[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 166 (Monday, October 21, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5913-S5914]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Appropriations

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, thank you very much for the opportunity to 
speak to my colleagues on the Senate floor this evening.
  I really come to talk about something that shouldn't be momentous, 
shouldn't be unusual, and should be routine around here. Unfortunately, 
as you and I have experienced, it is not routine. What is not routine 
is the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Congress getting its job done. Part of 
that job is the appropriations process, and it ought to be something we 
do every year on a routine basis.
  Every city council, every county commission, and every school board 
in the State of Kansas every year passes a budget and determines the 
spending for that school board or that city council or for that county 
commission. Yet, when we come to Washington, DC, over the years, it has 
become problematic and it has become difficult for us to do one of the 
basic things of a functioning government: to determine the amount of 
money to be spent, in broad terms, and then to fill in the spaces with 
what we should do for individual Agencies and Departments within that 
budget agreement.
  We are poised for a vote tomorrow, a motion on cloture. What that 
means to folks in Kansas is this: Should we begin the process of 
debating, amending, and passing appropriations bills? I am here to urge 
my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, to vote yes on cloture, 
to bring us to the point in which we can have the debate.
  I wouldn't have thought when I came to the U.S. Senate that one of my 
primary tasks, at least as I saw it, would be to try to help this place 
function and have an appropriations process that is thoughtful, that 
establishes priorities, that allows every Member of the Senate to have 
input. That is something we ought to be able to accomplish without a 
lot of work, and I hope that we demonstrate that we can do that in the 
vote tomorrow.
  The appropriations process has involved an Appropriations Committee 
of which you, Mr. President, and I serve on. Many of the bills have 
been considered and voted on. There will be four bills as a package in 
this motion to invoke cloture that will be presented to the full Senate 
tomorrow.
  For the subcommittee that I chair--Commerce, Justice, Science--that 
appropriations bill will be a part of that cloture package. 
Agriculture, something hugely important to my constituents in Kansas 
and across the country, Interior, Transportation, Housing, and Urban 
Development--those four bills have passed unanimously out of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee in September. Every Republican on the 
committee and every Democrat on the committee voted in favor of them.
  I know in my own circumstances, on the Commerce, Justice, Science 
bill, I worked closely--perhaps a better way to say it is that the 
ranking member of our subcommittee, the Senator from New Hampshire, 
Mrs. Shaheen, and I worked closely together--to try to find a path by 
which we could avoid those issues that would prevent us from finding an 
agreement that allowed our bill to move forward. I am pretty certain 
that occurred in the other three subcommittees.
  Presented tomorrow is an opportunity for the Senate to take up 4 
appropriations bills--4 out of 12--and those 4 are ones that were 
unanimously agreed to by the Appropriations Committee. I commend 
Chairman Shelby and Vice Chairman Leahy for their efforts in the full 
committee to bring us together to get us in a position where we have 
those four bills now, soon, I hope, to be pending in front of the 
Senate.

[[Page S5914]]

  Why does this matter? There is a lot of work that has gone into 
trying to determine what those appropriations bills should say and 
should contain. Certainly, how much money we spend is important, but if 
you sidetrack the appropriations process, you eliminate the 
prioritization. We need to make decisions every year on behalf of the 
American people. Is there something that we should spend no money on? 
Last year it received money but not this year. It is not enough 
priority for us to spend enough money on this year. Are there things we 
are spending money on today, this year, that are about right, and are 
there a few things we should spend more money on?
  That is a process that involves hearings. It involves witnesses. It 
involves testimony. It involves other Members, the U.S. Senators, and 
100 of us have the opportunity to provide input as to how much money 
should be spent in those various areas of the appropriations bill. Are 
there things that are higher priorities, programs that work better than 
others?
  We ought to care about this from a fiscal point of view--how much 
money we spend. Are we on a path to get us toward greater fiscal 
sanity, getting our books to balance? But at the same time, in the 
process of doing that, are we making decisions that determine that 
something is more important than something else because we know we 
shouldn't and can't spend money on everything?
  That is what the appropriations process does. Maybe we didn't get it 
exactly right, but allowing the bills to come to the Senate floor 
allows 99 of my colleagues to join me in the ability to offer 
amendments to change those priorities. So every Member of the Senate, 
on behalf of their constituents back home in their home States, ought 
to care about an appropriations bill being on the Senate floor.
  Perhaps, this is the point when I should say that if we fail to do 
this, what this normally will mean is that we have what we call a CR, 
or a continuing resolution, meaning that we are going to fund the 
Federal Government next year at the same levels and in the same way as 
we did this year.
  That lacks any kind of common sense or a basis for making a good 
decision. Not everything is equal. Just because we spent something last 
year in this amount doesn't mean it is the right amount next year. If 
we have been doing continuing resolutions one year after another, what 
that means is decisions we made about spending 3 or 4 years ago remain 
the priorities for next year's spending.
  We ought to avoid the continuing resolution. We ought to do our work. 
Tomorrow's vote puts us on a path to do that. Again, we are only on 
that path if the Members of the Senate decide that this is something we 
are going to proceed to accomplish.
  Fiscal order, prioritization of spending--I also think that Congress 
over the years has deferred too often to Federal Agencies and 
Departments. I tell my constituents that I know the American people are 
not satisfied with the nature of Congress as an institution and perhaps 
not satisfied with even their own Senator or U.S. Congressman or 
Congresswoman, but we are the closest thing that you have to the 
ability to make your will known and cause and effect in Washington, DC.
  Someone can visit with me and someone can visit with every U.S. 
Senator and have a consequence here. It is through this process, if you 
allow us all to participate in the legislative process, that we can 
take our constituents' will and bring it to Washington, DC, on their 
behalf.
  In the absence of that, it just means the Departments, the Cabinets, 
the Cabinet Secretaries, the Agency heads, the Bureau chiefs, and the 
people who work within the bureaucracy have more say if we don't do 
appropriations bills than elected officials representing Kansans and 
the people of 49 other States.
  This is a way we can bring the people of the United States into 
decisions made in Washington, DC. When we defer, when we do a 
continuing resolution, it means it is more likely that no person within 
the bureaucracy has any reason to pay any attention to our interests. A 
constituent brings me a problem and says: Something is going on at the 
Department of Interior, and this is what we are seeing, and this is how 
it affects us. Could you help solve that problem? Can you get 
somebody's attention at the Department of Interior? Could you get 
somebody's attention at the Department of Commerce?
  If we don't do appropriations bills, our ability to influence people 
at the Department of Commerce--the power of the purse strings--
disappears. It means that we have less ability not only to determine 
how money is to be spent but to be able to tell an Agency head or a 
Cabinet Secretary: This makes no sense. What you are doing to folks 
back home is very damaging to them. Let us explain to you.
  If human nature, being what it is, says that if you are the person or 
if you are the organization--in this case, the U.S. Senate--that 
determines how much money an Agency, Department, or Cabinet Secretary 
gets within their realm of authority, you are going to be much more 
likely to listen to a Member of Congress and help us solve problems on 
behalf of our constituents.
  The appropriations process matters greatly. I think we are poised for 
the opportunity to demonstrate that this place can work, it can 
represent the American people, and we can allow all of our colleagues 
to have input in the appropriations process, which has been ongoing 
since last year.
  I hope the conclusion tomorrow by my colleagues is that this is a 
worthy endeavor. The U.S. Senate ought to return to the days in which 
we did 12 appropriations bills on an annual basis and allowed the 
American people their input in the appropriations process.

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