[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 36 (Wednesday, February 28, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1019-S1020]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Government Funding

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, negotiators in both Chambers continue 
working to ensure the government will not shut down at the end of the 
week. We continue to make very good progress on an agreement, and we 
are very close to getting it done.
  I met yesterday with President Biden, with Speaker Johnson, with 
Leader McConnell, and Leader Jeffries; and we all agree a shutdown is a 
loser for the American people. In a shutdown, costs would go up, safety 
would go down, and the American people would pay the price.
  I am hopeful that the four leaders can reach this agreement very soon 
so we can not only avoid a shutdown on Friday but get closer to 
finishing the appropriations process altogether.
  If our House Republican colleagues of good will want to avert a 
shutdown--if they want to govern responsibly, as they say they do--they 
must resist the centrifugal pull of the extreme hard right who want to 
burn everything down, who openly use the threat of a shutdown to push 
their extreme agenda. They are brazen about it. They are brazen.
  We know what the hard right has been pushing. They want to restrict 
women's reproductive freedoms--we saw the case in Alabama. They want to 
rip apart gun safety laws and reward corporate polluters. Or else, they 
say, they want a shutdown. This is no way to govern.
  If our House Republican colleagues of good will want to do the right 
thing, they must accept a fundamental truth about divided government: 
Republicans cannot pass a bill without Democratic support; it takes 
both sides working together--and ignoring the extremes of the hard 
right--to get anything done.
  I have said this over and over again directly to the Speaker, even in 
my first conversation with him: The only way we will get things done is 
by bipartisanship. And I am proud in our Chamber, not just on the 
supplemental but in bill after bill after bill, we are working in a 
bipartisan way. I am proud of that record. The Speaker should 
understand that.

[[Page S1020]]

  So I am hopeful that soon we will have an agreement for keeping the 
government open beyond Friday's deadline. We will keep working very 
diligently today. And I ask my colleagues to stay flexible and be ready 
to act quickly when the time comes.