January 8, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 3 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
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GOVERNMENT FUNDING; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 3
(Senate - January 08, 2019)
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[Pages S72-S76] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] GOVERNMENT FUNDING Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to talk about hostages, seven hostages--seven spending bills that have come through this Republican-led Chamber, bills the House is ready to move forward on that have, ironically, been taken hostage by the Republican leadership of the Senate and the President of the United States. Those seven hostages, those spending bills, the House has said: Well, Mr. President, we have a difference of opinion that has to be worked out, and that is Homeland Security. So let's continue that debate while setting the other six free--freedom for six bills passed by the Republican-led Senate so we can put America back to work. It sounds like a pretty good idea, but good ideas and common sense seem to be victims--victims of this Presidential temper tantrum over a symbol on the southern border. So it shut down nine Cabinet Departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, Housing, Interior, State, Transportation, and the Treasury--affecting all kinds of everyday functions for Americans. The local schools keep functioning. They figure it out. The local city doesn't shut down. The county doesn't shut down. Has your State shut down? I don't think so. So why this childish behavior, why this incompetence, why [[Page S73]] this disregard for the quality of life for Americans? There are 800,000 workers who are either instructed to work without pay or who are instructed to go on furlough. We are all affected. Every one of us is affected by these Departments being shut down, but those 800,000 workers don't get a paycheck. What does that mean when they try to write the check that will pay for their mortgage or their rent, their student's tuition, or their utility bill? How do they keep the lights turned on? It is all fine for the President. His lights are staying on. He is not inconvenienced, but these 800,000 Americans are more than inconvenienced. They are put into a hard place over this hostage-taking by the President and the Republican leadership of this body. Out in Oregon, the estimate--admittedly somewhat imprecise--is that 9,000 workers have been affected. It seems in the ballpark. Oregon's population is about 1 percent of the country, and 1 percent of 800,000 is 8,000. So 9,000 sounds in the ballpark. There are 9,000 Oregonians who are affected by this foolishness. An air traffic controller wrote to me and said, we are ``tired of being a pawn in the partisan games that are being played in Washington. . . . These shutdowns have compromised aviation safety.'' He said they hinder the FAA's ability to hire and train new controllers and upgrade air traffic control systems. They break down morale and an already understaffed and frustrated workforce. Then there is the constituent who wrote to me to say: ``It is unconscionable for Trump to deprive Federal employees of earned and necessary income, holding them hostage for his foolish wall.'' There are seven spending bills held hostage, along with 800,000 Americans and their families' finances. There is the young man in Lane County whom I spoke with after one of my townhall meetings last week. He was supposed to be moving to California to begin working in the Sierra National Forest this past weekend. He was all set to go, giving up his current living arrangements because he was going to be moving into Forest Service housing. Then the shutdown happened. Now he has no job, has no key to undo the lock. He has no ability to move into that Forest Service housing. He is stranded. There are just all kinds of everyday stories of challenges to Americans. To President Trump, I say: Listen. Listen to the voices of ordinary Americans who are having a hard time because of you and because of the leadership of this Senate--the Republican leadership of this Senate. Ordinary Americans are caught in the middle of this. This is your shutdown, Mr. President. You said so. You said it on television. You said it from the Oval Office. You said you were proud to own this shutdown. You said: I am not going to blame anybody else. This is my shutdown. Yes, it is, Mr. Trump. Mr. President, it is your shutdown, and it is not a shutdown with a mission, a mission that is important, because the mission that is important, that you talk about, is border security. Every Democrat, every Republican supports border security. All of us who were here in 2013 voted for huge sums. I have heard some describe that bill we passed in 2013 as $35 billion for border security. I heard in an earlier speech tonight that it was over $40 billion for border security, smart border security--smart border security. Don't you want to spend the taxpayers' dollars smartly? Do you want to waste them? Do you want to shut down the government and create a hardship for 800,000 people because you want to waste their money? Mr. President, and to my colleagues across the aisle, listen to the common sense of people in your home State who want border security, but they don't want a foolish shutdown. The President said there is a crisis--crisis--at the border because so many people are coming. How many people are coming to the border? Let's take a look. This shows the number of folks who have been apprehended at the border from the year 2000--19 years ago now--to year-to-date in 2018. This is slightly out of date, so you can add a little bit more to that final bar, but you see the point. There were massive amounts in the year 2000, really high numbers in 2001 through 2007, and then the numbers dramatically decline through 2011 and beyond. I just got the numbers before I came to the floor for the last month we had, which was October. About 60,000 people came to the border. In 1 month, in 2000, 200,000 people came to the border. That is quite a difference. That is now less than one-third than last month. There is no crisis there, only the humanitarian crisis, Mr. Trump, that you are creating with your war on children--your war on migrant children--shoving them back into Mexico to put them at the mercy of the Mexican gangs; proceeding to let them into the United States and then ripping them out of the arms of their parents while you lock up their parents; deciding you are going to lock up the children with their parents behind barbed wire and internment camps; establishing a national system of child prisons that, last month, held 15,000 children, which is up from 7,000 in June; failing to provide medical evaluations for these children when they cross the border. Two have died--one after 6 days in the care of the American border guard. You, Mr. President, have created a crisis, a humanitarian crisis. The arrivals on the border are not the crisis; it is your hardened heart, your dark and evil heart, your war on children; the deliberate strategy of inflicting trauma on children in order to send a message of deterrence, a political message of deterrence. Who here believes it is right to deliberately injure children to send a message of deterrence? That is the strategy Jeff Sessions announced last May that started this intense assault on migrant children. Who would defend it today? Find me one caretaker of children who believes that inflicting trauma on children is acceptable. Find me one religious tradition, one moral code that says that is OK--because it is not OK. Every human civilization recognizes that. Meanwhile, our farmers are wondering what happened to their Farm Service Agencies. They are closed down across the country, including 23 in Oregon. What happened to those payments that the President promised for those affected by tariffs? The payments can't be distributed because of the shutdown. How about our Federal firefighters who need to be in training right now for the fires we are going to see next summer because of climate chaos? We are seeing the impacts in every conceivable way, as my colleagues have been pointing out, and it is time to end it. It is time to release the hostages. It is way past time to end it. It has 18 days--3 days from the longest shutdown in history. It is time to end it, put people back to work, return to common sense, and at the same time quit afflicting children and migrant adults as a political strategy. Almost everybody--probably everyone in this room--came here as a descendant of immigrants, almost all Americans. Not many of us are directly descended from Native Americans. Most of us are descendants from immigrants. How did we want them to be treated? We wanted them to be treated with respect and decency as they waited for an asylum hearing, and that is what we have to return to. So release the hostages, return to common sense, and treat the American people with respect. Thank you. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania. Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I join in raising these issues tonight about the government shutdown. The reason so many of us have referred to it simply as the ``Trump shutdown'' is because the President is the person who led the way to have the government shut down. He said that before the shutdown, as we all know. We have heard the statement he made in the Oval Office. Then, of course, we went forward. I think it is important to reset where we have been and where we are. There was an agreement in this body, the U.S. Senate, by 100 Senators, just before Christmas, to extend funding for the government for a short period of time so that if there were issues to debate between now and February, we could do that. It is hard to get 100 Senators to agree on anything around [[Page S74]] here, but of course that is what happened. Then it went to the House, and we know what happened after that. The President got pressure from rightwing talk show hosts, and I guess they have more influence on him than a lot of Americans, who never want a government shutdown. As we stand here tonight, 9 of 15 Federal Departments are closed, shut down, and I am not even itemizing the number of Agencies that is. Then we came into the new year, on January 3--I don't know what hour it was, but it was in the evening--with a new majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Democratic majority. What did that Democratic majority do? What did the Democratic House Speaker do? In her first act as Speaker, and in essence their first vote on substance, they voted to open up the government by voting in favor of a bill that was essentially a Republican appropriations bill. That is what the Democratic-controlled House did. They voted to move forward Republican appropriations bills that were voted on here in committee but also were agreed to here, in a sense, by consensus--a 100-to-0 consensus just before Christmas. So there is ample reason, there is a lot of documentary evidence--video evidence--that this is a Trump shutdown. I think it is important for people to understand. I know some here call it a partisan bill. No, it wasn't. It was a bipartisan bill. It just happened to have its origin in the work of Republicans in the Senate--the Senate appropriations work that was done by Republicans, with Democratic help. Of course, this Chamber is controlled by Republicans, so these were Republican bills. It is also important to know what could happen here. There is legislation now that the Senate can vote on that will open the government up by doing the following: by funding eight Departments of government until the 30th of September. It is important for people to understand that. They see the back and forth, and they see how a bill like that is characterized on television, but it is important for people to know--and I will keep saying it for emphasis because this is important we get the facts right--this is an action by a House controlled by Democrats to move forward bills that virtually every Republican agreed to in one way or another over time on various occasions. The effect of passing that bill here would open the government for those Agencies--those Departments is a more correct word--those Departments that are shut down right now, leaving only one Department that would now be funded over a longer term, the Department of Homeland Security. That Department would not be funded after a certain date in February if we can't agree on funding until then. What the effect of that is, it moves forward the effort to keep the government operating, to keep--just by way of example--13,709 FBI agents who could be working without pay, 4,399 DEA agents who could be working without pay, and I can go down the list. We have had many examples tonight. I will not restate them. It allows all of those operations of the Federal Government to go forward but still preserves the opportunity for the President or anyone to make assertions, to make arguments, and to put forth policy regarding border security, no matter what it is. We could debate that from now until that moment in February--that date in February when the Department of Homeland Security would run out of money--and see what would happen at that point. That is what people have to understand. There is a way to continue a debate about border security, a very important debate. I voted for, I don't know how many tens of billions now--billion with a ``b''--on border security since I have been here. I voted for the bill in 2013, the comprehensive bill that got 68 votes here in 2013--68 votes. That means a whole number of Republicans voted for it. That committed more than $40 billion to border security, based upon the testimony of experts, based upon people who understand border security. Let's be honest, folks. A lot of House Members and a lot of Democrats and Republicans in both parties and both Houses are not border security experts. That is why we should ask for their advice in telling us the best way to secure the border. That is essentially what happened in 2013, when both parties voted--68 votes here--to pass a comprehensive bill that had more than $40 billion for border security. That is how you do border security. You don't just say: Well, because I used a word in a campaign, I used a sound bite in a campaign, therefore, the sound bite--which isn't based upon good policy--has to become the policy. That is not how we should do things here. No one in either party should do it that way. Now we are, I guess, 17 days since the President decided to shut down the government because he would not get his wall. We should never confuse a wall with border security. We all want border security. I don't know of a legislator who doesn't support that. Most people here voted for it many times--border security--based upon what the experts tell us, not the politicians. If we were using politicians for that kind of expertise, we would be in big trouble. We wouldn't do that in many subject areas, including something as consequential and as important and as complicated as border security. We should do it the right way and have a debate about it and hear testimony from experts, not just hot air from politicians because they said a word or two or three in a campaign. That is not policy. Right now, there are 820,000 Federal employees, 14,000--some in Pennsylvania, wondering how they are going to make a mortgage payment or pay the rent or buy food. The list is longer than that. It is, in essence, appropriations hostage-taking. My colleague referred to and used that word in his remarks earlier. This is appropriations hostage- taking that hurts a lot of people and will continue to hurt more and more people as the days go on. That is one of the reasons why I supported the legislation introduced by Senators Cardin and Van Hollen that would guarantee backpay for these hard-working Federal employees who do so many things for the American people that we don't itemize or praise, except when there is a crisis like the one we are facing right now, the crisis of not having a government fully funded. So the President shut down the government over a wall that will not work, will not secure the border. Let's not confuse the two. We have always made investments over time--both parties, many administrations, many sessions of Congress have made investments in effective border security based upon the recommendations from experts. We should do that again, as we have done over many years. The security experts over the number of years charged with keeping our Nation safe have said this concrete or steel wall along the width of the southern border will not work. It will not work. Former Commissioner of Customs and Border Patrol Gil Kerlikowske said, in January 2017: ``I think that anyone who's been familiar with the southwest border and the terrain . . . kind of recognizes that building a wall along the entire southwest border is probably not going to work.'' That is someone who understands this subject. That is what he said. He is not a politician spewing out a sound bite or just doing an interview. He is a person who has dedicated a large portion of his life to border security, and we should listen to those voices. Building a concrete wall will not stop illegal activity. Border security--effective border security--will. What is that? It is technology. It is 24-hour surveillance. It is, as in the 2013 bill, in essence, doubling the Border Patrol. I think we could have hired 20,000 more people at the border to do border enforcement. That is why the cost was so high--because to hire 20,000 people costs a lot of money, but that is what we voted for then. I haven't even listed all of them, but those kinds of methods--battle-tested, proven methods to secure the border will work. That is what we should be doing. According to a 2017 national drug assessment report, most illegal smuggling happens at our ports of entry, not crossing a line in a desert at the southwest border--ports of entry. One example is at our airports. Airports are among the places we should be focusing our attention. I haven't heard the President talk about airports. Maybe I haven't been listening, but he has been President now for just about 2 years, and I am not sure he has talked about stopping smuggling at ports of entry. [[Page S75]] If the President was serious about securing the southern border or fixing our immigration system, he would work with both parties, both Houses, on an immigration system that would secure the border and do a whole range of things we need to do because we have a broken system. Here is my belief. I can't prove this. This is just my belief watching what he has said and listening to his speeches and listening to the policies he has supported and the policies he has not supported. I don't believe the President has any interest in fixing our broken immigration system. He seems to have an interest in building a wall that will not work--I am rather certain of that--but I don't think he has any interest in fixing this broken system. He has a strong interest, in my judgment, of scoring points, and I will give him that. He is an expert at scoring political points, but in terms of sitting down with people in both parties, taking hours and hours and hours and hours of testimony from border security experts, or at least listening to the presentations made here by way of hearings or information that can be ascertained in a hearing, I don't think he is willing to do that. I don't think he has any interest in doing that. The Presiding Officer and many Members of this Chamber, including the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator from Virginia, worked long and hard--not over hours but over days and weeks--to come up with a proposal last year which would have provided $25 billion for border security over about 10 years. It is a lot of money over 10 years, and they had to agree to that based upon those expert recommendations. They also coupled that with a statutory change that would make sure those Dreamers in the DACA Program were given the benefit of the fulfillment of our promise to them. That could have been done in law by statute, and I commend Republicans who stood up then and worked in a bipartisan way. What did the President do? He told them he would back them up, that he would sign that bill--that bill with $25 billion and a fix for the DACA Program. Then his second promise he made was, he said: I will take the heat. It didn't happen. He didn't sign it. He denigrated it. Of course, he didn't take the heat because he went running for cover. I don't see much evidence on the record that he wants to fix a broken system. Everyone knows the system is broken, everyone knows we have to rely upon experts to secure the border, everyone knows the path to citizenship is complicated, but we had a way to do that in the 2013 bill. Everyone knows that the guest worker program and bringing people out of the shadows and having order and rules to our immigration system is complicated and difficult. Everyone knows you can't do that with a sound bite. You can't do that with an image. You can't do that with a symbol. You have to do it with policy. That is what you have to do. The President seems totally disinterested in sitting down and trying to lead an effort on the kind of immigration reform that both parties know we need and that most Americans know we need as well. We all want to fix this system with a comprehensive bill. I mentioned the 2013 effort and what that would have done. Instead of wasting $5.6 billion on a wall, we could use that money to rebuild our infrastructure or to invest in border security that is based upon expertise. We could use $5.6 billion to do a lot of infrastructure in my State and a lot of States--fixing bridges, for example. I live in a State, like many, that has thousands of structurally deficient bridges. We could use that money to enhance our national security. I am told that we are to understand the President is looking for money--the $5.6 billion--potentially out of the Defense Department. Is that what we should be doing with DOD dollars that are meant for national security? We could also use $5.6 billion to invest in our children and thereby invest in our future, but I don't think the President is interested in this. He wants to win a sound bite war or an image or symbol war, not fix the problem and not make the investments we should make. Instead of creating chaos and perpetuating chaos, the President should support the bipartisan funding bill the House passed last week-- the Democratic House, which passed the Republican bills, for a little shorthand there. The bills would reopen the government and also provide $1 billion for border security that is based upon facts and evidence and expertise and effectiveness, not based upon some sound bite and hot air. The vast majority of Senate Republicans supported these funding measures last Congress. On August 1, Senate Republicans joined Democrats to advance funding for the Department of Agriculture, Financial Services, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior. That big appropriations bill is affecting all those Agencies referred to there. The vote was 92 to 6 on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I don't know who the 6 were, but 92 is a good number--and obviously in both parties. The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill passed out of committee--this is a committee vote; not a floor vote but an important vote--on June 14 by a vote of 30 to 0. The State-Foreign Operations bill passed out of committee by a vote of 31 to 0. So one bill passed on the floor 92 to 6, and the other committee votes were 30 to 0 and 31 to 0--again, bills passed by a Democratic House that are, in fact, Republican appropriations bills. That is what the House did. That bill is here, in essence. All the majority leader has to do is put it on the floor, and it will pass. The government will be opened up, and we could debate border security until the cows come home--all the rest of January, longer into February, as long as we all agree to debate it. Let's have a real debate. Let's not debate a sound bite about an image that refers to a way someone thinks we should do border security. Let's have the evidence and put it on the table. I think my point of view on this would prevail, but let's hear from both sides. We have a way out of this predicament for the American people, a way to provide certainty and relief to those families who are suffering right now and the many more families who will continue to suffer if this continues. It is time for the majority leader to schedule a vote and stop making excuses why he shouldn't. Let's see what happens if the President has to confront a bill passed by both Houses. If he vetoes it, then it is further evidence that he is not serious about border security, but we will see. Maybe the President would sign a bill that was passed by both parties in both Houses. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rounds). The Senator from New Hampshire. Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, for his compelling remarks. In fact, for the last several hours, we have heard compelling remarks from a number of our colleagues. I thank Senator Kaine from Virginia for helping to organize this effort and all of those who have come to the floor to talk about the lasting and negative effects of this senseless shutdown--a shutdown that is all about President Trump yielding to Rush Limbaugh and the rightwing commentators who told them he wasn't being tough enough. Senators Casey and Markey reminded us how we got here, that we had an agreement we thought the President had committed to sign. His Vice President, his Acting Chief of Staff, told us he was going to sign it. It passed the Senate on a voice vote. What is so ironic, as Senator Markey said, is that what is happening now is actually making us less safe. The idea that we have all of these people on our southern border, all of these TSA agents, people who are working, 800,000 employees, 400,000 who are furloughed, 380,000 who are working without pay--that is actually making us less safe. As Senator Durbin pointed out, a wall across our southern border wouldn't do anything to interdict the fentanyl that is coming across from China. That is the biggest killer of people in New Hampshire from overdoses; it is the fentanyl. As Senator Jones pointed out, the Coast Guard's role in interdiction is what is significant. It is not a wall that is going to keep out those vehicles that are going to come through our ports of entry. [[Page S76]] Senator Stabenow reminded us that there are 38 million people who depend on food assistance, and a quarter of the people in New Mexico, as Senator Heinrich told us, depend on food assistance. He quoted his constituent Kathy, who pointed out that the President is holding us hostage. She said: Federal employees are being held hostage. We are now being held hostage in the Senate because the majority is unwilling to act on the legislation that has passed the House and previously passed the Senate. Senator Bennet talked about China landing on the dark side of the Moon last week. It is a reminder that we have to compete in this world, that we can't assume that America is going to be No. 1 in everything again. Yet, while China was landing on the dark side of the Moon, our government was shut down. Thousands of researchers weren't doing their jobs at NASA, the Department of Agriculture, and so many other places because we were shut down. The cost to the economy as a whole, as Senator Hassan pointed out-- there are craft breweries in New Hampshire, small businesses that can't get their businesses started because government is shut down. Senator Klobuchar pointed out that the cost to the economy, according to the President's own advisers, is $10 billion a week. At a time when the stock market is going up and down, when we have people losing billions of dollars because of fluctuations in the stock market, $10 billion a week contributes to that uncertainty. Then, of course, Senator Van Hollen and Senator Merkley and virtually everybody here talked about the impact on ordinary Americans from this government shutdown. We are going to hear from President Trump in about 5 minutes. He is going to speak to the country. I will bet he doesn't talk about the impact on ordinary Americans of this government shutdown. I will bet he doesn't talk about the cost to the economy or what he promised to sign when this Congress passed funding bills. I will bet he doesn't talk about the future of America and what is going to happen if we don't continue to invest in research and if we don't continue to invest in our people and instead get involved in these partisan fights. No. I think what he is going to do is tell Americans a made-up story about the emergency at our southern border--an emergency that we saw from Senator Durbin and Senator Merkley is not real. We have gone from 1.6 million people coming across our southern border and being arrested down to about 200,000 in the last year. This is not a crisis that is affecting America. We need to address border security. Everybody here believes that. All of the people who spoke tonight said we need to address border security. We need to do it in a way that is thoughtful and that spends taxpayer dollars wisely. It is time for us to act in the Senate. It is time for Congress to fund this government, to get it back open. I very much appreciate Senator Kaine's work here tonight as we talk about the impacts on this country of this government shutdown. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield to my colleague from Virginia. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia. Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I would like to finish the colloquy of the Democratic Senators who talked about this important issue--the need to reopen the government and to stop the shutdown--and I intend to do so before 9 o'clock. I want to thank my colleague from New Hampshire and all the colleagues who appeared on the floor today. On Friday, January 11, if we do not end this shutdown, it will be tied for the longest shutdown of government in the history of the United States. It is also a payday where more than 800,000 Federal employees will not get a paycheck. My quick census research suggests that is essentially the population of South Dakota. More than 800,000 people who just want to serve their country, some of whom have been forced to work without a paycheck, will not get a paycheck on January. Friday, January 11, is right after Christmas, when a lot of Christmas bills come due. Friday, January 11, is in the middle of winter, when heating bills are at their highest. Friday, January 11, is right before the beginning of the college spring semester, and families will be sitting around kitchen tables to write tuition checks for their kids to go to school for the spring semester. That will be this Friday. This shutdown hurts workers. I told stories of workers in Virginia who have already suffered, and my colleagues have as well. It hurts citizens. I had the experience two Saturdays ago of going to four Federal--either national forests or Park Service operations and seeing gates closed. I watched families come up. They had driven. They may not get a lot of vacation. They had a lot of kids in the car, and they were coming up to have fun with their families that day. I watched the looks on their faces as they pulled to the locations and saw the gates closed and the sign saying that they weren't able to enjoy the day they had planned with their family. That is not the same as missing a mortgage payment, but for families who are stretched in time and want to spend a day enjoying time with each other--I saw the looks on their faces as they were turned away. Mr. President, you and I have worked together on an important initiative to train students, college students, to be our next cyber professionals. Today is the cyber jobs fair that the National Science Foundation sponsors for college students all over the country. It was at National Harbor. I went there. I walked by a lot of students who had come because they want to serve the country as cyber professionals, and they were having interviews. But a lot of the booths--the Department of Justice--there was a booth, there was a sign, but there was nobody there. There was nobody there from the Federal Agency to hire. These are effects on everyday citizens, kids who want jobs, Federal agencies that want to hire workers, families who just want to go to the parks. This is hurting workers, it is hurting citizens, and it is hurting our country. In conclusion, I just want to say: Why? Why would we want to hurt Federal workers? Why would we want them to be without a paycheck? Why do we want to hurt everyday citizens? Why do we want to hurt the reputation of the country? Because I could see from the looks on the faces of those getting turned away at the park not just aggravation, I could see: What kind of country is this? I am a hard-working person, I pay taxes, I am coming to a national park, I am coming to a national forest, and I am getting turned away because the President wants to shut down the government over a debate about border security. You know, Mr. President, because you and I worked on it together, in February, $25 billion for border security, that wasn't enough. The President blew up the deal. Five years ago, $44 billion of border security wasn't enough for the Republican House. We want to fund border security, but as I conclude, I just would say to this President: Do not hurt American workers. Do not hurt American citizens. Do not hurt the reputation of the greatest country on Earth. I would say to my Republican colleagues, please be willing to vote and support exactly what you voted and supported just 3 weeks ago. Why the change in position? Why was it OK in December, and it is not OK now? Is it not OK because the President suddenly said he didn't like it? Is it the job of the article I branch to play Mother May I with the President and seek his permission to be an article I branch? I don't believe it is. Let's end this shutdown. Let's reopen government. Let's do border security and immigration reform the right way. I yield the floor. ____________________
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