Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019--Motion
Floor Speech
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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me first of all echo the comments of my friend, the Senator from Tennessee. We will never fully know what was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, but I do believe that under the leadership of the Senator from Alaska 16 of us came to the floor yesterday and made these comments, with Senators on the Republican side saying: Please, let's reopen the government, and Senators on the Democratic side, like myself, saying: I am open to increasing the dollar amount on border security.
After the Presiding Officer's comments, I rise to welcome the news that sanity has prevailed--at least temporarily. After 35 painful days, we are finally poised to reopen the government and pay our hard-working Federal employees. It is not a moment too soon because under normal circumstances, today is supposed to be a Federal payday, but this morning, thousands of Federal employees went to work one more day knowing full well they would not be getting the paychecks they earned. Thousands more have been furloughed, waiting for the President and my colleagues to come to their senses to let us reopen the government.
For the last 35 days, 800,000 Federal workers have been held hostage through no fault of their own. Frankly, that is just scratching the surface of this destructive shutdown. That number of 800,000 doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of Federal contractors who are not getting paid.
I know I have talked to my friend the Senator from Alaska and appealed to the common sense and good sense of the Presiding Officer. We have some legislation that may not be perfect but would look at trying to make at least partially whole those low-paid Federal contractors--folks under $50,000--who, if we don't find a way to take care of them, will come out of this--more than 1 month of their annual salary--with nothing at all to show for it.
We also know--and the Senator from Alaska raised this issue with me-- that even if we were to move toward low-salaried contractors, the solution that we announced today and that hopefully will be signed later today really will do nothing to take care of the small businesses whose customers were furloughed or working without pay.
I am thinking about the Senator from Alaska, who had the powerful picture on the floor of the brewery in Kodiak, AK. I copied her efforts and went to Port City Brewery in Alexandria--I believe it was yesterday--where not only were they down dramatically in terms of customers, but they had five new brews they were trying to bring to market, and none of those were approved.
The truth is, the damage to those folks in the private sector is done, and I am not sure there is much we can do to rectify it. Candidly, thinking about here locally, there is no way we can undo the harm to the food truck owners--some have had their food trucks repossessed--who sit outside the Smithsonian waiting for the tourists to come. Those losses are permanent, as they are in my State and the Presiding Officer's State for those restaurants and campgrounds that are outside the Great Smoky Mountains or outside the Shenandoah Valley. As a matter of fact, there is no way we are going to be able to make whole the contractor who told me he was closing his doors and laying off 72 workers because he just couldn't meet the payroll during the shutdown.
Frankly, it is too late for the President or any of us to help those folks. The only thing we can do now is to end the shutdown, get the Federal workers and contractors back to work, and try our darnedest to make sure this never happens again.
We also need to make sure those folks get backpay. Again, I would especially urge that we take a hard look at making sure those low-wage contractors, who are suffering so badly right now, get an opportunity to get their backpay as well. I am cosponsoring legislation sponsored by the Senator from Minnesota, and I hope all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will look at that legislation.
By reopening the government temporarily, we now finally have the opportunity to take a timeout and give both parties the space to negotiate a compromise. We are clearly not there yet, but there is room for common ground.
Over the weekend, the President proposed additional funding for screening vehicles and cargo coming across the border at points of entry. The DEA says this is how the majority of illegal drugs come into our country. It is something we can work on together. If the White House wants to seriously discuss providing real, long-term security for Dreamers and TPS recipients, let's have that conversation as well. I think we can do it, but it will take time. In the meantime, let's make sure the President signs today the legislation that will allow our Federal employees and contractors to get back to work.
Before I close, I want to take a moment for self-reflection on what has happened over the last 35 days.
In many ways, we are right back to where we were in December, right back to where we were when this body nearly unanimously passed legislation that would have prevented this stupid crisis. For 35 days, this body has refused to fill its role as a part and coequal branch of government. We can't let that happen again.
I hope the White House will take some lessons from this crisis as well. They can start by realizing that no one wins a shutdown. If you shut down the government, the only thing we know for a fact is that the American people lose. I hope the President will also realize that you need to empower those around you to help make a deal. The Vice President came to the Senate with a deal in mid-December. I don't think he even left Capitol Hill before the President basically took back the Vice President's deal. Senator Graham proposed almost exactly this deal that we came to 3 weeks ago, but unfortunately, again, the President cut off his good friend at that point.
It is my hope that in the coming weeks, we can have a good-faith negotiation where both sides have an opportunity to come out ahead. Imagine that--a win-win proposition coming out of the Halls of Congress. But to do that, we have to have enough of the stunts and the political tit-for-tat that we have seen over the past few weeks.
In a moment of optimism, if there is anything good that can come from this shutdown, let's make it the last time that a President or a Congress uses shutting down the government as a negotiating tactic.
I have legislation, and it took some hard work to come up with the acronym, but the legislation is called the Stop STUPIDITY Act. That will make sure that Congress and the White House are the only ones who suffer when the Congress and the White House can't come to a funding agreement. Maybe the particulars of that legislation can change, or maybe even responsible Members like the Presiding Officer would think we don't need to put into law something called the Stop the STUPIDITY Act, so I am open to changing the name. But the final language in any deal that comes out 3 weeks from now should put strong provisions and strong penalties in place to prevent this tactic from being used by either party or any White House or Congress in the future.
In my mind, perhaps the best and easiest way to do that would be--and I know there is Republican legislation on this--to continue to fund government. In my idea, it would say that the only people who would actually be the victims of a shutdown going forward would be the Congress and our staff and the White House and its staff. A little bit of common sense tells me that we wouldn't be here 35 days into this shutdown if all our staff were experiencing the same kind of shortfall and economic distress that 800,000 of our fellow Federal workers experienced.
The truth is, our Federal workers need to get those paychecks. The truth is, our country can't afford another self-inflicted disaster. Let's go ahead and get that CR passed. Let's go ahead and sit down and negotiate in good faith on border security. Most importantly, let's make sure we are never back in this circumstance again.
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