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Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, here we go again. In just a little over 24 hours, Federal funding will run out, and the government will shut down.

Let me state for the record that my Republican colleagues and I are ready to get on with matters and ready to fund the government for the rest of this year. We all know that the faster we move it over the finish line, the faster our Federal Government can get to work on behalf of the American people and implement the agenda that the American people elected us to get done.

But after our Democratic friends had a nice long lunch on Capitol Hill yesterday, Senator Schumer took the floor to announce that their caucus would not support funding the government because, as he put it, ``Republicans chose a partisan path.'' But here is what Senator Schumer is really saying: Democrats would rather shut down the government than pass the funding bill just to shift blame to Republicans for our current funding predicament. Democrats are going to shut down the government to protect the government.

In the next 24 hours, even, Democrats are planning to use the very same filibuster they have opposed and tried to abolish to shut down the government. In the last administration, former Vice President Kamala Harris said that Joe Biden and the Democrats are ``kinda done with those archaic Senate rules.'' But here they are using those archaic Senate rules to shut down the government.

There is nothing that could explain such a drastic change of heart among my Democratic colleagues other than rank hypocrisy. Democrats are quick to criticize Republican efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our bureaucracies on behalf of hard-working American taxpayers. Yet in the same breath, Democrats are fighting to withhold the paychecks of air traffic controllers, our troops, Federal custodial staff. They can't be serious. The level of hypocrisy displayed by the minority leader and my Democratic colleagues is appalling to the office they hold and the constituents they serve. A government shutdown, of course, doesn't just affect the Federal workforce. For instance, food inspectors will be forced to stop their work, interrupting our food supply chains. It is as if the Democrats are trying to finish Joe Biden's job of driving up prices in the grocery store.

Let me remind everyone of why we are on the verge of a government shutdown. Just a few months ago, Senator Schumer and my Democratic colleagues held the majority here. During that time, Republicans joined with Democrats to vote 11 out of 12 government funding bills from committee--11 out of 12. Six of them were unanimous. The other five passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. That would seem to be a great accomplishment in a too-often-divided Washington--11 out of 12 bills, 6 unanimous, 5 with overwhelming bipartisan support.

But even though we had all those spending bills ready to go last summer on a bipartisan basis, then-Majority Leader Schumer failed to bring a single bill to the floor from August to the end of last year. Not a single bill. Even though--let me say it again--11 out of 12 passed out of committee; six were unanimous; and the other five were overwhelmingly bipartisan. Not a single one.

Senator Schumer had 224 days to bring those bills to the floor for a vote--224 days. What did we do, instead? He chose to prioritize election-year stunts trying to distract voters from Joe Biden's disastrous border crisis. He had a vote on mandating government-funded fertility treatments for biological men--more important than funding the government.

We also confirmed a whole host of unqualified Biden nominees you have never heard of for jobs you didn't know existed, not to mention a whole host of unqualified judges in States with two Democrat Senators who couldn't have gotten confirmed for the first 4 years and were only jammed through in a lameduck session, when we also could have been passing those spending bills to fund the government so we wouldn't be in this position.

Senator Schumer claims to care about the livelihoods of Federal workers, but as leader, he seemed more preoccupied with putting on a big political show. Yet here is Senator Schumer claiming that Republican partisanship is the reason for shutting down the government. Spare me.

It continued this year. Since Republicans took over, he blocked negotiations that would have made this funding bill a bipartisan effort from the start. Senator Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Tom Cole, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, made multiple, multiple offers to their Democratic counterparts to negotiate on a bipartisan basis government funding bills, just like we did last summer. But, no. Senator Schumer blocked it time and time again until just a few days ago.

Yet now, supposedly, the clock has run out. He wants another 30 days--another 30 days--when he had 224 days last year to do this, when we had over 60 days this year to negotiate on a bipartisan basis.

The time for those negotiations has regrettably passed. It is time to finish last year's business and move on to this year's business.

Democrats have one last chance to join Republicans and support a simple yearlong funding bill. Republicans encourage our Democratic colleagues to join this effort to keep the government funded for the American people we all serve.

Shutting our government down, as many of my Democratic colleagues are apparently considering, is not just some political stunt. There are real and consequential national security risks if they choose to go through with this reckless scheme.

A government shutdown will disrupt military training and could force us to cancel planned exercises with our allies and partners. These are the very same alliances Democrats claim to care so much about supporting and preserving. Furthermore, a shutdown would disrupt ongoing work to modernize our nuclear forces, which is already behind schedule. Any further delay would make this bad situation even worse.

And the potential Schumer shutdown will hurt military preparedness by slowing recruiting, create uncertainty in our defense supply chains, and impact our ability to produce badly needed munitions. This is not the message of strength we want to send to the allies we stand beside and the enemies we stand against.

To my Democratic colleagues who still believe that shutting down the government is the principled choice that you need to--again, it is hard for me to explain their position--shut down the government to protect the government, let me ask you, simply: What does voting no accomplish? Six months ago, Senator Schumer said:

If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans who suffer most.

That was Senator Schumer. What has happened in the last 6 months? Nothing, as far as I could tell, except who the American people elected to lead the government.

So if this Schumer shutdown stunt is just a threat to get Republicans to agree to a fake short-term extension that brings us right back to where we are now, again, what is the point?

The Democrats' hypocritical arguments reveal, once again, they are not serious about putting their duty to the American people above partnership, pettiness and pride.

I invite them all to justify the Schumer shutdown to the parents who must postpone a trip to a national park with their children after months of saving and planning; or to explain your reasoning for the Schumer shutdown to the veteran who has already taken a day off work to sign up for healthcare at his regional benefits office only to find it closed; or to defend the Schumer shutdown to the Federal employee who puts all of her groceries on a credit card to make sure there is enough money left at the end of the month to cover her rent.

My friends, we have two choices before us, and they are quite simple: either keep the government open and working for the people or shut it down. To do what exactly? I don't know. I think we can all agree that the American people deserve better than a government that is a day late and a couple billion dollars short. So I encourage my Democratic colleagues to vote with us to simply fund the government. Let's not have a Schumer shutdown.

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