[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 20233]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the clock is ticking ever closer to the 
end of the year. We still need to fund the government by Friday. We 
still need to lift the spending caps equally for defense and urgent 
domestic priorities, such as combatting the opioid crisis, improving 
healthcare for veterans, and building rural infrastructure. We must 
extend the FISA program and shore up pensions for over 1 million 
Americans. We still need to reauthorize CHIP and end the sabotage of 
our healthcare markets. We have had a bipartisan deal on a 
stabilization package for months now. It is a product that should have 
been easy to include in the end-year deal. After all, it is the product 
of bipartisan negotiations between Chairman Alexander and Ranking 
Member Murray, two of our most effective Senators. But now, because the 
Republicans are repealing the individual mandate in their tax bill, the 
Alexander-Murray deal will not have its intended effect. Even worse, 
Speaker Ryan has just said the agreement will not pass the House unless 
the Hyde language is attached to it--another eleventh hour partisan 
demand on a bill that has already been negotiated in the Senate. What 
should have been an easy addition to the year-end package is getting 
more difficult by the hour because of Republican demands.
  We still need to pass disaster supplemental funding to aid storm-
stricken parts of our country--California, Puerto Rico, the Virgin 
Islands, as well as Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. The disaster 
supplemental bill coming out of the House, while it has much better 
funding levels than the administration's proposal, still does not treat 
Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands fairly. It does not provide for cost-
sharing waivers, and it doesn't include enough funding for resiliency, 
mitigation, Medicaid, or drinking water infrastructure. It is a step in 
the right direction but not good enough.
  I would reiterate my plea. Texas and the Texas delegation have 
constantly criticized government funding. All of a sudden, now that 
there is a disaster, they want money. Fine. Yet what about that $10 
billion rainy day fund? Let Texas spend that. I guarantee you that if 
it were in a blue State, some of our friends from Texas would be 
calling for it--the very same people who opposed aid to Sandy, the very 
same people who have relished putting State and local deductibility in 
the bill. Well, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Let 
Texas dip into its $10 billion fund before it gets FEMA money. That is 
what seems fair and right, particularly for those who don't want to see 
Federal Government spending increase.
  Of course, last, but certainly not least, we still need to protect 
the Dreamers--young people brought into this country through no fault 
of their own, many of them who know no other country but ours. These 
are people who are in our Armed Forces--over 800--who are going to our 
schools, who are working in our factories and offices and stores. They, 
like everybody else--like our ancestors--want to be Americans. They 
contribute to America. They help America.
  Yet there are people on the other side of the aisle who have this 
nasty immigration attitude that affects the Dreamers and everybody 
else. It is so un-American. It is so against the statue with the torch 
in the harbor in the city in which I live. It is so against what the 
American people believe. Eighty percent want to help the Dreamers. Yet 
we are stymied so far, and 1,000 Dreamers are losing their status each 
week.
  On all of these things, the time to act is now. Bipartisan 
negotiations continue to seek a compromise to ensure DACA protections 
as well as to provide additional border security. We Democrats are all 
for that--real border security that makes a difference. We should 
strive to reach a deal as soon as is humanly possible.
  If we are not able to reach a global deal by this Friday on these 
many issues, there will be a temptation to do a short-term funding bill 
with some of these items but not others. That won't work. We should be 
doing all of these things together instead of in a piecemeal, week-by-
week fashion. Our Republican friends cannot pick and choose what they 
want and do what they did on the tax bill and do what they did on the 
healthcare bill in saying that Democrats are not welcome to be part of 
the deal--because this one ain't under reconciliation.
  We want to work in a bipartisan way, but a bipartisan way means just 
that, not Republicans deciding on their own and telling us that we 
should just be for it. The best way to get a good, bipartisan result, 
which by the Senate rules is necessary for spending bills, is for us to 
work together.

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