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Floor Speech
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Mr. MORENO. My colleague will yield for a question?
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Mr. MORENO. To all the Senators here, I ask you to think about a couple concepts that come from the private sector.
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Mr. MORENO. I remember the 2008 financial crisis as follows: It was a situation where any day, you would think, we are going to face total and complete bankruptcy.
I had mortgaged everything I owned in my life. I had maxed out my credit cards. I took out loans so big, I couldn't even do the math in my head. I would wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning wondering how I was going to make payroll.
My wife would say: Are you OK?
I would say: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I am fine.
I think, Mr. President, you have been there.
I had to ask my team to make a lot of sacrifices. We had to cut pay. We had to make a lot of adjustments because it was a matter of life or death. Either the business was going to survive or we were going to collectively perish into the great abyss of bankruptcy.
There is a concept that is important in creating a culture that says that as a leader, you must be willing to live in the shared experience of your team.
Now, I will contradict a little bit of what you said. Each of us in this Chamber makes $175,000 a year. That is not what the average American makes. That is dramatically more than the average American makes, and it is certainly a lot more than what the average TSA worker makes or the average FEMA worker who has to go out and help in places all over the country.
I saw the very sad storms that Hawaii is seeing, and I hope we get help to those people. But it is not going to be me that goes there; it is going to be the hard-working men and women of FEMA that go there, and they make a fraction of what we do.
I can't imagine having a job in which, for the third time in 6 months, you have to explain to your wife or husband or kids: Hey, I didn't get a paycheck today.
The kids look at you and say: Well, what did you do? What did you do to not get a paycheck? Were you insubordinate? Did you not show up for work? Did you yell at your boss?
Nope. I did everything right--other than work for the Department of Homeland Security.
Why would you stay in that job?
I think that is the thing we don't understand, is that people have breaking points where they just say: I am just not going to work here anymore.
This particular Agency, more than anything else, has a very simple charter: Protect us from dangers from abroad. These are the people that chase transnational criminals. I don't think any of us in this Chamber would be willing to go do that. It is tough work, brutal work. They put their lives at risk.
Not only do I think we should give them their paychecks, I think we should say: Thank you. Thank you for being willing to do this job.
I will end with this to my colleagues: We have to eat our own dog food. If we don't eat our own dog food, we will get disconnected permanently from the people we serve.
If we are willing to accept a paycheck that is three, four times what the average American makes and we deposit that every month and we say: Well, look, I have to pay the bills--I don't care how wealthy you are, if somebody is a multimillionaire or not a multimillionaire, 175 grand a year is a lot of money, certainly enough to pay the bills. Just ask the people who make three times less than that--they figure out how to make the bills.
This isn't about giving up the paycheck or giving up money--which, by the way, I think we should. I don't think we should get paid retroactively. I think we should just say: Look, you didn't do your fundamental duty, which is to fund the government, and if you have a policy dispute, then do the hard work. Go into the rooms and make the calls and go out there and persuade your colleagues. In the meantime, don't punish the workers. Don't punish the workers.
I grew up coming to America in the seventies and eighties. I looked at Democrats like Tip O'Neill and J.F.K. These were Democrats who said: Above all else, we are the party of the working men and women of this country. We are for the people who built this country. The very wealthy--they are just fine. They are just fine. But we focus on the working men and women of this country.
What drove me to run for office--not what I expected ever to do in my life, believe me. I never did. But I do consider it a great honor. Every day, including today--a beautiful, sunny day--I see the Capitol, and I think, my God, what would my mom and dad think if they were alive, that their youngest son gets to work in the U.S. Capitol?
It is crazy. Do you know what my mom would say? Only in America. Only in America.
But there are 260,000 families that aren't feeling the love right now. The least we could do today is say: We join you in that shared sacrifice. We join you so that we can understand what it is like to have to leave here and say ``Hey, yeah, not good. We are not going to get a paycheck because we didn't do our job.''
If we don't do that, what do you think the message is? You are much more elegant than I am. I think the accent does you 80 percent of the bidding there. But what do you think that says?
Here is my question: What does a signal of saying ``No, no, no, no. We insist on getting paid three times what the average American makes. We are not willing to sacrifice anything because maybe we are special''--is that the message that is sent?
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Mr. MORENO. Will my colleague yield for a quick question?
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Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I just wanted to clarify where we are right now because I think it was--we maybe rushed through it.
My question to my colleague from Louisiana is: This doesn't remove money from Senators; this just holds the money until the government reopens, much like the employees at DHS, where their paycheck is being held but, once we do our job--because they are doing their job--once we do our job, everybody would then get paid, correct? There is no loss of money.
And so that seems to me--would the Senator agree that that is like a bare minimum standard because any of us can go to the clerk of the Senate and say: Hey, hold my check until this government opens. What the Senator's resolution is saying is that all of us should do that, correct?
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Mr. MORENO. Will my colleague yield for a question?
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Mr. MORENO. I would ask my colleague if he would consider resubmitting your question again as a motion to reconsider.
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Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, just a parliamentary inquiry. Again, this is just somebody who has not been here a long time. I just want a clarification--a parliamentary inquiry: In order to speak before the U.S. Senate, my understanding is that the Senator has to yield the floor or complete his speech. Another Senator, if ordered to speak, has to seek recognition from the Chair in order to speak; is that correct or not?
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Mr. MORENO. Thank you, Mr. President.
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