DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS MUST COME TOGETHER TO REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 9
(House of Representatives - January 16, 2019)
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[Page H611]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS MUST COME TOGETHER TO REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Malinowski) for 5 minutes.
Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Speaker, I rise as a freshman who came here to
get things done on the 26th day of the longest government shutdown in
American history.
For 26 days, we have had to explain to 800,000 dedicated, patriotic
Americans why we will not pay them for their service to our country,
even as they must keep paying for their rent, their medicine and their
kids' educations.
For 26 days, we have had to explain why small business owners can't
get loans; why food safety inspections are suspended; why lines are
growing and terminals are being shut down at our airports; why we are
willing to jeopardize the safety of air travelers; why we can't protect
our National Parks from desecration; and why, if securing our country
is so important, we aren't paying the Coast Guard, and Customs and
Border Protection officers whose job it is to secure it.
In the last few days, I have been hearing from college students in my
district who have until February 1 to apply for financial aid, but they
can't access their tax transcripts from the IRS.
Mr. Speaker, I ask: Why are we doing this to ourselves? The President
says it is because of border security. But if we are honest, we know
that that is not what this is about. If getting $5.7 billion for a
border wall is important enough to inflict this much suffering on
Americans, why didn't the President pick this fight in the 2 years when
his party controlled both Houses of the Congress?
Why is he doing this now? I think we know the answer. I fear that for
the President the chaos is sometimes not a means to an end, but an end
in itself. He doesn't want a wall, he wants a fight over the wall; not
a compromise to open the government, but a conflict that dismantles the
government. And that raises the stakes for all of us.
For this is not about how we secure the border, as important as that
is to all of us. It is about how we govern our country. We have a
chance now to say, once and for all, Presidents are entitled to try to
persuade us to support their priorities, but if they fail to persuade
us, they are not entitled to shut the government down to get their way.
None of us, not Democrats or Republicans, are entitled to hold
hostage the basic functions of our government to force our will on
others. And if we give into this tactic now, it will be used again, and
again, and again. We will have chaos in our government for as far as
the eye can see.
So how do we solve this problem? We will not solve it by abdicating
our responsibility in the Congress and waiting for the President to
agree on something. If we wait for that, we will be waiting forever.
We will not solve it by encouraging him to use emergency powers or to
use our military to defy the Congress. That would tear another hole in
our constitutional fabric.
We will solve it when the House and the Senate Democrats and
Republicans come together to say: This is not how we do business in a
democracy.
Mr. Speaker, instead of enabling this abdication of responsibility by
the White House, let us rise to our responsibility in the Congress. Let
us work together to reopen the government by passing the same bills we
were all willing to vote for across party lines last year, and then
let's sit down together as adults to talk about immigration and the
border as part of the debate about funding the Department of Homeland
Security when both sides can put their ideas on the table and find
common ground.
If we do that, we will not only address border security, we will
break this pernicious practice of taking the American people hostage
when we don't get our way.
We can make this the shutdown to end all shutdowns.
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