Government Funding
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, as the expression goes, it is time for Democrats to fish or cut bait. We have 2 days until government funding expires. Democrats need to decide if they are going to support funding legislation that came over from the House or if they are going to shut down the government. So far, it is looking like they plan to shut it down.
The Democratic leader came to the floor, yesterday afternoon, and had the nerve to complain about the House bill. He wants yet another short- term piece of funding legislation to, as he said, ``give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass.''
Well, I am not sure how long the Democratic leader thinks we should drag out the funding process for fiscal year 2025: Until fiscal year 2026? Beyond?
We are already nearly 6 months into the 2025 fiscal year. In other words, we are halfway through--halfway through--this fiscal year, and it is past time to get fiscal year 2025 funding situated.
I would like to suggest to the Democratic leader that, if he has problems with the current situation, maybe--just maybe--he should have funded the government when he was in charge. The reason we are stuck here voting on a CR for the rest of 2025 is because the Democratic leader refused to consider appropriations bills last year.
Senators Murray and Collins, then chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, did a lot of work to deliver the fiscal year 2025 appropriations bills. In fact, they had moved 11--11--of the 12 bills out of the Appropriations Committee by the end of August, last year--or, I should say, the end of July, last year--and 6 of those bills, 6 of the 11 that the Appropriations Committee passed by the end of July, last year, passed unanimously coming out of the committee. The others were passed with big bipartisan majorities.
And then what happened? Well, then, the Democratic leader just sat on it. In his remaining 5 months as majority leader, he didn't bring a single fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill to the floor. So it is absolutely rich for him to be coming down to the floor now to call for a short- term CR--another short-term CR--to negotiate fiscal 2025 legislation. He had his chance for months.
I am no fan of continuing resolutions. In fact, I intend to do my very best to ensure that, from here on out, the government is funded through appropriations bills that proceed through regular order. But at this point, our best option is a continuing resolution to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2025 and clear the decks for the fiscal year 2026 appropriations process to begin, because, while the Democrat leader may have forgotten, given his decision to ignore regular-order appropriations last year, it is almost time to start considering fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills.
And I fully intend for us to consider them on the floor. My goal is to schedule floor action for every fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill that comes out of the committee, where they can be debated, amended, and passed for further negotiation with the House.
And that, of course, will require cooperation from Democrats. But I hope--I really hope--the Democrats will remember this situation, and others that we have been placed in, and work in partnership with Republicans to restore the regular-order appropriations process.
Continuing resolutions are never the preferred option, but thanks to the Democrat leader's decision to abandon the fiscal year 2025 appropriations process, the continuing resolution we have before us is the best option we have to fund the government for the balance of this year.
So it is time for the Democrat leader to acknowledge that it is his decisions that put us here and urge his colleagues to accept the situation and vote to fund the government rather than let it shutdown at midnight on Friday. If he doesn't, he will have the American people to answer to.
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