Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, in the last 40 years, we have had 21 government shutdowns--21. Twenty-one times, Congress and the President have not been able to agree or the Senate and the House have not been able to agree. As a result of that, Federal workers around the country have faced the consequences of Members of Congress not finding agreement.

Help me understand this. Twenty-one times in 40 years, Federal workers who get up every single day and serve the American people and serve their neighbors have faced the consequences of furloughs because Members of Congress could not come to a resolution. It is not that it has gone unnoticed. For a decade or more, there have been solutions that have been proposed.

Ten years ago, I had a proposal in the House--actually, Rob Portman had a great proposal in the Senate at the same time to deal with government shutdowns. Let's say when we get to the end of the fiscal year, we will just have a continuing resolution, but then we will cut spending every few months to press Congress to get to their work. The problem was, hardly anyone on the other side agreed with that. We couldn't get any bipartisan support for it. So my colleagues on the other side of the aisle proposed that if we get to the end of the fiscal year, we would have a continuing resolution, and every couple of months, the spending would go up, and it would just continue to go up and up and up until it was resolved. Well, they didn't have anyone on my side of the aisle saying ``We are going to put in a mechanism that just increases spending over and over again without congressional involvement,'' so they got no bipartisan support.

An idea was floated to just cut the pay of the Members of Congress. But it really wasn't cutting their pay; it was taking their pay and putting it in an escrow account and just kind of holding it for them, and then when everything was resolved, they would get their money back. So it really wasn't a reduction in pay; it was kind a shell game--push those dollars off to another side and get them all back later just to make it look like you got a cut in pay. But that hasn't had wide support either. A lot of people have real concerns about that because, quite frankly, some Members of Congress are very wealthy; some Members are not. Some Members don't notice their congressional pay; some do. It is kind of a disproportionate piece of leverage to resolve this.

What is interesting is that all those proposals acknowledged one simple thing: This is a problem. It needs to be resolved. Federal workers are facing the consequences; Members of Congress are not.

About 5 months ago, Maggie Hassan and I--this Chamber knows well the Senator from New Hampshire. She and I started working together on a nonpartisan--not just a bipartisan but a nonpartisan--way to stop government shutdowns. We have two very simple proposals.

There are two problems here. We need to stop Federal workers from getting hurt when there is a shutdown and make sure those families are not hurt. The second thing is, we want to actually get to appropriations, not continuing resolutions.

When do you a continuing resolution for any length of time, like what we are in right now--we are in our eighth week of a continuing resolution right now. When you do one that long, it hurts temporary workers who are Federal workers. They are laid off in the process. Other folks are not. Many of these agencies need those temporary workers, and those temporary workers are counting on that salary. It hurts contracting because everything can't start in a continuing resolution. You have to wait until there are real appropriations before new programs can start. You can't stop old programs. You can't do purchasing. It creates a tremendous inefficiency in government.

Our simple idea was this: Let's find a way to protect Federal workers and get to appropriations. The solution we came up with is pretty straightforward. When we get to the end of the fiscal year, which right now is October 1, if appropriations are not done, there will be a continuing resolution that kicks into effect to protect Federal workers, but Members of Congress and our staff and the White House Office of Management and Budget--none of us can travel. Members of Congress will be in continuous session 7 days a week until we get appropriations done. And one more thing: We can't move to any issues other than appropriations. We are locked into that box.

Basically, if our work is not done, we all will have to stay until the work is done. I have had folks say that is not really a big consequence. A lot of folks do that all over the country all the time. If at the end of their workday their work is not done, they have to stay until they get it done. Small business owners know that full well. It is not like you can punch a clock. If the work is not done in a small business, you stay until it actually gets done.

Here is the thing. Go back to last December. When the shutdown started last December and we got to an impasse here between the House, the Senate, and the White House, Members of Congress and our staff all left and went home. Federal workers across the country all took a big, deep breath as they walked into the holidays because they were on furlough, but Members of this body walked out. That should never happen--never.

What Senator Hassan and I are proposing is very simple. The pressure shouldn't be on Federal workers. They can't vote to solve this. The pressure should be on us.

For everyone in this body who says, ``I don't like that kind of artificial pressure,'' why don't you feel what it is like to be a Federal worker for a while and those Federal employees? They don't like that pressure on them. So let's flip it. Let's put the pressure on us, where it should be, and get it off the folks, where it should not be, and let's stay until we get our work done.

This idea is overly simplistic, but what is interesting is, for the first time in a decade, there is an idea that has bipartisan support. We have multiple Members of this body who are looking at it, contemplating it, and then nodding their heads, saying: I would rather the pressure be on us than on the Federal workers and their families.

Let's solve this. We shouldn't have government shutdowns. We should have arguments over debt and deficit. We should have arguments over the budget. That is why people sent us here--to solve how their money is going to be spent most efficiently and argue about issues on debt and deficit.

In the meantime, why in the world would we want to hurt the very people who serve their neighbors, those people being the Federal employees around the country? Let's keep them out of it. Let's keep them still serving their neighbors, and let's keep the fight right here where it needs to be. Let's argue this out until we get it resolved, and let's not quit until we resolve it. It is a simple idea that Senator Hassan and I actually believe will work.

In the decades to come, people will look back at the time when we used to have government shutdowns and will shake their heads and say: I can't believe there was a period of time during which the Federal government used to shut down when they argued. Now we stay until we get the issue settled.

It is a pretty straightforward idea, and I hope that more of my colleagues will join us in this absolute commitment to solving this for future generations.

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