Government Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I want to share with the body today my very short New Year's wish list. It is very short because Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are all the same. We need to open the government. We need to reopen the one-quarter of the Federal Government that is shut down today. We need to start acting like adults. We need to start doing the job that we were sent here to do because our Nation's security is at stake, kids' health is at stake, and families' economic security is at stake.

Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers all across the country are furloughed as we speak, including over a thousand in Connecticut. But that is not the extent of the damage. When you start having folks at airport security not be able to show up for their jobs because they have to work somewhere else in order to put food on the table, when you start creating questions about whether food stamps are going to go out or Section 8 vouchers are going to get paid, when you can't have the Department of Agriculture functioning to help our farmers, you are starting to affect a whole lot of people. You are starting to drag down the entire economy.

My hope--my wish--is that we will reopen the Federal Government. The fact of the matter is that this happens every now and again. Occasionally, somebody makes a demand, something that they can't get through the normal political process, and they say if they don't get that demand, they are going to shut down the government. Every time I have been through one of these, it is the party making the demand that eventually relents because we tend to all agree that is not the proper way in order to try to get what you want in the U.S. Government.

Senator Cruz and others shut down the government for 2 weeks because they wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Eventually, they relented. This time, President Trump couldn't get Congress to approve $5 billion for his wall in the budget so he decided to shut down the government. This is not how we should conduct a debate about legitimate public policy issues.

The future of the American healthcare system was a legitimate public policy issue, as is the security of our borders, but we shouldn't be having the discussion amidst a government shutdown--trying to use our Nation's security and all of these Federal workers and the work they do as hostages to try to achieve a political result.

Of course, we were all on the same page just a few weeks ago. This body voted unanimously to open the Federal Government, and now Senator McConnell says that piece of legislation that all of us voted for in December can't pass.

What changed? What changed in each one of your States that causes so many Members of this body to now say that they cannot vote for a continuing resolution that you all voted for back in December?

We know what has changed. The only thing that has changed is that the President has decided that he will not sign it. That is not how the Constitution works.

The Constitution doesn't make the Senate subservient to the President. The Constitution certainly doesn't make the President's party subservient to him. No one here has to follow the orders of President Trump, especially when he is doing something that is bad for the Nation. We could bring up that same bill that reopens the government at least temporarily. We could all vote the same way that we did back in December. We could send that bill to the House of Representatives and admit that the President shouldn't dictate our votes. Just because his position changed doesn't mean Senate Republicans' position should have changed.

Let's reopen the government so that, then, we can have a discussion about the question of immigration law and border security, because I am more than willing to have it.

OK, I didn't exactly tell the truth. I do have two other wishes beyond reopening the government, but they are connected to my primary wish. My second wish is that the President would stop making up things as he proceeds through this debate. The worst of his lies was the idea that there were 4,000 known or suspected terrorists who came across our southern border. That was a number proffered by the Press Secretary at the White House. It has been repeated in various ways, shapes, and forms by the President's allies.

Of course, we now know there have not been 4,000 suspected terrorists that have come across the southern border. There have been six since the beginning of this year. That is six people on a terrorist watch list who were not U.S. citizens. Do you know how many people who fit that description came across the northern border in the first 6 months of this year? Forty-one. If you really care about the security of this country--if your primary reason for getting up every morning is to make sure terrorists don't get into this country, then we should be putting up a wall with Canada, not a wall with Mexico.

The second fiction is that all of these drugs coming into the United States are crossing the U.S.-Mexican border at places where there isn't a wall. That is not true either. The vast majority of illegal products that come into this country come through ports of entry. We should all talk about why that is and what we can do to beef up protections, but putting up a wall along the treacherous portions of the Rio Grande are not going to stop smugglers who right now can find lots of other ways to get their goods into the United States.

I want to make sure that when we have this debate, we are having a fact-based debate.

My second wish in this new year is that the President and his allies would just start telling the truth, and the truth is that there is not a new security crisis at the southern border. Illegal crossings have been coming down since 2000. The people who are on the terrorist watch list who occasionally do try to come into this country are predominantly trying to get in through Canada, not through Mexico.

I want to talk about facts.

Here is my last wish. Again, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are to reopen the government. If I had No. 6 and 7, it would be that the President start talking about the real facts, and the other would be this: Let's not get into this very dangerous conversation about trying to do an end- around on the political process with a national emergency. I guess I am talking to my Republican colleagues here.

I get it that I often have some of the sharpest words for this President, but I hope that we can come together on the idea that declaring a national emergency because you can't get what you want through the political process is a really bad precedent to set. It is true that there are a whole bunch of national emergencies that have been declared, but none of the circumstances of those national emergencies and none of the powers that were utilized in those national emergencies compare to what the President is reportedly considering.

If the President is really talking about declaring a national emergency on our border, despite the fact that there is no set of facts that suggests that what is happening on our border is fundamentally different today than what was happening a year ago or 10 years ago, and if the President is really contemplating, by Executive order, reprogramming billions of dollars this Congress set aside for military construction projects to a border wall, that is a Pandora's box that, once opened, cannot be shut again. This is a genie escaping out of a bottle that will not be put back.

I said in jest last night that if President Trump can use a national emergency declaration to build a border wall, what would stop a Democratic President from declaring a healthcare emergency and passing and declaring a national emergency to create a single-payer healthcare system in this country? I wouldn't advise a Democratic President to do that, but I am not sure what the precedent would be if President Trump, having not been able to get Congress and the American public to get behind a border wall with Mexico that nobody really wants, declares a national emergency and builds it anyway. What would then stop any future President from doing the same thing on a host of other policy areas? Really, what would stop a President from declaring a healthcare national emergency because he or she can't get their legislation passed through the Senate and reordering our insurance markets and our Medicare and Medicaid programs to cure that national emergency, simply shifting money around from place to place?

I don't think this is an avenue that the Federal Government should go down because there will be a Democratic President someday, and if you can just declare a national emergency and move billions of dollars around because you can't get your way in Congress, that is a horse that, once out of the barn, is not coming back.

That is my wish list: Open the government, open the government, open the government, open the government; pass the bills that we passed back in December. Don't let the President dictate your votes. Let your constituents dictate your votes.

I hope the President and the White House start telling the truth about what is really happening with border security, and I hope this nonsense about declaring a national emergency goes away. I hope it goes away in part because Republicans in this body recognize the really dangerous precedent that sets for this country, and they recommend publicly and privately to the President that he shutter that idea.

We could reopen the government today. If Senator McConnell came down here and decided to put a continuing resolution before this body and said that it is the right thing to do for the country, it would pass with flying colors. If Senator McConnell exercised that kind of leadership that he has shown in previous shutdowns, it would pass with flying colors. We all know it would. I am sure there would be a handful of Republicans who just got elected with President Trump's support who might not support it, but it would pass just like it passed 3 weeks ago, and it would likely pass the House of Representatives by a veto- proof margin, as well, once the signal was given by Senate Republicans that the adults need to step up and reopen the government.

So this whole crisis can be over tonight. It can be over tonight if there is some leadership shown by Senate Republicans. Why spend all of this time trying to control this body? Why spend millions of dollars trying to run for office to become the majority party in the U.S. Senate if you are not willing to step up in a moment of crisis and lead the country through it? It is still possible, and I hope, as my new year's wish, that it gets done sooner rather than later.

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