-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Johnson for his dedication to trying to pay the Federal workers who are being used in what is a political battle--I want to excuse them from a partisan political battle that is not of their making so they can go back to work and serve the American people.

What we have here is a political standoff between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It has nothing to do with the air traffic controllers. Some of them are Democrats, and some are Republicans. It has nothing to do with any other essential or furloughed Federal workers. Some of them are Democrats; some, Republicans.

Some of them probably agreed that we should shut down the government so insurance companies can make billions more dollars off the American taxpayers under ObamaCare. Some of them are Republicans and think that we should open the government and work out this healthcare mess after we open the government. Regardless of that, they are not in a position to make those decisions. We are. We are.

So here we are in the longest shutdown in government history. The Congress is responsible for it. It is political. It is not policy driven. So since we are going to argue about politics and who is winning and who is losing and who is setting themselves up to have the next President or win the midterms instead of worrying about whether the airways are safe, whether WIC is funded, whether SNAP is funded, whether workers are funded, whether the military is funded; since we are going to fight over who is going to win the election a year from now, let's excuse the people who are not responsible for this dysfunction from our dysfunction.

That is what Senator Johnson is trying to do.

Now, we all agree, Democrats and Republicans, that this is not fair to Federal workers--people who are in the military, who are air traffic controllers, who are essential, who are furloughed. It is not fair to them. We all agree.

What Senator Johnson is doing is finding a way that we can be together on a bipartisan basis, excuse the Federal workers from this mess, let them be paid, and let us go on with our absurd, partisan, political dysfunction if that is what we want.

If we want to fight about healthcare, it is my opinion that we ought to do it after we fully open the government, but if we are not willing to do that, let's at least let the Federal workers off the hook.

I applaud Senator Johnson. I applaud Senator Sullivan. I applaud Senator Cruz.

We want to be able to keep Americans safe who are getting in airplanes every day.

We want to keep Americans safe who are working in the military. They don't make very much money, especially those young, first- and second- year military employees. Some of them have young families. Some of them have spouses. So I am telling you, they don't make much money, and then you withhold their pay. Those are the people that are working paycheck to paycheck. Let them out of our political dysfunction. Don't make them suffer for our political misfunction and dysfunction.

I want to also thank any Democrat who will listen and be compassionate towards your Federal workers in your districts.

This is wrong for those of us--whether we disagree about healthcare or not, whether you want to fund billions of dollars to give to insurance companies for a broken healthcare system--fine.

We can have that debate, but don't penalize the Federal workers for our dysfunction, our disrespect for them.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source