Continuing Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I came to the floor this afternoon to talk about our failure, once again, to go through a regular appropriations process. I share what I know is a disappointment on the part of many of our colleagues that this Congress is choosing, once again, to disregard the regular appropriations process and resort to a short-term continuing resolution.

This will have serious negative impacts on our country's national security and on the economy. As ranking member on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, I applaud the chair of that subcommittee, Senator Hoeven, who was just on the floor, for the bipartisan work that has gone on. But as I look at the potential impact on homeland security, our failure to get an appropriations bill will have serious negative consequences for our Nation's emergency preparedness, for our transportation security, and for cyber security, just to name a few.

Closer to home in our local communities, it will hurt law enforcement as well as efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. At the beginning of this 114th Congress, the majority leader pledged to return the Senate to regular order. Now, translated into simple English for people who may be watching, regular order means doing our job and doing it the right way when it comes to the budget process.

It means meeting our Constitutional responsibility to produce an annual appropriations bill for the American people--legislation that will allow government at all levels and people from all walks of life to plan, to invest, to build, and to move our Nation forward. But instead, we are again being presented with an inadequate short-term stopgap bill, a continuing resolution that does not get the job done for the American people.

I applaud the Appropriations Committee chair, Senator Cochran, and our vice chair, Senator Mikulski, and the great work that has been done by all of the members of the Appropriations Committee. Senators Cochran and Mikulski have led the committee in a diligent good-faith effort to craft appropriations bills that meet our Nation's current needs and challenges, but unfortunately all those efforts will now be cast aside.

As Vice Chair Mikulski said yesterday, Republican leaders have decided to ``procrastinate rather than legislate.'' This has brought us to the final days of the 114th Congress with no regular order and no annual appropriations bills. This has very serious consequences nationally as well as in our States and local communities. For example, just on homeland security, over the last year the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security has crafted a bipartisan bill to ramp up emergency preparedness at the local level to meet the rising threat of cyber attacks and to address challenges in transportation security, including at our airports. All of these improvements and gains will be lost for the time of the continuing resolution.

Over the last year, we have seen terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Orlando, and sadly, just this last week, in Columbus, OH. Yet, because of the continuing resolution, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be unable to award more than $2 billion in homeland security preparedness grants to State and local governments. These are grants that allow States and local communities to plan and to practice their emergency response before disasters happen. That is how we cut response time, and that is how we save lives, but because of Congress's failure to do our jobs and pass annual appropriations bills, these preparedness grants will not be able to go forward.

Another area that is a critical national priority is cyber security.

Last year Federal agencies reported more than 77,000 cyber security incidents. Local businesses that own and operate much of the infrastructure, from banks to sewage systems, are under greater threat of cyber attack. Late last month hackers attacked the New Hampshire- based company of Dyn, which is part of the backbone of the Internet.

This attack on Dyn took down large swathes of Internet all across the globe. Dyn responded admirably to the attack, but there will be more and more sophisticated attacks in the future. To address these challenges, our appropriations bill in Homeland Security tripled the number of Federal cyber security advisers, and it increased cyber security funds to harden systems in Federal agencies. But, again, because of the continuing resolution, all of these advances will be put on hold for the duration of the CR. Of course, our Nation faces ongoing challenges in transportation security. To address increasing airline passenger volume and long security wait times, we have added nearly 1,400 transportation security officers, converted about 3,000 part-time officers to full-time status, funded 50 new bomb-sniffing K-9 teams, and added new screening equipment. To sustain these efforts through fiscal year 2017, the Transportation Security Administration needs a funding increase, but under the continuing resolution, these funds will not be available.

This increases the prospect of staffing shortfalls, and it means that more and more Americans will be standing in long lines, angry and frustrated at airports across this country.

The damage done by the continuing resolution will be felt in each of our States and in communities all across America. This week I heard from the executive director of New Hampshire's Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Lyn Schollett. She and her colleagues across New Hampshire are very troubled by the prospect of the continuing resolution. She told me that crisis centers, which are critical to help victims of domestic violence, will be stretched. They will have unpredictability that will make it even harder for programs to train and retain competent staff. It will affect their ability to serve victims of domestic violence across New Hampshire.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I am also very aware--as so many of us on that committee are--of the harmful effect of continuing resolutions on our military. Just yesterday I joined with other members of the Senate Navy Caucus to hear from the Chief of Naval Operations, ADM John Richardson. He pointed out that the Navy and all the other services have lived with 9 years of continuing resolutions. I want to say that again. Nine years of continuing resolutions. Nine years of not being able to count on a budget process that would allow them to plan. He talked about how this chronic budget chaos has been very costly. He said that military planners now operate from the assumption that there will be a CR and that any planning for the first quarter of the fiscal year is rendered unreliable. Year after year, this has resulted in project delays, multiple contracting actions for the same work, and it winds up costing more. It winds up costing the taxpayers more, it winds up costing our military more, and it winds up having an impact on all of the missions we have asked our men and women in uniform to take on.

During the current continuing resolution period running through December 9, the Navy had planned to award $24 billion in research and development contracts, but now, because of the CR, it will award only $16 billion in contracts. In my home State of New Hampshire, the CR limits the ability of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard--one of the four premier public shipyards in the country--to award contracts for critical infrastructure projects. This can interfere with submarine maintenance schedules, which then impacts the readiness of the submarine fleet. Again, I think it is important to point out that this costs us more. It doesn't save money to have a continuing resolution.

That is a whole misunderstanding on the part of some people. It costs more.

Every Senator understands that our failure to pass a full-year appropriations bill for fiscal year 2017 will do serious harm to people in communities all across America. As I just said, as we have seen in past years, it is going to cost us more money.

The Constitution vests in Congress the profound responsibility to appropriate funds to meet the Nation's needs. We have a duty to do so in a timely and responsible manner.

I appreciate--I understand, based on news reports, that the reason we are going to a short-term continuing resolution is because the incoming administration says they want to put a stamp on government spending.

Well, that is not the way the process is supposed to work. In future fiscal years, there will be the opportunity for the new administration to put their imprint on government spending. They will have a lot to do in the coming months of the new administration with the nominees and the process of vetting and approval of nominees and with new legislation. Why set up a budget battle 3 months into the new administration when we don't need to, when we have appropriations bills that have been through committee, in most cases have been agreed to by House and Senate negotiators, and we could move forward with that process, just as leadership of this body has committed to do? At the beginning of this Congress, the Senate's Republican leaders pledged to restore regular order to the appropriations process.

Instead, once again we are presented with a short-term stop-gap funding bill that shortchanges critical national needs and priorities. I believe the American people deserve better.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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