Government Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on another matter, the Senate has, of course, returned for a last end-of-the-year legislative dash, and we have a lot of work to do before we cross the finish line.

As we know, government funding will expire in less than 2 weeks, and we have to reach an agreement, as the senior Senator from Vermont mentioned, before the December 11 deadline of the current continuing resolution. With millions of Americans already facing economic uncertainty, a government shutdown is, surely, not an option.

We need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act to support America's brave servicemembers and ensure that our military leaders have the ability to plan and operate with certainty and provide peace through American strength. Also, as we move into the winter months, which the experts have told us will present new challenges in our war against the COVID-19 virus, it is time to cut the partisanship and deliver another round of relief to the American people.

It is worth recounting--because people have short memories, apparently, in Washington, DC--that, over the last several months, our Democratic colleagues have consistently talked about the need to bolster our support in the fight against COVID-19. Yet, despite the repeated rhetoric and calls to action, they have unapologetically stood in the way of each and every attempt to make real progress.

This summer, we proposed something called the HEALS Act--as the Presiding Officer knows, for he was instrumental in that work--as a starting point for negotiations on a new relief package. It was a starting place, a place to begin bipartisan negotiations in the hope of crafting a package that could get the requisite number of votes. Unfortunately, before the election, our Democratic colleagues had simply no interest in amending the bill or trying to find any kind of common ground. I think they thought it was to their political advantage for the American people to be experiencing the anxiety and the pain before the election. I can't imagine holding them hostage, but that is what appeared, to me, to be the case.

Instead of trying to find common ground--in particular, the Speaker made the amazing statement that nothing was better than something when it came to COVID-19 relief, which is just the opposite of what I have always believed--she demeaned the bill of half a trillion dollars in spending as ``pathetic.'' The minority leader called it ``unworkable,'' but then they didn't lift a finger to try to get anything done.

So the next month we took another shot. We attempted to narrow the scope of negotiations to the most urgent matters--things like continuing Federal unemployment benefits, which expired at the end of July. This is last July. This time our Democratic colleagues rejected what they called a ``piecemeal'' approach.

Well, never mind the fact that the House returned to Washington to help pass a bill that supported the U.S. Postal Service. We all believe in supporting the Postal Service, but apparently they thought that piecemeal bill was acceptable as long as it was a Democratic-authored bill and didn't provide any additional relief to the American people.

Well, being unsuccessful those first two times, we tried again a third time. So in September the majority leader tried to bring a bill to the floor to provide $500 billion for our shared bipartisan priorities. There weren't any real differences in what was in the bill. The only difference was that our Democratic colleagues wanted to spend multiples of that for unrelated activities. We wanted to concentrate the effort on helping small businesses keep their employees on payroll, giving schools the resources they needed to keep their students and teachers safe, strengthening testing nationwide, and investing in the continued success of Operation Warp Speed, which is going to deliver an FDA-approved vaccine before the end of the year--not just one, maybe as many as two or three, and more, perhaps, to come.

Anyone who has spent time watching C-SPAN over the last several months has heard both Republicans and Democrats talk about the importance of every single one of these things, but when legislation that includes all of these priorities came up for an initial vote, our Democratic colleagues wouldn't even allow us to get on the bill. In other words, here in the Senate you have to vote to get on the bill before you can then offer amendments and try to make it better.

So they killed it. Without batting an eye, our Democratic colleagues voted in lockstep to block the bill and unanimously oppose legislation that would have invested an additional half-trillion dollars in our fight against COVID-19.

When the majority leader tried to bring the bill to the floor again in October, we saw exactly the same thing. It was the same bad movie all over again. Our Democratic colleagues refused to let us even debate, much less to amend, the bill.

It is not just these targeted packages that have been blocked by our Democratic colleagues. They stood in the way of our commonsense proposals, like the one from the now-former Senator from Arizona, Senator McSally, which would have extended unemployment benefits for 1 week while we negotiated a larger compromise.

Our friends on the other side of the aisle have repeatedly said that Congress needs to act, but the reality is their own actions have prevented us from doing so.

Month after month, they have demonstrated it is either the House's multitrillion-dollar, leftwing-policy grab-bag wish list or nothing. They have consistently told the American people: It is our way or the highway. You don't get an extension of unemployment insurance unless we get tax breaks for blue-State millionaires and billionaires. You don't get vaccine funding unless we get diversity studies on the marijuana industry. You don't get funding for schools unless we get permanent changes to hijack and take over our election laws and run them out of Washington, DC.

Well, even rank-and-file Democrats have now understood and criticized this sort of bogus approach to legislating. It has been the same song and dance month after month--fiery speeches, press conferences, tweets, and letters calling for action. But each time our Democratic colleagues have been given an opportunity to actually do something--to do more than spout off some meaningless, vapid rhetoric at the nearest microphone--they have simply stood in the way.

The fact of the matter is our Democratic colleagues have blocked more COVID relief bills than they have passed. Yet they continue to feign outrage over Congress's failure to pass a bill--we heard it again here today--as though they aren't the ones responsible for the impasse.

Our jobs here in the Senate aren't simply to vote against imperfect bills. If that were the case, no bill would ever pass, because none of them is perfect. But this body is built on making imperfect legislation better through a debate-and-amendment process--two processes we haven't seen much at work this year.

So the bottom line is Congress needs to act. The American people want Democrats and Republicans to come to an agreement on the things our country actually needs to make it through this crisis.

It won't be the last piece of legislation we pass, but we do need to do this next step, and we need to do it soon--as soon as possible.

It is time for our Democratic colleagues to realize the election is over and the only real people being hurt by their intransigence are the people they represent in their various States.

So it is time to start getting back to work for all the American people on a bipartisan piece of legislation and to quit the partisan games. I can't say it any more directly than that.

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