Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, it is my understanding that under unanimous consent the Senator from Texas is to be recognized, but I ask if he would allow me 5 minutes to follow the Senator from Maryland and then yield the floor to him.

I thank the Senator from Texas.

Madam President, I stand in support of the statement made by the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. We have served together in the House, now in the Senate. I am happy to serve with her in the capacity as chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, the largest in dollar amount that has this responsibility.

I think what she has spelled out on the floor is very straightforward and very honest.

We were challenged in the Senate to come up with a budget resolution this year. Many of our critics said, You have come up with excuses; now come up with a budget resolution. And we did. Six months ago we passed a budget resolution, and then we asked for consent to go to a conference committee with the House to work out our differences. Time and time again Senators on the other side of the aisle objected to our meeting with the House to work out our differences. They had a different reason every day. The net result was we couldn't have the conference committee to reach an agreement with the House on how much we would spend.

Then Senator Mikulski told each of us in our appropriations subcommittees: Do your work. Sit down with your Republican member and come up with a spending bill for next year that gets rid of sequestration and that is sensible. And we did. Time and again we worked these out on a bipartisan basis, brought them through committee, ready for floor action. The first bill came to the floor, transportation. Senator Patty Murray brought it to the floor. We wanted to bring this first spending bill to the floor. Let's debate it, let's get it done. The Republicans objected to considering this appropriations bill on the floor. They objected to a conference committee on a budget, they objected to the spending bills, and here we are at the eleventh hour, approaching October 1, without the money to continue the functions of government. We are facing a slowdown this week, and we are going to begin what may not technically be a filibuster but at least is a delay in meeting our responsibility to fund our government.

Some have said--the House Republicans and others--if you do not stop President Obama's health care reform act, we will shut down the government. That isn't fair. As Senator Mikulski has said, there are people across America counting on the functions of our government. This notion that we are somehow going to shut down the government with this political threat is unacceptable--unacceptable to the American people and unacceptable to this great institution.

Senator Mikulski is correct: We ought to have a short-term CR so we can sit down, roll up our sleeves, and finally finish this business. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, people are fed up with this do-nothing Congress that doesn't address the real issues American families are facing across our Nation. We need to roll up our sleeves and get it done. To have long speeches that go on for hours, delaying the funding of our government, jeopardizes the most basic functions of what we need to achieve right here. We need to come together on a bipartisan basis. A filibuster, delay, long speeches may get the attention of the media for a few minutes but won't solve America's problems.

The last point I want to make was her strongest point. The President is at the United Nations this week meeting with leaders around the world to try to bring about a more peaceful world in a very dangerous climate in many places. He wants to let people know that America will use its leadership and its power to come together to make this a better world. And what message is coming out of the United States Senate? That we are divided, we are fighting with one another, we are facing filibusters, and on and on. This isn't what America should be projecting.

Let's project the kind of unity and the kind of determination that has made this a great nation. Let's fund our government; let's solve our problems; let's stop the obstruction.

I yield the floor.

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