Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. CORNYN. I just want to ask the Senator from Oklahoma--9,000 a day. I had to get out my calculator to figure out what that means. Are you talking about 3 million, 3.285 million----
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Mr. CORNYN.--a year----
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Mr. CORNYN.--if the current rate----
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, here we are, 16 days before the end of the fiscal year, and the Senate has finally begun--we are not finishing; we are just beginning--taking up the annual appropriations process.
Just to remind everybody, there are 12 individual appropriations bills. There is no time for us to finish this process before the end of the fiscal year, which is actually part of the majority leader's plan. He never intended to have a normal process by which the appropriations bills would be considered because what we call the regular order around here means you take them up one at a time, all 12. It is a transparent, open process where the American people can see it, where every Senator--all 100 Senators--gets to participate in crafting those bills. If they believe the spending needs to be cut in a certain area, they can offer an amendment to do that. If we need different priorities in the spending bills, well, you can do that by offering an amendment and getting it passed.
Earlier today, the Senate voted 91 to 7 to begin debating this legislation that funds military construction projects and supports America's veterans. This bill is important because it bolsters our military readiness by investing in new and existing facilities at our military bases around the world. That includes, in Texas, places like Fort Bliss, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, and Fort Cavazos. It also helps us fulfill the promise we made to America's veterans by investing in mental health care, telehealth, housing, and other critical services.
Today, Texas is the proud home of 1\1/2\ million veterans, and this is one important way we keep our commitment and honor their service and the many sacrifices they have made for our country.
This legislation passed the Appropriations Committee earlier this summer with unanimous support. Every Democrat, every Republican voted for it--all 28 members. But this is just 1 of 12 funding bills the committee passed this summer with strong bipartisan support.
Earlier this week, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, spoke about the Senate appropriations process thus far, and he referred to it as ``the gold standard in good governance.'' When I read that, I nearly fell out of my chair. He calls this process, which is doomed to failure because of his refusal to bring these bills to the floor on a timely basis, the gold standard of good governance.
Given the fact that we are 16 days from a government shutdown unless the House and the Senate can agree on a continuing resolution, I would say this is far from the ``gold standard.'' As a matter of fact, I think you could say we have sunk about as far as we can.
But it is important to remember that this funding deadline didn't surprise us. It didn't pop up out of nowhere. It arrives every year on September 30. So the majority leader had plenty of time to plan, prepare, and to carve out time to pass all 12 appropriations bills, just like the rules contemplate. But here we are, September 14, 16 days ahead of the funding deadline, and the Senate has not passed a single funding bill for the government.
If the majority leader's gold standard comment had been in reference to the committee process, I would have agreed with him. The Appropriations Committee did their job. Senator Murray, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Collins, the ranking member, and all 28 Senators on a bipartisan basis did their job on a timely basis-- the first time they have done that in 5 years. But the committee's productivity was no accident. The chair and vice chair of the committee, Senator Murray and Senator Collins, promised to return to regular order, and that is exactly what they delivered.
Our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee worked across the aisle, which is the way you are supposed to work around here, to pass all of these bills by the end of July. They put the Senate in a strong position to debate, vote, amend, and then finally pass appropriations bills before the end of this month. So the committee process certainly was the gold standard of good governance, but that outstanding product has been squandered. You might even say this whole process was designed to fail because the majority leader refused to bring those bills to the floor on a timely basis.
Let's look at the MILCON-VA--Military Construction-VA--funding bill as an example. This legislation was approved by the committee on June 22, more than 2\1/2\ months ago. The majority leader, the Senator from New York, could have brought this legislation to the floor anytime between then, June 22, and now. He could have said, well, this is important work, so we maybe need to shorten the Senate's 2-week recess for the Fourth of July so we can get our work done, or he could have scheduled a vote during the July 4th period instead of working on nominations.
He could have canceled or--my preference would have been--delayed the 5-week August recess. If we had to cut that back to 4 weeks, do you think anybody would have suffered? Well, it would have given us an extra week to actually get our work done. But that didn't happen.
He could have adjusted the Senate work schedule in any number of ways and would have gotten cooperation from the minority leader, Senator McConnell, because we all understand--or at least most of us understand--the importance of getting our work done on a timely basis. But, as we know, none of that happened.
Days, weeks, months have passed as the Senate did nothing--nothing-- to advance any of the 12 bipartisan appropriations bills. And I want to be just crystal clear: It didn't have to be that way.
Again, this end-of-the-fiscal-year deadline is not a surprise to any of us. It is not as if the appropriations bills weren't ready on time-- they were--or that the Senate has been preoccupied with other priorities. The majority leader is the only person who can set the agenda of the Senate. He is the only one who could call up these bills and schedule a vote, but he has done nothing but squandered the opportunity.
I know that many of our colleagues are frustrated that the Senate has not obtained consent to consider two additional funding bills as part of a so-called minibus, bundling three bills together, but that is the rule. Rule XVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires a unanimous consent vote before you can bundle those individual appropriations bills together. But the majority leader knew that. He knew what the Senate rules were, and all along he was taking the risk that one Senator--maybe a handful of Senators--would want to consider the bills one at a time, which is the normal process. It is just not normal to do it starting 16 days before the end of the fiscal year.
Well, while the majority leader has preached the virtues of regular order, he has refused to actually engage in a process where we can be successful. As a matter of fact, he knows, by delaying the appropriations bills to this point, that we will not be successful because he has undermined it; he has sabotaged it.
Now, you might ask: Why would the majority leader do that? Well, two reasons. One is when you do a continuing resolution, it actually maximizes the power of the leadership because they are the ones that actually negotiate it, and then rank-and-file Members get to vote up or down. But the other reason he did it was because he wants to point to the House and claim that somehow they are trying to shut down the government.
Now, admittedly, the House is having their challenges, but Speaker McCarthy has pulled a rabbit out of the hat more than once this year, and I am hoping he can do so again. But if we do have a shutdown because the House and the Senate can't agree, it will be a Schumer shutdown--a Schumer shutdown.
Well, Members on both sides of the aisle want an opportunity to participate in the process. They want an opportunity to shape this legislation, even at this late hour, to do as much as we can in the truncated time that the majority leader has allowed us. So I urge the leader to let the Senate vote on this underlying bill, the MILCON-VA bill. It is important. We shouldn't act like it is a throwaway or inconsequential. We ought to do our work, even under the impossible timeframe that the majority leader has given us.
I think it is dangerous when Congress circumvents the normal process when it comes to funding the government. It is no secret that our debt is about 100 percent of our GDP. We are going to spend more money just paying interest to bondholders on our debt that is at some point more than we spend on national defense. Interest rates are high, we know, because the Federal Reserve is fighting inflation caused by too much reckless spending, but, as a result, we are also paying more money to our creditors to finance our national debt. And I think that is another symptom of the broken system by which we fund the government.
It has become all too common for short-term funding bills and large spending packages to be negotiated by a handful of leaders and rushed through both Chambers before the clock runs out. There is a growing sense of frustration among Members of this body on both sides of the aisle and a strong appetite to return to a normal, regular, transparent, participatory process, one that will give us at least a chance to try to get our fiscal house in better shape. But we have no chance to do that when, in essence, the majority leader creates an emergency situation, claims that he is the gold standard, and tries to blame the House and say they want a shutdown.
Well, I am not for a shutdown. I agree with the Senator from Oklahoma. The same problems that cause you to shut down the government are always there staring you in the face when you reopen. So we need to do our work. We need to solve those problems and avoid a shutdown, but it is really hard to do when the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, the only one who can schedule votes on the floor and the agenda of the Senate, sabotages the process.
The majority leader has purposely wasted more than 80 days that could have been spent debating funding bills and left the Senate with only two options: shut down the government or kick the can down the road with a continuing resolution. Of course, that is just a temporary measure, and then, when that expires, we have to deal with the consequences of that by figuring out, OK, how do we continue to fund the government at some appropriate level.
He knows we can't move 12 appropriations bills through the Senate and the House in the next 16 days, so this exercise will certainly end with another spending bill that is crafted at the last minute and jammed through both Houses. If this is the gold standard for anything, it is a gold standard for political theater. This is drama scripted by the majority leader. He is trying to put on a show or, I would say, a pretense of regular order in the Senate so he won't get the blame if the government shuts down; he can blame his political opponents in the House.
Well, suffice it to say, I am disappointed we find ourselves where we do, especially in light of the hard work done by our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee. They have done their job, but the majority leader has blown that up.
This is not an accident. This is by design. If the government shuts down at the end of the month, the majority leader won't be able to escape the blame for what will be a Schumer shutdown. Despite the political theater and the Kabuki dance, he will have to own that shutdown because he will have been the primary author of it.
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