-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, we are now in the third day of this government shutdown, and once again, our Democratic colleagues are going to have the opportunity to vote for a clean, nonpartisan continuing resolution that would open the government and allow us to continue working on the appropriations process.
Just to kind of give a little perspective on that, here are the statistics showing all of the Biden-era clean CRs that were passed. There were 13 of them--13 of them during the Biden administration, and 96 percent of the Democrats voted for it. Now they can't vote for a clean resolution. How do you explain that?
Unfortunately, Democratic leadership is demanding more than $1 trillion in new spending just to keep the government open. So instead of voting for this clean CR, they want more than $1 trillion in new spending in a CR that--the CR has no Republican priorities in it; it is just a clean CR.
So how is it we are supposed to put trillions of dollars of Democrat priorities in a CR that goes until November 21? That is what Leader Schumer has said, and that is exactly why this is the Schumer shutdown.
They have taken our government hostage with a list of demands that is really quite astonishing. They want funding for healthcare for illegal immigrants, and they want more subsidies for pandemic-era health insurance, all while actually repealing a $50 billion healthcare fund for rural hospitals that was put in the One Big Beautiful Bill. How does that make sense? In the meantime, vital programs that support hard-working American families have either been shuttered or are very nearly out of money.
Let's end this Schumer shutdown and pass a clean, short-term CR--the same kind of clean CR, mind you, that, as I said, 96 percent of Democrats voted to support 13 times during the Biden administration. That is what this shows.
Let's pass this clean CR, get back to work, and move our appropriations bills through regular order. That is how we are supposed to do it--through regular order. Already, we have made progress in this Congress by doing just that. The Appropriations Committee has passed 8 of the 12 approps bills on a bipartisan basis. As a matter of fact, we just approved, not too long ago, three of them--one of them was my Ag appropriations bill--by big bipartisan majorities here on the floor in the Senate. Compare that to last Congress, when Leader Schumer refused to allow us to bring any of the appropriations bills to the floor.
In fact, nearly a month ago now, the House requested a formal conference on the three bills that I just referenced that we passed across the floor with large bipartisan majorities, and we are ready to go to conference with them and finish our work on those appropriations bills through regular order, as I just said.
Our majority leader has said very clearly that he is ready to bring Defense appropriations and the Labor-Health bill, which would actually get us up north of 75, maybe even 80 percent of the appropriations process finished. He is ready to bring those two bills to the floor as soon as we are open and operating.
We need to reopen the government to return to our bipartisan appropriations work and get back to conducting the business of the American people.
Another good example is the work we are doing for our ag producers, and I know the Presiding Officer knows about that very well. Every American depends every single day on the high-quality, low-cost food supply that our farmers and ranchers provide.
At the same time, our farmers and ranchers depend on access to markets to ensure they get good prices for the high-quality crops they produce. This is particularly true, for example, for soybean farmers in my State of North Dakota, where we export 90 percent of what we grow--a lot of that going to markets like China.
With harvest season underway, the Trump administration continues to fight for better markets for our farmers and ranchers, but in the meantime, our producers need a bridge to stronger markets and the updated farm safety net which we included as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Due to China's efforts to reduce commodity prices and push up the cost of production, our farmers are having a hard time right now, as you well know.
As the administration works to secure better trade deals for our Nation, it is critical that we don't allow China to use our farmers as a pressure point in those negotiations. That is why I have been working--along with others--with this administration on emergency assistance to bridge that gap while we seek better trade agreements and more export sales for our farmers.
Along with Senate Ag Committee chairman Senator Boozman, we have done a lot of work, and we are ready to go when the President and the Secretary decide it is time to move forward with a plan that will help bridge that gap and keep our producers afloat. Doing so will give the administration's trade team needed leverage in these negotiations with China.
U.S. producers deserve to be treated fairly in the global marketplace, not to be used as a tool by China in their negotiations on fair trade, which we demand.
The administration's efforts are all about securing better trade terms that not only reduce foreign tariffs but eliminate the nontariff trade barriers that other countries use to lock out American farmers and ranchers.
By acting now and providing assistance to our producers during these negotiations, we will send a very strong signal to China that their tactics will not work.
That is how we secure better market access for our producers for the long term. That is exactly what President Trump did in his first term in the negotiations with China. We worked with him on the Market Facilitation Program to keep our farmers in the game. The result was that President Trump secured a $50 billion agreement from China to purchase our ag commodities.
That is what we are working to do again. So let's get this government back open so we can continue that hard work. You know, that is just one example of the work that needs to get done for the American people.
So, again, we are going to have a vote here in a little bit, and once again, I ask that our Democrat colleagues join with us and vote to get this government open. It is a clean, short-term resolution so that we can do the work of the American people.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source