Government Funding

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me pick up where my friend the Senator from Virginia left off.

We are now in the history books: the longest shutdown in American history on this President's watch--a President who, a few weeks back, said he would be proud to own this government shutdown; a President who, in the lead-up, said: Gosh, don't those Democrats know that most of the folks who aren't going to get paid are Democrats-- which was, frankly, one of the most insulting comments any elected official in my lifetime has ever made.

I wish the President or somebody from his White House had been with Senator Kaine and I when we sat down with Federal workers from Virginia last Friday. Senator Kaine may have already mentioned a couple of these stories. I am going to briefly recap a couple of them.

A number of Federal employees who came and sat with us said they were in Federal service because they thought it was national service, many of them former veterans who felt they had an obligation to continue to serve our Nation, to protect it.

One lady, who worked at a small Agency that investigates chemical spills--and there had been a chemical spill in Houston the week before--felt her job was to get out and investigate.

A young man who served in the military now was supposed to be approving the safety of helicopters that are supposed to be deployed to Iraq. This guy is not able to do his job. Who is going to watch out for the safety of those helicopters? What about the needs for those helicopters that may be for troops in harm's way?

There is the story of one worker who said she had a little bit and could get through with her savings, but she went into her IRA to draw down that money. As Senator Kaine mentioned, she will get repaid, but even if she gets repaid, she will not get repaid the tax penalty for an early withdrawal from her IRA.

Another employee was able to get a couple thousand dollar advance on a credit card, but even when he is repaid in terms of backpay, that will not make up for the fees and interest that is charged on the credit card.

My apologies to the Presiding Officer if the Senator from Virginia already recounted this story. A young couple, both Federal employees, brought their 7-week-old baby to this meeting and said they wanted to bring this small bundle of joy because they had the unthinkable happen. When they tried to get their daughter put on their Federal healthcare insurance, whoever was supposed to send in the form had been furloughed. So when they took their daughter to the doctor and the doctor prescribed medicine, at the drug store they couldn't pay the bill because the folks didn't have their insurance. They had done nothing wrong. In this case, it didn't end up in a tragedy. The insurance company, with additional documentation, put the child on the insurance plan, and this family was able to get medicine for their child, but no parent who has earned the right to have their kid covered by health insurance should have this kind of action interfere in their life.

I did hear Senator Kaine mention, we had some of the air traffic controllers there, and they brought a series of their checks. It almost added insult to injury to get checks that said 1 cent or a zero on it. It is better to not even send them a check. As Senator Kaine mentioned, do you really want, in the crowded airspace over Dulles, your air traffic controller spending 30 percent of his time figuring out how he will pay the mortgage or pay his kids' tuition? You want 100 percent of that Federal employee's focus on landing that plane safely.

So 800,000 thousand Federal workers, about half of them furloughed, half of them working not just full-time but in some cases overtime.

Another colleague, earlier today, had some folks working at a Federal penitentiary. A lot of the workers weren't showing up to work not because they were upset or because they want to rightly protest, they couldn't afford the gas because they live 2 hours away from the Federal penitentiary.

We have a President who is willing to go to the border and go on TV but who is not willing to sit down with any of this workforce. That is embarrassing and, frankly, disgraceful.

If you were saying this is only about Federal workers, that would be bad enough. What about the contractors? Even though there are a group of us trying to put legislation in place, even if we reopen government, many of these contractors will never be made whole.

We have in our State a number of small businesses. One veteran-owned business with nine employees had to shut down last week because she couldn't meet her payroll. Now, will that small business be able to reopen? I don't know.

We in Virginia are blessed with incredible National Parks, the Shenandoah National Park and around the area where Senator Kaine lives in Richmond, civil war battlefields. This isn't just Federal employees. What happens if you are a campground around the Shenandoah National Park? What happens if you are a little restaurant right outside of Petersburg Battlefield? When those facilities shut down, those small businesses will never see that income come back in.

We have a flourishing craft brewery industry in Virginia, as I know they have in New Mexico and I imagine even in Alaska. Port City Brewing, based in Virginia, can't bring a couple of new brews to market because ATF workers are furloughed.

There has already been mention of the growing lines at TSA and the airports. In fact, ag workers, farmers, are waiting to see whether the President's support checks are going to come in. They are not going to come in right now. You have bad trade policy reinforced with the bad business practices of a government that is shut down.

As a matter of fact, we can look at this at a more macrolevel. What is the cost to the taxpayer? The cost to the taxpayer has already exceeded $3.6 billion. Why, in good gracious' name, can't we at least just vote on what the House has already voted on, what 96 Senators voted on in the middle of December?

If we want to continue to litigate how we can better protect our borders, count me in. I am in favor of additional resources for border security. I am sure we can find a way to get to yes, but why hold 800,000 Federal workers and hundreds of thousands of contractors and, for that matter, the whole county hostage?

I know my friend, the Senator from New Mexico, is here. I am only going to take one more moment. In my career, I have spent longer in business than I have in government, and most of my career in business was about trying to do deals. I was a venture capitalist, which is all about doing deals. I was an entrepreneur.

Subsequent to that, I was Governor of a State that had a 2-to-1 Republican legislature. If I was going to get anything done as Governor, I had to find common ground with a legislature of a different party. I am proud to say, we did find common ground, and Virginia got independently recognized as best managed State and best State for business.

So I have had a little experience doing deals, and I will wager this; that when this shutdown comes to a conclusion, that business schools and management consultants will write case studies about how not to negotiate based on Donald Trump's activities. Donald Trump, who sold himself to the American people as the ultimate dealmaker, has, I think, in the last 24--even days before that--violated every cardinal rule of how to get a deal done. Let me briefly go through this.

The first thing you learn in business when you are trying to do a deal, even if you have a slight advantage, you try to make it at least appear like it is a win-win circumstance for both sides. There has been nothing out of this White House that has been any effort toward those who don't agree with the President any sense of a win-win. It has been all about my way or the highway. That is not the way you practice business.

The second rule of business is, if you have somebody negotiating on your behalf, you back up your negotiator. You don't cut their knees off. This President has humiliated not only the majority leader of the Senate, who had the misfortune of taking and accepting the President's word and having the Senate vote 96-to-2 on a plan that he thought the President was going to sign and then have his knees cut off, but a few days later, he had the Vice President come to Congress and offer a plan as at least a starting point. I don't think he even got back downtown before the President of the United States had cut off his own Vice President's negotiating skills.

In the last few days, one of the folks whom--I think, at least, based on reporting--a friend of all of ours, the President, is supposed to listen to, Senator Graham from South Carolina, has been shot down as well.

Rule No. 2, don't kneecap your negotiators.

Rule No. 3, realize that no matter how important the deal is, there is always going to be another deal. You have to leave something on the table. This President has so broken faith with folks in his own party and folks on our side of the aisle, how can this individual think he is going to have any credibility--regardless of how we resolve this issue on any forward-going basis--to be a strong negotiator?

Rule No. 4, have somebody that is willing to speak truth to power. Unfortunately, in this administration, any independent voice has quit, been fired, or if they quit, as is the case of the Secretary of Defense, the President changes the terms and says he fired them, after all.

Finally, for management 101, if you are asking your workforce to go through tough times, show a little empathy. I have never seen a leader in our country, in my time in politics, ever be more disrespectful of the Federal workforce, and both parties have done this. Whenever, over the last decade, we have gone to the well to try to cut programs, the part of the programs we always cut are what we call in Washington-speak domestic discretionary. In English, that means the folks who work on food stamps, the folks who work at our national parks, the folks who work at TSA, and the folks who work on the Coast Guard. Yet there has been zero empathy from this White House for those workers who all of us have spoken about, who are asked to do more, who aren't getting paid, or are asked to work overtime. We are a better country than this.

The President who said he was dealmaker supreme, I think, will go down, at least in modern management history, and will be studied but not studied on how you get a deal done but, frankly, on how not to get a deal done.

So I think it is incumbent upon us in the Senate to do our job. We do not have to ask permission from this President to reopen this government, to pass legislation that could override his veto should he choose to do that, to make sure the 96 Senators who voted in favor of keeping the government open in December would have a chance to reaffirm that vote on a going-forward basis.

I appreciate the time to come to the floor. I am going to hand off to my friend, the Senator from New Mexico. It is my hope that we don't make further history this week and that we find some way in this next day or so to get this government reopened so we can get this Federal workforce back to work.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source