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Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, after 40 long days, I am hopeful we can finally bring this shutdown to an end. I don't need to go over all the reasons why it is imperative to get the government open as soon as possible. From the truly precarious situation we are in with regard to air travel, the fact that our staffs have been working without pay for a full 40 days now, all of us, Republicans and Democrats, who support this bill know that the time to act is now.
So in just a few minutes, I will call up the vehicle for a clean continuing resolution, packaged with three bipartisan, yearlong appropriations bills: Agriculture appropriations, Military Construction, VA appropriations, and Legislative Branch appropriations. These bills will fund SNAP for the entire fiscal year, they will fund WIC for the entire fiscal year, and they will fund our veterans for the entire fiscal year.
After 40 days of uncertainty, I am profoundly glad to be able to announce nutrition programs, our veterans, and other critical priorities will have their full-year funding, and my goal is to quickly move to other full-year appropriations bills.
As I have said many times, I firmly believe that the way to fund the government is by passing appropriations bills through regular order--a process that gives Senators from both parties the fullest chance to make their voices heard. Healthcare
Mr. President, I also want to mention healthcare. There has been a lot of talk over the last several weeks on both sides of the aisle about the healthcare crisis in this country, and I am thankful to be able to say that we have Senators, both Democrat and Republican, who are eager to get to work to address that crisis in a bipartisan way. These Senators are not interested in political games; they are interested in finding real ways to address healthcare costs for American families. We also have a President who is willing to sit down and get to work on this issue. So I am looking forward to seeing what solutions might be brought forward.
Regardless, as I have said for weeks to my Democrat friends, I will schedule a vote on their proposal, and I have committed to having that vote no later than the second week in December.
Again, I am optimistic that after almost 6 weeks of this shutdown, we will finally be able to end it.
I will call up that bill in a matter of minutes, and I look forward to passing the clean continuing resolution and appropriations bill package in the very near future. 5371.
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Mr. THUNE. 5371.
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