[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Page 13843]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CONTINUING RESOLUTION

  MR. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes to talk about 
the continuing resolution passed by the Senate earlier today. This 
bipartisan agreement is the result of weeks of negotiations between 
Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate. It funds the 
Federal Government through December 9 at fiscal year 2016 levels and 
provides much-needed funding to fight the ongoing Zika public health 
emergency. We also now have an agreement on a path forward to finally 
address the public health crisis in Flint, MI.
  Funding the government through a stop-gap measure like this is not 
ideal, but it provides Congress additional time to negotiate a larger 
funding agreement to fund the Federal Government through the end of the 
2017 fiscal year.
  Included in this agreement is $1.1 billion in emergency funding to 
help States and our Federal health agencies properly respond to the 
Zika epidemic. As of last week, there were more than 23,000 reported 
cases of Zika in the United States and its territories, including more 
than 2,000 pregnant women who have been infected. This money will be 
used for vaccine development, mosquito control, and the delivery of 
much needed health care.
  While I am glad Congress will finally provide these much-needed 
funds, Congress should have provided this funding sooner. It has been 7 
months since the President requested emergency funding to address Zika 
and 4 months after the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to provide Zika 
funding.
  But it has taken this long for Republicans to finally agree to drop 
their outrageous demands to attach partisan poison pills to this vital 
public health funding. The agreement does not include controversial 
policy riders to overturn provisions of the Clean Water Act, nor does 
it block money from going to Planned Parenthood health centers that so 
many women rely on to access health care.
  We have also reached a bipartisan agreement on providing funding to 
address the crisis in Flint, MI. The people of Flint have waited 1 
year--far too long--for Congress to do our job and address the public 
health emergency that has poisoned 9,000 children and left 100,000 
residents without access to clean and safe water. Instead of turning on 
the tap to make breakfast or take a shower, Flint residents start their 
day by waiting in long lines for bottled water to feed and bathe their 
children, take showers, and stay healthy. The House has moved to 
include funding for Flint in their Water Resources and Development 
bill, and I am hopeful that a final agreement on assistance for Flint 
will be reached in the coming months. I also hope the final agreement 
will include funding for other communities, like those in my home State 
of Illinois, facing lead contaminated water issues.
  While this continuing resolution is a promising, bipartisan step 
forward, I am concerned about a provision that limits the Security and 
Exchange Commission's ability to finalize, issue, or implement a 
corporate political spending disclosure rule. In 2010, the Supreme 
Court issued a far-reaching decision in Citizens United v. Federal 
Election Commission. On a divided 5-4 vote, the Court struck down years 
of precedent and held that the First Amendment permitted corporations 
to spend freely from their treasuries to influence elections. As a 
result of Citizens United and a series of decisions that followed in 
its wake, special interests and wealthy, well-connected campaign donors 
have so far poured more than $2 billion of outside spending into recent 
Federal elections, including 2016 races. In the years since Citizens 
United, several of my colleagues and I have called for the SEC to 
initiate a rulemaking requiring public companies to disclose their 
political spending to shareholders. More than 1.2 million securities 
experts, institutional and individual investors, and members of the 
public have asked the SEC for a disclosure rule. Such a rulemaking 
would bring much-needed transparency to the U.S. political process. 
Shareholders deserve to know when outside spending in political 
campaigns comes from the coffers of a company they have invested in.
  Unfortunately, last year, this provision limiting the SEC's 
rulemaking authority was slipped into the omnibus appropriations bill, 
which we had to pass in order to fund the government for the 2016 
fiscal year. And I am disappointed that under this continuing 
resolution, this rider will continue to strangle the SEC's authority. I 
will work with my colleagues to strike this problematic rider in future 
legislation.
  I am also disappointed that the continuing resolution fails to 
address ongoing issues with the Export-Import Bank. Last fall, a 
bipartisan majority of the House and Senate joined together to end a 5-
month shutdown of the Export-Import Bank. Despite the end of the 
shutdown, the Bank remains unable to function because the board lacks 
the quorum necessary to approve financing deals of more than $10 
million. This not only harms large manufacturers and their employees, 
it also has a negative impact on thousands of small businesses that are 
suppliers and subcontractors and the hard-working men and women they 
employ. The President has nominated two qualified candidates, including 
a Republican, to serve on the board, but those nominations are being 
held hostage by the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. That is 
why I have supported language to deem the existing board as having the 
quorum needed to do its work until these nominations can be 
considered--a move that is not unprecedented. It is my hope that we 
will continue to work together to restore the Bank's operating board 
quorum so that we can prevent further disruption to the economic 
security of American workers.
  I am proud that bipartisan cooperation resulted in today's continuing 
resolution to keep the federal government open and operating through 
December 9, but our work here in Congress is hardly done. I will 
continue to work with colleagues over the months ahead to reach a 
bipartisan agreement on how we will fund the federal government for the 
year to come and finally provide funding to address the public health 
crisis in Flint.

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