Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, what we just witnessed was an effort by Senator Harry Reid to move the votes--the critical votes--on keeping the government open to this evening. What we have just heard from the Republican side of the aisle is they want to stall and delay this even more.

It is not just a matter of losing a legislative day in the Senate----

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Mr. DURBIN. Let me start by acknowledging what the Senator from Tennessee just said.

I have worked with Senator Corker on so many issues, bipartisan issues, and I salute him for his efforts to try to find bipartisan solutions. What he said is indicative of the problem we face now.

Two Senators--and it is their right under the Senate rules--the Senator from Utah and the junior Senator from Texas, have decided that they wish to delay this another day. They want to stall this another day. It isn't only losing a legislative day; it is more.

Look how long it took us to bring up the House continuing resolution. If I am not mistaken, they voted on it last Friday. We are thinking about voting on it tomorrow, 7 days later.

It tells you that the Senate rules, even at their best, with one Member objecting, can mean that measures take a long time. Ordinarily, it means we waste time, but this time it is critically more important because the government will not be funded.

Tuesday morning, all across America we will not fund the government because of the actions just taken on the floor of the Senate by Senator Cruz of Texas and Senator Lee of Utah. They are trying to slow this down and create a political crisis.

They are playing high stakes poker with other people's money. The victims of this political crisis will not be the Senators and House Members. It will be a lot of innocent people, a lot of workers across America, who only want to get up and do their work for the government to make this the greatest nation on Earth.

Some of them are risking their lives in uniform. They will be paid, but their paychecks will be delayed. What it means is they have to contact their wives and spouses back home Tuesday--if this delay by Senator Cruz and Senator Lee continues--they will have to contact them and say: Honey, it may be a little difficult this pay period. It doesn't look like we are going to get a paycheck because Congress has shut down the government.

There are others too, all across America, thousands of them, doing their work for this government at the FBI and at intelligence agencies that will go dark. Why have we reached this point? Why do these two Senators--two Senators--think this is in the best interests of the United States of America?

We have heard reports from economists, this cannot help our Nation, shutting down the government and failing to extend the debt ceiling. We are going to find ourselves in a position where this economy is going to start to stall.

People will start searching their savings accounts and notice their investments are going down in value. Why? Because two Republican Senators insisted that we couldn't speed up this vote and move this process forward to solve this problem.

The best explanation they can give us is they have notified their friends in the media and those on the e-mail to stay tuned for Friday. Friday is going to be the big day, their big day in the Sun. So they are delaying our actions here for a full day so that they can get adequate publicity for what they are about to do.

This is not in the best interests of the Senate and it is surely not in the best interests of the United States of America.

I listened to Senator Reid. He made an effort to come forward and expedite this process. There are people outside this door who warned us not to do that. They said: If you send this back to the House, it gives them time to do something.

Senator Reid has said from the start: We will not be party to delaying this critically important decision. There is too much at stake. We are going to move this through as quickly as we can, and we have.

At this point now, it is on the shoulders of those two Senators, those two tea party Republican Senators, who have decided that they want to close down the government or at least come closer to running the risk of closing down this government.

That isn't in the best interests of dealing with the issues that face America.

My job on the Senate Appropriations Committee is to be the chair of one of the most important subcommittees, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. I never dreamed I would have this responsibility. But with the passing of a genuine American hero, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, this mantel fell on my shoulders. Almost 60 percent of all domestic discretionary funds spent by the Federal Government go through this one subcommittee.

There is a lot of hard work involved in putting the appropriation together. But when you consider the responsibility we have, it is even more substantial. This appropriation supports our men and women in uniform and the Nation's intelligence agencies that keep our country safe.

I wish to state what a government shutdown is going to mean to them. A government shutdown is going to mean a lot of hardship. I mentioned earlier uniformed troops calling their spouses to say: We are not going to get our paychecks on time this month. Try to make do if you need it.

This is something totally necessary and something brought on by an action on the floor of the Senate just minutes ago by Republican Senators.

There are more than 700,000 civilian employees in the Department of Defense, and half of them will be sent home immediately Tuesday morning--sent home.

Men and women who work at military installations and in the Pentagon will be sent home from work. Over 80 percent of Department of Defense civilians work outside of the Pentagon, including 12,000 of them who work in my State. They will be given notice on Tuesday morning: You have to go home. Why? Because there was a promise made for some publicity on Friday by a couple of Senators.

That is unacceptable.

A substantial number of these hard-working men and women are going to be furloughed. They already face furlough because of a sequester. If we allow this government to shut down, once again, they will have to figure out how to make ends meet. Men and women who were trying to keep us safe in this country, many of them risking their lives, are now going to be pawns in this political game. It is an unconscionable breach of faith.

The risk to national security imposed by a shutdown is not confined to the military. It will cripple our intelligence community. These men and women serve as our country's first line of defense. We rely on these agencies to warn us of threats, to prevent terrorist attacks, and inform leaders making critical, national security decisions.

The intelligence community workforce, overwhelmingly made up of civilians, the greatest portion of them will be furloughed because of a government shutdown, a government shutdown that is totally unnecessary brought on by the House Republicans and two Senate Republicans. This shutdown will be quick, and the principal agencies will largely go dark within 4 to 8 hours of a shutdown order.

In America, these intelligence agencies that keep us safe are going to go dark because of this political strategy. If the government shuts down, all DOD work will stop on weapons and equipment maintenance not directly related to war. Bases will not be maintained, but you will see a degradation of facilities. We will see massive disruptions all across the country.

The Rock Island Arsenal in my State is a critical arsenal that supports more than 54,000 Active, Reserve, and retired military. The arsenal is the largest employer in the Illinois-Iowa region with more than 7,500 employees and more than 70 Federal and commercial tenants. The facility adds $1 billion to the local economy, supporting 14,000 jobs in the region.

A government shutdown will throw production schedules at Rock Island into chaos as orders get cut back and civilians sit at home under furlough. I cannot imagine going to these men and women and saying: The reason you have had this furlough and can't come to work is because two Senators decided they needed some publicity on Friday. Putting the arsenal's capabilities at risk degrades the defense industrial base. It jeopardizes our national and local economy.

The same thing is true at Scott Air Force Base. In a shutdown, its 5,000 civilian employees would experience the same loss of pay as everybody else. Scott's 5,500 active duty military personnel and their families would have to get by on savings and reserves while they wait for reimbursement with later paychecks.

When we go through these lists--and the lists are long--one thinks how totally unnecessary it is. Senator Reid has come to the floor repeatedly to tell you what the American people think. Eighty percent of the American people think this is foolish and wasteful. Seventy-five percent of Republicans have given up on this strategy.

Yet a handful of willful Members of the House and Senate decided they are going to keep going down this road. I hope they will have some revelations in the next few minutes or hours, maybe overnight. I hope they will reconsider what they have done, the risk they are putting this country in.

It is not appropriate, it is not fair. I have listened to them try to explain how they can have a filibuster for 21 hours and then turn around and unanimously vote for the next item up on business. It may be an argument that the Senator from Texas thinks he understands clearly. Most Americans don't understand what he was saying for 21 hours and then turning around and voting overwhelmingly to move forward on the bill.

I wish to make one thing clear before we go any further. ObamaCare as we know it is already funded. Senator Harry Reid is not going to be funding ObamaCare; it is already funded, and it will be. It will be under appropriations bills that we pass in CRs. This notion that he is going to somehow do something sinister--let me remind critics that we brought this to a vote in the Senate, one of the most historic votes, painful votes.

Senator Reid may remember when our colleague Senator Ted Kennedy was brought here on the floor of the Senate to vote for the Affordable Care Act. The man was literally dying of cancer, but this meant so much to him that he came down here for the vote at great personal risk and sacrifice. It was great to see his smiling face come through that door again, but we knew we would never see him again and we didn't.

That is the kind of sacrifice that was made. The votes were taken. Then in the next presidential election there was a referendum for ObamaCare. The American people were clear. They reelected President Obama. They rejected Governor Romney's promise to repeal ObamaCare.

These Members, at least two of them, can't accept the verdict of history. They continue to want to fight this battle. As I have said, they are fighting it at the expense of a lot of innocent people across America, at the expense of some of the best workers in the world. Those in military uniform and those in the civilian capacity do a great job for us every single day.

Picking on them, deciding to make them the object of this political exercise, is beneath us as a great institution.

Let me close by saying this. I will give credit to Senator Cruz when he was doing his 21 hours. I asked him point blank: So you want to eliminate the protection in ObamaCare that says that health insurance companies can't discriminate against children and families that have preexisting conditions?

He said: Yes, I do. I want to eliminate all of them.

I said: You want to eliminate the provision that says you can't limit the coverage in health insurance policies so people will have enough money for serious illness, cancer therapy and surgery?

I want to eliminate it all, he said.

You want to eliminate that protection for families to keep their kids on their own health insurance policies up to age 26--young people looking for jobs who may not have health insurance--you want to eliminate that too?

I want to eliminate every bit of it.

He was consistent--consistently wrong--because he fails to understand what working families across America face every single day, what 50 million uninsured Americans face with no protection, no peace of mind.

God forbid he ever spends a moment as the parent of a sick child without health insurance. I have been there. You never want that experience in your life for yourself or anybody else.

I asked Senator Cruz to tell us about his own personal health insurance since he decided he is going to be the arbiter on health insurance for the rest of America and for Congress. He won't give me a straight answer on how he has his own health insurance for his family. I think he owes that to us. He has told us a lot about his great family--and there are some wonderful stories--but when it comes to this issue, he ought to tell us.

Where does he get his health insurance? Who pays for it? What is the employer's contribution? What is the tax deduction taken by your employer, if any, for your health insurance? These are legitimate questions.

He has raised these questions about millions of families across America. He said: They are just fine. We can do without ObamaCare.

Let us hear his explanation of how he protects his family when it comes to health insurance. I don't think that is an unreasonable question. After all, he is the one who raised the issue.

I yield the floor.

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