Making Further Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the current debate over the current Federal budget. On Tuesday, a very telling and very troubling vote was held in the House of Representatives. In order to pass the 3-week continuing resolution needed to avert a government shutdown, which we are considering here in the Senate today, Speaker Boehner was forced to rely on votes from House Democrats.

He had to do so because conservative Republicans abandoned their party leadership in droves. They fumed that the measure lacked special interest add-ons dealing with ideological issues such as abortion, net neutrality, and global warming.

In all, 54 conservative Republicans rejected the measure--even though it was necessary to avert a shutdown, even though their own leadership negotiated the proposal, and even though it included $6 billion in additional cuts to domestic discretionary spending. This is a bad omen.

Last week, the Senate held two test votes: one on H.R. 1 and one on a Democratic alternative. We knew that neither proposal would have the votes to pass and, sure enough, both went down.

The purpose of those votes was to make it clear that both sides' opening bids in this debate were nonstarters and thus pave the way for a serious and good-faith compromise. But, unfortunately, an intense ideological tail continues to wag the dog over in the House of Representatives.

Speaker Boehner had hoped after H.R. 1 failed in the Senate, it would convince his conservatives of the need to compromise. Instead, those conservatives have only dug their heels in further, and that is no way to improve our Nation's fiscal footing.

Speaker Boehner has said in no uncertain terms that he wants to avoid a shutdown, and I believe him. He is a good, honest man. The problem is, a large percentage of those in his party think ``compromise'' is a four-letter word.

I do not envy the position the Speaker is in, but he is going to have to make a choice. This is not a yellow wood in Robert Frost's poem, but there are two divergent roads, and, sorry, Speaker Boehner cannot travel both. He can cater to the tea party element and, as Congressman Mike Pence has suggested, ``pick a fight'' that will inevitably cause a shutdown on April 8--that is one path--or he can abandon the tea party in these negotiations and forge a consensus among more moderate Republicans and a group of Democrats. I think we all know which road he should choose.

Speaker Boehner would not have been able to pass this short-term measure without Democratic votes, and he will not be able to pass a long-term one without Democratic votes either.

Throughout this debate, Democrats have repeatedly shown a willingness to negotiate, a willingness to meet Republicans somewhere in the middle, and yet the rank and file of the House GOP has been utterly unrelenting. They have wrapped their arms around the discredited, reckless approach advanced by H.R. 1, and they will not let go. In fact, they just keep squeezing harder.

Worse, the last few days have taught us that spending cuts alone will not bring a compromise.

The new demand from the far right is that we go along with all their extraneous riders. These riders don't belong on a budget bill, but they were shoehorned into H.R. 1 anyway. Now the hard-liners want them in the final deal.

This is why a compromise has been so hard to come by in the budget. It is because Republicans want more than spending cuts; they want to impose their entire social agenda on the back of a must-pass budget.

Those on the right are entitled to their policy positions, but there is a time and a place to debate these issues, and this ain't it. If this debate were only about spending cuts we probably would come to an agreement before long, but we will have a hard time coming to an agreement if those on the hard right treat the budget as an opportunity to enact a far-ranging agenda.

Many Republicans in the House recognize the unreasonableness of the hard-liners, to their credit. Steve LaTourette of Ohio said passing the 3-week stopgap was ``exactly what people expect us to do--find cuts and continue to talk.''

Michael Grimm, a very bright freshman from my home State of New York, said the tea party lawmakers were making ``a big mistake.''

This is proof positive there are reasonable Republicans in the House, including some reasonable freshmen such as Mr. Grimm who, along with a group of Democrats, can provide Speaker Boehner with the way around the tea party. In order to avoid a dead end on these budget talks, Speaker Boehner should abandon the tea party and work to forge a bipartisan consensus. It is the only way out of this bind.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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