a screw loose
around here because we are the only modern, industrialized country in
the world that shuts down its government for politics--our allies don't
shut down their government for politics, and our foes don't shut down
their government for politics. No local government shuts down its
government for politics. No school district shuts down its government
for politics. No State would ever think of doing it. No elected
official at any level of those governments would show their face in the
grocery store on the weekend after they shut down the government and
said to the citizens of Alamosa or the citizens of Durango or the
parents in Denver public schools: Sorry. Your kids can't come to school
today because we are shutting down the government for politics.
It is ridiculous.
I met an air traffic controller today who got her check on Friday
after she worked through the entire holiday. She had a kid. I don't
know how old he was, but he was a baby who had to be carried. She
worked the entire holiday, was separated from her family, got her check
on Friday, and it was for 77 cents. The people in this body might as
well be standing outside and lifting their middle finger at her and at
the TSA workers who were there today at Denver International Airport
making sure that we were safe, that the traveling public was safe, and
who were not getting paid, unlike the people here during this shutdown.
By the way, that airport, which we are very proud of in Denver and in
Colorado, the Denver International Airport, is the newest airport that
has been built in the United States of America, and it was built almost
a quarter of a century ago because we are not making the investments
that anybody else in the world is making.
As I said, no other advanced country in the world shuts down its
government for politics. I expect us to have disagreements. We should
have disagreements, but we shouldn't shut down the government over this
disagreement. It has been 24 days.
While we were shut down, other countries were actually investing in
their future.
In the last 24 days, South Korea broke ground on an expanded bullet
train outside their capitol of Seoul.
While we were shut down, Canada announced support for a new 5-
megawatt geothermal plant--the first of its kind in that country.
India issued tenders to set up 7.5 gigawatts of new solar capacity.
[[Page S183]]
New Zealand announced millions in new resources to improve the safety
of rural highways.
You should see our rural highways. And it is not just this shutdown;
it is a decade--a decade of fiscal fights made in the name of fiscal
responsibility that have put us in the position for the first time
since the Vietnam war and before the Vietnam war to see our
unemployment rate falling and the deficit going up.
This same wrecking crew who called Barack Obama a Socialist and a
Bolshevik and was incapable of bringing themselves to help at a moment
when our unemployment rate was at 10 percent and we were at the depths
of the worst recession since the Great Depression has now closed the
government and given us a $1.5 to $2 trillion deficit while the
unemployment rate is falling. And every one of them promised their
constituents and my constituents that these tax cuts would pay for
themselves.
God knows, when they add it up, what this shutdown is going to cost
the American people. It is not saving them money.
Vietnam opened a new international airport near Halong Bay to attract
tourists and boost the economy.
Singapore is preparing an Underground Master Plan to maximize its
urban space by moving things like data centers, utilities, and water
reservoirs below ground.
A new report shows that for the first time ever, Germany drew more
energy from renewable sources than coal in 2018.
Ireland, in contrast to what I was just saying about the United
States of America, ended the year with a budget surplus. Imagine the
flexibility it gives legislators and policymakers there to think, what
are we going to do with this surplus? How are we going to invest in the
next generation? How are we going to shore up our equivalent of Social
Security? Maybe we can have a real middle-class tax cut or lift some
people out of poverty in our country. We can't ask those questions
today because of our fiscal imbalance and because the Government of the
United States is shut down.
While we were shut down, other countries moved forward with a trade
partnership that excludes the United States. Once it is fully in place,
it will represent a trading block of nearly half a billion consumers
whom our manufacturers should be selling to and our small businesses
should be exporting to.
Not surprisingly, China has been extremely busy over the last 24 days
while we have been shut down. While we have been shut down, China
landed a spacecraft on the dark side of the Moon. That has never
happened before in human history. There was a time in our history--you
will remember it--when the Russians launched Sputnik. That caught our
imagination. John F. Kennedy said: We are going to put a man on the
Moon within the decade. That is what he said. That is what we did. Now,
because of the fecklessness of this Congress, did you know that America
cannot send an astronaut into space without asking the Russians for
permission to ride on one of their rockets?
A whole generation of Americans that I was part of was inspired by
the space mission that NASA led. Unfortunately, in my case, it did not
lead me to understand anything about mathematics or science, but it
inspired us as Americans to have a big vision for what our country
could do and for what our country could do in competition with our
adversaries around the world.
Do you think the Chinese are not observing what we are doing while
they are putting a rocket, a spaceship on the dark side of the Moon for
the first time in human history--something they will always be able to
claim; something we will never be able to claim? Do you think the
Russians know that we can't put somebody up on the space station if we
want to, that we have to wait for them to let us do it? Just after they
put that spaceship on the other side of the moon, China announced that
it is planning another mission to the moon by the end of the year and a
mission to Mars by as early as 2020.
It announced that it is planning to invest in 4,200 miles of new
railway lines this year, including almost 2,000 miles of high-speed
rail. Do you know how many more that is than we have? About 2,000, and
that says nothing about the investments that they have already made.
They have begun operating new high-speed rail lines in East China and
Northern China with initial speeds of 155 miles per hour while our
government is closed. That is another plan; that is another set of
tracks. China has plans for a 6-gigawatt wind farm on the border with
Mongolia that, once completed, would become the largest in the world.
China continues its pursuit of a vast space-based communications
network that will cover every inch of the Earth. If we are not
careful--if we are not careful--they are going to deploy 5G a lot more
quickly than we will. That is what the rest of the world is doing while
we are shut down.
My view of this is that we don't need to wait for the President on
this. That is what the majority leader keeps saying. He keeps saying:
Well, I can't pass something the President will veto because it will
not become law.
I don't understand the logic of that, speaking of math. We passed a
bill in this Senate--this Republican-controlled Senate; I think it was
virtually unanimously--to keep the government open. The House of
Representatives passed a very similar bill to keep the government open,
and in the middle of this, in the midst of all of this, President Trump
said: I am not going to accept that because I am going to use this
moment to extort Congress for $5 billion for my wall.
He said to the people he refers to as ``Chuck and Nancy'': Give me
the $5 billion.
They said: Why don't you just open the government? The Senate has
passed it almost unanimously, and the House has passed it.
His answer was ``because I will lose leverage,'' meaning: I will not
have the misery I am creating for the Federal workforce. I will not
have people who can't pay their mortgage, who can't pay for their early
childhood education, who can't pay for their education. I will not have
their misery to use to extort Members of Congress into giving me $5
billion for my wall.
This is notwithstanding the fact that he promised over and over and
over again when he was running for President that Mexico would pay for
the wall. That is not my talking point; that is not my coming out here
and being unfair and trying to exploit a weakness or a misstatement. I
think it is fair to say that almost all of his campaign was based on
the idea that there was going to be a wall and that Mexico was going to
pay for the wall. He could not have been clearer about that.
Now he's trying to shut down the government because he knows that
Mexico will not pay for the wall. The rest of us knew the whole time he
was telling America untruths about it. He has now turned, instead, to
the American taxpayer to say: OK. I wasn't telling the truth about it
then, but don't pay any attention to that. You now have to pay for the
wall.
Our first response to that is: No, you haven't even spent the money
that has been appropriated for the wall to date. He has not built an
inch of the wall. Look it up.
The second problem is that anybody who has studied this question for
any moment of time knows that his proposal is a waste of money for the
United States. I am not going to be lectured by anybody on the other
side about the need for border security. I was part of the Gang of 8
that negotiated the immigration bill in 2013. That was a bill that had
not $5 billion of border security in it, not $2.3 billion of border
security in it, but $46 billion of border security. It got 68 votes in
the Senate, never went to the House, was never allowed to have a vote
because of the tyranny of the so-called Hastert rule, which requires
people not to vote their conscience but to vote only along party and
partisan lines--another disgraceful chapter in modern American
political history. That $46 billion in that bill doubled the number of
security agents at our border. It built 350 miles of what the President
now refers to as steel slats, as if he invented that idea. It made sure
we could see every single inch of our border.
If the Chinese are going to be able to see every single inch of the
world, the least we could do is see every inch of our border, and in
that bill we were able to do that.
[[Page S184]]
Meanwhile, he tells his base--and FOX News repeats it every single
night--that Democrats are for open borders; Democrats are for
terrorists pouring in over the southern border.
I have become convinced--and we spent years working on immigration,
years working on border security, years working with my most cherished
Republican colleagues on this issue in a bipartisan way--that the
President doesn't want the wall. He wants the entertainment of the
wall. He wants to rally his base around the wall. Meanwhile, he is
taking the leading economy in the world, a country with the largest
capacity for self-defense in human history, and he has shut down its
government over a $5 billion, phony wall. It is a disgrace.
It is a disgrace for all hard-working Federal workers--and their
families who depend on them--who are out of work, who are being
furloughed, who aren't being paid. It is a disgrace for every person
who works in State and local governments and in school districts all
across this Nation, who would never think about shutting down their
government but who understand what they possess as civil servants is a
sacred trust to their community and to the next generation of
Coloradans or of folks from New Hampshire or of Alaskans or of
Americans.
We can't wait for the President--and I will finish with this--because
he either doesn't want the wall or he doesn't have the capacity to get
to a solution to it.
So we have to do our work as Senators. We have to vote to reopen the
government. If that were put on the floor tomorrow, it would pass, and
I will bet that it would pass with a veto-proof majority. Why? Because
the constituents of everybody in this place would say: Are you out of
your mind? Don't come back here and have another townhall and explain
why you shut down the government over politics.
Instead, Democrats and Republicans should come together in this
Chamber and set an example for the American people and say: All is not
lost. This exercise in a democratic Republic is going to live to fight
another day. We have come to our senses. We are not going to beat our
own constituents to death for the purpose of empty partisan slogans or
ideas that aren't going to advance the interests of the next generation
of Americans.
I worry every night that I am here about what kind of history the
next generation of Americans is going to write, about what we did when
it was our responsibility to make sure that we fulfilled our commitment
to them, the same ones that generation after generation after
generation of Americans have fulfilled for people who came after them.
That is what it means to be a citizen in a Republic like ours.
We are violating every norm of that approach to the work and allowing
our competitors around the world to create advantages for themselves
and potential liabilities for us. We shouldn't let this thing go into
the 25th day or 26th day or 27th day. We should end it now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my Democratic
colleagues in sharing stories of what we are hearing from our
constituents who are being impacted by this government shutdown.
I want to take a minute to thank my friend and colleague from
Colorado for his thoughtful and comprehensive and passionate remarks
about where we are and why. This is a needless and terrible exercise in
politics, and we need to reopen the government.
This senseless shutdown has been dragging on now for weeks, affecting
vital government services and leaving many Federal workers without pay.
With every day that passes without a resolution, hard-working people
are dealing with greater uncertainty, and many are facing tough choices
in order to protect their families and the way of life they have worked
so hard to build. Like many of my colleagues, I have heard from a
number of people throughout my State who have been affected by this
shutdown.
On Friday, I visited two nonprofits in New Hampshire, the Nashua Soup
Kitchen and the Community Action Partnership--most of us know it as CAP
of Strafford County--which provides vulnerable people with shelter,
food, and support. They are now in danger of being unable to provide
services that are a critical part of our safety net. They also fear an
increase in demand for those services because unpaid Federal workers
will be turning to them for help.
Federal employees and others affected by the shutdown in New
Hampshire have also written to my office to describe the hardships they
are facing and to urge us to reopen the government. One of those
Granite Staters has been an air traffic controller for close to 19
years. Sadly, on Christmas Eve, her mother passed away, leaving her
with a terrible loss but also with the stress and expenses of a
funeral, all while having to work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On
top of that, now she has not received a paycheck for that work.
She wrote:
The government shutdown has been the last thing on my mind.
But now the realization of not being able to pay my mortgage,
credit cards from Christmas-time, and now this funeral is too
much to bear.
She put it simply, saying:
My colleagues and I deserve better.
I also heard from a Granite Stater who works for the IRS. He wrote to
me saying:
The prospect of not having a paycheck for an extended time
is causing sleepless nights, and I am recovering from an
extended bout of pneumonia that ended up putting me in the
hospital right before Christmas. . . . My wife is worried
about the bills for that. Last night, I worked pushing out
the car payments. Today I applied for unemployment for the
first time in 25 years, and talked to my mortgage company.
He continues:
All this was under control a month ago, but now has me
worried, and is costing me charges and interest.
He also detailed his concerns about a coworker who is terrified of
losing her home if she is not able to pay her mortgage and of another
who is waiting to address a health issue until she has a paycheck
again. He said of him and his fellow Federal workers:
We are hardworking, dedicated employees. Our jobs involve
long hours, nights away from home, and risks to our health
and safety. . . . All I want is to do my job and be paid
fairly for it.
Finally, I heard from a Granite Stater whose husband is in the Coast
Guard and recently relocated to New Hampshire. She said:
To say this shutdown is impacting us is an understatement.
She wrote that she and her husband recently relocated to New
Hampshire and spent every last penny purchasing a home in the State
where they first met.
She said:
We knew it was going to be tight with our two paychecks,
but we would have enough to make ends meet. . . . That all
changed after Christmas when we were informed that our
President was prepared to shut down the government over a
wall.
Since then, she and her husband have watched, hoped, and prayed that
funding would come because now they fear they are going to have to call
family members to beg and to borrow money to pay their mortgage and not
go in default.
As bad as the direct impact of this situation is on Federal workers
and on some of our most vulnerable and on people and small businesses
who rely on government services, the shutdown also has ripple effects
on other people and businesses across our State.
We must do better. The President's politically motivated crisis is
devastating for too many hard-working families in New Hampshire and
across the country. They deserve better than being used as pawns for a
campaign slogan created by President Trump.
It is time for these games to stop, for the President's shutdown to
end, and for our government to reopen. We need a vote on the floor of
the Senate on the bipartisan bills that we already passed that would
reopen this government with a veto-proof majority.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak about the shutdown.
I know the hour is late. I will cut short my remarks.
But we are now, as you heard and as many Americans know, in day 24 of
the shutdown. This is a shutdown that the President, a number of weeks
ago, said that he--I am not quoting him exactly,
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but he seemed to want to have a shutdown, and then he went forward and
executed it even after this body, the Senate, voted unanimously just
before Christmas to extend funding for the government until February so
we could continue debates until then. But he chose to upend that and
now we have this shutdown lasting not just 24 days but now the longest
in American history. That is not a distinction any President or
administration or Congress--especially the majority here in the
Senate--should be proud of.
I think it is very clear that there is a way out of this, and the way
out of this would not foreclose--in fact, it would enhance--the chances
that we can have a fulsome, thorough, policy-oriented debate on border
security, which we should have. We should actually enlarge that to
speak to or debate a lot of major immigration issues and maybe come up
with a bipartisan bill like we had in 2013, where 68 votes brought
forward a bill out of the Senate that had probably the best border
security provisions in recent American history. It had a pathway to
citizenship. It was a long and arduous path but a pathway, nonetheless.
As well, it had guest worker provisions so that employers could have
order, rules, and certainty as to their workforce and our immigration
system.
We have a very broken system that we would have been 5 years, at
least, into the fixing of or the repair of if we had passed that bill--
or if the House had passed that bill. It had 68 votes in the Senate,
but it died in the House. We haven't seen a bill like that since--
certainly, not any bill that was as comprehensive.
Here we are with 24 days of government employees being held hostage
by the administration. I think there is some complicity here in the
Senate, as well, because we know there is a bill that would open eight
of the nine agencies. That bill is here in the Senate. We could pass it
tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow afternoon. We could pass it very
quickly because--remember, the first act of a Democratic-majority House
was to pass Republican appropriations bills--they are bills that sailed
through the Republican-majority Senate with little to no opposition.
That is where we find ourselves, with a way out of this predicament,
which I believe would not only open up the government--which would be
good for the whole country and for both parties all across the country
and, especially, for the people mostly adversely affected--but it would
also isolate the issue. Right?
The President says that he wants to have changes made, and he has a
different view than I do, but let's have weeks of debate on border
security or everything else he wants to talk about. Let's bring in the
experts. Let's have a dueling set of experts. Let's see whom the
American people support. Do they support one point of view that says we
want border security or the other point of view that says that you want
a wall or some steel barrier? That is kind of the choice. Do you want
real border security or something else? We should have a debate about
that.
If anything, the debate about the shutdown would be set aside because
it would be over. The government would be opened. The country, the
press, the Senate, and the House would naturally focus then on issues
of dispute. That would isolate the issue.
But it is very difficult to maintain an argument or a reasoned
debate--a debate based upon facts and policy and law, and, I hope, on
the advice and consultation of border security experts, not just
politicians. We have a lot of smart people in the Congress, but very
few, if any of them, are border security experts. Let's listen to the
experts. Let's take testimony from them like they had back in 2013,
which undergirded the bill that got 68 votes. That would be a way to
isolate and focus on the issue, instead of bringing misery to what is
now hundreds of thousands of Americans--soon to grow to millions and,
then, tens of millions--because those who miss paychecks today are a
very big number. That number will grow when it starts to affect
government services, which I will outline rather quickly because of the
hour.
We have a lot of men and women in the country now working without pay
or being furloughed, worrying about whether they can make a mortgage
payment, put food on the table, or pay their heating bill. They don't
have a choice. They can't just say: Well, sir, I can't pay the bill
today because the government shut down. So just wait and you will be
just fine.
No, they have to pay the bill. Thank God we passed legislation for
backpay, but for some of these folks, backpay will not be enough
because their credit will be adversely impacted. Their credit may be
destroyed even if they get the backpay.
On Friday, 820,000 Federal workers, including 14,000 in my home State
of Pennsylvania, missed a paycheck--more than 1,300 Department of
Agriculture employees, 990 Department of Interior employees, 1,200
Federal Bureau of Prisons employees, 775 FAA and TSA employees, 700 EPA
employees, as well as assistant U.S. attorneys in different parts of
Pennsylvania.
I will share a small part of a longer letter that I got from a
constituent. This constituent said:
I am currently a furloughed U.S. State Department employee
and one of your constituents. I will soon miss a paycheck
and, with car payments, student loan payments, et cetera, on
the horizon, my family of five will likely suffer. Beyond our
personal hardship, this shutdown is both expensive and
counterproductive to border security.
I couldn't agree more with that constituent and with the argument
that constituent makes, but what is even more compelling, of course, is
not the argument about the policy debate here in Washington. The more
compelling part of that, of course, is missing car payments, student
loan payments, and a family of that size suffering. That is real life.
That is not just a Washington theoretical debate. That is real life for
that family.
How about farmers? These are people who are not Federal Government
employees, but they are affected by the fact that Federal Government
employees are not at their desks or not in the field. Farmers can't
visit their local Farm Service Agency office to get assistance.
We have a new farm bill. It is one of the great bipartisan
achievements. Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate, came
together for a big farm bill. That is great. I am glad we got that done
at the end of 2018.
The bad news is that some of that requires advice, consultation, and
engagement with Farm Service Agency offices. They are not able to give
that assistance.
How about seniors who rely upon transportation services and nutrition
services provided by the Enhanced Mobility of Seniors and Individuals
with Disabilities Program? That and the Commodity Supplemental Food
Program, also known as the Senior Food Box, are now at risk of being
isolated. These seniors are now at risk of being isolated at home and
without food.
Approximately 2,400 units of low-income housing in Pennsylvania are
in jeopardy because the Department of Housing and Urban Development
will not be able to renew a contract. More than two-thirds of the
people who receive this type of assistance are seniors and people with
disabilities. The people who benefit from this type of housing
assistance have average incomes of less than $13,000.
Two million Pennsylvanians receive food assistance. It is actually
about 1.8 million, but it is almost 2 million Pennsylvanians who
receive assistance through the SNAP program, or the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program. We used to call it food stamps. They may
lose access if the shutdown drags on much longer.
I know the administration says: Don't worry. Everything is OK for
February.
That is, in essence, what the administration said, and they haven't
given us a definitive word about March.
So of those 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, a huge share of them have a
disability, and a huge share of them are children in households who
can't support themselves and can't afford food on their own because
they are children. They benefit, as well. They are part of the 1.8.
A lot of them, of course, are seniors who deserve this program
because that is what we do in America. We try to help people who need
food assistance. That is called being America--being the strong country
that we are, showing how strong we are not just by virtue of our
military and our GDP--everyone knows that. No one comes close
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in the world. But we are also strong because we say we care about
people with disabilities. We want to make sure if they need Medicaid,
they get that kind of healthcare. If they need food assistance, we will
get that for them. We care about our seniors, too, because we are
America and we are strong, and it is an American value.
These programs are important. When they are shut down, that is not an
American value being upheld. When we talk about these programs and
about food assistance, this is also real life--literally, today or the
day when you lose food assistance. Why should that assistance even be
the subject of uncertainty--uncertainty because someone doesn't get
their way on a policy matter here in Washington?
I guess it is OK for any Member of Congress because we are a coequal
branch of government. It is not like the President is higher than the
Congress. We are coequal. I guess because the President wants to shut
the government down to make a point about a policy matter, I guess that
should be an option that any Member of the House or the Senate should
exercise. So the next time, it will be a Member of Congress, when you
lose a battle on a policy matter or you don't propose the funding on
time, which is what happened here. They didn't ask for the money at the
beginning of the year. So they tried to shoehorn it in at the end of
the year. I guess if you lose the policy debate or your bill doesn't
pass, you vote to shut the government down--take action to shut the
government down like the President did.
I don't think that is the way any party or any country should
operate. So 200,000 Pennsylvanians may lose access to the Women,
Infants, and Children Program, which provides critical nutritional
support to mothers and young children--200,000.
So there are the 2 million I talked about. There are 1.8 million
people who are getting the benefits of the SNAP program, which, by the
way, helps all Americans. People ask: What do you mean by that? It
does. If you spend a buck on SNAP, you get $1.80 back in economic
activity because people have to eat, and they tend to spend that money
quickly. It helps everybody. So the SNAP program is not just a nice
thing to do for people who have disabilities or for seniors or
children; the SNAP program helps all of us because it helps to
stimulate the economy.
Even if you are disinterested in supporting this program but are
interested in having your own American economy grow, you should support
the SNAP program. It is also the right thing to do because it is a
darned good program. When you add 1.1 million people who are getting
SNAP and then 200,000 people who benefit from the WIC Program, you will
have gotten over 2 million just in one State.
These programs are not out of money this week or in the month of
January or in the month of February, but we don't know about March yet.
We haven't gotten any guarantees about March. Even if we get a
guarantee about March, what about April? That is far from guaranteed.
So that is what we are talking about here. Why should these people have
to wait? Why should a farmer have to wait weeks or months to talk to a
Farm Service Agency office? Why should families who have food
insecurity as part of their lives not be able to get something to eat
because we are having a policy debate here? Why shouldn't we give them
the certainty that they vote for us to ensure?
It is unconscionable and unacceptable, and I wish I could come up
with better words than that because they are not at all adequate. It is
unconscionable that children and moms and hungry Americans will suffer
because of this shutdown.
The President says he is concerned about crime and the flow of
dangerous drugs into the country. I agree with him. A lot of Americans
do, of course. Yet the shutdown is significantly impairing the FBI and
the DEA's law enforcement efforts. These are part of the list of
Agencies that are impacted. Agents are still doing their work to keep
the public safe. They are dedicated, and they are going to do their
work no matter what.
Yet, with many analysts on furlough, it is getting harder and harder
to work effectively to keep the public safe. I want an FBI that has all
of the resources it needs, with everyone on duty, with everyone
working. If the FBI is undermined because of the shutdown, we are less
safe. If the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, is undermined because of
the shutdown, we are less safe. You don't have to be a law enforcement
expert to say that.
It goes on from there. I have more, but I will not because of the
hour. I will go back to the beginning.
There are adverse impacts today with people not being paid as of
Friday. That alone is compelling and urgent and insulting, frankly, to
us as Americans and is directly insulting to those families who don't
deserve this. It is going to get a lot worse, though. That number is
going to grow and grow, not just with those who are directly affected
with their paychecks and in their livelihoods and their credit ratings
and all of that but with people who depend upon the Federal Government
for help when they are vulnerable, when they are hungry, when they want
an answer to a question, when they want to close on a mortgage or do a
long list of other things.
For the life of me, I do not understand why we would not pass a bill
that is sitting in this Chamber that would open eight of the nine
Agencies--that are closed--until the end of the fiscal year, September
30, so the shutdown will be over for those eight agencies. Then you
would have one Agency, Homeland Security, that would get short-term
funding, which would be another reason we could continue the debate and
another way to focus attention on border security and anything else
anybody wants to talk about here. It would focus the attention on that
issue and remove the issue that is in front of all of us, which is that
25 percent of the government--and a lot of it affecting a lot of
people--is closed, shuttered, not working, not effective, not
delivering on results.
There is an easy solution here that not only does not close the
debate on border security--effective, expert-recommended border
security--but, if anything, enhances the possibility that there will be
a more engaged debate on border security. As I said, I hope it will
grow into a larger immigration debate.
I yield the floor.
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