[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 27 (Tuesday, February 12, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S1176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           GOVERNMENT FUNDING

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, last night, the country heard some good 
news. The members of the conference committee announced a tentative 
agreement to keep the government open past Friday as well as provide 
additional border security. It was welcome news.
  All on the conference committee worked very hard and should be 
commended for their efforts. I talked to them regularly. Everyone 
wanted to get something done, and everyone wanted to avoid a government 
shutdown. While the details are still being hammered out, the tentative 
agreement represents a path forward for our country--away from another 
round of fraught negotiations up against a government funding cliff, 
away from a dreaded government shutdown.
  Over the past few months, we have been lurching from one manufactured 
crisis to another. It would be a wonderful thing for this Congress to 
pass bills that settle the budget issues for the rest of this year and 
for the country to finally move past. Hopefully, that is what this 
agreement will portend. Hopefully, this agreement means that there will 
not be another government shutdown on Friday--sparing the country of 
another nightmare of furloughed Federal employees, snarled airports, 
and economic hardship. Hopefully, it means that we will pass not only 
the DHS appropriations bill but all six other appropriations bills--
done in a bipartisan way--that have been caught in the tangle of these 
negotiations since last year.
  Each of these bills is a product of bipartisan consensus. Each 
contains more support for programs to help the American people--
additional funding for infrastructure, housing, money to combat the 
opioid crisis, and more. We should pass these appropriations bills 
alongside this agreement on DHS.
  These months of shutdown politics must come to an end. We now have a 
bipartisan proposal to accomplish our goals, better secure the border, 
and avoid another senseless government shutdown. I don't know the 
details, but the parameters of this are good. So I thank the members of 
the conference committee.
  I would make one more point. I urge President Trump to sign this 
agreement. We must not have a rerun of what happened a few months back, 
whereby legislators--Democratic and Republican, House and Senate--
agreed, and President Trump pulled the rug out from under the agreement 
and caused the shutdown. If he opposes this agreement, the same thing 
could happen again. We don't need it. So I strongly urge the President 
to sign this agreement. No one gets everything one wants in these 
agreements. The President must sign it and not cause another shutdown.

                          ____________________