Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Land Management Relating to ``Central Yukon Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan''

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, we are now 9 days into the government shutdown, and the disruption of the shutdown is being felt by many Americans. Particularly, what I want to talk about is the many Americans who are traveling or working in the aviation industry.

Government shutdowns are detrimental to some of our most basic functions of government, and our already-fragile air traffic control system is facing strain from this occurrence.

We are reminded how fragile our air system is by the facts of what occurred on January 29, when a flight from Kansas to Washington, DC, did not land safely at Washington Reagan, and it claimed the lives of 67 people.

Over the time that I have been in Congress, we have had a number of shutdowns and, in many instances, even Kansans told me: Shut her down. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me.

I have never found the value in a government shutdown. That accident that I just mentioned forced Congress and our Nation to reckon with an issue that has plagued us for decades: Why have we not effectively modernized our airspace system?

Since that crash, steps have been taken to train more controllers and enhance the aviation system, including a $12.5 billion investment in modernizing our airspace. But those efforts become much more difficult while Congress fails to keep the government operating and the shutdown is in place.

The Wall Street Journal, just this week, aptly summed up the current crisis stating: We ``have a system under pressure that now just has another 100 pounds of weight on it.''

The failure to pass a continuing resolution is slowly crushing our aviation system. Our system is too fragile and the stakes are too high for us to continue operating the national aviation system in the manner we are doing so. We will reach a breaking point, and this could result in the closing of our airspace or portions of it.

The consequences of the shutdown on our aviation system aren't isolated to major cities and large airports as the viability of the Air Service Program is also now put at risk. This program incentivizes airlines to provide commercial flights to rural communities that normally wouldn't be able to attract business from major airlines on their own. In Kansas, there are five such airports that use this program to provide flights to their communities. These flights allow my constituents to fly to larger cities for business, to see the family, for doctors' appointments, and so many other things. Several of these airports have seen and continue to see record levels of passenger growth.

All of these factors are chipping away at the sustainability and safety of our Nation's aviation system. In a previous Congress, I introduced the Aviation Funding Stability Act, which allows the FAA to draw from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund to make certain that critical operations continue when there is an appropriations lapse. In March of this year, I reintroduced this bill as we faced this threat of a shutdown. This legislation is still important, but the fact is that the only real solution here is to pass the continuing resolution.

We set out earlier this year, in a bipartisan manner, to transform our aviation system to make it safer for everyone, but that work is now significantly hindered without having an open and functioning government. The Senate Appropriations subcommittee, of which I am a member--the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee--has done its job. I joined my colleagues in advancing the fiscal year 2026 funding bill for the Department of Transportation but including all the aviation matters at the FAA and otherwise. We did that in July.

It included more than $22 billion for the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, with $5 billion for the FAA's facilities and equipment account--critical funding for modernizing outdated equipment in our national airspace. This legislation also included funding to hire 2,500 air traffic controllers to close the gap in our workforce. For every day we remain in a shutdown, the air traffic controller shortage gets worse, and the strain on the aviation system intensifies. Our system has a breaking point, and I hope that this dysfunction that we are undergoing stops before we see dramatic and damaging consequences.

My point is that the continuing resolution is standing in the way of the appropriations process. We have a majority leader who is willing to bring appropriations bills to the floor. They deserve the Senate's consideration of those appropriations bills. The challenge we face is getting them done by the end of the fiscal year; therefore, we have put in place a continuing resolution until a date in later November. This is a straightforward continuing resolution to give us the time to complete the appropriations process, including the money for the Transportation Department and the safety components that are included therein.

My second point is that a continuing resolution is necessary to avoid a shutdown. That point is that the shutdown is damaging to us in many ways to our Nation. It is broadly damaging to us because it allows those who are critics and those who are adversaries to realize that we are not as capable of functioning as we should be so that even our allies wonder what is going on in the United States.

The point I want to make is that there are consequences to the position we have allowed ourselves to get in, and it affects the safety of Americans every day. In having experienced the loss of life from the flight on January 29 from Wichita, KS, to Washington, DC, we should be doing everything we can to make certain that our air traffic system and the necessary components are in place to make sure that traveling American citizens and the citizens of the world who use our airline system have a safe and secure flight when they board a plane in the United States. The silliness of where we are today is impeding our ability to make that true.

I don't know when a shutdown makes sense, but the consequences of this one, in lieu of a short-term, clean CR for a few more weeks to complete our appropriations work, is a shutdown that makes absolutely no sense or is of any benefit to America.

I urge my Democratic colleagues to act now to pass this short-term continuing resolution so we can alleviate the pressures on our aviation system, return to doing our jobs in appropriating government funding, and provide much needed certainty and stability for our Nation.

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