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Floor Speech
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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, we have a lot of work to get done before January 19, the next deadline to pass our funding and avoid a shutdown.
The American people are looking for serious leadership and results, and I come to the floor today to be clear about what the standard for success is here.
We need to pass regular, full-year funding, based on the bipartisan spending agreement from earlier this year, that actually responds to the challenges before us. Anything less means missing critical opportunities and worse.
A ``date-change, full-year CR,'' as proposed by House Speaker Johnson, would be unprecedented and reckless.
Why is that? Well, because the Speaker's proposal would lock in outdated spending plans and devastating across-the-board cuts while locking all of us out of any kind of thoughtful decision-making process for our Nation's future, all of which should be absolutely unacceptable to everyone here.
It is one thing to have a short-term CR so we have additional time to negotiate in good faith and finish passing bills, full-year bills that strengthen our Nation, but it is another thing entirely to do a yearlong CR because we have no intention of doing our job.
We cannot just throw up our hands, act like nothing in the world has changed in the past 12 months, abdicate our responsibility to our constituents, and box in our Nation's future by putting the government on autopilot.
When you put the government on autopilot, without direction or any consideration of changing needs, you are functionally causing year- over-year funding cuts without any rhyme, reason, or recalibration for new and changing priorities, causing huge uncertainties and inefficiencies across our Federal Government and seriously impairing every single one of our Agencies' ability to fulfill their mission and move our country forward. And that, by the way, is all before taking into account the incredibly steep across-the-board cuts that would come into play under this scenario under our Fiscal Responsibility Act.
This runs way deeper than numbers, at best, stagnating on a page and Agencies cutting hard-working staff and crucial services. We are talking about missing opportunities on issues where the clock is ticking, pulling the rug out from our families who are struggling, and undermining our national defense and security in front of the whole world.
I think we all understand now is a dangerous time to signal America's global leadership is faltering, but that is exactly the message a yearlong CR would send: a year of America's military falling behind and a year of our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts falling behind.
When we put our government on autopilot, we are telling the world Congress is asleep at the wheel and incapable of responding to the growing threats of an ever more dangerous world.
In practical terms for defense, as my colleague--the senior Senator from Maine and vice chair of the committee--said here on this floor recently, it means the Pentagon freezing 330 new programs or production increases. It means falling behind in building our ships and our subs and much more and doing so, by the way, at a time when China already has a larger navy.
It means essentially no new progress in our efforts to strengthen our military and diplomatic footprint in the Indo-Pacific so we can forge strong partnerships and deter aggression from the Chinese Government. This is something we devoted significant thought and resources to across our bipartisan spending bills, with new funding for our Indo- Pacific strategy and the Countering PRC Influence Fund, not to mention other global leadership investments like the new Economic Resilience Initiative that will help strengthen our supply chains for critical resources and weaken the financial pressure our competitors can exert on key U.S. partners.
But all that goes out the window with a full-year CR, particularly under the construct that has been proposed by the Speaker of the House, where he would simply change a date and quit--change a date and quit.
Can you imagine a leader, one of the highest ranking officials in this country, if not the world, seriously proposing that as an answer right now?
Under the yearlong CR, we would not have critical funding increases to support our servicemembers, to support their families, from troop readiness essentials like recruitment and training to family support like childcare and barracks, to other projects like the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan.
I also want to remind our colleagues, a full-year CR would not just hurt our national security, it would be devastating for our families and our communities across the country and our country's future.
When it comes to keeping our economy strong, there are simply too many missed opportunities to even list.
We would lose out increases in bolstering trade and U.S. business competitiveness. We would lose out on strengthening our supply chain and building innovation hubs. We would lose out on research funding for manufacturing; AI; agriculture; clean energy; cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, and other terrible diseases and a lot more.
We would lose ground in our plans to send Americans back to the Moon, while the Chinese Government is going full speed ahead.
And when it comes to fighting the opioid epidemic, resigning our Nation to a yearlong CR means the increased investments that we did include in our Senate bills to keep fentanyl out of our country by stopping drug cartels and getting help to patients and families won't happen.
Instead, stagnant funding means furloughs at our border and thousands of pounds of illicit drugs reaching our communities.
A CR also will not include any funding to reform cosmetics safety or retirement security or the organ donation and transplant system.
And let's talk about WIC. WIC is the lifeline for moms who need formula, nutritious food, and other essentials to feed their babies. It is at risk of being severely underfunded by a CR.
I grew up in a family who knew what it meant to fall on hard times and have a government that had our backs. I will not let our country pull out the rug from folks in their time of need. But if we put spending on autopilot for the next year, we will be kicking struggling families off benefits and onto wait-lists.
It is not just WIC that is going to see these painful shortfalls that will ultimately hurt families, it is programs that keep families warm in the winter or cool in the summer and safe from extreme temperatures like LIHEAP. It is programs that give people healthcare, like community health centers and the new suicide prevention lifeline. It is programs that make sure families have a roof over their head, rental assistance, affordable housing, homelessness prevention--programs that already can't meet the needs in their communities.
It is the Social Security Administration, for crying out loud. A CR would force them to reduce hours and lay off staff. You want to call up and sign up for new benefits or see how you can fix a problem? There will be no one to answer you--long wait times.
And let's not forget, it is programs for folks who are trying to improve their situation, get a better job, and further their own career. A CR means no increases for apprenticeship funding, workforce training, or the maximum Pell amount.
What else do parents need if they are going to go to work? I have said it many times, childcare. We are in a childcare crisis, and with a full-year CR, this is only going to go from bad to worse because we will be resigned to across-the-board cuts to our Nation's childcare programs.
And our public schools also will face tight budgets. Kids are still recovering from this pandemic, and we can't afford to provide our schools less funding when our students deserve and need more support. It is that simple.
Look, I have been going on for a while. But the truth is, I have barely scratched the surface on what we will lose with a full-year CR: Increases throughout our bills to support Tribal communities, gone; over a billion dollars for FAA modernization efforts, gone; housing for wildland firefighters, improvements in our rail system, next-generation weather satellites, gone, gone, and gone.
And here is the kicker: I have only been talking so far about half the equation because the Fiscal Responsibility Act would force absolutely devastating across-the-board cuts on virtually all domestic programs that could be as much as nearly 10 percent.
Let's be clear about the damage here. Immediate hiring freezes and furloughs at just about every Agency. Millions of women and kids would lose WIC benefits; wait times at ports of entry would quadruple; wait times for new business permits from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau would increase fivefold; nearly 1,000 fewer full-time food safety inspectors; 2,500 fewer national park employees and less staff and equipment for our Federal firefighters; 5,000 scientists, students, and technical staff no longer receiving research support at our national labs and universities; 130,000 fewer small businesses getting training and counseling from the Small Business Association; nearly 700,000 households losing Federal housing assistance and being pushed toward homelessness; 2\1/2\ million patients across Indian Country hurt by a $235 million cut to the Indian Health Service hospitals and clinics.
And that is the tip of the iceberg. We are talking tens of billions of dollars slashed to programs that keep our country competitive and our economy strong and our families safe and sound. So this is really no run-of-the-mill CR outcome, which would be bad enough as it is.
The bottom line here is this: We have a job to do. We have a job to do. Our constituents expect us to come to work, to listen to them, respond to the challenges in their life, write the bills, solve our problems, and deliver results. At a minimum, they expect us to try--not threaten, as the Speaker is doing, to change a few words and give up.
A long-term CR wouldn't just shut out their voices, it would cede ground to our adversaries, let America fall behind, and cut off vital resources families count on each and every day.
If we want to make sure that America continues to lead; if we want a strong, competitive economy; if we want a safer world; and if we want a real future for our families, we cannot just throw our hands up and hope for the best. We have to come together, do the hard work of governing, hammer out bipartisan spending bills that actually reflect what we think our Nation needs, get back to the bipartisan spending agreement that the House Republicans wanted--actually, getting back to that, they demanded it--and agree that extreme partisan riders have no place in our spending bills.
In the full Senate here, as the Presiding Officer knows, we wrote 12 bipartisan spending bills that follow the full terms of the bipartisan spending agreement, but now we need House Republicans to hold up their end of the bargain. That means sticking to the entire agreement and using the full resources it provides for defense and domestic programs.
We cannot move forward if House Republicans are busy trying to go back on their word, especially for a deal that they pushed for and negotiated in the first place. Let's all remember that House Republicans were the ones who chose to hold the debt limit hostage until they secured this agreement. Let's also remember it was their leader who negotiated this deal directly with the President. They cut this deal. When you negotiate a deal, you don't then bargain over how much of your word you are going to keep. Deals are built on common ground and mutual trust, not shifting sand.
So, Madam President, I will be clear. I am not calling on Republicans to do anything extreme here or anything I wouldn't do myself. I get that no one ever gets everything they want, especially in a divided government. In fact, as I have said many times, I believe the cuts that were enacted by the Fiscal Responsibility Act set us back. But that was the deal. That was the deal we voted on. So, here in the Senate, we did write 12 bipartisan bills to those terms. That is the job. That is what legislating looks like in a divided government.
If we are going to avoid an unnecessary shutdown or an absolutely unacceptable, inflexible, yearlong CR--for the first time ever--we need everyone to get real about just what is at stake if we give up on writing serious, full-year funding bills. And that is just what it is going to take to get that done. So I call on everybody: Let's do our job.
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