No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I was just over in the Russell Senate Office Building, and a group of freshmen from the House intercepted me and handed me this piece of paper, this document, and asked that it be made part of the Record of the Senate, and I have come to do that.

Let me explain that these freshmen House Members want to see the Senate engaged in debate on how to end this shutdown of our government. They see in their home districts across this country tremendous damage occurring in all kinds of fashions--damage to security; damage to the economy; damage to families trying to get a home mortgage, and they can't get their FHA approval; damage to farmers who are seeking that loan that is necessary to prepare for the next farming season; damage in the preparation for next summer's forest fires.

I have been hearing about this from my home State. In Oregon, we just had a training for fighting fires canceled. We have prescribed burns that need to be done during the winter that are being canceled. We have thinning, which makes the forest more fire-resilient, that is being canceled. We have the reduction of fuels on the forest floor that add to the intensity of fires--the removal of those--being canceled. These just add more to the list of so many ways that folks are being affected across the country.

I am going to share this letter with the Presiding Officer and our colleagues. It says:

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the freshmen of the House are speaking a lot of common sense in this letter. They are saying: Here we are, looking at bills that the Senate passed under Republican leadership and that the House has passed under Democratic leadership. That is the foundation for going forward. Let not the Senate leadership be the obstruction to common sense. Let not this Chamber sit empty, sit quiet, and sit without votes on these bills to put our government back to work.

They want to see the Senate have the courage to take positions, to be here and argue, to say yes or no, but we don't say yes or no if there is no bill before us, and that must confound these 46 freshmen, who kind of expected that after more than 200 years of organizing, we would have a Senate that could actually operate as a legislative body, not sit here vacant and quiet in the midst of a national catastrophe--a catastrophe of the Trump shutdown affecting so many families.

There are 800,000 families of Federal workers, hundreds of thousands more families of contractors, millions of Americans who simply want a core government service so that they can proceed with their lives--a business permit, a home mortgage, an agricultural loan, work being done to prevent forest fires, and a compromise to our national security in terms of our Coast Guard and our TSA agents. It makes no common sense for us to sit here without action.

I praise the House freshmen for bringing a fresh, intense, commonsense view to the conversation on Capitol Hill. Let their words be heard in this Chamber.

Thank you.

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