Legislation Before the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday the House passed a continuing resolution on a very large bipartisan basis, with more than three-fourths voting in its favor.

Let me repeat that. Three-fourths, a majority of both parties, voted for the legislation needed to keep the government open. While some Senate Democrats may want to delay into a government shutdown, House Democrats overwhelmingly rejected that approach.

The funding in this CR is critical to our Nation's defense. It supports overseas operations, the fight against ISIL, and our forces in Afghanistan. It provides resources to begin implementing the medical innovation bill we passed earlier this week and to start bringing relief to victims of severe flooding across our country, and of course it includes provisions that will guarantee that retired coal miners in Kentucky--in Kentucky--and other States will not lose their health benefits at the end of this month. Would I have preferred that provision to be more generous? Of course I would have. My request to the House was to fund it for a full year, but we will be back at it in April, and I think it is highly unlikely that we will take it away-- just as I would have preferred that so many miners' places of employment hadn't been driven into bankruptcy in recent years, which as we all know is due in no small part to President Obama, his policies, and the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats who support all those policies that have been a huge factor in creating the dilemma we have in coal country in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia. Most of the Senate Democrats support the war on coal.
It has been my intention that the miner health benefits not expire at the end of April next year. As I just said, I am going to work with my colleagues to prevent that, but this is a good time to take yes for an answer. We should pass the CR without delay because if we don't pass the CR, the health benefits will go away at the end of this month. The House is gone. They are through for this session.Failure to pass this legislation means delaying funding for our troops overseas. Failure to pass this means delaying funding for Flint, MI. I promised Senator Stabenow we would deal with that issue, and we have, in the WRDA bill and the CR that are here, having passed the House. Failure to pass this legislation means delaying funding for storm recovery in many of our States, and of course failure to pass this legislation means creating a shutdown of the government. Over what? We have funded health care for miners through the end of April.

We have funding in here for the opioid crisis and a whole lot of other things that Senators say they care about. They want to shut the government down to stop this? Really. It hardly makes sense to me. In fact, passing this CR guarantees that health care will be there for miners through the end of April. It guarantees it. Failure to pass it guarantees it goes away at the end of the month.

I think it is time to get serious. I think we all don't want any of these consequences to come about. The thing to do is to pass this continuing resolution. After we pass that, we will turn to the water resources development bill. The House overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan water resources development bill as well, with more than three-fourths in its favor. It was overwhelming on both sides of the aisle.

Now it is our turn to act. Remember, this bill supports waterways, infrastructure, enhances commerce, and maintains American ecosystems.

It also authorizes spending in the continuing resolution, which will help families in Flint. Flint is in both of these bills. These are the folks who have been impacted by the drinking water crisis. We will have a vote on WRDA after the CR has been approved.

I encourage my colleagues to work together now so we can pass both of these as soon as possible. It strikes me that delay is not a solution to any of these problems I have outlined.

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