Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2014
Floor Speech
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want to thank my ranking member, Senator Sessions. We had a good debate, and I think everyone had a chance to see the differences about the values and priorities that drive us, how we see our country, and our future. I am looking forward to having that conversation again today.
The budget we are debating on the floor this week puts our middle-class families first. It reflects our progrowth, pro-middle-class agenda that the American people went to the polls in support of at the election just a few months ago. It takes the kind of truly balanced approach that families across our country strongly support, and I believe it is a strong and responsible vision for building a foundation for growth and restoring the promise of American opportunity.
I spoke at length last night about our budget. It is built on three principles. No. 1, we have to protect our fragile economic recovery, create jobs, and invest in our long-term growth. This is something every family in America is asking us to focus on.
No. 2, we need to tackle our deficit and debt fairly and responsibly. As Democrats we understand it is a responsibility we bear today, and we do it in this budget. No. 3, we need to keep the promises we made as a Nation to our seniors, our families, and our communities. There are many people who have struggled so much over the last few years and they are counting on us to be there for them again now.
We are going to hear a lot more about all of these principles today, and we are going to discuss the stark contrast between the budget that is expected to move in the House of Representatives today and the plan and path we have put forward here in the Senate as Democrats.
At this time, I yield to Senator Sessions for his opening remarks, and we will continue this debate throughout the day.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Our colleagues have sent a motion to the desk which sends our budget back to committee to balance.
I think we all know what this means. They wish to send our budget back to take months and weeks to put together a budget, which does one of two things in order to balance: It either raises incredible revenue or has devastating cuts. We have seen the package they are talking about. It is the Ryan budget being debated in the House right now. They say they would eliminate the deficit in 2023.
The Republicans have not put this budget out here right now, because they don't want to specify what the cuts are and be responsible for them. They just want some mystical moment to happen back in committee where these tough decisions are made.
We know what they are looking at. They are looking at the Ryan budget. They say it eliminates the deficit, but it does so in a devastating way to middle-class families across this country, families who are already struggling so much.
We hear a lot about balance these days. I want to clarify some real differences, important differences between how the Senate and the House budget use the word ``balance.''
The proposal which passed through the Budget Committee in the House would be devastating for our economic recovery. It would really threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs this year alone. It makes extreme cuts to our infrastructure, which is crumbling; to education, which is so important to our future; to the innovation this country has been built on, which would lay down a strong foundation for broad economic growth--which our Senate budget is working so hard to make happen.
Their budget in the House which the Republicans now want us to go back to committee and put in place would dismantle Medicare and cut off programs to support our middle-class and most vulnerable families. This sounds pretty unbalanced to me.
Frankly, their budget gets worse. As we learned last week, House Republicans have put forth a budget which calls for huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and makes it unclear how it will be paid for.
Those pay-fors will come on the backs of families who are working hard, average families who would see their taxes increase in order to give that tax cut to the wealthiest Americans. This is what they call balance.
I don't think that is balance. House Republicans like to say they are offering a balanced budget, which I would note also includes savings from the Affordable Care Act they vowed to repeal and tax increases on the wealthiest, which they strongly oppose. They haven't explained how they will reach that goal of reducing those rates down to 25 percent and who will pay for this. It is pretty clear, when you look at the numbers, how that will happen.
The House Republicans never explain how they get to what they call ``balance,'' because the only way they can do it is by raising taxes on the middle class or making deep cuts to vulnerable families and seniors, who depend on these benefits.
Our budget takes a very different approach to balance. We ensure our families today have the ability to get what they need to put their families back on a stable path to recovery. We make sure we invest in the important things this country needs to ensure our middle class has what they need in education and infrastructure. These are the things which allow families to know their kids can go to college, pay their mortgage, receive job training, and get back to work. That is balance.
When we have a responsible approach to spending cuts and to revenue, balance is an important word. Balance is about making sure we do what the Simpson-Bowles report has recommended, what every bipartisan group has said, and contains a responsible mix of revenues and spending cuts. This ensures no one bears the burden of the challenges of this country alone.
I would not call the House Republican bill balanced. Their balance says the wealthiest Americans, the biggest corporations don't contribute to this problem at all. Everything is done on the backs of our middle-class families.
Balance is an important word. It is an important word to every family, every community, every American. The approach we take is balanced, making sure everyone has an opportunity in this country for the future we need. This ensures everybody participates in solving the problems in front of us.
I take a backseat to no one when it comes to making sure we have a balanced approach. Our budget does that. We are going to be hearing more on it right now. We have a number of colleagues on the floor.
Let me make this very clear. The motion to recommit the Senators on the other side have offered simply says we will return to committee until we get the Ryan bill in front of us. This is something we soundly reject.
I have a number of colleagues here who will participate. I yield to the Senator from Delaware and thank him for his great contributions to our committee this year.
Mr. President, I yield time from the resolution.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I thank the Senators from Virginia and Hawaii for excellent statements and laying out the framework of why it is so important that we have a progrowth bill that is balanced, that deals with both spending cuts and revenue, and I really appreciate their time both in committee and on the Senate floor.
I ask unanimous consent that at 3:45 p.m. today there be up to 60 minutes of debate, equally divided between Senators Klobuchar and Coats, or their designees, for a report on the economic goals and policy under section 305(b) of the Congressional Budget Act.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Let me thank all the women Senators who are down here speaking so eloquently about the importance of passing a budget resolution which reflects the values and needs of women in this country and the men who are important to them.
I wish to especially thank our dean of women, Senator Mikulski, who has made this a lifetime passion to ensure the women who come after her have the strength and ability to participate in the economy in any way they wish. I thank her and the other Senators for their leadership.
Senator Klobuchar will continue this discussion.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Hawaii for joining a number of very strong Democratic women to talk about the importance of our budget for women in this country, and I appreciate her strong voice here in the Senate.
I yield 30 minutes off the resolution to the Senator from Vermont, who is a great member of our Budget Committee and contributes so much thought to all of it. We appreciate all his work.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we are having this debate in hopes of ultimately reaching a fair and bipartisan budget deal. We all know that is not going to be easy, so the least we can do is get our facts straight. It is kind of disappointing to see that rather than engaging in a productive conversation, some of our Republican colleagues prefer to launch some pretty inaccurate attacks. I would like to take just a moment to correct some of those inaccuracies so we can focus on the urgent task at hand.
Some Republicans continue to claim the Senate budget includes a $1.5 trillion tax hike. I talked about this last night, but I wish to make it clear again. This is not true. Here are the facts:
Of the $975 billion in new revenue from those who can afford it the most, $480 billion is matched with responsible spending cuts to fully replace sequestration, $100 billion goes toward targeted, high-priority infrastructure repairs and job training to help boost our economy and put Americans back to work. The rest goes to reduce the deficit. But, unfortunately, rather than seriously considering the credible path we have presented in our budget plan, some Republicans have decided to play some games with these numbers and are not telling the truth.
Instead of subtracting the sequestration replacement portion and the investment package from that $975 billion in total revenue, they are trying to say we should add it all together. They are taking one side of the ledger, combining that with the other side of the ledger, and coming to a conclusion that makes absolutely no sense. It doesn't make sense. You don't have to take my word for it. Fact checkers and reporters have called this claim false. They have called it a step too far. The Washington Post fact checker even gave it two Pinnochios.
Republicans have also made the argument that this budget actually only includes $300 billion in deficit reduction. That distorts the facts. It is not true, and it is inconsistent actually with what Republicans have claimed in the past.
Our budget includes 1.85 in deficit reduction, evenly divided between responsible spending cuts and new revenue. That revenue comes from closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending from a Tax Code that has been skewed toward the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. But some Republicans say that because part of what we are doing is replacing sequestration with smarter deficit reduction, that this somehow diminishes the savings.
I actually find this kind of interesting because I served on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction when Republicans and Democrats discussed ways to replace sequestration, which was, of course, well after sequestration had been signed into law. We didn't reach an agreement because Republicans refused to include revenue. But we did agree then that deficit reduction to replace sequestration was deficit reduction. In fact, my colleague Senator Toomey put forward a plan to replace sequestration--to replace sequestration that he said would have ``reduced our deficit by $1.2 trillion.''
I find it odd that some Republicans were willing to count replacing sequestration as deficit reduction when they were putting forth plans to do it, but they will not treat the Senate budget the same way, especially since bipartisan groups, including Simpson-Bowles and Domenici-Rivlin and the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, all used the same starting point that the Senate budget does. Like us, these groups knew sequestration was not deficit reduction. It was there to trigger deficit reduction that would come from replacing it. That was the whole point.
In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the Senate budget uses the appropriate starting point:
``Bowles and Simpson received no criticism when they did the same thing for their new budget plan of a few weeks ago.''
I didn't hear any Republicans complaining then. This just goes to show that, sadly, some of our Republican colleagues appear more interested in politicized attacks than serious consideration of our plan. The American people deserve better. They deserve better. They want an honest conversation. That is what we are trying to have with the credible approach we put forward.
Finally, I wish to strongly dispute the criticism I have heard that Democrats somehow don't take reducing our deficit and debt seriously. Despite what you may have heard, Democrats care deeply, as we both know, about restoring our Nation's fiscal health. We think it would be absolutely wrong to pile up unsustainable debt and hand it to our children. That is exactly why the Senate budget presents a serious, credible, and sustainable approach to getting our debt and deficits under control.
Experts on both sides of the aisle have generally come together around a few principles for a responsible deficit reduction plan. The Senate budget builds on the work of the last 2 years to meet each of those benchmarks.
In 2010, the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission recommended finding roughly $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. This has now become the benchmark of other serious bipartisan proposals. The Senate budget builds on the $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction that has already been done in the last 2 years since Simpson-Bowles, with an additional $1.85 trillion in new deficit reduction, for a total of $4.25 trillion in deficit reduction since the Simpson-Bowles report.
What the Senate budget does is it takes us the rest of the way to that $4 trillion goal and actually beyond it. Following the recommendations of Simpson-Bowles and the Senate Gang of 6 plan, the Senate budget importantly reduces the deficit to below 3 percent of GDP by 2015 and keeps it well below that level for the rest of our 10-year window in a responsible way. It pushes our debt as a percentage of the economy down, moving it in the right direction, as we have been told is an important goal.
So our budget reaches these benchmarks the way the American people have consistently said they want it done and the way economists and experts across our political spectrum have recommended--with an equal mix of responsible spending cuts across the Federal budget and new revenue raised by closing loopholes and cutting wasteful breaks that, by the way, primarily benefit the rich.
This budget responsibly cuts spending by $975 billion. As a member of the Budget Committee, the Presiding Officer knows we made some pretty tough choices to get there.
We think every program, including the ones that we know are important, needs to be wringing out the waste and trimming fat and reducing costs so our taxpayers get that benefit. So $500 billion of our deficit reduction comes from responsible savings on the domestic spending side, including, by the way, and I remind all, $275 billion in health care savings that we do in a way that does not harm seniors or families.
There are no sacred cows. We have put everything on the table. But we do it in a responsible way to preserve and protect and strengthen programs such as Medicare and Medicaid that the American people support as well. Our budget saves $240 billion by carefully and responsibly reducing defense spending while giving the Pentagon enough time to plan and align the reductions to time with the drawdown of our troops from overseas. The remainder of the savings, $242 billion, comes from savings on interest payments due to lower debt.
Taking the balanced approach the American people have consistently called for, our Senate budget matches those responsible spending cuts with $975 billion in new revenue, which is again raised by closing loopholes and cutting unfair spending in the Tax Code while locking in tax cuts for the middle class and low-income working families so we protect them from paying anymore.
There is bipartisan support for reducing the deficit by making the Tax Code more fair and efficient. During the fiscal cliff negotiations, Speaker Boehner proposed that we reduce the deficit by $800 billion by closing what he called special-interest loopholes and deductions. So the Senate budget takes him up on that. Every bipartisan group that has tackled this issue in a serious way recommended a lot more revenue than the $600 billion raised from the wealthiest Americans in the yearend deal.
If our budget passes, the total deficit reduction since the Simpson-Bowles report will consist of 64 percent spending cuts, 14 percent tax rate increases on the rich, and 22 percent new revenue from closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the Tax Code. That is a responsible approach. It is a balanced and fair approach. It is the one endorsed by bipartisan groups and experts and it is one that is supported by the vast majority of the American people.
I want to say this again. Here are the facts. Our budget does not include a $1.5 trillion tax hike. It does raise $975 billion, again from closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in our Tax Code. It reduces the deficit by $1.85 trillion when analyzed the same way Republicans have analyzed their own proposals. And Democrats do care deeply about our country. We do want to reduce our debt and deficit, which is exactly why we have put forward a responsible proposal to put our debt and deficit on a downward sustainable path. As we continue this debate over the next day I urge my Republican colleagues to stick to the facts. Let's end the misinformation. Let's work together on the job the American people want us to focus on and get a comprehensive budget deal and get our country back on track.
Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes off the resolution to Senator Wyden.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question? I will not insist on an answer but I wish to raise something.
Mrs. MURRAY. If the Senator would withhold, because we have two Senators waiting to talk. I will be happy to answer that. Can we let two of them go on our time?
Mr. SESSIONS. You have the time. That will be fine. Thank you.
Mrs. MURRAY. I yield 10 minutes to Senator Wyden and 35 minutes to Senator Levin.
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Mr. SESSIONS. I would like to say this to my chairman: I am willing to concede the point if the chair would agree to amend the two reserve funds so that they cannot be used to advance tax increases, and I would cease making that argument and accept the fact that you have already almost $1 trillion in new taxes.
So I would ask through the chair, is the Senator willing to amend those two reserve fund languages so they cannot be used to add another $500 billion in new taxes?
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, let me just respond again. As the Washington Post said in giving this concoction two Pinocchios, the reserve funds the Senator refers to lie within there in order to provide the $975 billion in revenues. So essentially what he is doing is double-counting. So I would just say to the Senator through the Chair that there is no need to have any kind of agreement here. That is what our budget does. It is clear. It is what every expert has said.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as I have stated many times out here on the floor--and our budget is very clear--we replace sequestration with a balanced mix of spending cuts and revenues, exactly as we have stated. There is no reason to misconstrue this. That is exactly what our budget does.
Mr. SESSIONS. Well, I wouldn't misconstrue it. So it does eliminate the sequester.
So then the next question would be, did you score the allowed increase in spending of $1.2 trillion in your budget as increased spending?
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, this is a matter of semantics. We replace the sequestration, very clearly, because it is very damaging to our country.
Mr. SESSIONS. Well, your staff indicated that you could not double-count that money, and if you eliminated the $1.2 trillion in sequester limit and allowed $1.2 trillion more to be spent, you would not save $1.85 trillion but approximately $700 billion on that decision alone. Do you agree with your staff in their analysis?
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I assume we are taking this off the Republican time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, let me be very clear: We have put out a budget that is credible. It is clear, and it is a good, solid approach. I know we are playing with numbers here in terms of baselines. There is no need to do that. We are doing what every single budget has done--Simpson-Bowles and everyone else--replacing the sequestration. We are clear that we have $975 billion in spending cuts, $975 billion in revenue. We, within the context of that, replace the sequester cuts. We take the $2.4 trillion that has already been done since Simpson-Bowles--since Simpson-Bowles and we add another $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction.
Mr. SESSIONS. One more question, then. Do you still stand by the promotional material that went with the budget--and in the budget document itself--that you have reduced the deficit over current law by $1.85 trillion or isn't it a fact that eliminating the sequester reduces that to approximately $700 billion in savings?
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, over the baseline, which we are very clear in what we are using--we are not hiding the ball, as he is trying to do when he is mixing numbers here--we reduce the budget by an additional $1.85 trillion, absolutely.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would just say that the Associated Press disagrees. It is plainly inaccurate. Plainly, I asked that question, over current law, did they count the sequester increase in spending? And the staff admitted in our Budget Committee mark up that it did not--that increased spending--and therefore we reduce the deficit savings from $1.85 trillion to about $700 billion. There is another $700 billion in gimmicks, so there is no reduction in the deficit in this budget.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want all of our Members to understand that the second amendment we will be voting on tonight is the Ryan budget.
Now, there seems to be some resistance among my Republican colleagues in bringing up the House Republican budget for a vote, and it is pretty easy to see why that is. Last year's Republican budget was, in fact, soundly rejected by the American people in the election. Since then, it continues to be very clear the American people prefer a balanced and fair approach that puts our economy and our middle class first--not an extreme, irresponsible approach.
Unfortunately, House Republicans put forward a budget last week that doubles down on the rejected ideology that the American people spoke about. They have a new talking point about their same old budget. They now claim their budget would eliminate the deficit in 2023. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has even said it does not really matter how their budget eliminates the deficit.
Americans across our country who will feel the impact of the choices we make in the coming weeks and months believe that it does matter. So while some of my Republican colleagues would probably prefer not to hear about it, I think that the impact of the House Republican budget is a crucial part of this debate, and we owe it to the American people to put our opinions on the record.
We have come a long way, but there are still far too many Americans today who are unemployed or underemployed, which is why our Senate budget's first priority is boosting our economic recovery.
Speaker Boehner has actually agreed with President Obama that our debt does not present ``an immediate crisis.'' So you might think the House budget would phase in cuts responsibly so we can protect our fragile recovery.
Instead, the House Republican budget would do serious damage to job creation and job growth, and it doubles down on the harmful cuts from sequestration, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will lower employment by 750,000 jobs this year alone and slow economic growth.
The House Republican budget will weaken our economy in the long term as well. As any business owner will tell you, in tight times, the last thing you want to do is cut investments that help make you stronger. Well, that is what the House Republican budget does. It cuts investments in education, so our students and workers are less prepared for the jobs of the future. It would undermine our ability to upgrade our roads and bridges and highways and ports even though our national infrastructure just got a D-plus from the American Society of Civil Engineers. And the House budget would greatly reduce our ability to support research and development, making it so much harder for us to maintain the innovative edge that helps us attract new industries and new businesses to the United States.
Americans want to see a budget that puts the middle class first and asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to do their fair share too as we work toward deficit reduction.
So our Senate budget locks in tax cuts for the middle class while closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the Tax Code. Our budget uses that new revenue from the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations for deficit reduction and for investments that support our economy and strengthen our middle class.
The House Republican budget, which we will vote on tonight, does the opposite. According to the Tax Policy Center, the tax plan in the House Republican budget would cost nearly $5.7 trillion in lost Federal revenue, and the majority of that lost revenue would benefit the wealthiest Americans.
Just like past House Republican budgets, it is once again pretty unclear how this budget would pay for all those tax cuts that are skewed toward the wealthiest. But the reality is that to achieve the goals that are laid out in their budget, House Republicans will either have to add to the deficit--meaning their budget might not actually balance, as they claim--or they are going to have to raise taxes on the middle class.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to keep from increasing the deficit while lowering rates--which they propose to do--the House budget would have to raise taxes by an average of $3,000 on families making less than $200,000 a year who have children. But in their plan, the wealthiest Americans will see a net tax cut averaging about $245,000.
There is no reason middle-class families should have to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. That is bad for our economy. It is very unfair. That kind of unbalanced approach is what made Americans reject the House Republican budget in the first place.
The same is true of Medicare. We just heard Senator Stabenow talk eloquently about the importance of Medicare. Well, the House Republican budget would replace the Medicare guarantee with a voucher, capped at growth levels below projected health care costs, forcing our seniors to pay more and more out of pocket, and ending Medicare as we know it.
That is not a solution that our seniors deserve.
AARP said, in their critique of the House Republican budget:
Removing the Medicare guarantee of affordable health coverage seniors have contributed to through a lifetime of hard work is not the answer.
That is not me, that is AARP.
The Senate budget offers a much better answer. Let me remind everyone, in our budget we uphold the principle--consistent with Simpson-Bowles and all other bipartisan deficit reduction proposals--that the most vulnerable families should not be asked to bear the burden of deficit reduction.
Our budget maintains the safety net that has kept millions of families and children above the poverty line during the recession and strongly supports efforts to help our low-income students and others, as they try to get back in the job market.
House Republicans say their budget balances. Nothing in it sounds like balance to me. I would like to remind my colleagues as this debate continues that unlike what House Republicans have said about how a budget achieves its goals, how it achieves those goals really matters a lot.
The American people have rejected this plan, and, understandably, some of my colleagues across the aisle would prefer not to vote on it. Our Senate budget offers a credible, serious approach to a fair and bipartisan agreement. It puts jobs and the economy first and provides a credible, balanced path forward.
We are going to have to make some tough choices in the coming weeks and months, and I recognize moving away from the extreme approach in the House Republican budget is going to be a tough choice for many of my Republican colleagues. But I hope, as they consider the effects of the House Republican budget on our economy and on our families throughout the country, and the fact that the House Republican approach has been thoroughly reviewed and rejected by the American people, they will now be willing to come to the table, end the gridlock and dysfunction, and discuss a fair, comprehensive budget deal.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield the remainder of my time.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, this next amendment is the Ryan budget. The House Republicans have doubled down on failed policies by passing the same budget that was rejected by the American people just a few months ago. Now Senate Republicans are going to have to decide whether they agree with this approach.
This budget would be devastating for the middle class and the economy. It would cause millions of our workers to lose their jobs and dismantle programs such as Medicare that seniors and families depend on. It relies on gimmicks and tricks to eliminate the deficit by an arbitrary date and does all that while giving the wealthiest Americans a tax cut.
I encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, again, the goal of our budget is to tackle our deficit and debt responsibly in a way that works for the middle class and the economy. That means a balanced mix of responsible spending cuts and new revenue from those who can afford it the most.
All of the bipartisan groups that have examined our budget situation have acknowledged this reality--Simpson-Bowles, Gang of 6, Domenici-Rivlin--and recommended more revenue than the roughly $600 billion that we generated in the yearend deal. In fact, Simpson-Bowles and the Gang of 6 each recommended well over $2 trillion in new revenue, which is several times more than the yearend deal. Repealing this budget's proposed revenue increase and striking the reconciliation instruction would be wholly irresponsible. We cannot cut our way out of this problem.
I urge my colleagues to vote no.
For the information of all Senators, this is the last vote this evening. Tomorrow there are votes beginning at 11. I ask again that all Senators be here. We are going to move through a lot of amendments tomorrow. I have a lot of Senators asking me to have their amendment voted on. I assure everyone that by 1 a.m., 2 a.m. tomorrow night, many Senators won't have that opportunity unless they are here and help move that process along.
I yield the floor and ask for a ``no'' vote.
I ask for the yeas and nays.
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Mrs. Murray. I thank the Senator and I couldn't agree with him more on the value of the Community Health Center Program. I know very well about the value they bring to Washington State, and also to the country by controlling health care costs and delivering care to our Nation's most vulnerable people and communities. We have included language that recognizes the importance of adequately funding the Community Health Center Program and I look forward to working with the Senator and other Senators to try and find a solution to the community health center funding cliff before it occurs.
Mr. SANDERS. I thank the Chairwoman. The sooner we can work on this the better, as it will really give the program and all the centers across the country the stability and certainty they need to plan for the future.
Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Senator for raising this very important issue. I look forward to working with him to ensure that community health centers can continue to provide care to our most vulnerable populations today and in the future.
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