National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021--Conference

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor today, 71 days in the fiscal year, 71 days into a continuing resolution. It is unfortunate. I am placing no blame.

It is unfortunate we have not considered on the floor of the U.S. Senate--not 1 of the 12 regular order appropriations bills. The appropriations process is completely broken. Quite honestly, it has been broken since I arrived here in the Senate in 2011.

I ran for the U.S. Senate primarily because I was concerned about the fact that we were mortgaging our children's future. Back then, we were $14 trillion in debt, and that was extremely concerning to me. Now, 10 years later, 71 days into the 2021 fiscal year, we are $27.4 trillion into debt. That is an increase of $13.4 trillion. It is almost double since I have been here in just 10 years.

Again, the appropriations process is so broken. During that timeframe, we had to pass 36 continuing resolutions. The debt limit has no power in terms of controlling our out-of-control spending. We either raised or suspended the debt limit nine times.

Unfortunately, during that time, that 10 years, we have also--because of the broken process here--we have shut down the government three times, costing our economy, costing our government billions of dollars, and hurting real people.

I come from the State of Wisconsin, where, if the legislature can't get its act together and we don't pass appropriations bills and we are at an impasse, we don't shut down the government. We don't even shut down a particular agency. What we do is we do something that is pretty practical, the type of commonsense legislation that Wisconsinites would embrace. We just appropriate. We just fund the agencies or the entire State government at the previous year's level.

Doesn't that make sense? I think it makes all the sense in the world.

Again, here we are, 71 days into the fiscal year, and we haven't passed an appropriations bill. We have to pass, within the next 24 hours or so, our 37th continuing resolution to kick the can another week so we can get our act together and pass some kind of massive omnibus that nobody is going to be able to read before they actually vote for it. It is a completely broken process.

I recognize that as chairman of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, a certain part of this government shutdown--this broken process--some of these elements weren't in my committee's jurisdiction. We had a number of pieces of legislation; one by Senator Portman; one by Senator Paul; one by Senator Lankford, who had been working on a similar piece of legislation from being in the House, to end government shutdowns forever.

As chairman of the committee, I had to take a look at these pieces of legislation and decide which one did I want to bring up to my committee, pass out of my committee, and bring to the floor of the Senate.

I chose Senator Lankford's because he had done a lot of hard work with Senator Maggie Hassan on a bipartisan bill. Again, it is very simple. It didn't automatically increase spending, didn't automatically decrease spending. It did exactly what we do in Wisconsin.

If we don't get our act together, and we don't pass any appropriations bills or a single or two appropriations bills, we don't shut down the government. We don't shut down that agency. We just appropriate enough funds at last year's level, and we continue until we actually do pass an appropriations bill.

I know the members of the Appropriations Committee and have all the respect in the world for the chairman and the ranking member. I know they don't like CRs, but, again, this will be our 37th CR since I have been here for 10 years. It is broken.

But just in case they are concerned about these CRs, what I can give you is Wisconsin's history in this. Since we passed this commonsense reform, really, the longest CR we ever had in Wisconsin since we had this anti-government shutdown process was just 4 months in 1971. That is a long time ago, and it was only 4 months. We are approaching 4 months now.

Again, this is the 37th CR since I took office. We passed out of my committee--there were only two dissenting votes, two ``no'' votes. Those came from two Senators who just had an alternate version of the End Government Shutdowns Act. We passed this out of my committee 12 to 2.

We have been working now for the last year trying to find some vehicle to add it on as an amendment to end this insanity.

We thought that with the group of us here, this would be a good time. It is a very simple bill. Again, if you don't pass an appropriations bill or all the appropriation bills, you just fund, you appropriate at last year's level. But we have a few little disciplines to force the Senators in Congress to do their job.

The first discipline is, we don't allow any Federal or campaign moneys to be spent on travel, which, basically, forces Members of Congress to stay here until we do get our act together, until we do pass appropriations bills and fund government that is necessary.

The other thing we do is we only allow Congress, each Chamber, to only bring up appropriations bills in their Chamber. There is an exception, of course, for any bill that would have to do with an immediate national security emergency. That is pretty much it.

In committee, Senator Scott had an amendment, which I will turn to him to have him describe the final discipline to force Members of Congress to do their jobs: pass appropriations bills and fund government without shutting the government down.

Senator Scott

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Mr. JOHNSON. I yield time to Senator Leahy.

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Vermont.

I think what Senator Lee and I were talking about is, you know, as opposed to the way it used to be, when we got here in 2011, the appropriations process was completely broken, and it is still broken. And it has been a bipartisan failure.

I arrived in 2011 under Democratic leadership. Now we are in a Republican leadership. It is broken.

The good news is the Preventing Government Shutdown Act is a bipartisan solution. It passed 12-to-2 out of my committee. It is cosponsored, largely, by Senator Lankford and Senator Hassan.

The concerns that the Senator from Vermont expressed about an automatic CR and passage of this bill is addressed in the bill. The bill has the disciplines to force us to only work on appropriations bills. We can leave town but not on the Federal dime, not on campaign money. We will have to pay for that ourselves.

And I don't know what we are going to pay for it with because we are not going to get paid until we actually pass the appropriations bill. So the discipline is already set in here. That is what is so beautiful about this bill, what is so elegant about it.

As I said, in Wisconsin, once they enforced this discipline, the most we have ever had is a 4-month CR. We are 71 days into this CR, and we are going to pass it for another week.

This process is broken. The Preventing Government Shutdown Act is a solution that will force us back to the good old days, where we bring up the appropriations bills, because my guess is that not many Members of Congress aren't going to want to not get paid and not be able to go back to their district.

So it will focus our minds. We will only be able to work on appropriations bills, other than in a national emergency. We will get the job done. That is what happened in Wisconsin. This is a solution.

304, S. 1877. I ask that the committee-reported substitute amendment be withdrawn, the Braun substitute amendment at the desk be considered agreed to, and the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. JOHNSON. I appreciate the words from the Senators from Vermont and Alabama. I would like to work with you, and I think all of us would like to work with you on a solution to this problem. So I appreciate those words, and I look forward to working with you in the future on this.

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