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Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I will ask you, I will ask everybody in the Chamber, everybody listening to me on C-SPAN: Aren't you getting sick and tired of the shutdown showdowns? I am. In 15 years, we should have passed 180 appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. We passed six--3.6 percent. That is a 96.7-percent failure rate.

I am sorry the appropriations process is broken. This bill does nothing to diminish the authority of the appropriators. What it does is it removes all the turmoil, all the disruption of people's lives. It takes away the partisan bickering, and it just--every 14-day rolling appropriations bill to keep any Department open, where we haven't passed an appropriations bill, gives appropriators time to find areas of agreement and work on compromise in disagreement.

Let me be clear, a vote against the Eliminate Shutdowns Act is a vote to continue the chaos and to continue the partisan game playing with people's lives.

And by the way, this won't be the only time we will vote on this. I will guarantee you that if we go into a shutdown. Please, do right by the American people. Vote for the Eliminate Shutdowns Act. We can do away with shutdowns for all time. A simple vote yes will do that.

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