Government Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. RISCH.

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Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I rise today, again, to discuss S. 1 and to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this.

We had a vote just the other day on this, and it has been reconsidered. All Republicans voted for it. Four of our friends on the other side of the aisle also voted with us on this, and I would urge a few more to do so. If that happens, we will actually pass this package of bills, which is so important.

These have been kicked around for some time. The substance of these bills have near--although not complete--unanimous approval of this body. Indeed, Members of this body have voted for these, both in committee and on the floor, individually in the past, but they have not gotten across the finish line because we ran out of time in the last Congress.

Essentially, it is a package of three bills that support our friends. One, of course, supports Israel. One supports Jordan, one of our best friends in the Middle East. And, lastly, one of the bills refreshes and strengthens the sanctions against Bashar al-Assad and his government in Syria.

These should pass. You might ask yourself: Well, what is going on here? Why are we having these party-line votes on this? Well, my friends on the other side of the aisle have said: We are not going to vote on anything while the government is shut down, and we should be focused on this. I would remind my friends that there are a lot of us around here who are veterans of the 2013 Obama-Harry Reid shutdown.

During that shutdown, the U.S. Senate continued to do its job, continued to consider resolutions, continued to pass bills, and continued to do confirmations, as it was required to do.

That is what we have here today--something that we should be doing that reinforces our friends in the Middle East. Particularly with times being somewhat tumultuous there, it is important that we support our friends in the Middle East, and it is important that we put these sanctions on the people of Syria.

I would also remind my friends on the other side of the aisle that they are forcing a vote on the Treasury regulations surrounding Mr. Deripaska, the Russian person who has had sanctions placed on him and who has gone through the process of getting them removed. My friends on the other side are requiring that we debate and then vote on those, which is a good thing to do. First of all, there are some issues that need to be aired there, and, secondly, it is important that we have the process for reviewing actions by the Treasury Department under the sanctions legislation in the past. It is good that we do that. But to say ``We can't do this, but we can do that'' because they want to do it really doesn't make sense. They also want to do this. I think if we had a straight-up vote on this, I would suspect the Democrats would vote unanimously to do this.

This is just the wrong way to do business. We are the U.S. Senate. We are open for business. We are doing business. In the last shutdown, we did business, and there is no reason we can't do this.

Mr. President, fellow Senators, for all of the reasons I have just said, I urge an affirmative vote on this good legislation. Get it on its way, and get it doing the things that we want to see done. Cloture Motion

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