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Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last night, the House of Representatives passed a short-term government funding bill that would extend funding through the end of this fiscal year. That is the end of September.
I was surprised to see only one Democrat in the House, Jared Golden from Maine, saw the light that a shutdown is a bad choice. Nevertheless, 212 Democrats voted against the continuing resolution, effectively voting to shut down the government.
It remains to be seen whether our colleagues here in the Senate, our Senate Democrats, will vote for a Schumer shutdown or not. The cognitive dissonance, though, is striking and I think worth commenting on.
If I listen to our colleagues across the aisle, they claim to have a lot of concern for the Federal workers that depend on government funding. They talk a pretty good game. So I find it interesting that so many of them in the House cast a vote that would put thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of Federal workers out of work, which is what results when the government shuts down.
Of course, I don't like continuing resolutions any more than the next person. They are certainly not the ideal way to govern, and I will talk about that in a minute. But it remains the second worst choice, a shutdown being the worst of all.
So let's take a look at how we got here in the first place. Last year, the Senate Appropriations Committee, on a bipartisan basis, passed all but 1 of their 12 appropriations bills. What did the majority leader--Senator Schumer at the time--what did he do? He simply refused to schedule any of those appropriations bills for a vote.
So it is because of Democratic dysfunction that we find ourselves now in a continuing resolution situation rather than having already attended to what in effect was last year's business and passing appropriations bills for the entire fiscal year.
Well, if our Democratic colleagues don't like voting for another CR, I would encourage them to take that up with their now-minority leader, as this falls squarely on his shoulders.
But the truth is, most of all, our Democratic colleagues are just mad about the outcome of the November 5 election.
Here in the Senate, I am glad that Senate Republicans are working to pass this necessary CR that will ensure that we prevent a government shutdown.
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