[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 190 (Monday, November 10, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8122-S8125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ORDER OF PROCEDURE
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the
remarks of Senators Murray and Collins, the postcloture time be
expired, and the Senate vote on adoption of the motion to proceed;
further, if agreed to, and following recognition of the majority
leader, it be in order for Senators Baldwin, Sanders, Slotkin, and
Merkley to speak for up to 5 minutes each, prior to a Baldwin motion to
table and a Merkley motion to table, if made; and following the
disposition of that vote, if it is not agreed to, Senator Paul be
recognized to speak for up to 9 minutes, and the Senate then vote in
relation to the Paul amendment No. 3941; further, that following
disposition of the Paul amendment, the Senate vote on the motion to
invoke cloture on the Collins substitute amendment No. 3937; and if
cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be expired, the pending
amendments other than the Collins substitute be withdrawn, and the
Senate vote on adoption of the Collins substitute amendment; and if
adopted, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on H.R. 5371,
as amended; finally, if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be
expired, the bill, as amended, be read the third time, and the Senate
vote on passage of H.R. 5371, as amended; and if passed, the motion to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no
intervening action or debate, and the mandatory quorum calls be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Government Funding
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, like so many people in this country, I am
so outraged that Republicans have refused to lift a finger to save so
many families from the skyrocketing healthcare premiums all year long.
I voted no on last night's vote because I do believe we need to address
healthcare costs before we move forward.
There is simply no time left to kick the can down the road when it
comes to saving the ACA tax credits. We are already 10 days into
enrollment. Yet we have Republicans saying: Why should we stop premiums
from skyrocketing when we never really wanted lower premiums in the
first place?
We have Republicans talking about going back to the good old days of
high-risk pools, which meant people with cancer could not get health
insurance. We have Speaker Johnson bragging that Republicans
strengthened healthcare by making the biggest cut to Medicaid in
history. That is like saying you strengthened a ship by throwing the
passengers overboard.
And when Democrats offered a clean 1-year extension of the tax
credits, which is truly the most straightforward and commonsense thing
we can do for people facing gigantic premium hikes this year,
Republicans said: Never ever, ever, ever.
They called it ``political terrorism.'' And to really put a fine
point on it, they fired up the old bad ideas machine to try and find a
new way to repeal the ACA. Republicans have gone from saying nothing
about healthcare costs all year long to saying later, later, later,
even after we are over a week into open enrollment and wasting every
bit of time we had for real negotiations.
Then, incredibly, Republicans started saying: Let's scrap the
Affordable Care Act altogether. Let's end protections for preexisting
conditions. By refusing to work with Democrats on a solution before
open enrollment started, Republicans have already pushed millions of
Americans off the healthcare cliff.
The only question was--and is--could we throw them a rope back up?
Could Congress get something done and stem some of the bleeding
Republicans already caused? Yes. By passing a clean
[[Page S8123]]
1-year extension of the ACA tax credits.
But right away, Republicans said they wouldn't even consider it. I
believe that we should keep pressing on that fight as time is of the
essence, and the clock has nearly run out. The reality is, there is a
point where it will be too late to make a meaningful difference on the
healthcare premiums, and I don't believe there is some magical date set
in stone, but that is coming up pretty fast.
It is pretty much now or never, and Republicans are essentially
saying never to stopping the worst of the MAGA healthcare hike.
Now, here is the important thing: This fight is not over, far from
it, because I and many of us have no intention of letting Republicans
off the hook. No one should doubt for a single second who is to blame
for the skyrocketing healthcare costs: Republicans and Republicans
alone.
When families across America are paying the price that they will see
for Republican inaction every month, I will make sure every single one
of them remembers the same Republicans who did everything in their
power to make tax breaks for billionaires permanent refused to even
negotiate one year of healthcare tax credits for working families at a
tiny fraction of the cost.
Unfortunately, here we are, and it seems clear Republicans are
feeling no urgency to act on healthcare before it is too late, even a
quick simple extension to help families.
But, I want to be clear, while I cannot vote for this overall deal
today, not when we still need to address healthcare, I do absolutely
support the appropriations bills and CR that we will move forward which
do take meaningful steps to reject drastic cuts and extreme policies
pushed by both Trump and House Republicans and make sure that
Congress--not Trump--is in charge of Federal spending.
It is important that Democrats were at the table on the CR and our
first three funding bills and used our spot at that table to fight for
hard-working families in America. The difference is clear and a sharp
contrast between the bills that were released yesterday and the bills
written by the House Republicans and the budget put forward by
President Trump.
In our bills, Democrats were able to secure real wins for folks back
home and fight off painful, senseless cuts and extreme policy.
On the CR, we made sure to protect Federal workers, both by ensuring
they receive backpay they are owed, something that has been debated
extensively, and by reversing the punitive RIFs done by this
administration during the administration and blocking them from doing
more this year.
In the Agriculture appropriations bill, while Trump and House
Republicans fought to make steep cuts to WIC that would have seriously
cut benefits for millions of women and kids, we successfully fought
together to keep WIC fully funded. This bill ensures that 7 million
moms and babies will get the full nutrition benefits they rely on.
We also sustained key investments in our rural communities because we
rejected a Trump funding takeover. We protected housing support in
rural communities and vital agricultural research happening across the
country, including in my home State of Washington at WSU.
We stopped Trump from blowing a truly massive hole in FDA's budget
which would have slowed drug approvals and seriously endangered our
food supply.
None of this is inconsequential. All of this matters. And I want to
thank Chair Hoeven and Ranking Member Shaheen for all of their good
work on that vital bill to our communities. In the Military
Construction and Veterans Affairs bills, we were able to secure funding
to make sure we were taking care of our veterans and our servicemembers
and ensure that this administration keeps its promises to our veterans
by ensuring staffing of critical services such as the crisis hotline
centers.
I want to thank Chair Boozman and Ranking Member Ossoff for all their
good work on this critical bill to our veterans and our servicemembers.
And, lastly, on the Legislative Branch bill, which is the smallest
bill, it covers the important needs of this institution, from
protecting GAO and CBO, the Architect of the Capitol, our Capitol
Police, and other Agencies that actually make this place work, to make
sure our offices have what they need to take care of our constituents
and keep our campus safe.
We should all appreciate the hard work that went into completing this
bill. I want to thank Chair Mullin and Ranking Member Heinrich for all
of their work on that important bill and the critical matters within to
every Senator in this Chamber.
Now, obviously, those are not the bills I would have written on my
own. I have concerns we were not able to address in these bills, and
Republicans were not open to some of them. But I still want to do more
when it comes to delivering critical investments for communities in our
country, and I will, as always, keep pushing my colleagues every day.
But we did secure real wins for folks back home when Democrats and
Republicans were able to sit down at the table together on funding, and
they are immeasurably better than Trump and Vought holding the pen--
which is what the slush fund CR that we have been operating on this
year allowed.
I am proud for what we have been able to negotiate to protect key
programs our families and communities rely on and protect our authority
as lawmakers who are here to be a voice for our constituents. I want to
emphasize that I really appreciate the work of my counterpart, the
senior Senator from Maine Susan Collins, who has done incredible work
on all these bills.
I want to thank our subcommittee chairs and ranking members and all
of our staff who have worked hard to put these bills together, and I
want to make clear I deeply appreciate the partnership of my colleagues
on the Senate Appropriations Committee who have all worked in good
faith during these very difficult times and these very difficult
negotiations.
No matter what, these bills need to get done and our staff put in
late nights and our chairs and ranking members held countless
conversations to compromise and work toward solutions.
I hope to continue building on that progress and showing what it does
look like when we come together and put families before politics.
I look forward to getting our next minibus up on the floor to move
multiple needed bills along that we have marked up in the committee and
give those to conference, and I hope we can be on that package as soon
as possible.
I look forward to working with the Senator from Maine and working to
get those final bills completed, so they, too, can be conferenced with
the House as soon as possible.
And I want to thank all of our committee members and staffs for their
incredible work on these critical bills. We have a lot of work ahead,
and I know we can get there.
Passing full-year funding bills helps to ensure that Congress--not
Trump or Russ Vought--decides how taxpayer dollars are spent. We should
never turn the keys over to Trump and his Cabinet Secretaries, allowing
them to make unilateral cuts and shift funding around however they
please.
Every day, they prove in a new way how critical it is that Congress
assert its authority and rein in their chaos, and I will continue to
work to do that on the Appropriations Committee.
But I also need to continue fighting to stop the MAGA healthcare hike
for as long as there is still time left on this clock to fix this. The
reality is, there is a point where it will be too late to make a
meaningful difference, but until we reach that point of no return, we
do have to fight tooth and nail to force Republicans to actually work
with us on that issue. And because, in this package, Republicans have
still refused to address the healthcare crisis families are facing
right now, a crisis that gets worse and harder to fix every single day,
I will be voting no.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this is the 41st day of an entirely
unnecessary government shutdown; a shutdown that never should have
occurred; a shutdown that has caused tremendous harm to the American
people, to our national security, to our entire country; a shutdown
that has resulted in Federal employees being furloughed, laid
[[Page S8124]]
off, or forced to work without compensation; a shutdown that is causing
enormous uncertainty and stress for families that rely upon the SNAP
program for the nutrition that they need; a shutdown that is causing
families to wonder: Are they going to be able to fly to see the
grandparents on Thanksgiving? A shutdown that never should have
occurred.
We finally have the ability tonight to end this shutdown. We have put
forth, the Appropriations Committee, working in a bipartisan way with
Members on both sides of the aisle and in both Chambers, a package of
bills that includes a continuing resolution that will reopen government
immediately once it is passed by this Senate, the House, and signed
into law by the President.
It is legislation that due to incredibly good work by Senators Jeanne
Shaheen, Tim Kaine, Katie Britt, the White House, and many of us, will
ensure that those Federal employees who have been furloughed or laid
off or forced to work without pay will receive their backpay, will be
recalled to their jobs if they were laid off as a result of this
shutdown.
That will make a huge difference to these Federal employees who have
worked so hard to serve the people of our Nation.
This package of bills also includes three--three--yearlong
appropriations bills that were passed by overwhelming margins,
bipartisan margins, more than 80 votes in each case, by the Members of
this Senate way back on August 1.
These bills are the Agriculture bill, the Agriculture-FDA bill--
Senator Boozman chairs that subcommittee. It includes funding for the
SNAP program; for the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program,
known as WIC; for our farmers; for rural development; for our rural
communities throughout this country. It is a very important bill--a
bill that will take away the worry that families who are low income and
seniors who are low income and rely upon the SNAP program or the WIC
Program are feeling today about whether the funding is going to be
there. That concern goes away with the passage of this full-year
appropriations bill that extends until the end of September of next
year.
A second bill in this package is the Military Construction and
Veterans Affairs bill. That subcommittee is chaired--I have actually
mixed up the two subcommittees. Agriculture is chaired by Senator
Hoeven, and Military Construction-VA is chaired by Senator Boozman.
They are both extraordinary chairmen who work in a bipartisan manner
with their ranking minority members and with their House counterparts.
Think about it. Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if
tonight the Senate passes the bill that provides yearlong funding
through the end of this fiscal year, to September 30 of next year, for
our VA? What a way to tell our veterans how much we value their
sacrifice and their service--a debt to them that we can never fully
repay. It is so important to get that bill through.
Military construction projects--what a difference that makes to our
troops all over the world. There are two that matter a great deal to me
in the State of Maine, one that will help the Portsmouth Naval
Shipyard, which I worked on with my fellow Senator from Maine and our
two Senators from New Hampshire, and one that will benefit the Air
National Guard Base in Bangor, ME, where I live. I am so proud of that
base. It does more refuelings than any base on the east coast during
wartime, and it is extraordinarily skillful and filled with patriots.
They will be taken care of.
The third bill is the Legislative Branch bill. That bill answers
concerns that a lot of our Members have about security in this
increasingly polarized and difficult environment in which we live. But
that is not all, and I want to correct any misimpression that has been
given by some who have spoken today on the other side of the aisle.
The Senate majority leader has given a public commitment that he will
bring to the Senate floor bills that extend the Affordable Care Act,
which, unfortunately, has turned out to be anything but affordable. But
it will extend the premium tax credits that allow our lower income and
middle-income families to afford their much needed health insurance. In
many cases, these are individuals who are self-employed, so they do not
get health insurance through the workplace, or they are the employees
of small businesses that are unable to provide health insurance,
particularly in this time when we are seeing skyrocketing premiums.
So, as I have said from the beginning, I support an extension of the
ACA tax credits, but they need reform. It is wrong that wealthy
families qualify for taxpayer-subsidized tax credits for their health
insurance when they can afford their own health insurance. That was the
change in ObamaCare that was made during COVID.
We should take a look at what the original income cap was under the
Affordable Care Act. It was 400 percent of the poverty level. Now, we
can decide what it should be, but surely we ought to be able to agree
in a bipartisan way that there should be some cap on income so that
very wealthy individuals are not able to receive taxpayer-funded tax
credits. Let's limit that to those who are in middle-income and lower
income families.
There are other great ideas that have been raised by our colleagues
on how we can reform the ACA to make health insurance more affordable.
I know that the chair of the HELP Committee, Senator Cassidy, who is a
medical doctor, as well as Chairman Mike Crapo of the Finance Committee
have promised to have hearings to take a hard look at this, and we have
the commitment of the majority leader to bring these bills to the
floor.
So it is just not true that we are ignoring this issue. We do need to
act by the end of the year, and that is exactly what the majority
leader has promised.
In addition, he has pledged to bring additional, yearlong
appropriations bills to the Senate floor. We will be doing that
shortly, and that is the right thing to do.
I want to thank the eight Democrats who yesterday stood up for the
American people and did what was right: pledged to reopen government;
to pass these three appropriations bills that Members of this Chamber
passed by over 80 votes on August 1 and which will take away the threat
of any kind of shut down for the programs in those three bills.
As I mentioned, the last bill is the Leg Branch bill. I want to thank
Senator Markwayne Mullin for his leadership on that bill as well.
We have terrific members on the Appropriations Committee on both
sides of the aisle who have worked so hard, and I must say that I think
all of them ought to be voting for this package of bills tonight.
I made most of my comments yesterday when I brought these bills to
floor. There are others who are seeking recognition, so I will cease my
remarks. But I just want to encourage everyone to cast their vote for
this package of bills so that we can send it over to our House
colleagues, where I hope they will do the same, and then send it to the
President, who has already endorsed this package and pledged to sign
the bill into law.
Let's end this entirely unnecessary, shameful shutdown.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes of
debate, equally divided, prior to each rollcall in relation to Calendar
No. 168, H.R. 5371.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Vote on Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all postcloture time
is expired.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
Ms. COLLINS. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 60, nays 40, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 611 Leg.]
YEAS--60
Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Durbin
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
[[Page S8125]]
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hassan
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kaine
Kennedy
King
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Ricketts
Risch
Rosen
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young
NAYS--40
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Coons
Duckworth
Gallego
Gillibrand
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kelly
Kim
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Reed
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
The motion was agreed to.
____________________