[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6175]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CONTINUING RESOLUTION

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I wish to speak on the 
appropriations bill. We still have several issues to address. Our 
Republican friends, mostly in the House--I want to say that my friend 
the Republican leader is working hard to get a good bill done, and I 
appreciate that, but Republicans are holding us up on some critical 
poison pill riders.
  We have made good enough progress. The four corners of the 
negotiations--the Appropriations chairmen and the ranking members in 
both Chambers and the House and Senate leadership were negotiating 
until 1:30 a.m. last night. I want to thank all of the staff who worked 
so hard and stayed up so late to bring us closer to an agreement. They 
have done heroic work, and I am happy to report that, if we get an 
agreement, we will see increases in NIH funding, year-round Pell 
grants, and housing assistance in the underlying omnibus bill.
  We are willing to have a voice vote on a short-term extension of the 
government funding in the hopes that we can wrap this up early next 
week. As I said last night, there is still a handful of unresolved 
poison pill riders, fewer than there were yesterday at 6 o'clock 
because of the work they did overnight, but there are still some out 
there.
  I want to reiterate the Democratic position. We don't want them--
zero. We are happy to pass a clean, bipartisan appropriations bill, 
which is the way this process is supposed to work. On the more 
controversial issues, we can have a debate in regular order. They 
shouldn't be stuck in these bills with no debate and no discussion and 
no votes--no regular order voting.
  I am confident that we can get there if both sides realize that these 
important debates on policy should be left with the regular order 
process and in full view of the public.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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