No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, last Saturday was a historic day in Springfield, IL, my hometown. It was the biggest snowfall in one day in our city's history. I spent that Saturday not shaking hands with my constituents but shaking hands with my shovel, trying to shovel snow away. It was a historic day in Springfield but, sadly, it was a historic day for America too.

Saturday marked the longest shutdown of the U.S. Government in the history of the United States. As of today, the shutdown has continued for 26 days. Day by day, the harmful effects of this government shutdown are getting worse. Alarmingly, the President seems not to really understand or appreciate the real-life impact this shutdown is having on many Americans.

In all, more than 8,000 Federal workers in my home State of Illinois are going without a paycheck during this shutdown--8,000 people who are concerned about paying their bills, as most working families are. These are hard-working Americans.

I want to show you a photo of one of them. He happens to be a friend of mine. His name is Toby Hauck. This is Toby here. Toby is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. His job in Aurora, IL, is to make sure that my plane, when it arrives at O'Hare, lands safely. Toby Hauck is an air traffic controller. Air traffic controllers have some of the most important and most stressful Federal jobs in America, and this shutdown is a kick in the gut to Toby Hauck and all of these air traffic controllers.

Many air traffic controllers, like Toby, are already working 6 days a week. I am not happy to report that. Pushing them to the limits of physical exhaustion isn't in the best interest of safety when it comes to our aircraft, but because of staffing shortages, that is what they are faced with, working 6 days a week. The shutdown is making staff shortages in the air traffic control facilities across the United States even worse.

The shutdown has closed down the FAA academy where new air traffic controllers are trained and has stopped training in each facility to implement new procedures and new equipment.

Toby's father and grandfather, incidentally, served in the U.S. military, as he did. This picture depicts his great son and Toby's granddaughter. I wanted to bring another point home. Toby's son is deploying overseas this month. Toby and his wife will be looking after their 2\1/2\-year-old granddaughter during the 10-month deployment. Toby's lack of a paycheck since December 31 of last year adds stress to an already hectic life.

Toby says:

Veterans are very proud of our heritage and what we have done for the country. And those of us who continue to serve the Federal Government as Federal employees continue that pride throughout their careers.

Toby says:

We are hardworking, proud American employees doing a job for the American public that is essential as an air traffic controller. It's not acceptable as a veteran, as a federal employee, as an air traffic controller to use my profession and my livelihood as a political football.

Toby doesn't stand alone as a veteran working for the Federal Government. Veterans are some of the hardest hit Federal employees of the Trump shutdown. Today as many as 250,000 Federal workers and Federal contractors are going without pay during the shutdown. According to the Office of Personnel Management, as of the end of fiscal year 2016, veterans represented 31 percent of the Federal workforce. This is more than a 5-percent increase since 2009, when President Obama encouraged veterans to apply for employment with the Federal Government to boost the hiring of men and women who served our country in uniform.

In Illinois, we have 50,000 Federal workers, and almost 28 percent of them are veterans. More than one-quarter of all veterans working in the Federal Government also have a Department of Veterans Affairs disability rating.

For example, if SNAP, the food stamp program, runs out, 38 million Americans could lose their food stamp benefits. That includes veterans living in households that participate in SNAP. You don't think about that very often, do you? Do you mean there are veterans on food stamps? The figure has averaged about 1.4 million veterans a year between 2015 and 2017, according to the Census Bureau. Illinois is home to nearly 50,000 veterans who are beneficiaries of food stamps and HUD rental assistance programs on an annual basis as well. So the very programs that are going to be hampered, slowed down, and stopped because of the Trump shutdown affect veterans across my State of Illinois and across the Nation. About 1,150 contracts under the project-based rental assistance program have lapsed, with hundreds more scheduled to expire because of this shutdown. People are suffering around the country.

Federal workers are suffering. Their workers are suffering and veterans are suffering because of this Trump shutdown. More than 380,000 Federal workers have been furloughed; 450,000 or more are being forced to work without pay. These are hard-working Americans like the TSA officers I met last week at O'Hare and met just a few days ago when I flew to St. Louis Lambert Airport. They go to work every single day, and their job is to make sure that dangerous people don't get on the airplanes with you, your children, and your family. They can't afford to have their paychecks held hostage by a manufactured crisis.

These families of Federal workers have bills to pay. A worker at the Environmental Protection Agency, Cynthia Colquitt, is going without a paycheck after serving 26 years as a Federal employee. How hard is it? She is a single mom, and she says, quite honestly: I get by paycheck to paycheck. She has never missed a mortgage payment; she is very serious about those things. But now she is worried the shutdown will impact her credit rating if she doesn't have a paycheck to pay her bills on time.

Shutdowns not only hurt our Federal workers, but the impact is also felt by small businesses around the country that rely on the business of Federal workers and the government. This shutdown is hurting our economy and only adding to economic uncertainty. Remember what happened in December? If you happen to have a retirement account with investments in stocks, you noticed that December was a pretty horrible month. There was an 8.7-percent drop in the stock market in December-- the worst December for the stock market since 1931, during the Great Depression.

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase is now warning that if this shutdown lasts another several weeks, it could reduce our Nation's quarterly growth to zero. The victims of the shutdown will not be the Federal employees; it will affect the entire economy because the input into the economy--the things they buy and pay for--will be diminished.

Just why are we in this mess? Well, as the President said several weeks ago on camera in the Oval Office, it is his shutdown and he is very proud of it. He said that he was going to hold the hard-earned paychecks of Americans hostage in an attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall on the southern border of the United States, a concrete wall, as he described it, ``from sea to shining sea,'' which, incidentally, he promised would be paid for by the Mexicans.

Let me say that again. All of the pain of this shutdown is caused because the President made a campaign promise to build this almighty wall. Well, we know something about walls. They don't work very well. We know it might have been a great response several hundred years ago to build a wall--not so much today. There are better ways to make America safe, other than building a wall. Yet the President said: It is my wall or a shutdown.

If we have a debate about border security, I want to be a part of it, but we shouldn't do it while holding the Government of the United States hostage. Every day of the government shutdown is another day that President Trump is harming innocent Americans, preventing hundreds of thousands of Americans from getting their paychecks and millions more from getting access to vital Federal services.

We should reopen this government and we ought to do it this afternoon and we can. One phone call from the President to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate, is all it takes. Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, has already passed the spending bills to open the government. She did it last week. She sent them over here. They are sitting at the desk up here. We are not touching them because Senator McConnell said: I am not going to solve this problem until the President gives me permission. A little reminder to my colleague Senator McConnell, under the Constitution, we are a separate branch of government. We don't wait for a permission slip from the President of the United States to do the job we were elected to do.

Today we had a vote earlier, and I looked at the other side of the aisle and talked to a number of my Republican colleagues. I wasn't a bit surprised to find so many of them fed up with this government shutdown. They want it to end today, and so do I. Then we can sit down and negotiate border security and do it the right way, not with a gun at our head--I should say, a gun to the head of 800,000 Federal employees. Let's reopen the government and then continue to negotiate. House Democrats have given us the bills we need to do that. Now it is up to Senator McConnell. Will he come forward through that door onto the floor, call these bills, and end this shutdown before 5 p.m. today?

He could. He has the power to do it. He can pass the spending bills. He warns us that President Trump may not sign these bills. Well, Senator McConnell has been around the Senate for decades. He has been around so long that I am sure he is familiar with our Constitution. Do you know what? If the President vetoed these spending bills, we have the constitutional authority and opportunity to override his veto--to come up with 67 votes in the Senate, two-thirds in the House to override any Presidential veto. I think the votes are there, and I think that is the reason Senator McConnell is afraid to call the bills.

It is time for the Senate to act. Let's not wait for a permission slip from President Trump. Let's do what we were elected to do. Let's spare Toby Hauck and 800,000 Federal employees, including many veterans, the hardships their families are facing.

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