Thune: Shutdown Schumer Strikes Again
“Now, what’s being suggested by the Democrat leader is … he’s willing to shut the government down over a clean CR! Something that, last year and the year before, he said he wanted.”
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor:
Thune’s remarks below (as delivered):
“Mr. President, I’m going to speak in just a moment about the border, but just to kind of set the stage a little bit on sort of where things stand:
“You just heard the Democrat leader talk about their willingness … to fund the government, something he’s said repeatedly in the past.
“In fact, in the past, as I used quotes on the floor yesterday, he said he likes clean CRs – clean CRs – and that we need to keep the government open for all kinds of reasons, including people who are served by the VA hospitals, for example.
“And I agree with him.
“I think that’s important.
“I don’t think anybody benefits from a government shutdown, which is why we are trying to advance a clean CR.
“A CR that incorporates anomalies that have been requested by his side of the aisle, some on ours, things that we normally incorporate into a continuing resolution.
“But the objective, Mr. President, in all this would be to fund the government into the foreseeable future.
“And what’s being talked about is somewhere in the November time frame, pre-Thanksgiving, perhaps, which would give us after the end of the fiscal year on September 30, another six to seven weeks to consider individual appropriation bills, and to fund the government the way it’s supposed to be funded.
“Under regular order, where the committees are doing their work and where we’re doing our work on the floor.
“As the chair knows, earlier this year, we already passed three appropriation bills across the floor of the Senate, something that hadn’t been done before the August recess going back as far as 2018, I believe.
“So, [it’s] been a long time since we’ve enacted, under regular order, appropriation bills.
“And that Mr. President, ought to be the goal.
“The goal here should be to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded, through the normal appropriations process.
“Now, I realize that’s a little out of the ordinary given the past few years under … the Democrat leader’s leadership here in the Senate, where these issues, a lot of times, got decided behind closed doors in his office.
“And that seems to be what he wants to have happen again.
“He’s suggesting that he would like to have conversations about this.
“Well, he knows my office is right down the hall.
“He knows my phone number.
“I haven’t heard from him.
“All we’re simply doing is asking for the very thing that in the past he has said he wants, and that is a clean funding resolution to fund the government.
“That’s what we are proposing here.
“That’s what I hope we will have the votes to pick up later this week.
“Now, if the Democrat leader chooses to oppose it, that’s his prerogative.
“But I would hope there would be Democrat senators who would give us the requisite number of votes to get to 60 in order to keep the government open, and that’s my objective in all this.
“And I would say, Mr. President, that we have, I think, a process whereby the Appropriations Committee, our chair, Senator Collins, has been working with the ranking Democrat, Senator Murray, and with their House counterparts on funding the government in this way, in this fashion.
“And those discussions, to the degree that they’re occurring, are occurring because we allow them to have those conversations, and don’t get in the way of that, and I think what the Democrat leader is suggesting is that he wants to interject himself into those discussions and perhaps even instruct his ranking member not to participate.
“So I hope that isn’t the case, but my expectation is that we will proceed to fund the government in a way that keeps it open for that foreseeable time period.
“I think right now what they’re talking about in the House of Representatives is somewhere in the November 21 time frame, and that would give us an additional six to seven weeks in which to move individual appropriation bills, which is the way we should be funding the government.
“And which is the way, historically, prior to the Democrat leader’s term as majority leader, we used to do it.
“Now, he moved that behind closed doors into his office.
“And frankly, I don’t think that is in the best interest of this institution, certainly not in the best interest of our members – on my side or on his side – who, frankly, want an open process, and have requested that.
“And that was one of the issues, when I was running for this job, that senators on our side of the aisle had suggested, is we want to do this in the light of day.
“We want an open process.
“We want regular order to work.
“We want the chairs to be empowered and individual members of the committees to be empowered, and just as importantly, individual senators to be empowered, to be able to have their voices heard in that appropriations process.
“And so that’s where we are right now.
“Now, what’s being suggested by the Democrat leader is they are willing – he’s willing, I hope they aren’t – he’s willing to shut the government down over a clean CR!
“Something that, last year and the year before, he said he wanted.
“Because that’s the way to do this, not with all kinds of things attached to it and poison pills, but clean, straight up, fund the government.
“That’s what he’s wanted.
“Now, I hope his members are smart enough to know that it’s a really bad idea, for lots of reasons, to shut the government down over a clean funding resolution, extended to a foreseeable date in the future, that would enable the Appropriations Committee and this institution, the Senate, working with our colleagues in the House, to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded, through the normal appropriations process.
“I sincerely hope we can do that, Mr. President.
“That’s what we are advocating: a clean funding resolution.
“Not with all kinds of ornaments and attachments to it – a handful of anomalies that both sides agree to that would fund the government into November, until such time as we have the opportunity here to debate and hopefully report out and actually move annual appropriations bills so the Senate’s voice, senators’ voices, can be heard in that process.
“That is a very, I know, foreign concept to the Democrat leader, and certainly something at least right now … it doesn’t sound like he’s open to.
“But the alternative is a government shutdown.
“And if you refuse to move a clean CR so the appropriations committees can do their work, and we can do our work here in the Senate, you’re essentially, you’re advocating for a government shutdown, and I don’t know how that doesn’t fall on you.
“Now, he’s suggesting that that’s going to fall on the Republicans.
“But if, in fact, the House of Representatives can act on this, the president is prepared to sign a continuing resolution that funds the government, clean resolution for the foreseeable future, and we have the number of votes here in the Senate to pass it, then it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.
“So I would hope that he will come to a different conclusion.
“And to the question of whether or not he would like to sit down with me: my office is right down here, and he has my cell phone number at any time. We can do that.
“It doesn’t seem necessary, given the fact that if we hand the ball to the appropriators, which is where this should be decided, and they negotiate this, and then we have a clean CR to fund the government for the next seven weeks, that to me seems like a very straightforward solution to this, at least in the near term, and one which in past Congresses the Democrat leader has supported.
“So that’s what we’re trending toward, Mr. President, and if the Democrat leader wants to chat about that or any other subject, he knows where to find me.
“And by the way, as many of his colleagues were out here trying to negotiate a bipartisan compromise on nominations last week, he was nowhere to be found.
“And so … this is a time, if you want to actually engage and try and come up with some bipartisan solutions to some of these problems, I certainly welcome that, and I look forward to those conversations in the future.”
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