[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11483-11484]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               EDUCATION BILL AND APPROPRIATIONS PROCESS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, in the Chamber this morning we have the 
chairman of the education committee, a man for whom I have the utmost 
respect. He is a person who understands education. He was the Governor 
of the State of Tennessee. He was the Secretary of Education, and he 
has been an outstanding Senator.
  But something occurred last night that I think is really outside the 
specter of reasonableness. Cloture was filed on the education bill last 
night, meaning we are going to have a vote on it tomorrow morning.
  We have worked on a few amendments, and basically all of them could 
have been accepted with voice votes. There was not a single difficult 
amendment that was brought up. So now cloture is being sought, and in 
the process, ignoring Democratic amendments that we have been waiting 
to offer for some time now. We are not going to allow cloture to 
succeed unless we have a pathway forward on these amendments.
  The ranking member of the committee, the senior Senator from 
Washington, knows this. She has talked with the chairman of the 
committee about this, and we are going to have to have a reasonable 
time to debate those amendments and have votes on those amendments. 
Otherwise, we are not going to complete this bill. It is an important 
bill. We should complete the bill.
  Senate Democrats have said for months that Republicans are running a 
sham on the appropriations process. From the very beginning, the 
Republicans have proceeded with an appropriations process that is 
designed to fail. They moved forward bills they know Democrats cannot 
support. Republican leaders in Congress simply have shown no interest 
in funding our government in a fair and responsible manner.
  This past week, even we were surprised how House Republican 
leadership has handled the appropriations process. Republicans brought 
their interior and environment appropriations bill before the House for 
debate. This legislation is nothing short of a disaster. In fact, the 
bill that they brought to the floor is so bad that President Obama has 
made it clear already that it will be vetoed.
  What does it do? It strangles the Environmental Protection Agency's 
budget, cutting it by 9 percent, $700 million. It prohibits completion 
and implementation of pollution standards for dirty powerplants to 
address climate change. It cuts funding for State drinking water 
infrastructure. It cuts funding for National Parks.
  We have such an infrastructure deficit in our National Park System 
that it is a crying shame. Yet they cut more from this program. We are 
the envy of the rest of the world with our national parks, but with how 
the Republicans have treated this wonderful system of parks we have, 
they are really being depleted. It allows corporations to shift costs 
of their toxic waste bills to taxpayers.
  We have had for decades a very successful program to clean up these 
very, very dirty spills dealing with chemicals and other substances 
that shouldn't be on the ground. It is called Superfund. What it does 
is make sure that these environmental disasters are paid for by the 
people who created the disaster. What does the House do on this? They 
change this and say: No, we are not going to have the people that 
messed up the environment clean it up; we are going to have the 
taxpayers clean it up. That is wrong.
  This bill that was in the House last week blocks hydraulic fracking 
rules for public lands designed to provide transparency and protect 
communities that host oil and gas drilling. Rules for public lands, not 
private lands--they eliminate that.
  Those are only a small number of the devastating provisions the 
Republicans have piled into this funding bill. But even more shocking 
was what occurred next, as legislation pertaining to the removal of the 
Confederate flag brought the Republicans' appropriations bill to a 
screeching halt. In an attempt to avoid voting on amendments that would 
outlaw the use of Confederate emblems, the House leadership shut down 
their own spending bill.
  The Confederate flag issue was brought up by Republicans. They 
accepted it the day before this debacle took place on the House floor. 
But then they wanted more debate on the Confederate flag, and it didn't 
sell. What did they do? They figured out a way to drop this bill 
totally and take it off the floor.
  Listen to a few of the headlines that were in the newspapers that 
follow.
  From the Atlantic: ``Republican Defenders of the Confederate Flag 
Derail a Spending Bill.''
  From Politico: ``GOP Leaders Yank Bill after Confederate Flag 
Fracas.''
  From Roll Call: ``The Confederate Flag Imperils Republican Goal to 
Finish Spending Bills by August.''
  Finally, from the Wall Street Journal: ``Confederate Flag Debate 
Prompts House to Pull Spending Bill.''
  It is very disappointing that this is what the Republican Party of 
the 21st century stands for--protecting emblems of racism and our 
tragic past. The Congress should not be protecting the Confederate 
flag. Protecting the

[[Page 11484]]

Confederate flag certainly is not worthy of bringing the entire U.S. 
Government to a standstill. But that is what the Republicans have been 
doing all along with their bogus appropriations bills--bringing our 
country to a standstill.
  It has been clear for months that the only way Congress will arrive 
at a responsible budget is by Republicans and Democrats, Senate and 
House, sitting down together and finding a path forward. Now is the 
time to negotiate--not in September, not in October.
  We know that the Republicans are experienced in shutting down the 
government. They did it before for several weeks. It was devastating to 
our economy, and it was a real shock to the worldwide community. 
Sequestration is another ingenious method of the Republicans to hurt 
the American middle class.
  Republicans are experienced in shutting down the government. They did 
it 2 years ago. We know how the American economy suffered.
  Senate Democrats aren't the only ones calling on Republican leaders 
to sit down for bipartisan funding talks. Listen to what was said by 
congressional Republicans. Hal Rogers is dean of the Kentucky 
delegation and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Here is 
what he said:

       If we wait until the end of the fiscal year, then we're 
     going to have to pass a C.R . . . then try to cobble together 
     something in the meantime like we've been doing, but under 
     pressure. And that's not the best way to legislate.

  House Appropriations subcommittee chairman Mike Simpson of Idaho 
said:

       Under sequestration, the way it currently exists, you can't 
     pass appropriations bills. It ensures that what you've got is 
     a C.R. for the rest of your life.

  House Appropriations subcommittee chairman Tom Cole said:

       The reality is we still live in a divided government. It's 
     not as if the Democrats can be shut out, but they can't 
     dictate to us any more than we can dictate to them. It's time 
     to sit down and see if we can make a deal.

  Charlie Dent, Appropriations subcommittee chairman in the House, from 
Pennsylvania, said:

       We all know there's going to have to be a short-term C.R. 
     to take us from September to December. And I would hope 
     sometime between now and then, we'll have a negotiated budget 
     agreement.

  These are just a few of the quotes of the House Republic chairmen. 
The only way we are going to avoid another Republican Government 
shutdown is by both parties sitting down to construct a bipartisan 
agreement.
  Let's skip all of the unnecessary drama by starting today to work 
together to avoid another government shutdown.
  What is the business of the day, Mr. President?

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