Continuing Appropriations Amendments Act, 2018

Mr. President, as a native West Virginian, I want to say how proud I am of our colleague, Mr. Manchin.

Perhaps you have heard the old saying: I am Tom Carper or I am so- and-so, and I approve this message. We do a lot of that on political campaigns. Well, I approve of much of what Joe says, and today is no exception.

My wife and I like to go to movies. We don't get to see much of them, but over the holidays we had a chance to see a couple of them. One of the best movies of this past year was a movie about World War II Britain, ``Churchill.'' I am reminded, as we wander through this impasse, of two things Churchill said. About democracy, he said, ``Democracy is the worst form of government [devised by man] except for all the [rest].''

Think about that. This is a hard way to govern, and we have proved it again. A lot of democracies around the world prove it again year after year after year.

Churchill knew we saved their behinds over in Britain in World War II. We came to the rescue and helped turn the tide. He was always grateful for that, but he used to like to poke fun at our country. Another great Churchill quote was about America. He said this about America: ``You can always count on America to do the right thing in the end, after trying everything else.''

Think about that. This situation we are in right now with the shutdown--a lot of people are calling it the Trump shutdown--whatever you call it, I think it cries out for leadership.

I just want to quote comments of one person at the time, someone who was not in elective office, but he said these words talking about leadership during an earlier shutdown. This individual said:

Well, if you say who gets fired it always has to be the

top. I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get

solved from the top and the president's the leader. And he's

got to get everybody in a room and he's got to lead.

This person went on to say:

When they talk about the government shutdown, they're going

to be talking about the president of the United States, who

the president was at that time.

This individual goes on:

They're not going to be talking about who was head of the

House, the head of the Senate, who's running things in

Washington. So, I really think the pressure is on the

president.

The President will do what it takes to lead. Those comments were given in 2013 during an earlier shutdown. Those are the words of Donald Trump, criticizing then-President Barack Obama.

Think about those words then and think about those words today. The President has ``got to get everybody in a room and he's got to lead''-- has got to get everybody in a room, and he has to lead. This was true 5 years ago, 4 years ago, and it is true today. With this President, we find a willingness on the part of Senator Schumer, Senator McConnell, Speaker Ryan, and Leader Pelosi responding to an invitation to go to the President even tonight, go to the White House even tonight, and sit down and try to hammer things out. It ain't going to be easy, but, frankly, there is a lot of consensus here on what we ought to do, in terms of the budget priorities, defense spending, and nondefense. There is a lot more agreement than disagreement. We heard discussion about that between Senator Manchin and our colleague from Alaska.

I think there is a fair amount of agreement, in terms of extending coverage--maybe not permanent but extending the Children's Health Insurance Program 6 to 10 years. The State and Federal partnership covers about 9 million kids. There is a lot of agreement on that.

There is a lot of agreement on the Federal community health centers. They provide a cost-effective, affordable approach to healthcare coverage for primary care for people who don't have coverage, maybe don't have any money, and they can get coverage and have access to primary care, in many cases, in their own community. They are important in Alaska, they are important in West Virginia, they are important in Delaware, and they are important to the speaker from Missouri who is going to succeed me. There is a lot of agreement there.

Frankly, you have a lot of agreement on what should happen to the Dreamers, these young people who were brought here by their parents, in many cases years ago. They grew up here and were educated here. In many cases, they are working here. In a lot of cases, they are serving in the military. They are teachers and police officers, and they are doing all kinds of things.

It is a time in this country where we have roughly 3 million jobs that are going unfilled because the folks who would like to do those jobs in many cases don't have the education, the experience, the interest in doing those jobs, the willingness. They don't have the work ethics. In many cases, they can't pass a drug test.

It is a time where we are in the eighth year of the longest running economic expansion in the history of the country. Barack Obama and Joe Biden took office in 2009, at the bottom of the worst recession since the Great Depression. They handed off to this administration a year ago today the longest running economic expansion in the history of the country, and for the past year, that expansion has continued.

One of the keys to making sure our economy expands is to make sure the workforce our employers need is being provided by our schools--high schools, public schools, colleges, universities, community colleges. And at the very time when employers are saying, ``Look, when we open our doors for business on Monday, there are going to be 3 million jobs that we don't have anybody to come to work to fill,'' are we serious about saying that, rather than enabling 800,000 or so Dreamers who have the skills, who have the education, who have the work ethic, who want to do the job--rather than letting you do those jobs, fill those jobs, we are going to send you back to the country where you were born? And by the way, we will send about 200,000 Salvadorans who came here at a time of crisis in their country 10 or 20 years ago--we are going to send them with you. Does that make sense?

As a former Governor who for 8 years led the State of Delaware to actually cut taxes 7 out of 8 years, balance our budget 8 years in a row, pay down debt, earn AAA credit ratings, and saw more jobs created in 8 years than any 8-year period in the history of the State of Delaware--I didn't create one of those jobs, but we sure know something in Delaware about creating a nurturing environment for job creation. That is what we do in our jobs. We don't create

jobs; we help create that nurturing environment.

Basically sending close to 1 million people who are able to do jobs that aren't getting done and wouldn't get done, sending them back to the country where they were born--that makes no sense, no sense at all.

The last thing I will say is this about my little State. Delaware was the first State to ratify the Constitution. I am very proud of that. We were the first State to ratify the Constitution--on December 7, 1787. For 1 whole week, Delaware was the entire United States of America. We opened up. We let in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the rest, and I think for the most part it has turned out pretty well. We are struggling a little bit with it right now, but we will get through this.

One of the keys in Delaware more often than not is working pretty well--Democrats and Republicans working together, which is what is needed here. We have had a whole bunch of Governors who did lead; who were humble, not haughty; who had the heart of a servant; who believed that Governors unite, not divide; who build bridges, not walls; who don't try to tear other people down to build themselves up; who are aspirational and appeal to our better angels. We had a couple of good Republicans who did that--Michael Castle, Pete du Pont, and others. So it will be done on a bipartisan basis.

Here are four reasons why Delaware continues to enjoy success, has enjoyed success. There has been able leadership--and not just Governors but legislators, Democrats and Republicans.

We have something we call the Delaware Way. To the amazement of a lot of people, 2 days after the election every other year, winners and losers get together in Georgetown, DE. In Sussex County, DE, the southernmost county, the county seat, Georgetown--we have a big brunch hosted by our community college in Georgetown. Democrats and Republicans are there--the folks who ran against each other--and their families and supporters are there.

When the brunch is over, we go outside and we get in these horse- drawn carriages, and winners and losers ride together, side by side, with their families. There is a big parade, and thousands of people come. Schools are closed. When the parade is over, we all gather in the circle in the middle of Georgetown, and we have some speeches, some inspiring patriotic music, and some prayers. Then the political leaders of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and maybe the Libertarian Party stand in front of the masses of people. They have what looks like a big glass aquarium, and it is half full of sand. They take an ax, and the party leaders lower this ax into the aquarium. They fill it up with sand from Rehoboth Beach or Bethany or one of our five- star beaches. And then we go off, and people open up their houses, and Democrats and Republicans spend time together. We lick our wounds and sort of get to like each other again, and we go on to govern our State.

We use the four c's in Delaware.

This is my last point, and I will yield to Senator McCaskill, who is ready to roll behind me.

There are four c's. We communicate. We talk to one another in my State.

Last night when we were on the floor, there was a lot of communication going on. That is important. We need to continue that communication. But for God's sake, the President needs to invite our four leaders--two from the House, two from the Senate; two Democrats, two Republicans--and have real communication. He needs to provide air cover for the Republicans in the House who are willing to take up a reasonable compromise that I think we are willing to pass here in the Senate. The President has to provide that air cover.

First of all, the first ``c'' is communication. Next is compromise.

In a compromise, nobody wins everything they want. Senator Schumer was willing to put on the table what Donald Trump has been talking about for years; that is, a wall, actually authorizing the construction of a wall--not on every single inch or mile of the border with Mexico but a good deal of it. That is what Donald Trump is talking about more in terms of border security than anything else. Do I think that is a great idea? No, I don't. In some places, a wall makes some sense, and in a lot of places, it doesn't. There are a lot of other more cost- effective options. There are other things that could be more cost- effective that would enable our 20,000 Border Patrol folks to do their jobs. But Chuck Schumer put on the table the authorization for building the wall. That is a pretty good compromise, and that shows we are willing to compromise.

So the second ``c'' is compromise. The third ``c'' is collaboration, to actually work together on this stuff. The last ``c'' is civility, to treat one another the way we would want to be treated. Communicate, compromise, collaborate, civility--it doesn't work just in Delaware; it works in States all over this country. It used to work in this place, in this body, and we could use it again.

The quote that I used from Donald Trump from 4 or 5 years ago talking about the leadership that Barack Obama needed to show--I think he did. Sometimes we need to listen to our own words, look at ourselves in the mirror and remember our own words. Mr. President, we would do well to do just that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate what the Senator from Illinois, my dear friend, just said. It is interesting when we deal with substance and not sound bites.

I used to worry when I was first here and I would hear some of my very senior colleagues--they were all senior to me; I was the most junior Member of the Senate--talk about when this, that, and the other thing happened. I came here with President Ford was the President. I served with President Carter, President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, President Clinton, President George W. Bush, President Obama, and now, of course, President Trump.

Every one of these Presidents were different, but when we got in times like this, they believed in substance and not sound bites. Every one of them would reach a point where Republicans and Democrats could sit down and reach an agreement knowing, whether it was a Republican President or Democratic President, they would keep their word and the Members would keep theirs.

I was honored to be asked to speak at the Gold Medal presentation to Senator Bob Dole the other day. Senator Dole was a Republican leader and the Republican majority leader, one of the finest Senators I ever served with--this, from a liberal Democrat from New England--because he always kept his word, because he always brought both Republicans and Democrats together, because he knew we would keep our word.

Frankly, as I spoke those words at his Gold Medal presentation, I thought: Can't we go back to those days? Can't we have a time when our leaders come together and the Members across the aisle come together and then vote? The Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, said: Let's have votes.

Yes, we passed most of the appropriations bills out of committee in the past year, but we want time to bring them up on the floor. There will be amendments I will not like, there will be amendments I will like, but we will get to vote on them. Vote yes or vote no. That is what we should do.

Months ago, when President Donald Trump called for a government shutdown, I thought, when I first heard that, it couldn't be. Then I saw what he said: ``Our country needs a good shutdown.'' Well, through his leadership and chaos and inability to govern or keep his word, he got exactly what he wanted.

I would tell him, after 43 years' experience in this body, there is no such thing as a good shutdown. It hurts our Nation, it hurts our reputation around the world, it hurts our military, it hurts our civilian population, it hurts our businesspeople, it hurts our educators, and it hurts those who are seeking cures for every kind of disease there is.

Now, I know it is the majority--and the majority is, of course, the Republicans who control the White House, the House, and the Senate. It is their responsibility to produce a bill to send to the President. If they can't get 60 votes because they refuse to negotiate with Democrats, well, that is their responsibility. All they needed was nine

Democrats. They couldn't get it done. In fact, they lost four of their own Members. They could not get it done because Republicans shut Democrats out of their closed-door meetings. They disenfranchised more than half the American people. They only appealed for our support after they had written a bill without our input. Let me tell you, after my years of experience under Democratic and Republican leadership and Democratic and Republican Presidents, that is not the way to do it.

On the first day of this Trump shutdown, the anniversary of his inauguration, we are 112 days into the fiscal year. For 112 days, the leadership has told us they just need more time to negotiate a bipartisan deal. I have yet to see the negotiations. I have yet to see the deal.

They spent that time pursuing a hyper-partisan agenda over the last year. They stripped healthcare from millions of Americans. They rolled back commonsense regulations. They passed a tax bill for big corporations and the superwealthy on the backs of middle-class working people. This was not time spent negotiating in good faith on the budget, or the Children's Health Insurance Program, or for veterans, or for community health centers, or for Dreamers or for a comprehensive disaster relief package to address the disasters that have gone across our country in the past year.

Now, last night they said let's have another month to negotiate. Come on, we are 112 days into the fiscal year, and now they want another month into the fiscal year--another month of not addressing the consequences of sequestration by reaching a bipartisan deal to increase the spending on our military and invest in our communities. Another month where we fail to adequately take care of our veterans.

Our military leaders agree, we cannot govern by a continuing resolution. The military cannot function under sequestration, and I agree with them because we need a budget deal.

I admire Defense Secretary General Mattis. He said, ``for all the heartache caused by the loss of our troops during these wars, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of our military than sequestration.''

Last night, I could not, in good conscience, support another continuing resolution without even the promise of a bipartisan deal.

Democrats have been ready and willing and asking to negotiate since June, just as we did in April, to get the budget passed. In July, I offered a path forward that would have raised the budget cap set in place by the Budget Control Act. My plan would have increased spending for our military by $54 billion and increased investments in our domestic priorities by $54 billion. Parity has always been the path forward. It allows us to both strengthen our military but also invest in our infrastructure, improve our education, combat the opioid epidemic, and address the needs of our veterans. These are bipartisan priorities.

I know from my friends in both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, we share--we share--these goals. But now, for 112 days, the Republican leadership has kicked the can down the road and cast aside the basic responsibility of Congress to fund the government.

They gave us this government shutdown. They followed what Donald Trump said in asking for a good shutdown, even though anybody who has had any experience in government knows there is no such thing, as the President has said, as ``a good government shutdown.'' This was done under the careening leadership and chaos of the President.

He said he was for extending CHIP in the House bill, and then he was against it. He said he would sign any bipartisan deal we brought to his desk to protect the Dreamers and increase border security. Then, through a bipartisan deal, Republicans and Democrats came and did exactly what he asked for, and he scoffed at it. Now, that is not steady-as-he-goes leadership.

If we can't take the word of the President, when we know he is only one tweet away from changing his mind, why should we trust him when he says he will take care of our veterans or get serious about the opioid epidemic? Why would we take his word when he says he wants to protect the Dreamers?

After promising to treat DACA recipients with great heart, President Trump and the Republicans instead held our Nation's Dreamers hostage. They caved to the xenophobic voices within their party. President Trump rejected a bipartisan deal--the only bipartisan DACA deal--which Senators Graham, Durbin, and others specifically crafted to meet his demand.

As we speak, 122 Dreamers lose their status every day; that is, yesterday on Friday; that is, today on Saturday; and that is tomorrow on Sunday. We know, on March 5, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients will begin to lose their status due to President Trump's actions.

Republicans now argue there is no urgency to provide protection for Dreamers. I wish you would sit with one of these families and listen to them. They are people who are pursuing great educations. They are pillars of our communities and taxpayers. Ask them if there is any urgency, when you have a medical student about to graduate from medical school and he worries that he will hear [knocking] at the door.

Well, in light of the decision to end DACA, 122 Dreamers lose their status every day, and the administration has acknowledged to Congress that implementing any Dream legislation would take up to 6 months, during which tens of thousands more could lose their status. No urgency? If that were my family, I would feel the urgency every minute of the day and night.

Since President Trump decided to revoke the protected status, hundreds of thousands of Dreamers have had to live with fear and anxiety every day their status has not been resolved. Imagine how they feel when they see the President's views seem to change constantly, almost daily. Talk about causing whiplash.

Dreamers have no reason to believe President Trump would not prioritize them for deportation. The fact is, the administration has asked the Supreme Court to immediately nullify a district court decision--immediately nullify it--to protect DACA recipients, and they seem to have no sense of enforcement priorities. They detained a 10- year-old Texas girl with cerebral palsy. They deported a Michigan father, with no criminal record, who came to this country as a child 30 years ago, paid his taxes and obeyed the law.

Even the majority leader, to his credit, is uncertain of what the President wants for Dreamers, or for any path forward for that matter. The majority leader, the Republican leader, said earlier this week, ``As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels.'' I have never heard a comment like that in 43 years in the Senate.

We are spinning our wheels with a Trump shutdown. We are spinning our wheels because the leadership waited for guidance from the President, unfortunately, instead of doing their jobs working with us, sending a bipartisan deal to his desk.

We are spinning our wheels because President Trump--I will give him at least credit for this--is very straightforward. He repeatedly called for a government shutdown. He is probably the only person in the government ever who has been foolish enough to do that, but he got exactly what he wanted, a government shutdown.

So, today, medical research has ground to a halt. Today, in Vermont and across the Nation, hundreds of thousands of Federal workers are furloughed through no fault of their own. In Vermont and across the Nation, every additional hour of a Trump shutdown deals another blow to the men and women trying to recover from opioid addiction. Every hour, the burden of the Trump shutdown should weigh heavier on the President's shoulders because there is only one person in this country who wanted this shutdown; that is, President Trump.

The Trump shutdown is not and was not necessary. We have always had the pieces. Everybody--Republicans and Democrats--want to raise the budget caps set in place by the Budget Control Act. We want to stop the devastating consequence of sequestration. We want to take care of the bipartisan Children's Health Insurance Program. We have a bipartisan agreement to protect the Dreamers.

We have all the pieces. Let's put them together. Let's show the honesty and the courage to do our jobs.

I see other Senators on the floor wishing to speak.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, here is what is happening. Last night, Senate Democrats asked to do a 1-day continuing resolution. They also asked to do a 3-day continuing resolution. What

does that mean? That means we were at an impasse because the House- passed continuing resolution was 4 weeks, and that was not acceptable to enough U.S. Senators to pass. If you subject it to a vote, and it doesn't get cloture, it fails.

Under normal circumstances, then you try to find out what might be able to get cloture, but we were so close to the deadline that we needed something called a unanimous consent request. In other words, we needed every single U.S. Senator to accede to the idea that we should vote on something.

It is not unusual for a unanimous consent request to be granted. A lot of times it is just perfunctory stuff, everyday stuff to kind of move something in a schedule, allow someone to have 10 more minutes to speak, or whatever it may be, but on big things, you don't always grant consent. I get that.

Think about where we were. We were on the precipice of the government shutdown, and Senator Nelson from Florida asked for unanimous consent-- in other words, all 100 U.S. Senators agreeing--to bring up a measure that would have kept the government open; the idea being that is better than a shutdown; the idea being that everybody on the Senate floor was actually behaving like a Senator last night who did not want to shut down the government.

There were lots of very interesting, constructive, and productive bipartisan conversations. We were close. We weren't that close--we weren't 10 minutes away--but we weren't so far apart that it wasn't worth trying. That is why Senator Nelson said: Why don't we buy ourselves another 24 hours and not shut down the government.

The majority leader objected. It was the majority leader's prerogative to allow it to be voted on. Had that been subjected to a vote, I doubt there would have been more than a handful of people voting against it. Nobody wants a government shutdown. Senator Nelson provided the opportunity for us to avoid this.

Then Senator Tester said: OK. Maybe 1 day is too short. Maybe we can't get this done in 20. My view was we should have 12-hour CRs. We should have absolute, burning pressure on ourselves. It should be physically miserable. We should be here. We should be working. We should be negotiating. That is my view. I think we should be on 12-hour CRs.

Listen, I can't go home, right? I live pretty far away, but even for those who live on the Eastern Seaboard, I don't think anybody should be comfortable this weekend--politically, physically, mentally. To understand what is happening to the country, you should not be comfortable. You should be embarrassed. I think we should be on 12-hour CRs. OK. A 24-hour CR, I was fine with that. That got rejected. How about a 3-day CR? That is what President Trump wanted to do to try to close the deal, but those were rejected.

No one can explain to the public why we can't keep the government open for a few days to negotiate without punishing the whole country. Nobody wins during a shutdown. We were so close to an agreement.

The overarching reason we didn't reach an agreement is, we have an erratic White House. I have been trying to dial down my rhetoric in this context. I am looking at the Presiding Officer, who is a Republican, with whom I have a constructive working relationship. If we are going to get out of this, we have to get out of this together. So I am trying to watch my tone because we are going to have to vote on something together at some point. The simple fact is, the White House has been erratic and inconsistent in this process.

There was at least a framework for a deal on January 11, and it got blown up in that very famous meeting with the expletives. Then there was at least a framework for a deal yesterday, and it got--now very famously--blown up by a subsequent meeting and a subsequent phone call. Here we are with four continuing resolutions in 4 months.

We haven't actually been able to work on the appropriations process. We haven't done great with appropriations in the past 5 years since I have been here, but, occasionally we will get an omnibus done. Occasionally, we will have proper markups. Occasionally, we will look at each executive agency and do our job properly.

It is not the regular order like it used to be with my predecessor and many of the people of the Senate of old. It was not as bad as this. A CR month by month, week by week--enough is enough.

Instead of trying to deal with this, the White House is failing to address these baseline issues and then creates new crises. This was a manufactured crisis on DACA. They didn't need to create this crisis, but now we have one.

Instead of using the Executive's authority to solve problems, they are focusing on the wrong things. They are punishing children who were brought to this country through no fault of their own and now are as American as anyone in Congress, except in the eyes of the law, but there is a level of inconsistency, as a euphemism, that we have had to deal with in these negotiations. The White House told the Republicans to fund CHIP as part of a 30-day spending bill, and then the President tweeted we should only fund CHIP if it is part of a long-term solution.

We had a deal on the table to help Dreamers in exchange for border funding only to have the White House change its mind. That happened once when the deal was blown up a couple weeks ago and then yesterday.

Senate Republicans may feel comfortable; they may feel uncomfortable. I don't know. I think it probably depends on the Member, but they are in a holding pattern waiting for Presidential leadership, and they don't know what the White House wants. They don't want to move on legislation without the White House's approval, but trying to get clarity from the administration on this or any other issue is a fool's errand because it changes by the hour and certainly by the day. That is why we are in this position.

It is not unusual for Congress to have disagreements between the parties, within the political parties, between the House and the Senate. That is the way the legislative process works. It is a messy process, but the way an executive is supposed to play that role, they are supposed to wield that authority, that power. Whether it is a Governor or a mayor or a President, when it gets close--and we are close--the executive is supposed to close the deal. This Executive does the opposite.

This Executive has blown up every deal every time. Sometimes we are far apart, and it gets worse. Sometimes we are vanishingly close, and it gets blown up, but what an executive is supposed to do is play that role, play that adult in the room. Right now, we are a ship without a captain.

That is why we are marking the 1-year anniversary of this administration with a government shutdown. That is why hundreds of thousands of people across the country are marching to say they are dissatisfied with the direction of this country.

The year 2017 in this U.S. Senate, it was a unique year. That is because we had basically no bipartisanship on the Senate floor. There were a few things that went by unanimous consent. The process of the U.S. Senate is supposed to be that you submit a bill on the floor, and it takes a week or two. Everybody offers amendments. There is lots of haggling. It is kind of messy. People talk too long, people argue, but in the end, you move a piece of legislation. It is a bipartisan process by construct.

We are supposed to be different than the House. We are not a majoritarian institution. We are supposed to be a moderating force on the country. We are supposed to be the adults in the room. The way you do that is through an open amendment process.

I want everybody to know we had a couple of situations where Democrats were allowed to offer amendments, but that was in something called vote-arama. I know the Presiding Officer hates vote-arama. I know most people in the U.S. Senate hate vote-arama. Why? Because it is a farce. It is worse than student council. Everyone is just doing stuff to position themselves back home. None of the things we vote on in the vote-arama process has any force of law or is going to be enacted. There is nothing meaningful that happens in vote-arama.

Other than that, not one single, solitary Democratic amendment was considered on the U.S. Senate floor. No Democratic Senator had their amendment considered on the Senate floor except inside of the process called vote-

arama, which we all know is a farce. So we haven't had bipartisanship.

I was so encouraged when the majority leader, early this year--I think the first week of the year right before convening--said he wants to do things on the basis of 60 votes, which is the way the Senate has always worked. I know he considers himself an institutionalist.

I understand they felt it imperative to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and do their tax cuts via the reconciliation process, which is a 51-vote threshold, but he basically announced: We are going to do bipartisan stuff this year. But what we have is an erratic administration that changes its position every hour, and so it is very difficult to get to 60. They lack the clarity, they lack the capacity, and it appears they lack the desire to govern in a bipartisan fashion.

So I just want to be very clear. Democrats are ready and eager to talk. We are here to find a way forward, but that does require Presidential leadership.

I don't understand why we couldn't have a 1-day CR, a 2-day CR, or a 5-day CR. I don't understand why we can't negotiate with the government open. When Bill Nelson comes to the floor and says: Why don't we buy ourselves another 24 hours so that civilian DOD employees can get paid, so people at the Pearl Harbor Shipyard can get paid, so people who work for the Federal Government can get paid, so some of the people who work in the U.S. Congress, in security and elsewhere, parking--all of these wonderful civil servants are not going to get paid. All of these services are going to get shut down tomorrow--not tomorrow but Monday morning--because nobody is even going to allow Bill Nelson's proposal to even get a vote.

If you guys don't want to do a 24-hour CR, vote against it, but at least allow us to keep the government open and keep these negotiations open.

Now is the time for Congress to conduct itself as the article I branch--as a separate, coequal branch of government. And we are not--I understand the politics. We just had 8 years of President Obama, and obviously Democrats were very eager to understand the administration's position so we could calibrate and coordinate. We didn't always do the same thing, but you have to keep an open ear to what a President of your party desires to do. But when a President of your party is either totally unclear or changes his mind every 12 hours, then you have to make a judgment that you are going to exercise your constitutional obligation and get the job done with his participation or over his objections. That is what we need to do on a bipartisan basis.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Missouri for sharing Frankie's story with us today, the fight for progress, and the life she lived.

I was thinking last night as we were debating here on the floor about one of the ways that Martin Luther King summarized how we move forward toward justice. He said that it takes ``the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.'' That is what it takes to move us forward, and it sounds as though she was every bit the tireless individual, the passionate individual, who worked to advance justice.

I thank my colleague for sharing that story.

Speaking of fighting and justice, we have a lot to talk about. We are here in the middle of the Trump shutdown. Last night was quite interesting. Democrats came to the floor and said that we need to keep the government open. We want to have a debate and a vote on a provision to extend the government by 24 hours so that we could really force leadership to get in the room and work out a resolution on multiple issues that are already bipartisan issues.

It shouldn't be that hard, but the majority leader, who is in control of this body, proceeded to say that he objected. It takes unanimous consent to get to a bill, so he sealed the deal on the Trump shutdown. He made sure this body couldn't debate or vote on keeping the government open for another day.

Senator Nelson put that forward, and then Senator Tester tried to say: OK, let's take a little more time. If you don't think you can do it in a day, how about 3 days? Senator Tester moved to proceed to consideration of an amendment that would provide a continuing resolution for 3 days--to keep the government open 3 days to force our leadership on both sides to sit down and work out the details on these bipartisan proposals.

Again, the majority leader objected. He sealed the deal on the Trump shutdown. Then he had the gall to come to this floor and blame others when he is in charge. This blame game by those who are in charge is fascinating. Republicans are in control of the Presidency. Republicans are in control of the House. Republicans are in control of the Senate.

The Republican leader objected to debating an extension for our government to stay open. Not once, but twice last night, he blocked it.

Well, it is very clear where the responsibility lies for this situation, which never occurs here in the United States--no. President Trump, back in 2013, said that the responsibility for a shutdown--this was when President Obama was in office. He said that it always comes back to the President. Well, how true those words are today.

In 2013, there wasn't unified control. You didn't have the same party in charge of the Presidency and the House and the Senate, so it was a little bit of a more mixed-up story. But then Citizen Trump said: It is all the President's fault. Now we have a different situation where the same party controls all three settings.

Let me tell you that the mechanism by which the Senate operates has

changed dramatically. You can think of the possibility of offering amendments on the floor of the Senate. Here is an amendment box. You can take and put your proposal in that box so that you can get it in line to be debated. But the majority leader has the ability to close that box and put a padlock on it. That is what Mitch McConnell did.

The technical term here is ``filling the tree,'' but that is a little hard to picture, so let's talk about the amendment box. He put a padlock on it and said that there would be no Democratic amendments considered. He has that power under the rules of the Senate.

Then he did something else, which is interesting, which really is a new level of obstruction of dialogue here in the Senate. He took that box, and he put a tarp over the top of it. That tarp is another type of motion that has to be resolved before you can even get to the amendments to propose that one be taken out of the box so another can be put in. In fact, if you were following the Senate last night, you saw this very crazy motion in which the majority leader himself took the tarp off the box--a resolution related to a motion to move the bill to committee and back--so that he could change the amendments that he put in the box. But that box remained completely forbidden ground for Democrats to be able to participate in, to be able to put a bill on this floor.

So it takes particular--I don't know what the right word for it is--I guess ``determination'' to spin the politics for that individual who has locked up the amendment box, preventing Democrats from putting a proposal on the floor--even a bipartisan proposal supported by Republicans--and then to blame Democrats, whom he has locked out of the process.

Our responsibility is absolutely clear here. This Trump shutdown sits with the President, who made an offer a week ago Tuesday and took it back a week ago Thursday. He made another offer a couple of days ago. A few hours later, he withdrew it. Yes, I want to take on these issues. No, I don't. Yes, I do. No, I don't. The Democratic leader said it is like negotiating with Jell-O. There is just no ``there'' there to be able to have rational policy consideration.

This Trump shutdown is doing a lot of damage across this country. It will do more damage with every succeeding day. And I say this directly to the President of the United States: Get engaged. Your job is to govern, to be part of the dialogue, not to be going off to Pennsylvania to campaign, not to be ignoring issues until it is only 24 hours out before we hit a deadline, not to be spending every weekend golfing and making your personal schedule off limits so that the public won't see that you are virtually never paying attention to governing. Mr. President--and I am speaking to President Trump--get engaged. You have a job to do. This is your shutdown, just as you said it was the President's responsibility in 2013.

These issues that we are wrestling with go back to the middle of last year because it was in the middle of last year when we were approaching the deadline for the fiscal year, which ends at the end of September. So it was time to get a bill for children's healthcare to this floor and debate it and reauthorize it, renew it before we hit September 30. It was the time to get the bill for our community health clinics to the floor to be debated and reauthorized so that our community health clinics would stay open. It was the time to get to the floor a bill to take on the opioid epidemic.

But what was the Republican Party engaged in? They weren't engaged in facilitating addressing healthcare problems. Oh, no. They were engaged in a bill to try to wipe out healthcare for 30 million Americans. We had five different versions of this bill here on the floor that wiped out healthcare for 22 million to 30 million Americans, and by a bare margin of a vote, we were able to block those bills. I thank my Republican colleagues who joined in that effort.

They weren't interested in talking about children's healthcare, community healthcare clinics, or the opioid crisis. Finally, when the healthcare debate was sealed, what did they turn to? Not the governing issue of spending bills that should have been done by October 1. Oh, no, they had a different plan--a tax bill to deliver $1 trillion-plus to the richest Americans. That was more important than children's healthcare. Increasing wealth inequality was more important than our children. Increasing income inequality was more important than our children.

We, the Democrats, are saying stop--stop taking up the time of this body on making the situation worse in America on healthcare, making the deficit worse here in America, robbing the common fund to enrich the richest Americans. Stop all of that. Instead, let's address all these issues right before us.

The members of our communities who have gone to grade school, high school, community colleges, colleges, who are working in our businesses, doing so much for our community, their immigration status isn't nailed down. There is bipartisan support to nail that down. That is just and fair and right.

All of us have members in our communities who are contributing so much, and they are being left in just an incredibly stressful limbo. They deserve better.

I think the Democrats and the Republicans who have sent us--here it is, a bipartisan deal waiting to happen, but President Trump says yes today and no tomorrow. He says yes in the morning and no in the afternoon. Quite frankly, the Republican leadership does the same thing.

So quit saying yes and no and just say yes. Let's get this bipartisan deal done. Let's get the opioid funding done. It is an epidemic. It is killing more people in America than traffic accidents. Let's get help in the right place.

Yes, let's get the children's healthcare bill done. Senator Stabenow asked unanimous consent for immediate consideration of the bill for permanent CHIP funding. Who said no? The Republican leader came to the floor and blocked it because he is in charge. He has the amendment box all locked up, so Democrats can't even put a bipartisan proposal before this body.

I thank Senator Nelson for fiercely fighting to keep us open for another day for negotiations. I thank Senator Tester for fighting and putting forward the proposal to stay open for 3 more days while we force negotiations to get these important issues addressed. I thank Senator McCaskill, who just spoke, for working hard to get a bill before this body that would ensure that the pay and death benefits for members of the armed services are taken care of.

Who said no in every situation? Who said: I am keeping a lock on the amendment lockbox? Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate--complete control.

This is no longer a deliberative body. A deliberative body debates issues. A deliberative body invites proposals from all Members. This is completely unlike the Senate I saw as a young man when I first came here as an intern for Senator Hatfield in 1976. Then, each side offered amendments, and they argued their hearts out. They voted, and a simple majority sent an issue forward or killed it.

Now we can't even start a conversation, and when we do get an amendment, it is by a supermajority. That is a rare event. Outside of the reconciliation bills, which were a special provision for the budget, we virtually have not had a single Democratic amendment all through 2017. That is what has happened to the Senate, and that is why we are here.

The responsibility is clear. This Trump shutdown should never have happened. President Trump needs to get his act together and get engaged. The majority needs to quit locking the amendment box so we can have actual dialogue and debate on the floor. Republicans have to quit blocking things both Democrats and Republicans have agreed to on children's health, on community health clinics, on opioids, and on legal status for our Dreamers.

This should not be a hard deal to close. Let's open up this government, and let's get these issues dealt with and done for the benefit of the citizens of the United States of America.

Thank you.

Mr. President, we are in the midst of the Trump shutdown, aptly named for him because he is the one--perhaps the only one in America--who thinks it is a good shutdown. In fact, his head of Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, gloated that it was ``kind of cool'' that he was the one who got to shut down the government. ``Kind of cool,'' he said on Friday in a radio interview.

As I speak tonight, all Americans know there is no such thing as a good shutdown. All of us in this body strongly believe that we must end this shutdown.

We mark the first-year anniversary of the Trump Presidency with the Trump shutdown and his now infamously saying on May 2 that our country needs a ``good shutdown.'' But this shutdown has damaging, even potentially devastating effects on millions of Americans--our troops whose pay will be delayed, our families who rely on the Children's Health Insurance Program and who will soon be without funding, community health center patients whose source of healthcare will be closed, government workers who keep our Nation running every day, the disaster relief victims in Puerto Rico who will be denied relief, along with their fellow Americans in Texas and Florida. This shutdown is not a ``good shutdown,'' and it is not ``kind of cool.''

I beg to differ with the majority leader, who has just come to the floor saying that Democrats agree with everything that is in the measure that came to us from the House, because, as damaging as a shutdown is, so is a continuing resolution. It is corrosive and destructive to good government.

We have been through three continuing resolutions--each a month--in as many months, and now a fourth in the fourth month is proposed. That is no way to run a government. Whether it is 3 weeks or 4 weeks, at the end of that so-called continuing resolution--a short-term temporary patch--we will be in the same place as we are today.

The good news is that we have bipartisan consensus not only that we must end the shutdown but also on each of those issues that are necessary to reach consensus on a longer term, full fiscal year package. That is also why a continuing resolution and the measure that came to us from the House are completely inadequate--because they continue to fund those programs at the same level as the previous year, 2017. The Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and our military leaders have told us unequivocally and clearly that those levels are inadequate to our national defense.

I hope there is bipartisan consensus among us on the Armed Services Committee and in the Chamber as a whole that we need a strong national defense--both military and nonmilitary funding--and there needs to be an increase in that funding, which the bill presented last night did not provide.

So far from agreeing with every provision in that 4-week extension, it is inadequate. It would be irresponsible and reprehensible for this body to go along with it, and that is why four of our Republican colleagues joined us in opposing it.

We are all here tonight ready to vote but waiting on one man-- President Trump--to finally be the leader that we expect and demand the President to be; the leader that Donald Trump himself in 2013 said that President Obama should be in ending or stopping the shutdown then. He said, in effect, that the buck would stop with President Obama--just as now it does with President Trump.

In President Obama's case, his party did not control the two branches and Houses of the Congress. The Republicans control the House, they control the Senate, and they control the White House. They are in charge. They are responsible, and they are dysfunctional, in disarray and division.

There have been weeks--indeed, months--of difficult negotiations. I am not here to blame my Republican colleagues. I think they have worked--many of them--in good faith. And that is the reason we have arrived at bipartisan agreements on the need for increases in defense spending, both military and nonmilitary; on the need for the Children's Health Insurance Program to be reauthorized, along with

community health centers; the needs of veterans and pensioners and disaster relief to aid the victims of the recent hurricanes, Irma and Maria. That is why we need also to prevent the mass, draconian deportation of 800,000 young people brought here as infants and children through no choice of their own.

Those bipartisan agreements on each of those issues can be turned into a package that can unite both sides of the aisle--maybe not everyone but a majority here and a majority in the House of Representatives--if they are simply put to a vote. We are here to vote on the substance. Give us that opportunity to vote on a package that embodies those bipartisan agreements.

The President must either lead or get out of the way. These difficult negotiations have to be contrasted with the talks that took place just yesterday between the President and the minority leader, Senator Schumer. In a kind of microcosm, that day epitomizes the kind of leadership that got us to this point.

The President and minority leader emerged from that conversation at midday with a conceptual framework and agreement--virtually--on a constructive set of principles, including a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

To the consternation of some on our side, the minority leader put on the table, in effect, full funding for the wall--the wall that my colleague Senator Rubio just discussed as a condition for such an agreement. This wall was supposed to be funded by the Mexicans. It is, in my view, excessively costly and a waste of money. Border security is absolutely necessary, but it can be done more effectively and less expensively with surveillance, drones, sensors, more patrol officers, and better training. There is a set of fencing system improvements that we can agree on. But if Donald Trump wants that wall and it is a condition for literally the survival of 800,000 young people, the minority leader was willing to put it on the table. That flexibility and willingness to compromise epitomizes the approach that we have offered to take--and must be taken--to reach an agreement.

Within hours, literally, the President backed away from that virtual agreement--maybe ``backed away,'' in fact, is inaccurate. He was pulled away by his far-right extremist staff and supporters. We may never know all of the names that spoke to him, but the fact is, the agreement fell apart.

The shutdown is almost entirely the making of one man, who happens to be President of the United States and who today marks his 1-year anniversary--a year characterized by chaos and conflict, disarray and dysfunction, personal invective and partisan controversy. He has reversed himself so many times that the majority leader himself expressed frustration just a day or so ago because we have no idea what he wants to emerge from these bodies on any of these issues. The minority leader characterized negotiating with him as trying to deal with Jell-O. I think it is equally like a ping pong ball that ricochets back and forth, depending on who has last talked to him and what his mood is and what his last tweet may have been.

So, just as many times before, the President is likely to put the extreme rightwing members of his party before all else--before children and their health, before Dreamers and their potential deportation, and before funding for our troops.

One party is in charge of the Senate and the House and the White House. It owns this shutdown. But more important than pointing fingers and assigning blame is reaching an end and reaching agreement on what is necessary to end this shutdown. And more important than who is hurt politically in this body or the House or in the White House is who is hurt in the country by the failure of this government to function.

We have work to do. We are here tonight. I will be here tonight and tomorrow. We have engaged in some very constructive conversation and discussion across the aisle. I think there is good will on both sides because ultimately we have in our hearts and minds this great Nation. If the President is not able to take yes for an answer, he needs to accept what we provide and resolve that the great dealmaker has to be a deal acceptor. He has repeatedly shown himself to be an erratic, unreliable, unpredictable, and capricious negotiator. There are a number of ways to resolve this shutdown that are within reach with the right kind of leadership on both sides.

I went today to the Women's March here in Washington. I was impressed with the excitement and energy and the dedication of many of the young people who were there. Far from the cynicism and the partisanship that maybe we find all too rampant in this body, their idealism seems balanced. It is inspiring and exciting, their dedication to equal rights and equality, to women's healthcare, and engaging in the political process, believing that one person--one of them, one of us-- can make a difference.

If we are impressed by the resolve and determination of those young people, as I was, we should fulfill those high expectations which they and all America have for us.

Restoring trust in our institutions is a service we can help perform by ending this shutdown, coming to an agreement, and making sure we do what is truly in the public interest.

Looking into their eyes, I was reminded also of the Dreamers. They are known as Dreamers because they believe in that same American dream.

Many of the individuals at the Women's March on the Mall in Washington, DC, this morning were, in fact, Dreamers. They were not a majority but many. They were there because they believe in America, the only country they have ever known. Their communities, their schools, their families are intricately part of this Nation. They are Americans except for the papers, the documents they lack.

I know that my Republican colleagues want to give them a path to citizenship. It is not so much give but afford them the opportunity for a path to citizenship because they have so much to give back to this country. They have lived here all their lives. They played by the rules. They are our future doctors, engineers, nurses, business owners, and entrepreneurs. We can fulfill the American dream for them and for us if we give them that path to citizenship.

A great nation fulfills its promises. America is the greatest Nation in the history of the world. We need to keep our promise. We need to keep our promise in this body to the American people--the oath we have taken to uphold the law and the Constitution--and to do what is right.

We should do what is right for the Dreamers and their American dream, for our military who need support, children who need health insurance, families who need health facilities, veterans who need programs that they have earned and deserve, and fellow Americans who need disaster relief. Every one of them should be done now, not 3 weeks from now, not 4 weeks from now. We are already 112 days into this fiscal year. Now is the time to do the right thing.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the question of the Senator, and it is one I have given a great deal of thought. I think there have been a lot of discussions around here about fancy changes to the budget process and new bills and new budget processes and new rules and everything. I always stop and say: Wait a minute. We could have a budget process written by Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson, but if we don't do our job, it is not going to work. That is essentially where we are now. That is one of the reasons I voted no last night.

I have had it with CRs--continuing resolutions--which really means ``can't resolve.'' We can't make decisions. I want to talk, with the indulgence of the Senator from Montana, a bit about this part of why we are where we are.

I think this is a deeper issue because where we are today is going to simply be repeated 6 months from now, a year from now, 3 months from now, and 5 years from now. It just keeps going on. It is one of the reasons we can't get where we are going.

I was a Governor of Maine in the 1990s. I remember vividly, and I can almost tell you where I was standing in my office when a group of legislators--we had a budget deadline of July 1. A group of legislators came to me because budgets are hard. We all know that. It is hard to resolve some of these issues. They came to me a week or so before the expiration date and said: Governor, we have never done it before here in Maine, but will you go along with a continuing resolution like they do in Washington, and we can solve this in an extra week? I said: Not on your life. Why did I say that? Because that is what we do here, and it doesn't work. That is what has gotten us into trouble. Governments all over the country don't do continuing resolutions. They struggle, they argue, they debate, and they get their budgets done. Yet here we have this constant escape hatch that is in the background.

I have done a lot of reading and thinking about the Framers, who were geniuses--the people who wrote the Constitution. If you read the Federalist Papers, read Madison, read Hamilton, they understood human nature. That is why the Constitution has withstood the test of time for 200 years, because it is based upon a deep understanding and perception of why and how people do this.

This is a human nature question. If you are confronted with a difficult decision, and you have an easy way out, you will always take it. That is what a continuing resolution is. It is basically a statement that says: We can't solve this. We are just going to kick it down the road a few months or 6 months or a week or a couple of months, and maybe something will happen then. My problem is, we will not know anything in a month that we don't know now, and there is no reason to delay it.

The problem is, this government by continuing resolution--and I will give you the figures in a minute; they are breathtaking--but government by continuing resolution is, in fact, like a slow-motion shutdown because the agencies--particularly the military--can't plan. They can't commit. They can't commit to long-term contracts. The military--I am on the Armed Services Committee. I don't think we have had half a dozen hearings in the last 5 years where we haven't talked about sequestration and continuing resolutions. In fact, the Secretary of Defense came to us just a couple of weeks ago and said: Please don't do another continuing resolution. It is crippling to our military.

Yes, DACA is important. All the other issues wrapped up in this are important. But I think there is an underlying issue about the functionality of this organization we really need to address. I went back and looked at the last 20 years. Here is some of the data I find amazing: In the last 20 years, we have averaged 5.6 continuing resolutions a year--every year for 20 years. The average number of days before we got to a budget after the deadline was 137 days, approaching half a year.

If we can do it 6 months late, why can't we do it on time? What did we know 6 months later that we didn't know when we should have done it in the first place? I believe this is really one of the reasons this place doesn't work very well. If we continue to provide this exit, this easy way out, we will always find ourselves in positions like this, and that is where the problem is.

If you could go to your chemistry teacher and say ``The Tuesday exam is looking a little tough for me; I would like a continuing resolution until Friday,'' who is not going to do it? That is what we are doing, and we are going to do it as long as we keep allowing it to happen.

Frankly, I have talked to a lot of my colleagues off the floor in the last few days. We need to have a peasants' revolt here where we say we are not going to vote for these things anymore. Then the leadership and the committee chairs and the President are going to have to make the deals and the arrangements they have to make when they have to make them.

Last fall, we blew through all kinds of deadlines. We blew through the CHIP

deadline. We blew through the FQHC deadline. We blew through, of course, the biggest deadline of all--the budget, September 30. Oh, let's do a continuing resolution. And I voted for them. I voted for a bunch of them. But I am tired of it. This is at the core of one of the reasons this place doesn't work.

All we have to do is do our job and do it now. It is not going to be easier 1 month or 2 months from now.

Assuming we can find some resolution here in the next couple of days--and I deeply hope we can. Nobody wants to shut down the government. It is not good for anybody. But the deeper issue is that we have to get out of the continuing resolution business because as long as that escape hatch is there, it is going to be used. Madison would say that is human nature. I think we as a collective body have to weld that escape hatch shut so that people can't take it and we would have to get our job done at the time that is required. That would go a long way. We don't need fancy changes in the budget process; we just need to do the job we are assigned to do under the current system.

As I said, I deeply hope our leadership can negotiate a solution to this problem. It seems to me they were very close last night. Hopefully, we can do it. I frankly don't understand--at the end of the evening last night, when the Senator made the motion for a 3-day continuing resolution so that we didn't have to shut down the government last night--we could have kept talking and found a solution--it was objected to. I found that very puzzling.

I don't really understand those who are saying this side of the aisle shut down the government. Well, as of midnight or 10 minutes after, when you made your motion, it was the other side who shut down the government because they had before them an option that would have kept it open for 3 or 4 days to try to get this done.

I appreciate the Senator raising these issues. I would like to ask him what is on the minds of the people of Montana. If they are like the people of Maine, they are just puzzled why we can't get these things taken care of.

The same thing. I wish we could banish the phrase ``continuing resolution.'' I know of no business that does business that way. I know of no school district or very few States--I think some States allow 1 or 2 days if they are in really close negotiations, and I understand that. It would be one thing if we were right on it, and just give us a couple more days, and we can iron this out, or, on the other hand, if we had an agreement and it would take several days or perhaps even several weeks to actually do the writing of the bill. I understand that.

I think people just scratch their heads because this is so alien to most people's common, everyday experience. This is one of the few places I know of where we have this kind of operation.

I have a modest suggestion: no budget, no recess. If we don't get these things done, which is the most basic job we have, let's stay here until it gets done. Maybe that is another reflection of using human nature as an incentive, because everyone wants to have a break every now and then.

I am glad we are here on this Saturday. At least we didn't shut down the government last night and then go home. We are going to be here tomorrow, as far as I am concerned and as far as I know. I am certainly going to be here. We have to have some discussion.

The Senator mentioned the four leaders. I think this has to involve the President as well. One of the powers of the President is as a convener. I think the President has to be involved in this, he has to make some decisions, and he has to help guide the decisions--here is what I will take, here is what I won't take--and work with this party so we can get a comprehensive agreement on some of these important issues. I understand they have nice meeting rooms in the White House. They probably have sandwiches. I think they can bring the group down there and say: Nobody leaves this place until we get this done. As I say, I think the people of Maine are just scratching their heads and saying: Why can't we do this?

I think another important point is that if this were a body and an institution that was one party, if everybody was of the same party, there wouldn't be any dispute--somebody would lay down the law, and that is what would happen. But this is an institution intended to represent the entire country and different views. That means that if you are in the majority--particularly in the Senate--you have a responsibility to get input from the minority, for people. In my case, I am in a minority of two.

Everybody here has valid input. To just say: This is it. Here is the deal. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, we are going to hammer you for not going along--that is no way to make good policy in the long run.

There is a lot of good thinking in this Hall. There are a lot of smart people. In fact, I told somebody at home that I have never been in an outfit that has more good people and gets less done. There is something about this structure. I don't think there is anything in the water down here, but there is something about how this structure works that just keeps us from getting there.

I respect that the majority has the majority, but there also has to be some role to work together, and that is what the 60-vote margin is all about. I think this is a place where there needs to be some compromise.

One of my favorite philosophers, Mick Jagger, said: ``You don't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you might just find you get what you need.'' I think that is where we are right now. Everybody can't get what they want, but if we work together, if we listen to each other, if we respect each other, and if we quit taking the easy way out, we will get what we need. That is what the people of Maine want us to do.

I thank the Senator from Montana for his clear thinking, as always, and his contribution to this discussion. I hope our colleagues will pay heed, as they always should, to the Senator from Montana.

Mr. President, I am proud to be a Wisconsin Senator. Washington is broken. Washington isn't working for Wisconsin or Minnesota or the rest of America, for that matter. I rise today to call on all my Senate colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to fix it.

I think it is very important for all of us to be honest with the American people and shoot straight with how we got to this point where we are today, amidst a government shutdown.

At the end of September, nearly 4 months ago, the Republican majority missed a major deadline--a deadline to pass a budget for America and its government and appropriations bills that fund the government for the year. Republicans have the power of the majority here in the U.S. Senate, in the House of Representatives, and the Presidency. Yet the Republican leadership has failed--failed to put together a budget for America and its government that provides certainty for our country. Families in Wisconsin who are struggling paycheck to paycheck put together a budget for their families because they have to in order to make ends meet. But here in Washington, my friends on the other side of the aisle have played by a different set of rules.

On Friday night, they didn't put forward a budget for America and its government. Instead, they offered their fourth short-term continuing resolution in the last 4 months. This is no way to govern, simply kicking the can down the road each month and ignoring the real needs of our country.

The Federal budget is not a calendar year budget; rather, it runs from October 1 to September 30 each year. There are all sorts of historical reasons for why that is, but among them, if we get our work done on time, the local governments and other entities that have calendar year budgets get to see what Federal funds have been allocated for the things that we do jointly that make a real difference in people's lives. The Congress is actually supposed to get its budget done in the spring and then finish its appropriations process by September 30. In fact, today we should be starting our work on the 2019 budget. Instead, we are still working on the 2018 budget that should have been completed last spring and appropriations bills that should have been done by September 30.

The majority had from September 30 until December 9--that was the first, short-term continuing resolution, as it is known--to get the job done. On a bipartisan basis, we allocated that time through a continuing resolution. The majority then had from December 9 until December 22, another short-term continuing resolution, and then from December 22 to January 19, another continuing resolution. But the governing majority still hasn't done its work, so they asked for yet another 4 weeks. This month-by-month approach from the majority has failed. It has failed to provide our military and troops with the budget certainty they need.

We heard from Secretary Mattis and his team this week about how harmful these continuing resolutions are to our Nation's military, and the majority should heed those words because it impedes the military's ability to plan for the defense of our Nation. Under repeated continuing resolutions, the Department can't start new programs, hiring and recruitment are limited, and our national security funding priorities are left on autopilot. The Defense Department has made it clear that they need a long-term budget, not week-by-week and month-by- month measures, but the majority has failed to deliver results.

Our veterans need VA reforms so that they can get the healthcare services they have earned, and I have worked in a bipartisan manner on a number of reforms of the VA Choice Program, but the continuing resolution offered--and rightly rejected by both Democrats and Republicans--shortchanges veterans' health when we should be working together to serve those who have bravely served this Nation.

Four months ago, congressional Republicans let funding for children's healthcare expire. They refused to pass legislation that funds the Children's Health Insurance Program, otherwise known as CHIP, and 170,000 children in the State of Wisconsin rely on CHIP for their healthcare. But the congressional Republicans were more concerned during that period of time with giving away massive tax breaks; 80 percent-plus of the benefits go to the upper 1 percent and big corporations. In fact, while these children were ignored, Republicans gave permanent tax cuts to powerful corporations and now won't provide permanent funding for the CHIP program for children's health insurance for low-income families.

Four months ago, the majority party that controls Washington let funding for community health centers lapse. In my home State, 300,000 Wisconsinites are served by community health centers, including kids on CHIP. Two weeks ago, I visited one of those community health centers in Green Bay, WI. The healthcare workers and staff describe the anxiety and uncertainty they feel every day because they don't know whether they will have the funding they need to minister to the healthcare needs of those whom they serve. Many community health centers can't move forward with longer term contracts for services or repairs or invest in new medical equipment because they don't know if or when Washington will act. They found out on Friday night that the continuing resolution offered, just like the three before it, failed to address funding for community health centers once again, but it did give tax breaks to big insurance companies. We cannot leave our community health centers without the funding they need to serve the people for whom we all work. We should take action now to fully fund them because they can't wait any longer.

I know that every one of my colleagues here in the Senate has come face to face with the opioid epidemic. I know I have. I have traveled my State and met with healthcare workers, local officials, people from law enforcement and the judiciary who are working on the frontlines of this crisis. I know what it is like to have a loved one dependent upon narcotics. I have met with families who have lost a loved one to this epidemic. I have met with family members who are currently finding their own lives totally upended because of a loved one who is hooked on opioids. There is bipartisan support for doing more. There is support across party lines for the Federal Government to step up and be a stronger partner in this fight. A short-term, stopgap measure isn't going to do it, and we all know it. So let's find the will to work together to provide strong investments in local communities so that they have

the resources they need for prevention treatment and recovery efforts. Let's work together to save lives.

We are where we are right now because I think Washington has lost sight of what our work here should be about--making a difference in people's lives. Hundreds of thousands of young people have had their lives placed in limbo by the politics of Washington. The Dreamers, who have only known America as their home, are working hard. They are going to school. They are serving in our military. President Trump has threatened them with deportation. Right now, we have a bipartisan solution that Republican leadership in both the Senate and the House have refused to make a commitment to passing. This bipartisan solution strengthens border security and does right by the Dreamers. Just a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with an education leader in Wisconsin. He told me that his school, a Catholic K-12 school, employs by his count 23 Dreamers. He can't imagine the devastating impact it might have if we don't figure this out.

On Thursday of last week, I spoke with a Wisconsin Dreamer. She made her way to DC--and this wasn't her first trip--to tell her powerful story. She asked for an update, and I told her what I thought was happening here. She told me she had just 8 days left before her DACA status expires, and she said: I don't know what I am going to do, how I will be able to work. Today, she has only 5 days left. We have a bipartisan solution that Senate Republicans and Democrats have worked on together, so let's do our job and let's get it done.

I have the privilege of working for a State with a work ethic that is second to none. I am deeply humbled by that privilege, and I do everything I can to respect and reward the hard work of Wisconsinites. That is why I have been working for months on pension reforms. When people work hard and they play by the rules and build their retirement security, they should be able to depend on the pensions they have earned. Right now, 25,000 Wisconsin retirees and workers have had their pensions threatened through no fault of their own. I have visited with these workers throughout the State of Wisconsin in Green Bay, in Endeavor, in Milwaukee, and Brookfield--hundreds of them. They each have a powerful story. I spoke to one worker who started his job as a trucker at age 23. He worked for 40 years. At several stages in his career, he had the opportunity, if you will call it that, to forgo a potential increase in wages so that he could put more into his pension, so he and his wife could enjoy a secure retirement. But today he and thousands of others are facing the prospect of massive cuts to the pensions they have earned, unless Congress acts. They can't afford to have us kick the can down the road once again. They need us to act and keep the promises of the pensions they worked so hard for. Let's work together. Let's work together and get the job done by passing the Butch Lewis Act and save the pensions that over a million workers and retirees across this country are counting on.

Mr. President, enough of round after round of fighting. The American people are fed up with it. They did not send us here to perform a monthly melodrama. They sent us here to get things done. They didn't send us here to play political games and create chaos. They sent us here to work together on solutions to the problems that they face and that we face jointly as a nation. The biggest problem we face right now is that Washington is broken. It is up to us to fix it, so let's start working together to get the job done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, late last night this body voted on the fourth short-term continuing resolution for fiscal year 2018. That means we are already into this by 3 or 4 months. I voted for the continuing resolution last night because I refuse to support a government shutdown in any way, shape, or form, but it doesn't mean I believe this should be the way this Congress works.

To my good friend from Alaska and all of the good people here, I consider everyone in this body my friend. To the blame game, I got here in November 2010. The Democrats were the majority at that time, and I wondered why we weren't voting. I didn't understand the process. As I started learning the process, I kept wondering, why aren't we voting? There were filibusters and cloture and we couldn't get things done.

I am not here to say who is at fault. I know when you are in the majority, you are in a leadership position, and you are supposed to lead. We expect leadership to lead. Leadership has to make sacrifices sometime to find a pathway forward. Both sides are guilty of not doing that as well as it should be done.

We are in a government shutdown. It should never happen. Three hundred million people shouldn't be penalized for the dysfunction of this body. As Democrats and Republicans, I would hope we would be Americans first.

I don't think of my Democratic Party before I think of what is good for the country or what is good for the State of West Virginia. I have my Democratic principles I believe in. As a West Virginia Democrat, perhaps they are a little different than maybe a Washington Democrat, and I have my Republican friends in West Virginia who believe a little differently than Washington Republicans. At the end of the day, we always try to do what is right for the State of West Virginia and, most importantly, what is right for the country.

We are not going to let our troops down. There is no way, shape, or form. You have to be accountable and responsible. In all the things we are doing, I can't fathom how we have allowed so much power in two people's hands--both leaders of our respective caucuses--where it seems any negotiations are only done between two people. The only negotiations are with the staff of those two people, and we are supposed to, as a body, blindly go along. As you know, I don't do that all the time. My votes are pretty independent, and they will be. I always said if I can go home to West Virginia and I can explain what I am voting for and why I did it, whether they would agree or not, if I can explain it, I can vote for it. If I can't look a West Virginian in the eye and explain my vote, I made it for political reasons for myself or for somebody else but not for my State. I am not going to do that.

For us to go beyond tomorrow would absolutely be a travesty. If we can't open this government back up and work through our differences, it would be a travesty. If we allow this country to suffer starting Monday morning--when everybody should be at work, everybody should be paid for the work they are doing for our great country to keep it safe, our military, and everybody down that line--then shame on all of us.

I believe we can. I believe the majority leader is going to find a pathway forward, and he will be able to lead and accept what the minority, the Democratic Party, is saying. We can adjust and make some adjustments here. We need some votes on this. We would like to be able to proceed further, and we want to make sure we can come to an agreement that gives us a long-term solution, not every month it is coming back to us. That means getting a pathway forward. I truly believe in my heart that can be done, and it will be done.

I have, in my State of West Virginia, 20,000-plus children depending on the CHIP program for their healthcare, and I know the Presiding Officer does too. We all do. We want to take care of that.

We have our military, and we want our military to be funded properly so they can defend us. We need to make sure they have all the necessary equipment and armaments and all the technology they are going to need to be safe themselves. For us to divide ourselves between Democrats and Republicans about who supports the military more or less is wrong. It is the one thing that keeps us bipartisan. It is the one cohesive thing we have in this Senate is our military and our love of our veterans and the work of our military, what they are doing and what they have done for us. I have never found a Democrat or Republican who wouldn't rally behind a veteran or help the military to be as safe as they can. So that should be taken off the table. No one is against the military.

Every time we pass another short-term funding bill, we put our national security at risk. We talked about that. We stall critical projects for our economy and our citizens. The CR means we are stagnant. We can't plan, we have no long projection that we can take care of. It basically gets us from one day to the next. If the CR is for 30 days, it gives you 30 days. If it is 3 days, it gets us 3 days. Somebody has to move the needle forward to make sure we can run in a consistent way. We need a 12-month budget. We need the 12 appropriations bills the Senator from Alaska spoke about. We need those to be taken up and leadership must lead and make that happen. During the shutdown, government agencies and services will close. The people we are supposed to serve are going to suffer, and that is just wrong.

The Department of Defense--we have talked about that on both sides of the aisle--will not be able to pay death gratuities to families. Think about that. We will not be able to pay the death gratuities to families of servicemembers killed in combat without additional legislation from Congress. With this dysfunctional shutdown, where we can't operate, that is not going to happen. Everyone wants to use something as a wedge and something they can hold against each other, and then they figure out what they can do with it: Well, I am for this or I want to take care of the death benefits. That is the least we can do, but so-and-so doesn't want to do it. That is not right. I can't fix it that way. That doesn't repair it.

Yesterday, during negotiations, while government agencies were preparing for a shutdown, I spoke to my good friend Ken Fisher. I don't know if you know about the Fisher House. You may have heard of them. They are all over the country taking care of our military families. When there is someone wounded anywhere in the world, if someone needs-- if a family needs a place to stay, it is similar to the Ronald McDonald House that helps families in need when they want to go visit, and they can't afford these types of trips. They take care of that. Ken Fisher and his family and his foundation have always been there for them. Ken Fisher is making sure there is no funding gap during the time of unfathomable loss.

Can you imagine, here is an individual, a private individual, a philanthropist, the Fisher House, they are agreeing to offer the families an advanced grant until the government can make reimbursements at the appropriate time. They will also cover the flights and hotels and incidentals for the family for this period of time. Here is an individual, an American, willing to say: Listen, we are going to put our family money up in support of our military families who have lost a loved one defending our country, making sure they are able to travel to be with that body of the deceased, being able to give them comfort. Knowing we are so dysfunctional right now that we can't make that happen, to have a private individual step up and do that for us is unbelievable.

You talk about the love and pride of an American putting their country first. Ken Fisher and his family have put their money where their mouth is. They put their money where they believe what is good about this country, what makes us better than anyplace in the world. Ken and his family and the Fisher House stepped up to help our soldiers and their families during a time of need and especially during this senseless shutdown.

As I said before, this shutdown shouldn't go anymore than tomorrow. Tomorrow it should come to an end. This truly unacceptable silliness that we go through should stop.

We have important work to do, including ensuring the military is

equipped to protect our country, fighting the opioid epidemic, keeping our promise to our coal miners and their pensions. We have pension plans they are going to lose by 2022. The average pension a miner gets, you would think is, what, an exorbitant amount? It is $586, the average pension. That is all we are asking for. Most of them are widows collecting these pensions to keep their homes opened up, to be able to take care of themselves. We need to help there. The Children's Health Insurance Program, the CHIP program--there are 20,000 West Virginians and 9 million Americans who must be taken care of.

Funding the government is one of our most basic constitutional obligations, and now because of partisan politics--and everybody in this room is guilty--100, guilty as charged who are not able to sit down and do their job, not able to work through our differences, not able to put your country before yourself and your politics, only thinking of what might benefit you or the party to which you belong, as if that is the only oath and alliance and allegiance you owe.

That is not who I am and not whom I am going to be. I am going to do whatever I can to keep this government open and get it back open. This is dangerous to our national security, and it is truly embarrassing. I want to apologize to every citizen in West Virginia and every citizen across this country. We are better than this, and I am ashamed we haven't been able to show the true spirit of who we are and whom we should be and why you sent us here to do our job. I will continue to fight to make America what it should be and what it is, the promise of the world, the hope of the world. There are people all over the world thinking we can be better than what we are. Let's show them. Let's do our job.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Michigan for her words today but also, more importantly, for her advocacy for so many years, and maybe especially in the last year, on the Children's Health Insurance Program and all of the great work she has done.

This is a program which has been bipartisan for a generation. I speak from the vantage point of Pennsylvania. It has been bipartisan in my home State for even longer than the Federal program. In Pennsylvania, the program was passed in 1992 and became law in 1993, and so for longer than the Federal program, which many people know started in 1997.

It has personal connections to me. My father was the Governor who signed the legislation into law in 1993. Since that time, every Republican and Democratic Governor and, for the most part, the legislatures of both parties have supported it, which has been the case here. It is only lately that CHIP has become contentious.

The tragic irony here--or if you wanted to use stronger language, I would use the word ``insult''--in this case, you had legislation to reauthorize--which is a fancy Washington word for ``do it again'' with maybe some changes--the legislation was reauthorized in the fall and was ready for passage on the Senate floor. The majority leader indicated that it had to get through committee, and it did. We had a unanimous vote in the Finance Committee to have children's health--to have that program be part of our law going forward. What happened? The deadline was September 30. The Republican majority had the opportunity to bring that bill, the KIDS Act--that was the bill--to the floor. If that bill were brought to the floor, it would have passed in a matter of hours, if not less.

The majority decided not to bring the Children's Health Insurance Program reauthorization bill, the KIDS Act, to the floor before September 30, so the program expired September 30. Here we are, more than 100 days--I guess it is 112 days or something like that--since it expired. Republicans had the power to get children's health insurance done by September 30. They failed despite the fact that there was a bill to do that. It could have passed on the floor very quickly. They have all the power to do it, to get it on the floor, and they chose not to.

That is bad enough, but it gets worse. They had all of the month of October, and they did nothing on children's health insurance. They had all of the month of November, and they did nothing on children's health insurance. They had all of the month of December, and they did nothing on children's health insurance.

Now there is this newfound urgency to make sure they criticize Democrats for not passing this defective piece of legislation that has major holes in it from the House, which was developed only by the Freedom Caucus in the House, and we are supposed to accept, I guess, whatever the Freedom Caucus in the House wants. That is the way we are supposed to run the U.S. Senate.

Why would Republicans--despite their assertions that they want to move the children's health insurance bill forward--let all of October, all of November, and all of December pass after they already let it expire? Why would they let all that time go by? It is not a mystery. We don't have to hire a private investigator to find out why they let it go that long. One reason is, because for most of November or all of November but certainly all of December, until, I guess, about the 22nd of December, they were focused on one priority, their tax bill, a tax bill which is a giveaway to the superrich. The top 1 percent gets about $51,000 in year one. I hope everyone else is going to do that well-- sorry, they are not. What do they do in that bill in addition to helping the wealthy? They gave big corporations not just the kind of tax cuts we have never seen before--more than almost $1.5 trillion for corporations--but they made it permanent. So they got permanent corporate tax relief when they should have been figuring out a way to get children's health insurance done. So that is the story of how we got from there to here.

We hear now that because there are changes in the cost of children's health that this would be a 6-year bill. Well, that is a good amount of time, but guess what. Guess what. Because of all that change in the intervening period, we could do a 10-year Children's Health Insurance Program and save billions of dollars in doing it, compared to what Republicans want to do now. So if there is this urgency to do something about children's health on the Republican side, I say let's join together and not only get children's health insurance done--today we could do it. We have all day today. We have all day tomorrow. We have a big weekend of work here. Let's get children's health insurance done and knock something off the list. We don't have to worry about it, but while we are at it, let's make it 10 years. I would argue that children's health insurance should be a permanent program, just like the tax cuts for corporations. They found a way to give corporations permanent tax relief. Why wouldn't you support permanent children's health insurance? But if they can't do that, we could at least do it for 10 years. That is easy to do right here today, a 10-year Children's Health Insurance Program so that 9 million kids and their families and 180,000 in Pennsylvania can have the certainty to know that despite the fact that it is over 100 days late because of Republican failure to get the job done, we could get it done right now, today. So let's see what they do.

Here is another issue we have to talk about because this bill that came over from the House didn't address this issue: community health centers. Eight hundred thousand people in Pennsylvania depend upon those community health centers. There is nothing in that bill that we voted on last night to address those 800,000 people in Pennsylvania and tens of millions across the

country. The House bill didn't even touch that. I guess those people shouldn't have to worry.

Community health centers, we know after that expired, just like the Children's Health Insurance Program--and the Republicans have the majority. They could have made sure the health centers continued, but they didn't. So after expiring, we know these health centers face a funding reduction of 60 percent to 70 percent. We also know, at least in my State, of the 180,000 children covered on CHIP, something on the order of 9,000 children enrolled in the CHIP program go to community health centers. So having CHIP in place is essential, but having community health centers in place alongside it is also essential. What do those 9,000 kids in Pennsylvania do if they have CHIP coverage but can't go to the community health center down the street because it is closed because it wasn't addressed by House Republicans or Senate Republicans?

So while we are at it this weekend, why don't we get community health centers done. In my State, 4,915 people work there in full-time jobs-- 4,915 people.

The third issue of four--and I will be done in a minute--tax extenders. That is kind of another Washington phrase, right? Well, in this case, not getting these extenders done by the end of the year, which we almost always do no matter who is in charge--but guess what. They couldn't do it. They didn't get to tax extenders for rural hospitals by the end of the year because guess what. They were working on their tax bill for big corporations and rich people. So rural hospitals got pushed aside, just like children's health got pushed aside, just like community health centers got pushed aside because they had to get their tax bill done for those big corporations and rich people. So tax extenders for rural hospitals didn't get done. Rural health providers face hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts across the Nation.

I represent a State that has 67 counties, but we have 48 counties of those 67 that are rural. In those 48 rural counties, about 279,000 people got healthcare either through the Medicaid expansion or through the exchanges. In those communities where there is a rural hospital-- sometimes there is only one hospital for a long distance--those communities rely upon that hospital not just for healthcare but for jobs. Sometimes--in most places, it is the biggest employer in the county or the second biggest employer. In my State, there are between 20 and 30 rural counties where the hospital is either the biggest employer or the second biggest. They need those tax provisions in place, but the majority did not get that done.

Finally, I will end with this. The senior Senator from Michigan highlighted this, and I think it is important. Another thing that didn't get done that wasn't in this bill coming over from the House was an important program we don't talk about enough. It has been in place a couple of years. That is the Maternal Infant and Early Child Home Visiting Program, an evidence-based home visiting program that supports at-risk pregnant women and young families. That didn't get done in this bill. It was not in the bill. In fiscal year 2017, funding for that program was $400 million. It is the right thing to do to have that in place.

We know that just in Pennsylvania, for example, 3,282 families benefit from this program. That is another part of this bill that wasn't included. So if the majority is so concerned, as they professed last night--I wish they did this months ago, but just last night, breaking news, they are concerned about the Children's Health Insurance Program--let's pass it today. Let's get it done today and make it a 10- year program. No one would have to worry for an entire decade about children's health insurance if the Republican majority wants to join us in that effort.

I yield the floor, and note that the next speaker is the senior Senator from Ohio, a great fighter for our kids and for our families.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we rise today after a long night last night--a night that I think could produce some fruits today or tomorrow or soon, I hope, because, on behalf of the just over 1 million Montanans and families across this country, and I believe a vast majority of the people in this body, we need to put this shutdown to an end.

Folks, whether it be a welder in Butte or a teacher in Billings or a sugar beet farmer in Sidney or a mill worker in Columbia Falls, they have all told me, and they will continue to tell me, that this body is incredibly dysfunctional and that Congress is incredibly dysfunctional. We ought to break that. We ought to start working together. We ought to start listening to one another. We shouldn't be taking off the right side of the Earth nor the left side of the Earth. We should work in the middle for policies that work for America.

The budget may be the most important of those policies that work for America. It has been 112 days now since our budget ran out--the end of September of this year. We have responded to that budget running out by passing four short-term continuing resolutions, we call them--stop-gap measures, bandaids, if you will, kicking the can down the road; it is described by a lot of different methods--to fund the budget. That has resulted in costing the taxpayers additional dollars and incredible inefficiencies, and it is caused by the Members of this body not doing their job and leadership not doing their job.

Enough is enough. We need to roll up our sleeves. We need to work together. We need to talk. We need to listen to one another. We need to come to a resolution of this problem.

We can talk about the Children's Health Insurance Program. It is an incredibly important program, there is no doubt about it, but it has been held hostage for the last 4 months. I can tell my colleagues that if it was put on the floor--and it could have been put on the floor at any time in the last 4 months--it would have passed, I believe, overwhelmingly by this body. Why? Because kids need it. Families need it. We are putting, in Montana's case alone, 24,000 kids at risk who do not have credible care.

The same can be said for our healthcare centers. The same can be said for the opioid crisis. The same can be said for security on our northern and southern borders. The same can be said for our military. The uncertainty we have without a longer budget that goes to the end of the fiscal year is unacceptable. We all know it. We have been talking about it for months, but nothing ever comes to the floor to solve it, except for a continuing resolution, which is not a solution at all, it is a bandaid.

Last night, I proposed a 72-hour--3-day--extension so the shutdown wouldn't happen until Monday night so we could work together to negotiate this deal, to put some pressure on the body to work together to come up with a deal by Monday night. It seemed reasonable enough to me. We have been talking about these issues for months, but the majority leader objected to keeping the government open and pushing ourselves--driving ourselves to the negotiating table to get something done.

Look, I have worked in this body with a number of folks on my side of the aisle and on the other side of the aisle, and we have had success. I bring this up often because Johnny Isakson is an incredibly good chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I happen to be the ranking member. Johnny Isakson and I work well together. We don't always agree, but from the very beginning, we have agreed to put what we disagree on off to the side and work on what we agree on. What has transpired is a record number of votes on tough issues coming out of the Veterans Affairs' Committee. Why? Because we are working for the veterans, and that is what we need to be doing here. We should not be working for a political party. We should not be posturing ourselves for the next election. We should not be putting working families and businesses at risk. We should be working together to make a difference for this country with a long-term funding bill that addresses a number of issues which have all been laid on the table, from healthcare to opioids, to pensions, to our military, to border security--the list goes on, but it is a list we can work with. We know what needs to be done. We need to quit playing games.

One of the people I have incredible respect for in this body who has what I believe uncommon common sense is the Senator from Maine. Senator King and I visit, oftentimes off the floor, and we talk about our frustrations with this body because it doesn't have to be this way. We can get things done if we work together. I am hoping Senator King can explain to me why we continue to have a budget that doesn't work for the American people, that continues to be a patchwork of month-by-month or week-by-week continuing resolutions and what we need to do to fix it.

I thank Senator King for the question.

Last night, as we approached midnight, I got an email from one of my good friends in Montana who is in the business of agriculture. He is a rancher in North Central Montana, actually on the Rocky Mount front. He said: Why does this have to happen?

My comment to him was that continuing resolutions don't work well for this country. They cost taxpayers a bunch of money, and they don't give folks the kind of predictability in their government that they elected us to give them.

I am with the Senator. I voted for the continuing resolutions--the one that extended it to December 1 and then the next one, which went to I believe December 19. At that moment in time, I thought, well, Christmas is looming, and we will come to an agreement, and if not, we will just stay here throughout the Christmas break and do it because it is that important.

I believe strongly in my family, and I love to be there, and I was there for Christmas, but the truth is, this job here is critically important for the whole country, and we need to do our job.

The motion for yet another CR from December 19--to move it to January 19 came up, and I held my nose and I voted for it. At that time, I said: I am not going to do this again. In that month between December 19 through January 19, we were supposed to have worked out a deal. Guess what happened. There was no deal worked out. Now we are back in exactly the same place.

What Senator King said is exactly correct. What are we going to know in February that we don't know now? The point is, nothing additional is going to be added to the equation. We all know what it is--deals with border security, the military, healthcare issues, pensions, opioids, and a budget that goes until the end of September, which is the end of the fiscal year for this country--but it is simply not going to happen unless we get folks working together again.

Look, the Republicans have majorities in the House and the Senate. They control the Presidency and the White House. I am telling you, if the floor leader doesn't provide the kind of leadership that we need to get to a point where we address the issues that are important to this country, we will never address the issues, and we will continue to have continuing resolution after continuing resolution.

So what I would ask is that folks from both sides lock themselves in a room. The two leaders, lock themselves in the room. Ultimately, that is what it is going to come down to, to come to an agreement that works for this country and gives predictability over the long haul.

I happen to be on the Appropriations Committee. We are going to be starting to work on the fiscal year 2019 budget, and we are not even done with the 2018 budget because of these continuing resolutions.

So I would tell Senator King that the people of Montana are frustrated. They want to see their government work better. What are the folks in Maine telling you?

I think that is what the whole country wants us to do.

The Senator brought up the point that if this body were all one party and they all thought the same, it might be easier. But it would be a lot worse. The truth is, diversity of thought is important. Talking with people, getting compromise, and finding the middle ground is what built this country. That is what built America. We need to look at those principles when we move forward on a bill like this.

Ten days ago, I was at the White House. Senator Durbin was there. There were about two dozen folks, between the House and the Senate, from both parties. We saw the President more focused than I have ever seen him before. He said: You bring us a bill on the issue of immigration, and I will sign it. I will be the bad guy, he said. I will sign it. There is a bipartisan group here who got together and did that, and then he said no.

So the Senator is exactly right. The White House--the President--has to provide the kind of leadership and assurance to know that he is not just going to say no, that he will take yes for an answer. I think it is very, very important moving forward.

Look, we are at a moment in time where everybody looks at us, and I think we have single-digit approval ratings--probably lower than that now after last night. America is saying: Come on, guys. It doesn't have to be like this. You need to work together.

Everybody needs to work together and come together and come up with something that works for America, that solves the problems that are there. That is what I ask of this body today. We all say basically the same thing, so let's just do it. Let's put the bill together, let's bring it to the floor, and let's vote and get it done.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived.

Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I want to call to the attention of my colleagues a part of the statement of the White House Press Secretary tonight, presumably on behalf of the administration. It simply says: We will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while Democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage over their reckless demands.

That appropriately represents the White House view of where we are. And what we have just witnessed on the floor was a cynical decision by Senate Democrats to shove aside millions of Americans for the sake of irresponsible political gains. A government shutdown was 100 percent avoidable--completely avoidable. Now it is imminent, all because Senate Democrats chose to filibuster a noncontroversial funding bill that contains nothing, not a thing, they do not support--nothing they do not support.

Perhaps across the aisle some of our Democratic colleagues are feeling proud of themselves, but what has their filibuster accomplished? What has it accomplished? The answer is simple: their very own government shutdown.

The shutdown effects on the American people will come as no surprise. All week, as we have stood on the floor and begged our colleagues to come to their senses, Senate Republicans have described exactly what this will mean.

For America's men and women in uniform, shutting down the government means delayed pay. For the many thousands of civilian employees who support their missions, it means furloughs. And for the families of fallen heroes, it may well mean a freeze on survivor death benefits. For veterans who rely on our promise of care, shutting down the government means threatening their access to treatment. For so many Americans struggling with opioid addiction, the same is true. Thanks to the Democratic leader's decision to filibuster an extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, low-income families will slip closer to losing health coverage for their kids, and in many States, this is an emergency.

I am having trouble understanding which one of these outcomes my Democratic colleagues could possibly be proud of. Which one of them? I think our friends on the other side took some bad advice--really bad advice. I would hate to have to be trying to explain this myself.

They ignored the Governors, including seven Democrats who wrote Congress begging us to extend SCHIP for 9 million children. They ignored the needs of millions of Americans who rely on the Federal Government for important services. They held all this hostage--all of this hostage over the completely unrelated issue of illegal immigration.

Republicans in the Senate have done all we can to continue the normal operations of the Federal Government and secure certainty for these SCHIP kids. We could pass it tonight, it could go to the President for signature, and these kids would be OK.

Well, we are going to continue to do all we can. We will vote again so the American people know who stands for them. And when our friends across the aisle remember who it is they actually represent, we will be ready to come together in a bipartisan discussion that will be necessary to clean up all of this mess.

We have all been having private conversations here on the floor. Almost everybody on both sides doesn't understand how we ended up here, because most of the stuff, we agree on. Well, there is only one reason we ended up here: the shoehorning of illegal immigration into this debate.

Now, having said that, there is a lot of sympathy in this body for doing something about the DACA kids. It is not like nobody is interested in that. We have been talking about it for 3 months. But the one reason we are where we are is because we couldn't close out any of these other component parts because our friends on the other side said: You have to deal with this issue. This issue is the key to getting defense spending, this issue is the key to getting help for SCHIP kids, and on and on and on.

I think most of the American people believe that shutting down the government over this issue, which doesn't even ripen until March, is irresponsible. And I have just listed all of the people who are going to be adversely impacted by this action.

So we are going to keep on voting, and the government may be heading into a shutdown, but the Senate is not shutting down. We are open to talk and to resolve this. I don't think it makes the institution look very responsible. The American people should expect better from us than this.

Mr. President, I want to particularly commend the five Democrats who voted not to shut the government down. The new Senator from Alabama, during his campaign, said it was important to fund the S- CHIP program before it ran out of money, and he listened to the seven Democratic Governors who said: This is an emergency; we need help.

There were five courageous Democrats on the other side who stood up to this ridiculous argument that it made sense somehow to shut down the government over an illegal immigration issue that the vast majority of this body would like to do something about anyway.

I want to particularly commend the five Democrats who had the courage to stand up to this ridiculous strategy that put their whole party in an incredible predicament because, as the White House just indicated, the President is not going to talk about the issue at all while the government is shut down. He made it quite clear. He said: ``When Democrats start paying our armed forces and first responders, we will reopen negotiations on immigration reform.''

So this particular strategy has eliminated the possibility of getting a signature on the thing they shut the government down over. Can anybody explain to me this strategy? I am perplexed. I wasn't first in my class, but I wasn't last either. How does this get them what they are looking for?

We will continue to talk because when all the games stop, the issues are still there--every single one of them are still there. The American people expect us to act like adults, to get together and solve the problems.

Now I will be offering an amendment to change the date to February 8. We will, unfortunately, not be able to get that vote tonight, but I will be subsequently asking for consent, but at some point here, we will be voting on February 8. That is the date the senior Senator from South Carolina and I have been talking about, and the Democratic leader and I have been talking about--which begins to move a little bit closer to where our friends on the other side said they wanted to be--but a reasonable period of time that takes into account the State of the Union, our party conferences, and the amount of time it takes to actually write a bill once you have an agreement. You can't just reach an agreement, snap your fingers, and everything falls into place and you are ready to go. It is a reasonable period to first agree, and then write, get ready to negotiate a settlement that we have been working on for months. February 8 is a very reasonable time. I hear there is sentiment for that on both sides of the aisle. I hope so.

At some point, we will vote on that option. I can't get that vote tonight, but I am going to ask consent to have that vote tonight.

Vote on Motion to Refer with Amendment No. 1905

Mr. President, I move to table the motion to refer.

Mr. President, I move to table the motion to concur with further amendment.

Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 195, with a further amendment.

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk on the motion to concur with amendment.

Mr. President, I move to refer the House message on H.R. 195 to the Committee on Appropriations to report back forthwith with instructions.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the mandatory quorum call be waived and the Senate immediately vote on the motion to invoke cloture without any intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we passed similar legislation during the government shutdown back in 2013. My hope is that we can restore funding for the entire government before this becomes necessary. I am going to object for tonight, but we will discuss it again tomorrow. Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, for the information of all our colleagues, the Senate will convene at 12 noon tomorrow.

My hope is that an agreement can be reached. We will be here in session tomorrow working to finally resolve the way forward. Senators should expect votes tomorrow.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 12 noon, Saturday, January 20; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; finally, that following leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R. 195.