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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the world now knows, over the weekend, Congress passed a short-term funding bill to prevent a government shutdown.

I want to commend Speaker McCarthy and the Members of the House on both sides of the aisle for finding a path forward to keep the government open for the next 45 days while the two Chambers advance full-year appropriations bills. The failure to advance those bills was, in fact, the reason why we came up against the end of the fiscal year deadline and had to resort to a short-term continuing resolution.

Now, I have made my feelings about government shutdowns crystal clear. They don't save any money. They don't solve any problems, and the same problems that caused you to shut down the government are still there staring you in the face when you reopen. They are not in anyone's best interest, unless you are concerned primarily with politics and the blame game.

When the government shuts down, millions of federal workers are left without being paid. Now, that doesn't mean they don't have to continue doing their jobs. It just means they won't get paid. That includes members of the military, our frontline border security personnel, and so many others. I am glad their families don't have to confront the reality of a shutdown today.

Beyond the impact on individual workers, shutdowns impact critical functions of the Federal Government. Immigration court hearings are canceled, resulting in an even greater backlog of pending cases. The E- Verify system, which is designed to allow employers to determine whether somebody can lawfully work in the United States, is taken offline, meaning employers have no way to verify job applicants' employment eligibility. In many cases, Federal investigators aren't able to pursue leads of potential criminal activity, develop evidence, or even bring enforcement actions against bad actors. Programs that support our veterans, low-income families, and other vulnerable Americans are temporarily paralyzed.

So there are no winners during a government shutdown. The overwhelming majority of us--and, I believe, of the country--understand that. So I am glad we were able to avert a crisis at the last minute. But the fact that we even landed in that situation represents a failure of Congress to govern, and it starts right here in the U.S. Senate.

At the start of the summer, it looked like the Senate would embrace the regular appropriations process, something it hadn't done in a long time. The day this Chamber passed the legislation raising the debt limit, Leader Schumer and Leader McConnell issued a joint statement about the process going forward. This is back when the debt ceiling legislation was signed. They said they asked the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee to get regular order process started to move all 12 appropriations bills through the Appropriations Committee. The leadership also pledged to work in a bipartisanship fashion to advance funding bills and noted that ``expeditious floor consideration'' would be key to preventing automatic funding cuts.

Well, there is no question that our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee did their job. As a matter of fact, they exceeded their expectations. Under the leadership of Chairman Murray and Ranking Member Collins, the Appropriations Committee passed all 12 appropriations bills before the end of July. Each bill received, as I said, broad bipartisan support. More than half of them passed unanimously.

So our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, handed the majority leader 12 bipartisan funding bills on a silver platter. They put the Senate in the strongest possible position to return to a transparent, orderly, and full-participation process, where every Member of the Senate would get a chance to participate in shaping those bills--hopefully, maybe even improving them.

But, as we know now, that is not what happened. The majority leader, which, as we know--maybe not everybody knows--is the only person in the Senate--of all 100 Senators, the majority leader is the only one who can schedule legislation for votes on the floor. And he allowed the months of June, July, August, and half of September to pass before he even attempted to put a bill on the floor.

The minibus, or the package of three appropriations bills that the Senate majority leader, the Senator from New York, put on the floor for vote, wasn't until 18 days before the funding deadline. Now, that is a far cry from the ``expeditious floor consideration'' that he promised earlier this year. He had ample time and countless opportunities to move those bills across the Senate floor and to pave the way for a thoughtful and on-time appropriations process.

Instead, as we all know, we were here on Saturday, September 30, scrambling to pass a short-term funding bill to avoid a shutdown. And I remember, speech after speech after speech, the majority leader said: Oh, it is those Republicans in the House who are causing this problem. And he accepted no responsibility for his failure to move a single appropriations bill through the Senate before the end of the fiscal year.

Well, we were staring down the barrel of a government shutdown, and it was in large part because of his lack of leadership of the Senate. I am sure that Senator Schumer will not hesitate to claim credit for keeping the government open and blame the House for the problems, but I think it is important to remind everyone of the facts.

Mr. President, here we are, October 3, the Democrat-led Senate has still not passed a single one of the 12 regular appropriations bills. We haven't passed funding for the Defense Department, for Homeland Security, for Veterans Affairs--nothing. And what is even more astonishing is the majority leader, apparently, has no plans to move any appropriations bills across the floor this week or in coming weeks. The Senate is not even expected to address any appropriations bills before gaveling out tomorrow evening and returning about 2 weeks later.

Now, as we know, Congress passed, thanks to the House, a bipartisan stopgap appropriations bill. We had 45 days from Saturday to fund the government on an ongoing basis, and the majority leader has chosen to send the Members of the Senate home for the next 2 weeks and to burn 2 weeks out of the 45 days, doing nothing. I fear that, 45 days from Saturday, we will have passed--since we passed the current continuing resolution, we will find ourselves exactly in the same place we found ourselves just a couple of days ago.

It is outrageous. It is irresponsible. The American people deserve better.

The House, by contrast, which the majority leader likes to point to as the problem, even though they saved our bacon by passing a short- term CR there--when the Senate had done nothing, all we could do was take up their short-term continuing resolution and pass it, which we did on Saturday night.

Meanwhile, the House has passed 5 of its 12 funding bills, with plans to advance even more during the coming days. Speaker McCarthy canceled the scheduled recess so the House can continue to process those bills.

The Senate majority leader should take a few lessons from Speaker McCarthy. He should start putting funding bills on the floor and take our responsibilities seriously. There is no excuse for burning 2 weeks out of the 45 days we just got last Saturday when there is so much work to be done.

But I guarantee one thing, I will bet you Senator Schumer will try to cast blame on House Republicans. But the facts speak for themselves. The only reason we are not in a shutdown today is because of Speaker McCarthy, because of his leadership. He managed to get a clean short- term funding bill through the House with bipartisan support. All Senator Schumer had to do was schedule a vote in the Senate. McCarthy's clean continuing resolution passed with the vote of 88 Senators.

Well, I hope the majority leader will use the next couple of weeks-- or the remaining weeks in that 45-day reprieve--far more wisely than he has used it during the last 3 months. He promised regular order, and now is his chance, once again, to deliver it.

In the next several weeks, I hope the Senate will have the chance to visit all 12 of those appropriations bills--maybe bundled as so-called minibuses, but to address them, nonetheless. But I expect the Senate will also, at the same time, have a thorough debate about our Nation's border security or lack thereof.

The Biden administration claims it is taking action to control illegal immigration, but the evidence plainly shows that their policies are making things worse, not better. According to news reports, September broke the record for the most border crossings in a single month. An estimated 260,000 migrants crossed the southern border last month.

CBS News has reported that the Department of Homeland Security has released most migrants into the interior--just released them--some even without a notice to appear in immigration court. The Department of Homeland Security has instructed them to undergo immigration court proceedings, which, potentially, are as much as 10 years away.

Law enforcement, nonprofits, and border communities have been under tremendous strain throughout the Biden administration, and it is time for Congress to take action to address the crisis, even if President Biden will not.

I was in New York yesterday and learned about the strain being placed on that great city, just trying to house all of the migrants who end up there.

I read that the Governor of Illinois is asking for more money to help pay for the housing and the feeding of these families.

So, clearly, we have got a problem, but, so far, the Biden administration hasn't cared to lift a finger to do anything about it.

One thing I can promise you is I, for one, am not going to vote for a penny of more money to fund the current broken system. So we are going to have a debate and a discussion, and we are going to have some votes on what the Federal Government needs to do to step up and fill the gap being filled right now by States like Texas and Arizona.

We need more agents. We need more detention space, more physical barriers, more immigration judges, and more flexibility to remove individuals who have zero legitimate claim to remain in the United States.

President Biden has proven his unwillingness to address this crisis. So it is time for Congress to do so.

As funding discussions continue, this is a top priority for Senate Republicans, and I know, from talking to my Democratic colleagues, they understand this is a problem. They understand that the problem that many thought was one that border States had to bear is now affecting the entire country. And we haven't even talked about the drugs that come across the border, smuggled by the same criminal organizations that smuggle people.

So I am glad Congress averted a government shutdown, but the real work has just begun. We have less than 7 weeks to advance a full-year appropriations bill and address urgent priorities like securing the border. I would urge the majority leader just to quit wasting time. You know, for many weeks now, Congress has not been in session--or the Senate has not been in session--on Mondays. So we come into session on Tuesday at about 3 in the afternoon, have a vote at 5:30, and then we leave after lunch on Thursday. The American people are not getting what they pay for when it comes to the Senate doing its job. But, again, the person who controls that schedule is the majority leader, and it is time to get serious and to get to work and to do our job.

I hope the majority leader will quit wasting time and allow the Senators to do the work we were sent here to do.

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