No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. 5, H.R. 21, making appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I would like to speak on the preceding motion, but before I do, I would like to yield my time to my colleague from New Mexico.

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Mr. KAINE. I will briefly conclude my comments recognizing my colleague from Indiana is also on the floor.

I thank the Senator from New Mexico for his words. He spoke about the motion I just made. I will be on the floor tomorrow and Saturday and next week--Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday--to share stories that have been shared with me and are being shared with me every day by Virginians affected and the Agencies the Senator from New Mexico discussed and others.

Just to clarify, the motion that I made earlier was to pass a House bill that is pending before us. It is an appropriation for the remainder of the fiscal year for the following Departments and Agencies: Department of Interior; Environmental Protection Agency; Forest Service; Department of Treasury, including the IRS; Judiciary; Executive Office of the President--we are trying to fund the Executive Office of the President; the District of Columbia; Department of Agriculture, including the Food Stamp Program; the Food and Drug Administration; Department of Transportation; Department of Housing and Urban Development; Department of Commerce; Department of Justice, including the FBI; science-related Agencies, including NASA; the Department of State and several related and independent Agencies.

That was the motion that I made that was objected to by the majority leader.

Three items quickly. There are three levels of surreal illogic to the position we are in. The first is, we are having a legitimate debate between Congress and the President on border security and immigration reform. That is a very legitimate debate, in which there are intellectually respectable differences of opinion. If we are having a debate about that, why would we punish the workers who are charged with administering the Food Stamp Program? Why punish workers in the National Forest and National Parks? Why punish the citizens who need those services? The first level of illogic to the position we are in is we are punishing both workers and the citizens who need services completely unconnected with the border and immigration reform issue.

Surreal illogic No. 2. If we are having a debate about safety and security on the border, why would we demand Customs and Border Patrol folks work without pay? Those who are affected and who are part of the Agencies dealing with the dispute are, by all accounts, the frontline people who are dealing with this--immigration judges, Custom and Border Patrol folks, ICE agents, DEA agents, the Coast Guard, which interdicts drugs, FBI, U.S. marshals, BATF agents--why would we make their lives harder when they are the safety and security professionals who are charged with dealing with the issue we are trying to figure out?

The final level of surreal illogic, as I yield to my colleague from Indiana, is this. I want to thank all my colleagues because a week ago, by unanimous consent, we passed a backpay bill that the President signed yesterday. Now we have guaranteed that the Federal Treasury will write a check for the paychecks for all of these workers. It is actually probably going to be more because to close and restart actually costs a little bit more. We agreed to pay backpay in this and any future shutdown to these workers.

So if we are going to pay them anyway, why wouldn't we want them to be serving Americans instead of being furloughed? If we are going to pay them anyway--if the Federal Treasury is going to write that check-- wouldn't it be better if they are in their offices answering phones, processing food stamp applications, and serving their fellow Americans than locked out of their offices?

We bar Federal workers from striking because of the need for continuous government operations, but we are locking them out of their offices while we have agreed to give them full payment for the work they would have been doing had we not locked them out. That is not fiscally smart.

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