-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. COLLINS. I want to thank the Senator from Alaska, who is an extraordinarily talented leader on the Appropriations Committee, for her comments.

Mr. President, I rise to urge passage of this funding measure to prevent an unnecessary, harmful, and costly government shutdown at midnight tonight.

Government shutdowns are inherently a failure to govern effectively and have negative consequences all across government. They inevitably require certain government employees, such as Border Patrol agents, members of our military and Coast Guard, TSA screeners, and air traffic controllers, to report to work with no certainty at all on when they will receive their next paycheck. That is just unfair.

Shutdowns also put critical investments in our national defense on hold. Training exercises would be limited, which could hurt our Nation's readiness. New programs would be paused, delaying new capabilities from getting to our warfighters. That is why we have always, in the past, avoided CRs for the Department of Defense. At our borders, the men and women performing vital law enforcement activities would have to do so without pay and without the assistance of support staff, putting more pressure on frontline operators.

Other harmful potential impacts include curtailed operations to the Veterans Benefits Administration, resulting in the closure of education and GI bill call centers and the suspension of career counseling and transition assistance for our veterans; the closure of our wonderful national parks to visitors; increased travel delays as the onboarding of additional TSA agents would stall, and some FAA employees would face furloughs; and costly delays for projects at the Army Corps of Engineers and critical water infrastructure projects.

That is just a very partial list of the harm that would be done from a government shutdown. This unfortunate situation that we are in with a continuing resolution should, however, have been avoided. The Senate should have finished these bills last year. I called for that repeatedly, as did many other Members.

Senator Murray and I worked as a team, provided leadership, consulted with the members of our Senate Appropriations Committee. Each of us worked so hard to report 11 of the 12 bills with overwhelming bipartisan support, including 6 which came out of our committee unanimously. Unfortunately, these bipartisan bills languished on the calendar for months, never being brought to the floor for consideration.

This decision by the then-Senate majority leader denied Senators the opportunity to debate and amend our reported bills and denied the House and the Senate the chance to go to conference and work out the differences among the bills. Similarly, attempts since January by House Chairman Tom Cole and I to reach agreement with our Democratic counterparts regrettably were not successful, despite my making five good-faith offers. Now that opportunity is gone. A yearlong CR is, by no means, my first choice, but our focus now, given where we are, must be on preventing a government shutdown.

For the most part, this is a straightforward CR that simply continues fiscal year 2024 funding levels. Now, it does include--and this is important--a number of needed anomalies that are aimed at addressing pressing needs.

For example, the CR realigns funding in the appropriations accounts for the Department of Defense to meet current global threats and covers the cost of pay raises for junior enlisted personnel.

It provides increased funding for housing assistance and for what is known as the WIC Program--for Women, Infants, and Children--to maintain support for these vulnerable families.

Within the Department of Homeland Security, the continuing resolution includes targeted increases to support ICE operations, to avoid furloughs of TSA airport screeners, and to fund much needed pay raises for members of our Coast Guard.

It also includes increased funding for the FAA so that more air traffic controllers can be hired to make our Nation's airspace safer.

We can delay no longer. It is essential that the continuing resolution be adopted today in order to prevent a harmful government shutdown. I urge its adoption. Let each and every one of us here commit to working together on the fiscal year 2026 budget so that we can enact appropriations bills prior to the start of the new fiscal year.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source