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Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I have made no secret of my opposition to this bill. For weeks, I have been warning about the real dangers of a yearlong CR like the one that has come before us from the House Republicans. But before I talk about those dangers and why I will be voting no on cloture and on final passage, I want my colleagues to hear what I have to say, but I do hope that they will join me in voting no.

I want to talk for a moment about how we did get here because I fear some Members of the Republican leadership may need a history lesson. The fact of the matter is, the only reason we are staring down a shutdown deadline halfway into this fiscal year is that the House Republicans decided to kick the can down the road with a major punt and because they have repeatedly walked away from the table. This is just a historical record. We were all here for it. We saw what happened. Perhaps it is worth ticking through once more because I will admit it can get easy to lose track of all that has happened over the last few months and just how many times House Republicans have made a deal just to break it in recent years. So I want to give a refresher. It has been a while since my time as a preschool teacher, but I guess school is back in session because I am not going to let anyone get away with ignoring how Republicans forced us to the edge of a shutdown today.

Remember, last year, after a bruising fiscal year 2024 process in which House Republicans made one ridiculous demand after the next and caused one delay after the other, as Appropriations chair, I worked hard alongside my colleagues, including Senator Collins, who is here today, within our committee to write and pass serious bipartisan spending bills for this current fiscal year. It was no easy feat. We had fewer resources at our disposal to make use of, and we had even more challenges to address, but we managed to work together--Senator Collins and I and our committee members--and we cleared all but one of our bills overwhelmingly in committee, and many of those bills cleared on unanimous votes.

Then, come November, after the election, I was pushing very hard to get our funding bills done and wrapped up by the end of the year. My Democratic colleagues and even many of my Republican colleagues wanted to get that done, but Speaker Johnson and Trump chose to kick the can down the road. They chose to. Trump reportedly wanted to make sure his fingerprints were on our spending bills for this fiscal year. The Speaker not only wanted to, of course, please Trump, but he was worried about how a messy funding fight might complicate his path to becoming Speaker again. So the decision was made, and Speaker Johnson punted from December to March.

Then we negotiated a bipartisan CR to fund the government through March 14, today. Along with that, we passed disaster relief, and we extended critical laws. We reached a bipartisan-bicameral deal. Then House Republicans walked away and blew that deal up at the last minute. Why? I will tell you--because the richest man in the world sent a bunch of completely inaccurate tweets, and instead of saying, ``Do you know what? Actually, Elon, you have no clue what you are talking about. These are programs that help my constituents,'' House Republicans said, ``Let's put this guy in charge.'' They killed that bipartisan agreement, rolled out an altogether different bill not long thereafter and punted on government funding.

That is what happened, and that is essentially what they have been doing ever since--cheering and clapping as Trump and Elon got basic facts wrong, broke laws, blocked funding that our communities needed, dismantled entire Agencies, fired veterans, shuttered our Social Security offices, and broke government to enrich themselves.

While Trump and Republican leadership were fixating on whether they would pass one bill or two for their plan to gut healthcare for kids and to pass more tax cuts for billionaires, a fast approaching deadline was on its way to us, the one that is here now.

For the next several months, I have remained at the table, ready to negotiate funding bills. I and my Democratic counterpart in the House, Rosa DeLauro, never left the table--not once. We made offer after offer as did our Republican counterparts. My top priority has been and continues to be doing what we do, what we do every year--every year-- which is passing full-year funding bills with the detailed directives that we include in our spending laws every year. I have wanted to make sure we continue to provide those and make sure that our constituents' voices are heard--that they are heard in Federal funding--which, I have to say, this CR fails to do.

Instead of working with us in good faith to fund the government in a bipartisan way, Speaker Johnson and Republican leadership walked away and started working on a Republican funding bill without an ounce--not an ounce--of Democratic input. I remained at the table. My counterparts on Appropriations and I continued to talk, to keep the ball rolling. By the end of last week, for all intents and purposes, we had an agreement on topline funding, but the call had already been made. Johnson was in on it. Trump was in on it. Russ Vought was in on it. Johnson decided: Instead of talking with Democrats, it would be easier to have Trump get on the phone and scream and bully House Republicans into submission. He figured, if outright intimidation from Trump was enough to convince every Republican to vote for a budget resolution that will cut Medicaid for seniors and kids, then it might also be enough for them to pass a Republican CR, especially if Trump threatened dissenters with political retribution, which, of course, he did. That is the bill they rolled out on Saturday and passed earlier this week.

Now, as I have laid out in depth, the yearlong CR that House Republicans sent our way hands a blank check to Elon Musk and Donald Trump to decide how our constituents' taxpayer dollars get spent, all while cutting the funding working people count on each and every day. It is anything but a ``clean CR.'' What Republicans are pushing here is not a continuing resolution. In this case, ``CR'' stands for ``complete resignation'' because what Republicans are doing here is ceding more discretion to two billionaires to decide what does and does not get funded in their States. It is a power grab CR.

Not only that, it does make serious cuts to domestic funding. It leaves our working families in the dust. We are talking about a nearly 50-percent cut to lifesaving medical research and to conditions affecting our servicemembers. It is a giant shortfall in funding for the NIH. It is a massive cut in funding for Army Corps projects and is $15 billion less for our domestic priorities. This bill will force Social Security to cut staff and close offices and make it harder for our seniors to get the benefits they have spent their careers paying into the system to earn. It creates a devastating shortfall that risks tens of thousands of Americans losing their housing. So this bill causes real pain for communities across the country.

Let me be clear: This bill empowers Trump and Musk to pick winners and losers. I guarantee you they will not only go after Democrats. Inexplicably, House Republicans are saying: Give Trump all this power or we will shut down government.

Well, let's be very clear: That is and always has been a false choice. The reality is, there were other options House Republicans could have chosen, but they chose--they chose--to pull out of bipartisan negotiations and send a deeply partisan bill here to the Senate today. Democrats did not have an ounce of input into writing this bill, and now House Republicans expect us to support it? That makes zero sense.

Let me be clear: In my time in Congress, never ever has one party written partisan, full-year appropriations bills for all of government and expected the other party to go along without any input.

To my colleagues here who want to pass individual appropriations bills in a timely manner for the next fiscal year, how are Democrats supposed to trust that those will be good-faith negotiations after we did the hard work of negotiating overwhelmingly bipartisan appropriations bills last year only for us to see this, today, from the Republicans in the House and only for Republicans to now say, ``Swallow this partisan House Republican CR or it will be Democrats who are shutting down the government''? That is a false choice and one we cannot accept going forward.

When I cast my vote today, I am representing nearly 8 million people in Washington State, and in this democracy, their voices count for something. So you had better believe I am not handing over my vote in exchange for nothing. The choice is not a government shutdown or passing a bill to write a blank check to Elon Musk. That is not how this works. On Monday, I rolled out a clean 4-week extension to prevent a shutdown and to keep government funded while it gives us the time to hammer out a bipartisan agreement. We could still pass that right here, right now. If any Member has any suggestions on what they want to see in this CR, I am all ears. House Republicans may have already left town, but I am pretty sure they know how to get on a plane. That is their job--show up and vote.

The bottom line is, this bill will mean more pain and chaos for our country. I cannot support it.

Please let's remember, Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. If you refuse to put forward an offer that includes any Democratic input, you don't get Democratic votes. That is on Republicans. If you don't get any input from Democrats, it is a Republican vote. A shutdown is on Republicans.

The American people rightly understand that Republicans have pushed this country towards a shutdown. They do understand that Donald Trump has created a massive economic uncertainty and is putting us on track for a Republican recession with his indiscriminate layoffs, his illegal funding freeze, his incoherent trade war, and now by threatening a Republican shutdown.

Democrats did not write this bill. We did not have any input, but if we had, we sure wouldn't have handed over more of our power to two billionaires. You can bet we would not have cut our domestic investments by billions. Democrats did not write this bill, but if we did, we would have protected our public schools. Democrats did not write this bill, but if we did, we would have put our veterans first, and you can bet we would not have prevented the District of Columbia from spending its own taxpayer dollars and be forced to lay off police and teachers. Democrats did not have any say on this bill, but if we did, we would have protected our public lands and your healthcare and lifesaving cancer research.

So I hope my Democratic and, yes, my Republican colleagues as well will join me in voting no on this bill and swiftly passing a 4-week extension so we can hammer out a better bipartisan solution.

I am voting no because my constituents should have a say in how their tax dollars are spent. I am voting no because Congress--Congress, each one of us, not Elon Musk--should decide which schools or which hospitals get funding. I am voting no, and I hope my colleagues will join me.

Before I close, I want to say to my constituents who are frightened and scared: I understand your fears. Some days, I share them. But your voice matters. Speaking out matters. You elected me to be your voice, and you better believe I will keep fighting for you. So shoulders up. Keep the faith. We stand strong, but we do not stand down. We are going to keep fighting for the America we love.

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