Unanimous Consent Request--H.J. Res. 72

Floor Speech

Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives H.J. Res. 72, making continuing appropriations for veterans' benefits for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three times and passed; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, what we are being told by the majority is that we have to vote for everything in order to fund anything. Moments ago, I proposed a unanimous consent request that if approved would provide for the immediate availability of mandatory funds generally controlled through the annual appropriations process for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I thank the Republican leader for making similar requests earlier today and other Republican colleagues for joining him. I look forward to making other similar requests in the coming hours. Frankly, I am a little stunned at some of the things we are hearing from the other side of the aisle. It is difficult for me to understand the objection to bills the House passed last night and the ones Senate Republicans are trying to pass today.

First, this legislation does not fund anything that is controversial. None of the pieces of legislation being worked on and passed by the House right now and last night can be considered controversial. These bills provide funding for things such as veterans' disability benefits, the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks open and they make sure our National Guard personnel get paid.

There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats do not agree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be among those things. Second, the President himself has asked Congress to do this. I remind my friends exactly what he said a few days ago, speaking to what might happen during a government shutdown.

He said:

Office buildings would close, paychecks would be delayed. Vital services for seniors and veterans, women and children, businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung ..... Veterans who've sacrificed for their country, will find their support centers unstaffed ..... Tourists will find every one of America's national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed. And of course the communities and small businesses that rely on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out of customers and out of luck.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives took the President of the United States at his word and started acting immediately to draft bills that would make sure these priorities received funding. In response, Senate Democrats have said this plan to fund things such as veterans, national parks, and others was fundamentally unserious. They said Republicans were playing games. The biggest head-scratcher of them all, the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things he said he wanted to fund, that he would like Congress to fund.

It makes me wonder, why is it that the President of the United States and the Democrats in the Senate are having such a hard time taking yes for an answer. The fundamental objection, as I understand it, has been that because these bills, passed by the House of Representatives last night, and those being passed today, within the next couple of hours, because those bills do not fund everything, they are objectionable; in other words, we have to fund everything or we may fund nothing.

I have to remind my colleagues that normally, under regular order, Congress will vote on and ultimately approve a dozen or so separate segmented appropriations measures, making sure we address each year within our Federal Government what it is that we are spending money on. This is a big government, one that expends between $3.5 and $4 trillion a year. It is appropriate that we break this up into pieces.

But over the last 4 1/2 years or so, we have been operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, measures that basically require us to fund everything or fund nothing. So what this proposal does, what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are quite wisely doing is saying let's start with those areas as to which there is the most broad-based bipartisan consensus, and let's keep government funded at current levels, as the continuing resolution would do within those areas, and let's build consensus and let's start funding the government in those areas where there is not significant objection.

What I do not hear from my colleagues is a substantive objection to what it does fund. What I hear is they are objecting to what it does not fund. So let's pass those things we can agree should be funded, and let's move forward. I think we can get most of this resolved fairly quickly.

Two of the bills in the House of Representatives that have been passed in this fashion have, quite significantly, received substantial bipartisan support. I expect that the rest of them will receive bipartisan support as well. In the middle of an unfortunate government shutdown, surrounded by all of this diverse rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House, overwhelmingly, to approve these bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in the Senate, acting upon the advice of our better angels and acting in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation to keep our government funded.

Fourth, this is a path forward that was first introduced by none other than the distinguished majority leader himself. On Monday afternoon, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, the Senate majority leader, asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured our Active-Duty military would be paid in the event of a shutdown. In a matter of minutes it was done.

So I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games? Was that unserious? We did that then. Monday, just a few days ago, we passed something that did not fund everything, but it did fund something. It funded the government to the extent necessary to allow us to continue paying our Active-Duty military personnel.

Was that unserious? Well, of course not. Why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans' disability payments, cancer research, or our National Guard?

Why is it all of a sudden trying to play games trying to keep our national parks open?

What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans' benefits?

Finally, none of these bills has any connection to the implementation of ObamaCare.

I understand that my friends across the aisle support that law despite its numerous failings and indications that it is harming the American people and the economy, that it is hurting jobs and threatening the affordability of health insurance.

I understand that some of my friends across the aisle want to protect that law.

We are going to continue to have that debate about that law, especially in light of all of the problems people are having signing up with the exchanges, not to mention the ongoing problems of job losses, wage reductions, hours lost, and people losing their health coverage because of ObamaCare. Especially in light of all of those problems, we should continue having that debate, but that debate isn't essential to every aspect of our government's funding.

Let me be clear. We will do everything in our power to protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. That fight will most certainly continue.

My friends across the aisle are welcome to join that debate, as I am sure they will. But none of these bills, none of the bills that we are considering today relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare.

For this moment, at the very least, we should focus on keeping our promise to the people, those who have sacrificed the most to keep this country free.

I applaud the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. I applaud the Republicans and the Democrats who have supported legislation to help keep our government funded in these critical areas. We can come together if we act in a step-by-step process, if we pursue a step-by-step process for funding our government.

It more closely resembles the way we should have been appropriating in the first place. This is the best way forward. It is the way to help minimize the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of this unfortunate shutdown.

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