Unanimous Consent Request--H.J. Res. 1

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. I will not prolong this because I know a lot of my Democratic colleagues on the floor may want to speak, but there are two shutdowns going on here. The first one related to the government can only be solved with a Presidential signature, supportive of the Speaker of the House and supportive of at least 10 of our Democratic colleagues--or 7 on the other side. In other words, there has to be a deal, an agreement.

There is a second shutdown going on that, as far as my research can discover, is rather unprecedented. The Senate itself is being shut down because of the refusal of our colleagues on the other side to do business in the Senate during this period. There is no precedent for that. There is no reason for that. We are all here.

The bill they are refusing to let us get on relates to Israel, our great friend Israel, and addresses the atrocities that have been occurring in Syria.

I am having a hard time understanding why the Senate should be shut down as well as the government. We are all here. In fact, attendance looks pretty good, and I don't know why we can't process bills that the vast majority of us support.

I had hoped to pass all of these bills at the end of last session. We had some last-minute objections--and I will say on our side--and so we were unable to do it, but the vast majority of the Members of the Senate do want to process these bills.

So I would hope, no matter how you view the government shutdown, that there is no real significant reason to shut down the Senate.

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