[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 16, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H611]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS MUST COME TOGETHER TO REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Malinowski) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Speaker, I rise as a freshman who came here to 
get things done on the 26th day of the longest government shutdown in 
American history.
  For 26 days, we have had to explain to 800,000 dedicated, patriotic 
Americans why we will not pay them for their service to our country, 
even as they must keep paying for their rent, their medicine and their 
kids' educations.
  For 26 days, we have had to explain why small business owners can't 
get loans; why food safety inspections are suspended; why lines are 
growing and terminals are being shut down at our airports; why we are 
willing to jeopardize the safety of air travelers; why we can't protect 
our National Parks from desecration; and why, if securing our country 
is so important, we aren't paying the Coast Guard, and Customs and 
Border Protection officers whose job it is to secure it.
  In the last few days, I have been hearing from college students in my 
district who have until February 1 to apply for financial aid, but they 
can't access their tax transcripts from the IRS.

  Mr. Speaker, I ask: Why are we doing this to ourselves? The President 
says it is because of border security. But if we are honest, we know 
that that is not what this is about. If getting $5.7 billion for a 
border wall is important enough to inflict this much suffering on 
Americans, why didn't the President pick this fight in the 2 years when 
his party controlled both Houses of the Congress?
  Why is he doing this now? I think we know the answer. I fear that for 
the President the chaos is sometimes not a means to an end, but an end 
in itself. He doesn't want a wall, he wants a fight over the wall; not 
a compromise to open the government, but a conflict that dismantles the 
government. And that raises the stakes for all of us.
  For this is not about how we secure the border, as important as that 
is to all of us. It is about how we govern our country. We have a 
chance now to say, once and for all, Presidents are entitled to try to 
persuade us to support their priorities, but if they fail to persuade 
us, they are not entitled to shut the government down to get their way.
  None of us, not Democrats or Republicans, are entitled to hold 
hostage the basic functions of our government to force our will on 
others. And if we give into this tactic now, it will be used again, and 
again, and again. We will have chaos in our government for as far as 
the eye can see.
  So how do we solve this problem? We will not solve it by abdicating 
our responsibility in the Congress and waiting for the President to 
agree on something. If we wait for that, we will be waiting forever.
  We will not solve it by encouraging him to use emergency powers or to 
use our military to defy the Congress. That would tear another hole in 
our constitutional fabric.
  We will solve it when the House and the Senate Democrats and 
Republicans come together to say: This is not how we do business in a 
democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, instead of enabling this abdication of responsibility by 
the White House, let us rise to our responsibility in the Congress. Let 
us work together to reopen the government by passing the same bills we 
were all willing to vote for across party lines last year, and then 
let's sit down together as adults to talk about immigration and the 
border as part of the debate about funding the Department of Homeland 
Security when both sides can put their ideas on the table and find 
common ground.
  If we do that, we will not only address border security, we will 
break this pernicious practice of taking the American people hostage 
when we don't get our way.
  We can make this the shutdown to end all shutdowns.

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