[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 49 (Friday, March 14, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1759-S1762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Government Funding

  Mr. President, before I conclude my time here on the floor, I just 
want to acknowledge the place that we are at here today on the 14th of 
March, a day that we have seen coming, not just on the calendar, but we 
here in the Congress have known that this is the day that our 
continuing resolution was going to run out, the clock runs, and we had 
a choice.
  We have a choice we have to make. That choice is: Does the government 
shut down at 11:59 tonight or do we keep it open? And I think most of 
us would say a shutdown is never ever a good idea. But you want to be 
able to have an option that is tenable.
  I stood here earlier this week, and I described what a Morton's fork 
is. It is a phrase that basically refers to a choice between two 
equally untenable positions. That is exactly where we are. We have two 
equally untenable positions, in my view. We have a shutdown, which we 
cannot do, and we have a long-term CR in front of us, meaning a 
continuing resolution that continues the operations of the government 
until the 30th of September.
  People would say that is good. But it doesn't allow for the good work 
that those of us that have tried to shepherd the appropriations bills 
through this process--it doesn't allow for that direction from the 
Congress. It basically continues fiscal year 2024 levels but without 
the parameters that the Congress, that we have directed--not just those 
of us on the Appropriations Committee but along with all of our 
colleagues.

[[Page S1760]]

  I don't like--I do not like--a long-term continuing resolution. If we 
had had the ability to move our appropriations bills through the floor 
as we should have, as we set ourselves up to do, but as we were not 
allowed to do. We were not able to bring those completed appropriations 
bills--even though the vast majority of them were not only bipartisan 
but overwhelmingly supported through the committee--and the Democratic 
leader didn't bring them to the floor. It didn't happen. So we didn't 
have the chance to finish our work.
  We need to be able to make sure that the work that we do here is 
concluded. Why? Because that is the responsibility that we have as 
Members of Congress. This is our job. This is our job under the 
Constitution. It is not the executive's; it is not the President's; it 
is our job.
  If we had had the ability to have a short-term CR to just give us a 
little more room to finish these up, that could have given us a better 
option. It could have given us a third option that would have been 
tenable. But my colleague, the chairman now of the Appropriations 
Committee, working with her ranking member, tried to get us to that 
place, multiple offers were extended. We didn't get there, and that is 
a shame. It is a shame because it puts us, again, in a place where we 
have two untenable, equally untenable, choices in front of us.
  I am reluctant--I am very reluctant--to support a long-term CR. I do 
not like the fact that it gives the executive branch the authority that 
we own as Members of Congress when it comes to defining spending 
priorities. But I also cannot--I cannot--be part of anything that 
ultimately shuts this government down. I have been in the Senate for a 
long while now. I have never voted to go into a government shutdown. In 
fact, I have been, along with my colleague, engaged in many of those 
ventures where once the shutdown happened, we were scurrying to try to 
find ways to avoid extending it because the danger to our governmental 
functions and our operations, the harm that it brings to good 
individuals, is simply not worth it.
  We are in a bad place. We are in a bad place. It is a place that I 
regret. But I can tell you, for one, as a member of the Appropriations 
Committee, I want us to be able to do our work, and I want to be able 
to see our work completed, voted on, and then signed into law as the 
American people expect us to do.
  I see that my friend from Maine and the chairman of this great 
committee that we are going to make sure is able to do its work is 
here. I yield to her.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. I want to thank the Senator from Alaska, who is an 
extraordinarily talented leader on the Appropriations Committee, for 
her comments.
  Mr. President, I rise to urge passage of this funding measure to 
prevent an unnecessary, harmful, and costly government shutdown at 
midnight tonight.
  Government shutdowns are inherently a failure to govern effectively 
and have negative consequences all across government. They inevitably 
require certain government employees, such as Border Patrol agents, 
members of our military and Coast Guard, TSA screeners, and air traffic 
controllers, to report to work with no certainty at all on when they 
will receive their next paycheck. That is just unfair.
  Shutdowns also put critical investments in our national defense on 
hold. Training exercises would be limited, which could hurt our 
Nation's readiness. New programs would be paused, delaying new 
capabilities from getting to our warfighters. That is why we have 
always, in the past, avoided CRs for the Department of Defense. At our 
borders, the men and women performing vital law enforcement activities 
would have to do so without pay and without the assistance of support 
staff, putting more pressure on frontline operators.
  Other harmful potential impacts include curtailed operations to the 
Veterans Benefits Administration, resulting in the closure of education 
and GI bill call centers and the suspension of career counseling and 
transition assistance for our veterans; the closure of our wonderful 
national parks to visitors; increased travel delays as the onboarding 
of additional TSA agents would stall, and some FAA employees would face 
furloughs; and costly delays for projects at the Army Corps of 
Engineers and critical water infrastructure projects.
  That is just a very partial list of the harm that would be done from 
a government shutdown. This unfortunate situation that we are in with a 
continuing resolution should, however, have been avoided. The Senate 
should have finished these bills last year. I called for that 
repeatedly, as did many other Members.
  Senator Murray and I worked as a team, provided leadership, consulted 
with the members of our Senate Appropriations Committee. Each of us 
worked so hard to report 11 of the 12 bills with overwhelming 
bipartisan support, including 6 which came out of our committee 
unanimously. Unfortunately, these bipartisan bills languished on the 
calendar for months, never being brought to the floor for 
consideration.

  This decision by the then-Senate majority leader denied Senators the 
opportunity to debate and amend our reported bills and denied the House 
and the Senate the chance to go to conference and work out the 
differences among the bills. Similarly, attempts since January by House 
Chairman   Tom Cole and I to reach agreement with our Democratic 
counterparts regrettably were not successful, despite my making five 
good-faith offers. Now that opportunity is gone. A yearlong CR is, by 
no means, my first choice, but our focus now, given where we are, must 
be on preventing a government shutdown.
  For the most part, this is a straightforward CR that simply continues 
fiscal year 2024 funding levels. Now, it does include--and this is 
important--a number of needed anomalies that are aimed at addressing 
pressing needs.
  For example, the CR realigns funding in the appropriations accounts 
for the Department of Defense to meet current global threats and covers 
the cost of pay raises for junior enlisted personnel.
  It provides increased funding for housing assistance and for what is 
known as the WIC Program--for Women, Infants, and Children--to maintain 
support for these vulnerable families.
  Within the Department of Homeland Security, the continuing resolution 
includes targeted increases to support ICE operations, to avoid 
furloughs of TSA airport screeners, and to fund much needed pay raises 
for members of our Coast Guard.
  It also includes increased funding for the FAA so that more air 
traffic controllers can be hired to make our Nation's airspace safer.
  We can delay no longer. It is essential that the continuing 
resolution be adopted today in order to prevent a harmful government 
shutdown. I urge its adoption. Let each and every one of us here commit 
to working together on the fiscal year 2026 budget so that we can enact 
appropriations bills prior to the start of the new fiscal year.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Moody). The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my 
remarks before the vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I have made no secret of my opposition 
to this bill. For weeks, I have been warning about the real dangers of 
a yearlong CR like the one that has come before us from the House 
Republicans. But before I talk about those dangers and why I will be 
voting no on cloture and on final passage, I want my colleagues to hear 
what I have to say, but I do hope that they will join me in voting no.
  I want to talk for a moment about how we did get here because I fear 
some Members of the Republican leadership may need a history lesson. 
The fact of the matter is, the only reason we are staring down a 
shutdown deadline halfway into this fiscal year is that the House 
Republicans decided to kick the can down the road with a major punt and 
because they have repeatedly walked away from the table. This is just a 
historical record. We were all here for it. We saw what happened. 
Perhaps it is worth ticking through once more because I will admit it 
can get easy to lose track of all that has happened over the last few 
months

[[Page S1761]]

and just how many times House Republicans have made a deal just to 
break it in recent years. So I want to give a refresher. It has been a 
while since my time as a preschool teacher, but I guess school is back 
in session because I am not going to let anyone get away with ignoring 
how Republicans forced us to the edge of a shutdown today.
  Remember, last year, after a bruising fiscal year 2024 process in 
which House Republicans made one ridiculous demand after the next and 
caused one delay after the other, as Appropriations chair, I worked 
hard alongside my colleagues, including Senator Collins, who is here 
today, within our committee to write and pass serious bipartisan 
spending bills for this current fiscal year. It was no easy feat. We 
had fewer resources at our disposal to make use of, and we had even 
more challenges to address, but we managed to work together--Senator 
Collins and I and our committee members--and we cleared all but one of 
our bills overwhelmingly in committee, and many of those bills cleared 
on unanimous votes.
  Then, come November, after the election, I was pushing very hard to 
get our funding bills done and wrapped up by the end of the year. My 
Democratic colleagues and even many of my Republican colleagues wanted 
to get that done, but Speaker Johnson and Trump chose to kick the can 
down the road. They chose to. Trump reportedly wanted to make sure his 
fingerprints were on our spending bills for this fiscal year. The 
Speaker not only wanted to, of course, please Trump, but he was worried 
about how a messy funding fight might complicate his path to becoming 
Speaker again. So the decision was made, and Speaker Johnson punted 
from December to March.
  Then we negotiated a bipartisan CR to fund the government through 
March 14, today. Along with that, we passed disaster relief, and we 
extended critical laws. We reached a bipartisan-bicameral deal. Then 
House Republicans walked away and blew that deal up at the last minute. 
Why? I will tell you--because the richest man in the world sent a bunch 
of completely inaccurate tweets, and instead of saying, ``Do you know 
what? Actually, Elon, you have no clue what you are talking about. 
These are programs that help my constituents,'' House Republicans said, 
``Let's put this guy in charge.'' They killed that bipartisan 
agreement, rolled out an altogether different bill not long thereafter 
and punted on government funding.
  That is what happened, and that is essentially what they have been 
doing ever since--cheering and clapping as Trump and Elon got basic 
facts wrong, broke laws, blocked funding that our communities needed, 
dismantled entire Agencies, fired veterans, shuttered our Social 
Security offices, and broke government to enrich themselves.

  While Trump and Republican leadership were fixating on whether they 
would pass one bill or two for their plan to gut healthcare for kids 
and to pass more tax cuts for billionaires, a fast approaching deadline 
was on its way to us, the one that is here now.
  For the next several months, I have remained at the table, ready to 
negotiate funding bills. I and my Democratic counterpart in the House, 
Rosa DeLauro, never left the table--not once. We made offer after offer 
as did our Republican counterparts. My top priority has been and 
continues to be doing what we do, what we do every year--every year--
which is passing full-year funding bills with the detailed directives 
that we include in our spending laws every year. I have wanted to make 
sure we continue to provide those and make sure that our constituents' 
voices are heard--that they are heard in Federal funding--which, I have 
to say, this CR fails to do.
  Instead of working with us in good faith to fund the government in a 
bipartisan way, Speaker Johnson and Republican leadership walked away 
and started working on a Republican funding bill without an ounce--not 
an ounce--of Democratic input. I remained at the table. My counterparts 
on Appropriations and I continued to talk, to keep the ball rolling. By 
the end of last week, for all intents and purposes, we had an agreement 
on topline funding, but the call had already been made. Johnson was in 
on it. Trump was in on it. Russ Vought was in on it. Johnson decided: 
Instead of talking with Democrats, it would be easier to have Trump get 
on the phone and scream and bully House Republicans into submission. He 
figured, if outright intimidation from Trump was enough to convince 
every Republican to vote for a budget resolution that will cut Medicaid 
for seniors and kids, then it might also be enough for them to pass a 
Republican CR, especially if Trump threatened dissenters with political 
retribution, which, of course, he did. That is the bill they rolled out 
on Saturday and passed earlier this week.
  Now, as I have laid out in depth, the yearlong CR that House 
Republicans sent our way hands a blank check to Elon Musk and Donald 
Trump to decide how our constituents' taxpayer dollars get spent, all 
while cutting the funding working people count on each and every day. 
It is anything but a ``clean CR.'' What Republicans are pushing here is 
not a continuing resolution. In this case, ``CR'' stands for ``complete 
resignation'' because what Republicans are doing here is ceding more 
discretion to two billionaires to decide what does and does not get 
funded in their States. It is a power grab CR.
  Not only that, it does make serious cuts to domestic funding. It 
leaves our working families in the dust. We are talking about a nearly 
50-percent cut to lifesaving medical research and to conditions 
affecting our servicemembers. It is a giant shortfall in funding for 
the NIH. It is a massive cut in funding for Army Corps projects and is 
$15 billion less for our domestic priorities. This bill will force 
Social Security to cut staff and close offices and make it harder for 
our seniors to get the benefits they have spent their careers paying 
into the system to earn. It creates a devastating shortfall that risks 
tens of thousands of Americans losing their housing. So this bill 
causes real pain for communities across the country.
  Let me be clear: This bill empowers Trump and Musk to pick winners 
and losers. I guarantee you they will not only go after Democrats. 
Inexplicably, House Republicans are saying: Give Trump all this power 
or we will shut down government.
  Well, let's be very clear: That is and always has been a false 
choice. The reality is, there were other options House Republicans 
could have chosen, but they chose--they chose--to pull out of 
bipartisan negotiations and send a deeply partisan bill here to the 
Senate today. Democrats did not have an ounce of input into writing 
this bill, and now House Republicans expect us to support it? That 
makes zero sense.
  Let me be clear: In my time in Congress, never ever has one party 
written partisan, full-year appropriations bills for all of government 
and expected the other party to go along without any input.
  To my colleagues here who want to pass individual appropriations 
bills in a timely manner for the next fiscal year, how are Democrats 
supposed to trust that those will be good-faith negotiations after we 
did the hard work of negotiating overwhelmingly bipartisan 
appropriations bills last year only for us to see this, today, from the 
Republicans in the House and only for Republicans to now say, ``Swallow 
this partisan House Republican CR or it will be Democrats who are 
shutting down the government''? That is a false choice and one we 
cannot accept going forward.
  When I cast my vote today, I am representing nearly 8 million people 
in Washington State, and in this democracy, their voices count for 
something. So you had better believe I am not handing over my vote in 
exchange for nothing. The choice is not a government shutdown or 
passing a bill to write a blank check to Elon Musk. That is not how 
this works. On Monday, I rolled out a clean 4-week extension to prevent 
a shutdown and to keep government funded while it gives us the time to 
hammer out a bipartisan agreement. We could still pass that right here, 
right now. If any Member has any suggestions on what they want to see 
in this CR, I am all ears. House Republicans may have already left 
town, but I am pretty sure they know how to get on a plane. That is 
their job--show up and vote.

  The bottom line is, this bill will mean more pain and chaos for our 
country. I cannot support it.
  Please let's remember, Republicans control the House, the Senate, and 
the White House. If you refuse to put forward an offer that includes 
any Democratic input, you don't get Democratic

[[Page S1762]]

votes. That is on Republicans. If you don't get any input from 
Democrats, it is a Republican vote. A shutdown is on Republicans.
  The American people rightly understand that Republicans have pushed 
this country towards a shutdown. They do understand that Donald Trump 
has created a massive economic uncertainty and is putting us on track 
for a Republican recession with his indiscriminate layoffs, his illegal 
funding freeze, his incoherent trade war, and now by threatening a 
Republican shutdown.
  Democrats did not write this bill. We did not have any input, but if 
we had, we sure wouldn't have handed over more of our power to two 
billionaires. You can bet we would not have cut our domestic 
investments by billions. Democrats did not write this bill, but if we 
did, we would have protected our public schools. Democrats did not 
write this bill, but if we did, we would have put our veterans first, 
and you can bet we would not have prevented the District of Columbia 
from spending its own taxpayer dollars and be forced to lay off police 
and teachers. Democrats did not have any say on this bill, but if we 
did, we would have protected our public lands and your healthcare and 
lifesaving cancer research.
  So I hope my Democratic and, yes, my Republican colleagues as well 
will join me in voting no on this bill and swiftly passing a 4-week 
extension so we can hammer out a better bipartisan solution.
  I am voting no because my constituents should have a say in how their 
tax dollars are spent. I am voting no because Congress--Congress, each 
one of us, not Elon Musk--should decide which schools or which 
hospitals get funding. I am voting no, and I hope my colleagues will 
join me.
  Before I close, I want to say to my constituents who are frightened 
and scared: I understand your fears. Some days, I share them. But your 
voice matters. Speaking out matters. You elected me to be your voice, 
and you better believe I will keep fighting for you. So shoulders up. 
Keep the faith. We stand strong, but we do not stand down. We are going 
to keep fighting for the America we love.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 5 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall votes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I have the greatest respect for the 
previous speaker and also for the distinguished chair of the 
Appropriations Committee.
  If she gets her way this afternoon or later tonight, the government 
will shut down. We would have to call the House back in. It will be a 
long period of uncertainty in a shutdown. That is the choice we are 
faced with.
  The Speaker of the House has been faced with a very, very slim margin 
in the House of Representatives. He has had to do a deal that none of 
us likes, but he has decided that we have a responsibility to govern, 
and the better choice is to keep the government open.
  The previous speaker has had 6 months to try to negotiate the deal 
which she says we can do now in 30 days. It is not going to happen.
  We are here to make tough choices. Today, Senator Collins and I and 
others will make tough choices. We don't like the choices before us, 
but that is the way you have to govern.