quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. ms. hirono: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are in a quorum call. ms. hirono: i i ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. hirono: mr. president, when donald trump was a private citizen during the last government shutdown, he said, and i quote, problems start from the to be, and they have to get solved from the top. and the president is the leader and he's got to get everybody in a room and he's got to lead.

that's what donald trump said when he was citizen trump. he is now the president. now that he's the president, he has those shoes to wear, he refuses to step into them and step up. the only person to have actually said maybe we need a good shut down-is president trump. although i have to say recently, the office of management and budget director mick mulvaney also said it was cool to shut down the government. unbelievable, definitely not cool. this attitude may explain why the president keeps shooting down bipartisan efforts to prevent a shutdown. republicans control the house and the senate. i don't know why we have to keep reminding republicans that they control the house and the senate. there is no reason for the majority leader and the speaker to enable -- this trump shutdown

to continue. there is no reason to wait on the president to tell them to do whatever or tell them what he believes because donald trump is a changeling. he is unable of being consist sentst tent. i witnessed this weeks ago when i went to the white house to find a path forward to protect the dreamers. during the meeting in front of all of us and an national tv for over 50 minutes, donald trump promised to sign whatever bipartisan compromise that congress came up with. he said he'd take the heat. we had barely driven back to the capitol before he went back on that promise. this pattern repeated on friday when the democratic leader discussed a broad bipartisan compromise with the president to keep the government open. and after agreeing to -- or appearing to agree on a

framework, the president shortly thereafter said no once again. this is donald trump's shutdown. it's important to understand who is responsible for his shutdown. he himself said it's the president who's supposed to be bringing everybody together. but frankly it's more important to end the shutdown. it's time for congress to lead. congress is a separate branch of government, and we should start acting like it. we can come to a broad bipartisan agreement on nearly every part of a deal to end this shutdown. we can reauthorize the children's health insurance program that provides health insurance to 9 million children all across the country. we can fund community health centers that provide health care for hundreds -- literally hundreds of millions of people in our communities. we can protect the dreamers.

we can fully fund the department of defense and provide funding parity for critical domestic programs. congress shouldn't wait around for the president to make up his mind. let's do our jobs. i support passing a very short-term funding bill, somewhere between one and three days, which we have proposed, to sustain the urgency in getting this done in a shorter time -- in as short a time as possible. so a multi-week extension of government funding that allows the president, the majority leader and the speaker to kick the can down the road and pit one group against another is not the way to go. the republicans continue to pit the children's health insurance program against dreamers. they pit funding for troops against dreamers. pitting one group after another on and on. are the republicans saying we

can only take care of one group or the other? do we cut off the right arm or the left arm? we've seen this pitting one group against another strategy at work all week. authorization for the children's health insurance program expired september 30 -- months ago. but the majority leader waited until now to put it up for a vote because he hoped to use it as leverage to divide democrats and leave dreamers out in the cold, pitting one group against another. and just as a reminder, guess who spent months and months trying to take away health care from millions of americans and more months to provide the richest 1% of people and corporations in our country huge tax cuts all behind closed doors? the republicans, that's who. we could have and should have

funded the children's health insurance program months ago. we could have come to a compromise on dreamers months ago. the majority leader has come to the floor repeatedly to argue there is no urgency to protect the dreamers or the daca participantsment, that we have months to find a solution. doesn't he know that more than 16,000 people have lost their daca protections since donald trump cruelly and cynically ended the program in september? and every single day 122 did a croix recipients lose their statistic -- daca recipients lose their status. these young dreamers are scared of being kicked out of the only country they know and love. that is the united states of america. over the past few days, we've heard the president and the majority leader continuously

disrespecting these inspiring young people by referring to them as illegals. that's how you take away an individual's humanity, by categorizing them as one group or another, as illegals. i've met many of these daca recipients. they are not illegals. they frankly are legally protected under the daca program to be in the united states. they want to make a contribution to the only country that they know. america. dreamers like leonardo from oregon who came to my office in late december to share his immigrant story and why he's fighting to be able to stay in the united states. leonardo came to our country with his siblings and his mom who was fleeing an abusive marriage. growing up, leonardo hardly saw his mom, who took public transportation to work the nightshift and slept most of the

day. he told me as he's gotten older and he had to work so hard to make ends meet, he truly appreciates the sacrifices his mom made to make sure he had food and clothes. like many high school students, he groomed -- he dreamed of going to college. he saw athletics as a path to pursue his dreams. leonardo got a scholarship offer from a small school but at precisely the moment he thought his dreams came through, he learned the school was unable to full i will its promise because leonardo was undocumented. put yourself in his shoes. his heart was broken. leonardo's life changed when he was able to sign for daca. he enrolled in community college to study chemistry and those become a pharmacist one day. leonardo told me that daca doesn't just allow him to access

a better quality of life. he said it changed how he values himself as an individual and person, that he was more than his status. that he was a human being. not an illegal, that he was a human being. when i asked him why he came all this way to share his story, he said -- i quote him, "what we're doing here really encompasses what it means to be an american. the idea that we have to fight for justice, that we have to fight for dignity, that equality surpasses any status, that our humanity surpasses any status." thank you, leonardo. i agree. this is a pivotal moment for congress. are we going to continue to bend to the whims of an unpredictable, mercurial and unreliable president? or will we come together on a

bipartisan basis, behave like the separate brage of government that we are -- separate branch of government that we are and reauthorize the children's health insurance program, fund community health centers, protect dreamers, and provide parity for defense and domestic programs in a long-term budget deal? i respect my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. what i don't respect is holding up this process, knowing full well that we can come up with a bipartisan way in three, two days, even one day to end this shutdown. mr. president, i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: mr. president, one of the unusual things about the moment we find ourselves in is that we're debating an virtually all fronts on topics that 70% of the senators agree on. when you look at the appropria appropriating bill, at least 70 senators are for the children's health insurance program, maybe 90, maybe more than that. it is a widely supported program. nobody really believes that the obama taxes in obamacare on medical device taxes every made any sense or the so-called cadillac tax, where if you've worked hard and in many cases worked and negotiated an insurance coverage package, that now the government says is better than it should be, that you should pay taxes on that or that everybody should pay an

individual tax on their health care. nobody is for that. surely everybody wants the government's doors to stay open. and so on that front, one of the major criticisms of stopping the continuing resolution from going on is that nobody is opposed to it. so using it totally as leverage on an issue that we all -- that we also almost all agree on. you know, these kids who came here as kids -- and i have met a mum of them, as you have, mr. president, and one of the first questions i often ask is well, how old were you when your parents brought you here? the answer is often 18 months, two, three, followed by something like, now i work at an architectural firm or us just graduated from college.

but they clearly grew up in this country. we all get that. this is not a hard problem to solve, i don't believe. but leverage has somehow become the big issue here. first of all, we let the appropriations process collapse. where only a few people have anything to say about how we spend our money. and then we decided we're going to let the whole legislating process collapse. way too much time being spent on confirming people that there's no opposition to. and then the very people, our friends on the other side, like the democratic leader, who insist on 30 hours of debate or 8 hours of debate where there is no debate and all you do is use up that time so nothing else can happen, says why can't we debate this issue? well, we could debate this issue if we just hadn't spent an entire week confirming four district judges. these are not four supreme court judges and they're not four circuit judges that appeal from

the district court. we spent an entire week last week doing nothing but that. and these judges were all confirmed. we all knew they were going to be confirmed on monday when they were all confirmed by the end of the week. but we spent the whole week doing that. and then the same people that insisted on that wonder why we don't have time to debate the issues that we'd all like to debate. mr. president, i would have liked to have seen the children's health insurance bill debated, but we ran out of time. we're now beyond the time when the bill expires. states are beginning to have stress on that. i would have loved to have seen a debate there and i'd love to see that debate exclude expanding excellence in mental health to a few more states. i would have loved to have seen that debate include the expansion we need in community health centers. but we didn't have time for that. we were spending needless time confirming people that were ultimately going to be

confirmed. you remember, the rules on this, mr. president, 30 hours of debate on the floor. if anybody insists on it for a district judge or for a circuit judge, rather. 30 hours of debate. so there are only so many hours in a week. and we are wasting those hours. that rule has to change. and if we can't change it one way, my guess is that eventually the frustration will become so great we change it another. so we find ourselves here in a government shutdown with no disagreement on what we're talking about. just to treat, to show who is running the senate. well, the majority at the end of the day is going to run the senate. that's what always happens. and if our friends on the other side want to run the senate, they need to get in the majority. but this will not be the way they get there. my good friend, the senator from hawaii, she and i have a common health issue with kidney cancer, we both lost a kidney, and

that's a pretty binding sort of thing. when i say i care about her a lot, i do. but she said how dare people talk about kids who were brought here illegally as people who came here illegally. i think a great disservice was done to the daca kids when the other side decided they wanted to make them a focal point on a debate that they have nothing to do about. and don't act surprised that other people are going to come to a conclusion of what's the weakest point in the argument for daca kids, the weakest point is every one of them came to the country illegally. now they were brought illegally, but every one of them came to the country illegally. and we need them. they grew up here. they went to school here. we need that vital, strong population as part of a growing economy. 70% of the country if not 80% agrees with that. this is an issue that could be solved. but we see the further

deterioration of how we spend our money. the appropriations process, for a decade now has been to where it comes down to one big bill at the end that almost nobody had anything to say about. certainly has strengthened leadership on both sides. it's weakened membership on both sides. i don't think the leaders want the power that they've gotten through this wrecked process. for 200 years we appropriated our money by bringing the bills to the floor. i imagine initially there may have been one bill. in recent years there have been a dozen. one or two at a time on the floor, and every member in the house and every member of the senate could propose any amendment they wanted to as long as it was about spending and it didn't add any money. we haven't seen this enough time in recent years that people even hardly can remember the process in the senate. though the house has rediscovered it where a bill comes to the floor and you say, no, i think we ought to spend $1

million here more than we're spending. and i'd propose we do that by cutting this other category by $1 million. and then all the members vote. we're never going to have that debate this year, mr. speaker -- mr. president. the speaker saw the debate on the other side, we're never going to have that debate here because starting a decade ago roughly the leader of the senate, the democratic leader of the senate decided we're not going to bring those bills to the floor unless they're unamendable. and even four and five years ago when -- i think my math is right here -- barbara mikulski, great senator from maryland, an incredible legislator, had become the chairman of the appropriations committee for the only two years in her career, and she aggressively argued with the leadership on her side all the time, let's bring these bills to the floor and debate the bills. let's not have one big bill at

the end of the year. or even worse, one big bill four, five, six months into the next year. we have to figure out how to recapture the process of our responsibility. this is, this works. it includes the members and the people they work for in a way that we are not now included. the debate of how we spend our money becomes public in ways that it is not now public. we can't bring a bill to the floor in the senate, an appropriations bill without 60 members being willing to debate the bill. now one way we could do this is just figure out how to change to where an appropriations bill, maybe all bills don't take 60 members just to debate the bill. because once -- i'm a believer that once you got these bills started and once you started debating them and once members got to see that their own amendment wasn't nearly as popular as they thought it might be, that we would then get to

the final vote, we'd pass a bill, maybe a package of a couple of bills, the house would do the same. we'd have a conference. it would go to the president's desk. he'd sign those bills and that part of the package is funded for the next year. for year after year where virtually nothing is funded on december 30 for the october 1 fiscal year. and here we are january 21 already still talking about work that should have been completed in september, it is unacceptable. if we can't see this moment where we're debating two big issues that everybody agrees on the component parts of both of those big issues, if we can't see this as a moment where we need to fundamentally change how we get this work done, we may have lost the constitutional responsibility that the congress has to set our priorities based on how we spend our money. the one thing i know for sure,

mr. president, is how we decide to spend our money is not the way we're deciding the best way to do it is not the way we're doing it now. and it's now led to where it's not even a late year fight about well, we're defense -- and i think defense is the principal reason for the federal government to exist, the number-one priority of the federal government is to support the common defense. but we've gone beyond i want more money for defense, and before i do that i'd like to have more money -- i'd like to see us have more money for something else as well to -- it's not even about the appropriations bill. we're not even going to give you a number to appropriate to on the appropriations bill. we don't fund the government now until we do something that has nothing to do w-l funding the government. maybe that's the logical conclusion of years of bad behavior. maybe that's the logical conclusion of thinking you can hide the work of the congress

behind a massive bill that nobody understands, that everybody says i want to be in that massive bill that nobody understands either. and i believe one of the issues that was debated the last few hours was we want to put our bill that would help daca kids on a bill that must pass. we're not, we'll not be happy unless our bill as we guarantee it gets on another bill that would have a better chance of passing than our bill. what we need is a daca bill that can pass on its own. surely you can take a 70% or 80% issue and combine it with another 70% issue of people who believe we ought to do a better job securing the border and managing people who have come into the country in other ways as well. surely you can take those two issues and find a way to put them together in a bill that winds up on the president's

desk. but there appears to be a little confidence in that and frankly little confidence in the way we appropriate money. this is an out raeublgs -- outrageous place to be and you and i and other members of the senate and members of the house need to figure out what we do to convince our colleagues that rules need to change or behavior needs to change so that everybody has an opportunity to talk about the priorities of the government, how those are funded and so that we also have time to get to the important debates that we'd all like to be part of. i hope we can reach a conclusion quickly. people deserve for their government to be open. people deserve for the very opening of the government not to be held hostage to things that have nothing to do with appropriating money but everything to do with a congress that no longer works the way that the american people deserve

to see it work. and i hope, mr. president, we find a conclusion quickly and let the doors of the government be open to the people the government is supposed to serve rather than those very doors to be used as a leverage because legislators couldn't figure out how to legislate. and i yield my time.

mr. blumenthal: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you, mr. president. we have heard some highly partisan and passionate speeches on the floor of the united states senate and a lot of finger pointing.

the american people are done with the blaming and the finger pointing. they want the government to be reopened. and all of us do too. and that's why a number of our colleagues are working hard, and we have been involved, many of us, directly and indirectly in promoting and suggesting possible solutions. reaching across the aisle, working to reach a consensus and to make sure that the government is reopened. the president has been absent. some would say absent without leave, a.w.l., from these negotiations. and ironically he is the only one in america who has referred

to this good shutdown. it is a trump shutdown because the president has enabled, indeed encouraged it to happen. and so across the aisle in the united states senate there are efforts to provide leadership and to fill the gap that has been created by a president that is awol in america. the lack of leadership is potentially tragic for this country. he has thrived on chaos and confusion, personal invective and insult, and the time is now for us in this body to fill that vacuum. we are divided in our nation in many ways, but we are united in

support of our military men and women. two of my sons have served, and all of us in this chamber and throughout the country support them and their families who equally serve and sacrifice. no speech on the floor here, no tweet by the president, will change that fundamental unity and bipartisan support for our military men and women, and that is why there was bipartisan support for rejecting a short-term, kick the can down the road patch in a continuing resolution. a continuing resolution that flatlines funding for our national defense, both military

and nonmilitary, is against our national interest, and the most eloquent and persuasive voice on that topic is general mattis, our secretary of defense. in a september 8th letter, and i ask unanimous consent that it be entered in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: secretary mattis informed congress, quote, long-term c.r.'s impact the readiness of our force and equipment at a time when security threats are at an all-time high. the longer the c.r., the greater the consequences for our force. so my republican colleagues should take no solace in the harmful c.r., whether it's three weeks or four weeks, that they are continuing to insist that

the united states senate improve. in fact, i believe that we can fully fund our government today without requiring the mass draconian deportation of children in march without abandoning our commitment to opioid treatment programs, without ending the children's health insurance program, without foregoing community health centers, without foregoing, as well, pensions our veterans needs. we can do all of it. we must do all of it. and the elements of consensus are there. it's bipartisan support for every one of these programs, opioid treatment and addiction was supported in the cure act and other measures by overwhelming bipartisan

consensus and we all support opioid treatment programs. we support addressing the pension needs and veteran challenges of this nation. we cannot abandon them. we support making sure that there's disaster relief for puerto rico and texas and florida. we support measures that will preserve the community health insurance program and health centers, children's health insurance. these measures should not be options or luxuries or choices. we have an obligation. we are a nation strong enough in the courage of our convictions to do all of it and to meet the obligation. it is a moral obligation and an economic obligation to provide a path to citizenship for the

dreamers. we have a moral obligation because we made a promise. great nations keep their promises to those 800,000 young people brought to this country as infants and children without any choice on their own and there is a bipartisan consensus to give them that path to citizenship. there is growing acceptance of the funding that the minority leader, senator schumer, put on the table to build a wall. if that is what is necessary to achieve a compromise, and it is a compromise on our part, but that's what an agreement takes. each side must give something. and there is bipartisan consensus for every one of these

elements and every one of them should be part of a full budget and a full budget is what is necessary. most americans want their government open. most americans want a bipartisan agreement that will keep their friends, coworkers, neighbors who were brought to this country as children, keep them safe from arbitrary seizure and deportation from the only home they have ever known. most americans recognize that moral obligation and most americans recognize the economic advantages. half a trillion dollars would be lost in economic activity in workforce contributions, according to the joint committee, if there were these mass deportations. most people want our opioid

epidemic faced and a hoes of other pressing priorities that were all pushed aside and delayed and denied in the mad dash by our republican colleagues for a tax bill that benefits mainly the rich. the republicans who have spoken today seem to imply that we have to make a choice. they want to falsely blame or frame this debate as if we must choose between the dreamers and our troops. that's a false choice. it's an unnecessary and, in fact, irrelevant choice. there is no such choice that has to be made. we can do both. a great nation can be strong militarily and also be a nation

that keeps its promises. in fact, the two go together. we are a nation of immigrants. our strength is our diversity and we have made a promise to the dreamers and that promise is one that we must keep. when the senior senator from missouri, senator mccaskill, came to the floor to pass a simple measure, one that seems to be a matter of common sense, pay our military act, it would have protected our military and their families during this trump shutdown. senator mcconnell, unfortunately, blocked that effort. democrats are united in ensuring our troops and their families are spared any needless suffering or sacrifice during the shutdown.

today we are back to continue the fight for each and every american, our troops, our children, our friends, our family, and we will be there each and every day until we accomplish that task, and that includes the pay our military act. and i still hope our republican friends will agree to it for even the short term, and we hope it is a very short time that the shutdown continues. we all hope it will end tonight or tomorrow or as soon as possible, but even in that short time frame, military men and women should be guaranteed that they are paid, without question and without doubt. republicans are in charge of both houses of congress and they have the white house. they own this shutdown. it is the trump shutdown, but

there is no satisfaction for anyone on this side of the aisle in that simple truth. they control the floor schedule, they control what bills will be voted on and when. they control the schedule of our votes here. they could have funded chip months before it expired in september. in the state of connecticut those funds will expire shortly, as in many other states. they could have funded community health centers long ago. they could have enabled us to solve the dreamer challenge months ago, in fact, in september when the president first announced that he would end their program, but we have been constrained in this debate

by the finger-pointing, by the blaming, by the failure to move forward. we must now come together. today we can no longer wait to solve the mounting problems facing our nation. now is the moment to permanently fund health insurance for nine million children in america. now is the time to protect the dreamers from deportation. now is the time to provide disaster relief for puerto rico, texas, and florida. now is the time for full funding for the opioid programs. now is past time for the tweets and the reneging which has characterized the white house response. we have an obligation to be the responsible leaders in the

absence of that leadership in the white house. we're here today, and all of us will be here until we solve this problem, and we can do it on a bipartisan basis. congress must do its job. the american people expect no less. they deserve no less and we owe them much more. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: mr. president, tonight i want to talk about our responsibility here in the united states senate to reopen the government, to get back to work solving real problems and fixing the system so we aren't tempted to play political games with government shutdowns in the future. we're now in the second day of what i think is a senseless shutdown. it's not helping anybody. a lot of disruption, dislocation, dysfunction for no reason. the situation was perhaps best described by democratic leader shuck schumer in 2013 when he said -- chuck schumer in 2013 when he said and i quote, look, i believe in immigration reform. what i persuaded my caucus that

i'm going to shut the government down and i'm not going to pay our bills unless i get my way. it's a politics of idiocy, of confrontation, of paralysis. end quote. i think chuck schumer was right. by the way, i think the lesson of 2013 and that shutdown is that they don't work. i think they are a bad idea. they are unnecessary disruptions. they hurt ow economy. they hurt our families and our troops. ultimately they also cost the taxpayers more money, not less. that's been the history. that's why for six years now, i've been fighting to passion legislation called end government shutdowns. it's a very simple piece of legislation. by the way, my efforts in that have spanned presidents of both parties and of majorities here in the senate of both parties. it's not a political issue. we should end government shutdowns. more on that in a minute. but let's take a look at the real world impact of a shutdown.

in my home state of ohio nearly 50,000 federal workers are seeing their paychecks halted through no fault of their own. this includes rangers at parks across the state, like cuyahoga valley national park. this includes employees at nasa glenn, ',000 of them. it includes thousands of civilian employees at wright patterson air force base and thousands of other federal employees around the buckeye state are going to be hurt, hurt why? because of partisan politics here in washington, d.c. by the way, federal contractors i'm told are being told they can't go to work and yet they're going to get paid after the fact. how does that help taxpayers? how did we get here? spending goes through congress. congress alone has the power of the purt. every time appropriated of spending has to go through this place. unfortunately, since the fiscal year ended on september 30,

democrats and republicans in congress have been unable to agree on an overall budget plan that allows us to fund what are 12 annual spending bills. since then we have passed three of these so-called continuing resolutions that are also called c.r.'s. they provide short-term funding for the government, basically a continuation of the spending of last year, just to keep the government from shutting down. that's what c.r.'s do, but they don't include new policies typically, the new spending levels for the fiscal year but it's just to keep things going and keep government operating. nobody likes them. i don't like continuing resolutions. who would? but the alternative is either come to an agreement on these 12 annual spending bills we talked about or have the government shut down. that was considered unthinkable the last four months when the continuing resolutions were were passed by big partisan

majorities of the house and senate. by the way, eight of these 12 annual spending bills i was talking about, they actually passed out of committee with big bipartisan votes. so eight of the 12 actually have been passed. their he ready to come to the senate floor but they haven't come to the senate floor because they require 60 votes out of a hundred to be brought up. and democrats not having a solution to what the overall spending levels will be have not cooperated to bring those individual spending bills to the floor. that's obviously the best way to do this is to have these 12 spending bills come to the floor, have the debate, put the best policies in place, have the right level of spending for this fiscal year. that hasn't happened. so you have these short-term continuing resolutions. you might ask, how can the continuing resolutions pass because they don't seem to, you know, be very popular. but they're better than a shutdown. by the way, they also require 60

votes. but again, it's the one thing we've been able to pass over the past four months to avoid shutdowns while we negotiate our differences over the level of spending, over the policies that are going to be in place between now and the rest of the fiscal year. and they've always passed, again, in a broad bipartisan basis. some democrats have voted with us to keep our government open in the past because, as the democratic leader has said, shutting down the government just doesn't make any sense. in order to pass a c.r., a continuing resolution, only 39 senators can vote no. because again you have to get 40. on friday night, 44 democrats chose to vote down the latest c.r. even though almost nothing of substance has changed in the continuing resolution since the last continuing resolution that was voted on again by big majorities. the only thing that's changed is that there was added a very popular and urgent extension of

a health care program called the chip program, children's health insurance program. absolutely critical that we pass that because in the next couple weeks we're told, some states will begin to run out of money. chip expired actually back in september and it's had short-term fixes since then. in this continuing resolution, same as the last continuing resolutions basically, nobody really objects to what's in the continuing resolution, but the addition has been this really important program, chip is reauthorized. by the way, it's reauthorized for its longest reauthorization ever in the history of the program, a six-year reauthorization which i strongly support and i think my colleagues do across the board. if we don't deal with chip, again, this is urgent enough that some states are actually going to run out of money. so some are choosing to shut down the government, even though they can't point to anything in the short-term continuing resolution that they disagree with and even though it

endangers the health care of children and families around the country. that's where we are. the main reason we've heard from democrats who oppose an otherwise acceptable continuing resolution is what we just heard tonight from some of my colleagues on the other side, including colleagues i work a lot on other issues and i respect them, but they have said this is about something else, not the spending bill but it's about how we deal with daca and broader immigration reform. i want to resolve daca, too. and i believe most of the members of this body sincerely want to resolve daca. it was an administrative program that was appropriate to be legislated. the president gave us until march to deal with it. we must and should do deal with it and there's an ongoing good-faith effort to resolve the daca issue as well as broader immigration issues, like boarder security. and to do all that before daca expires on march 5, which is six

weeks away. there's been a lot of finger pointing and there's always plenty of room for that around here. let's face it. but the situation is clear. we are in day two of a shutdown because my democratic colleagues are holding hostage the entire federal government and children in need of health care through chip for a nonspending issue that's being worked on and we all know expires on march 5 and we need to deal with. without a spending bill or a continuing resolution to keep the government open short term while we come to an agreement on larger issues, there are a bunch of federal workers who are going to wake up tomorrow morning and find themselves furloughed. many won't be able to go to work because their offices are closed. some will, i'm told, have to report to work but they're not going to get paid, at least until the government reopens. and again the taxpayer always ends up getting the short end of the stick on this. i just think it's crazy that we're allowing this to happen. it doesn't make any sense.

i don't get it. yes, there are some larger issues we've got to come together on and solve in a bipartisan way but we should agree to a short-term funding deal to just get the government up and running and then move on to solving those problems because we're not working on them now, i can tell you, because everybody is distracted by this issue, a government shutdown. my understanding is we're going to vote on a new proposal tonight to reopen the government. it's shorter term. why? because a number of democrats have said that they think that the previous continuing resolution, which was for four weeks was too long. so this one will be just two and a half weeks til february 8. -- until february 8. that's fine with me. i think that gives us enough time to resolve these issues and yet enough time to actually put the changes into legislation, two and a half weeks. that would be pretty fast by congressional time. i understand the new c.r. proposal will also be coupled with these important chip funding proposals. in other words, the long-term extension of the children's health insurance program which

is important. and a commitment to continue the negotiations to address all the outstanding issues, including daca, including defense spending, including disaster relief. let's support it. let's get this behind us. let's be sure people don't wake up on monday morning to find that they're furloughed and then let's get back to these hard issues that we were hired to resolve. i know it's a lot harder dealing with the substantive issues than dealing with these political issues. it's easy to shut down government. that doesn't take any ingenuity or imagination. that's easy. it's harder to deal with these tough issues but that's what we've got to do. shutdown is not the answer. the situation tonight is a reminder that we should end government shutdowns for good. again, that's why i've introduced bipartisan legislation i mentioned earlier called the end government shutdowns act to avoid these types of unnecessary disruptions that are unproductive and unfair to our constituents. the bill would simply continue spending from the previous year

for 120 days if any appropriations bill or any c.r. is not agreed to by the established deadline. and then it would gradually decline that funding by 1% and then 1% to give lawmakers the incentive that's needed around here to actually come together on a funding agreement. i think it's sensible. i think it's common sense. it's always been bipartisan in the past. hopefully we can get it done. i first introduced this bill in 2012 with my democratic colleague jon tester from montana. when a democratic president, president obama was in the white house and democrats controlled the senate. so this is a commonsense solution that benefits the country, not one political party or another. it's what's best for our country. if this bill were law, we wouldn't be in this situation. instead we'd be talking about the substantive issues, how we

resolve daca, how rewe solve defense spending. we've had 18 shutdowns in our country's history and none of them would have happened if this was law. there would be no last-minute political brinkmanship on issues unrelated to funding our government. our constituents, including federal employees, would not have their lives disrupted. taxpayers wouldn't get fleeced by shutdowns and the backpay that happens and the inefficiencies. our legislation is bipartisan but, frankly, we need a lot more members to support it. and help us put in place a long-term solution to make sure these shutdowns don't continue to happen. so i urge my colleagues tonight and any staff that might be watching, please sign up on this legislation. we need your help. it's common sense. it's a time at which i hope we all realize these shutdowns don't make sense. and we have an alternative. a shutdown isn't helping anyone. it isn't helping americans who need access to vital government services. it isn't helping federal

employees who should instead be working, not be furloughed. and it sure isn't helping the nine million children who are in need of basic health care services under chip. there are bipartisan discussions going on right now. i've talked to colleagues on both sides of the aisle this afternoon and this evening. i think those discussions have been productive. let's hope they're successful. let's hope we can resolve this thing tonight. let's hope we can have a vote to give the american people the certainty and predictability they're looking for. let's reopen government and let's get back to work. i hope all my colleagues will join me in doing that tonight. i yield back my time.

mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. the senate is in a quorum call. mr. thune: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: i ask that later this evening that we have a vote that allows us to open the government back up and recommence the negotiations on immigration and a whole range of other issues that are currently of concern to members here and i think of concern, fairly, to the american people. so i hope that we will have the 60 votes that are necessary to do that when we have that vote later today. in fact, what we'll be voting on later today has been modified from what was originally sent over to the house, which was a four-week continuing resolution. this, i believe, will be a three-week continuing

resolution, modified at the request of some democrats here in the senate. but i hope that we can get the government up and functioning again, mr. president. it is important in my view, that we do that. but there's been a lot of discussion throughout the course of the afternoon on the floor and in the previous days leading up to this about, you know, who is to blame and all of that sort of thing. i don't think the american people frankly care much, they just want to see their elected officials work together to get results. the one thing i will point out because a number of my colleagues on the democrat side have spoken earlier today and consistently said that this is president trump's fault somehow. i guess i would simply point out, mr. president, that the president of the united states doesn't appropriate a single dime. that's not his authority under the constitution. that's the authority of the congress. that's our article 1 power. congress has the ability to appropriate funds. the president of the united states, just let me repeat,

cannot appropriate a single dime. that's just not -- the idea that this is somehow the president's fault, i think, is completely missing the point and is simply an attempt to try and dodge responsibility. i think also i point out that as many as our colleagues have come down here today and tried to blame the president and tried to blame republicans, or whatever, i think the american people get this and it seems like the news media seems to get it. this is from the associated press. senate democrats derail bill to avert shutdown. senate democrats block passage of a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open. bloomberg, senate democrats block g.o.p. funding plan as shutdown kicks in. those are just a few of the sort of coverage of this by the

media. and so the point i would make, mr. president, is that i think it's not being lost on people outside this chamber what happens happening here. this is purely an attempt to hijack the united states senate over a debate on an issue which, frankly, doesn't have an urgent deadline. there's nothing that says that we have to have the issue of daca solved tomorrow or even the day after that. there's a deadline in march and there were good-faith negotiations underway between republicans and democrats in the house nn the senate -- house and in the senate to solve that issue, and it is an issue that needs to be resolved. there is great sympathy on both sides of the united states senate for how to deal with those young people who were brought into this country here illegally through no fault of their own. the president has said he wants to see that issue resolved, which is why those discussions

and negotiations were underway. the house of representatives, the senate, republicans, democrats, bicameral, bipartisan negotiations underway to address that issue. and so the other thing that was included in the funding resolution, of course, was an extension, a reauthorization of the children's health insurance program, which i think pretty much here supports. i mean there may be some who would vote against that, but i doubt it. i think it enjoys broad bipartisan support. it's a six-year extension, and that's something that we needed to get done as well. that's included in the funding resolution that the democrats are objecting to. one of the reasons for objecting as i listened this afternoon was, it should have been done last year. yeah, okay. does that mean we can't vote for it now? we have a knicks in -- a fix in place, a solution in place, a six-year reauthorization of the chip program. i serve on the finance

committee. when we reported it out, it was five years, so it has an additional year, six-year reauthorization of chip and all of a sudden democrats are saying, i don't know why we're voting on it now. we should have voted on it last year. when does it become too late in the game to solve a problem that needs to be solved? i think that notwithstanding their assertions this afternoon on the floor, mr. president, that somehow that ought to prevent us from moving forward with that legislation or give them an excuse to vote to shut down the government, that is beyond me. i find it incredibly hard to believe. so the other thing that was pointed out, and i guess this is -- you know, the democrats have said and they made this about issue, which i get. it is an issue they are very passionate about. as i said before, there's passion on both sides about that issue and a real desire to find a solution, but i'm not sure you

are in the best position to find that solution in the middle of a government shutdown. i want to point out what senator schumer, the democrat leader said back in 2013. this was on a sunday morning talk show, abc's "this week." he said, basically it is sort of like this, someone goes into your house, takes your wife and children hostage and then says, let's negotiate over the price of your house. we could do the same thing on immigration. we believe strongly on immigration reform. we could say we're shutting down the government, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling until you pass immigration reform. it would be governmental chaos. it was governmental chaos in 2013, mr. president, according to then-senator schumer, now the democratic leader, governmental

chaos to shut the government down or hold the government hostage to get another issue addressed. he made that same argument about immigration. he went on to say that there are democrats here, we can do the same thing on immigration. we believe -- at the time the shut down happened in 2013, it had to do with obamacare. and it was, in fact, the -- the rolls were reversed or flipped in that situation. it was the republicans, and, frankly, president obama at the time did a fairly effective job of pointing out, as i am pointing out right now, he can't appropriate money, that's the role of the congress. but the point is at the time the democratic leader thought it would create governmental chaos to shut the government down and it should not be done to try and solve some other unrelated issue. and yet here we are two days into a government shutdown which could have been totally avoided. we had a vote a couple of nights

ago, a bipartisan vote, i might add, to keep the government open. so what do we have so far? we have the house of representatives to send a resolution to fund the government, keep the government open and give us some additional time now to resolve some of these outstanding issues, including the daca issue. the president of the united states has expressed support for that funding resolution to keep the government open. he has made it very clear he wants the government to stay open. he also made it very clear he wants a solution on daca and is willing to engage in conversations and discussions about how to resolve that issue, and then we had a vote in the united states senate which was bipartisan, a bipartisan majority in the united states senate, a majority, bipartisan, five democrats joined republicans here in the senate on a resolution to keep the government open and functioning and to keep it from shutting down. so we got bipartisan support in the senate for that, majority support, the house of

representatives, the president all on record. the only thing right now that is preventing us from opening up the government and getting back to where we are discussing and debating those issues and to extending health insurance coverage to nine million children in this country, the only thing standing in the way of that is the senate democrats. and so i'm hopeful that this evening when that time comes to vote that we will have a sufficient number of democrats here in the senate that will join with republicans. we had a bipartisan majority, as i said, friday night on the vote, but we didn't have the 60-vote threshold that's necessary to keep the government from shutting down. now it's going to take 60 votes to open it back up. i'm hoping that there will be democrats that will find their way and see that this does create, as senator schumer described, governmental chaos, a situation where it is difficult for people to see clearly and to have a fair, reasonable,

thoughtful discussion about how to solve big issues like daca, a discussion which, as i pointed out, is already underway. so pretty clear what's going on here, mr. president. the media understands it. the american people, i think, understand it, and attempts by our colleagues on the other side to obfuscate it or dodge it or run away from it, or deflect it or create some other shiny object for people to look at isn't going to -- we will have another opportunity for senate democrats to go on the record and say, we're not going to shut this government down, we're not going to keep this government shut down, and we are going to move forward in a reasonable way to deal with the issues that we think need to be dealt with on behalf of the american people, not in the middle of a crisis mode, or as i said as was described by senator p

schumer -- senator schumer, in the middle of governmental chaos. mr. president, let's get on with that. let's have a vote and let's have a bipartisan 60-vote threshold that will allow us to get the government back open and get the negotiations back on track. i yield the floor. mr. menendez: mr. president. the senator from new jersey is recognized. mr. menendez: mr. president, here we are on a sunday evening with the government technically already shut down a year basically after president trump said when we need is a good shutdown. i didn't say that. my colleagues, the democratic caucus, didn't say that.

president trump said that, what we need is a good shutdown. so a year later, i would just simply say that republicans who control the house of representatives, the united states senate listened to president trump and they gave him a shutdown because of their unwillingness to compromise. now, there's no such thing as a good shutdown. i think we universally recognize that. now, i know my colleague who just spoke before me suggested that it's not the president who appropriates. that's true. he's very right. but what is true is that it's the president that's got to sign something, and when he doesn't tell you what he's for, it's very difficult to figure out what you're going to send him that he'll sign. that's why i heard the majority leader in some interviews say, when we know what president trump is for, speaking about one

topic, then we will figure out what we will send him. that is part of the problem. the president is intimately involved in this process and to suggest that he isn't goes even against his own views. now, how many short-term extensions -- that's what we're talking about here. people at home may hear continuing resolution. that's basically a short-term extension -- will republicans ask for before they sit down and do the homework that's necessary, the hard work, the tough decisions? this is government on life support lurching from one short-term continuation of money to another short-term continuation of money to another short-term of continuation of money. and when i hear my colleagues speak, i guess they missed the fact that not one, not two, not

three, but four republican senators also voted not to continue these short-term funding resolutions because they understand that we need to get the hard work of the nation done. so four republican senators joined with democrats to say enough is enough. that's a bipartisan view that enough is enough. so let's remember how we got here because if you understand how we got here, then maybe you can figure out how we move forward. funding for the federal government lapsed at the end of last -- last september. by october 1 we should have had this in place. but instead of performing their basic responsibility to govern, my republican colleagues spent the fall of 2017 gorging on tax cuts for the wealthy.

that's right. the republican majority in both houses of congress spent october, november, december on a joy ride of pure ecstasy showering giant corporations with trillion-dollar tax cut, lowering rates for wealthy c.e.o.'s and saddling working families with permanent tax increases. and now republicans are finally coming down off their hide and finally realizing they forgot to do the hard work of governing, of having the appropriations for the government on a long-term basis. but governing requires making tough decisions. it requires long-term planning. it requires making compromises in service of the greater good. but instead of charting a real course forward for our military,

for our veterans, for our health centers, for our disaster-stricken communities, i believe when we say this is the united states of america, that i vote for funding for states and communities far outside new jersey because we are all in this together. yet that hasn't been done here. and, yes, for dreamers as well. and yes for dreamers as well. no, what they keep asking for is a short-term extension after a short-term extension. if any school district, any city, any agency or business in america would run itself into ruin if it effectively tried two, three, or four-week increments. this is not the first continuing resolution to keep the government open. it's not the second one. i voted for the first to because i said, you know, let's give them some time.

it's not the third one. we're looking at the fourth one. and they have the ga lu l who accuse democrats who don't control the house, don't control the senate, don't control the white house of shutting down the government. i've been in congress a long time now and only in washington when one party has control of both chambers and the president of the united states and fails to do their jobs can you subject that it's the minority party that is responsible. it just boggles the imagination. yes, there's a 60-vote requirement but if you know you don't have the 60 votes, including two republican senators who voted for us who want to have a full funding of the government, then you come and you negotiate so that we can get to a point where we can have that full funding. but, no, you just want to stick on the floor whatever you want

and jam it and then say either vote for this or you're going to be responsible for closing down the government. that is not democracy. the last time i checked, this is not cuba. this is the united states of america. the american people aren't stupid. they know it's no coincidence that the federal government has shut down after they spent a year watching in horror at this undisciplined, dysfunctional white house tarnishing the image of the united states globally. they know as harry truman once said that the buck stops with the president. and they know the buck stops with president trump today. as a matter of fact, it was president trump as a private citizen when he was comentszing about the last -- commenting about the last time the government had this challenge, that it was president obama who was responsible, that he was the leader, that he should have brought everybody into the oval office, constituent them down, -- sit them down, work it out. where is he? he's been hiding. he certainly hasn't called

everybody in to work it out. now in the face of this entirely predictable situation, the majority is presenting us with another shorm-term sham -- short-term sham of kicking the ball down the road so they can kick the can even further down the road and refuse to make a real commitment to america's military, america's health centers, america's disaster-stricken communities, america's children, and, yes, america's dreamers. you know, i can't believe that they would accuse democrats of playing politics with health care for nine million children when back in september, september of last year, the senate finance committee passed unanimously my bipartisan bill with chairman hatch and ranking member brown to fully fund the children's health insurance program for five years. now, there are those of us who wanted a much longer extension. there are clear studies that say that if we reauthorize the children's health insurance program for a decade, we could

save tens of millions of dollars in doing so. but we went with a five-year. but children's health insurance program, that's exactly what chip is all become it's children's health insurance program. it doesn't stand for a bargaining chip. but that's exactly what republicans have used it ever since its funding lapse last september. we could have chip passed last september, but, no, we were too busy doing tax cuts, too busy doing tax cuts. no budget, no appropriations, no children's health insurance. so to my colleagues in the -- do my colleagues in the majority realize how transparent they've made their motives? they didn't want to give the children's health insurance program an up-or-down vote on the floor because they wanted to save it as a bargaining chip to get democratic votes for another short-term sham.

now, keep in mind this short-term continuing resolution neglects other major priority, like disaster relief for puerto rico and florida and texas and california. i keep hearing leader mcconnell talk about reopening the government to serve all americans, but this short-term c.r. doesn't do squat for the 3.5 million american citizens living in puerto rico who are crying out for help. none of us would have accepted what they are in the midst of, many still without light, still without electricity months after. nor does this short-term sham roy any long-term certainty for the pentagon, for the nation's defense, which needs to be able to commit to contracts and purchase the equipment our men and women in uniform depend on to protect this country from those who would do us harm. our military leaders agree we

cannot protect the nation on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis. it's insane. so let's reopen the government right now with a short-term continuing resolution that keeps everyone here in washington, the president, the leadership, both parties, both houses, and members to get the job done so we can actually do our jobs and hash out a plan to keep our armed forces fully funded and prepared for today's challenges. in fact, it was dana white, the spokesperson for the u.s. department of defense, who recently said and called these short-term c.r.'s, quote -- her quote, wasteful and destructive. she went on to say, we need a fully funded fiscal 2018 budget or face -- or face ramifications on our military. that's the chief spokesman for the secretary of defense.

i think it's worth pointing out that i voted against the ridiculous sequestration that republicans forced upon president obama back in 2011 after threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the united states, which has us in this predicament, the predicament that i constantly hear about our defense budget under this sword, this limitation was cited by something -- created by something republicans pushed to sequester fundin funds from goig beyond a certain cap. i voted against that because i knew arbitrary caps on government spending and military readiness would not do justice to this country or the priorit priorities of the american people. yet some of my republican colleagues are demanding a repeal of sequestration only for our defense agencies, and i'm

all in for a strong national defense but not at the expense of what makes this nation worthy of fighting for and dying for. like the life-saving research under way at national institutes of health that is seeking groundbreaking discoveries to cure the diseases that many of our families face, the alzheimer's that took my mother's life, the parkinson's of my neighbor, the challenges in cancer that so many of our families have, the protection provided by the centers for disease control and prevention, the education funding we provide to public schools throughout the country, the beautiful national parks that are the envy of the world and the national treasure of the united states. congress has a responsibility to make smart investments in our people and our communities, like funding for our community health centers that so many hardworking people across the country depend

on for access to care. i know that some of my far right republican colleagues are offended by the mere concept of publicly funded community centers. they don't see the critical value of these health centers offered to our communities, places where doctors and health providers serve every patient who walks through the door, regardless of whether or not she has private insurance or medicare, medicaid, or no coverage at all, all takers providing health care -- providing quality health care. that doesn't change the reality that our communities depend on these health centers and, therefore, they depend on us to provide the funding. that's not in this c.r. i'd also like to remind my republican colleagues and president trump to own up to the rotten reality that they are all talk and no action on the opioid crisis that has claimed the lives of thousands of americans in recent years. they want to gut medicaid and

they have even -- some, not all, but some even go so far as to blame medicaid -- blame medicaid for the opioid crisis as if that makes any sense. i invite my republican colleagues to come home to new jersey with me and meet some of the americans who credit medicaid with getting their lives back on track and addiction free. but again, whether we're talking about community health centers or the opioid crisis or the pensions of our workers, people who worked a lifetime, worked really hard and through no actions of their own find their pensions in jeopardy after having worked a lifetime. this doesn't do anything to help them in that regard. that's one of the reasons we want a full funding of the government and to meet that challenge as well. instead of dealing with the challenges that face americans in their lives every day, whether they're wondering about

the state of their pensions while trying to pay for their kids' soaring tuition bills, struggling to make ends meet with stagnant paychecks that have barely budged in decades, helping ailing parents who need long-term care, caring for their young children when their employers provide no family leave. i could go on and on. but the bottom line is none of these challenges get any attention from my republican colleagues here in the house and the senate in terms of this budget. i spent the first -- they spent the first half of 2017, last year, in a relentless effort to strip millions of americans of their health care coverage, relentless. relentless. and then when the american people spoke out and beat back republican efforts to repeal the affordable care act, they gave up and they set their sights on corporate tax cuts. they let funding for the federal government lapse in september decided not to do anything about

it. they had bigger fish to fry. borrowing trillions from china and padding the pockets of a bunch of corporate fat cats. that's where they spent their time and energy, tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 %. and guess what president trump's strategy is totract the american people from his party's fail you are a to govern? well, it's by fanning the flames of fear and bigotry. i was incredibly disappointed to see the ad released by the president's reelection campaign yesterday which accused democrats of sympathizing with violent criminals. i can't say that i'm surprised. the fact is that whenever president trump's own failures of leadership reflect negatively on him, he responds in the same way -- more racism, more xenophobia, more white nationalism. well, i'm not here to politicize the grief that victims of violent crimes and their

families have endured. and we shouldn't let ourselves fall into the same traps of fear and division that he seeks to fan. we should be having an honest and bipartisan conversation instead of that about how we protect the 800,000 dreamers lawfully living across this nation. because let's remember who created this crisis. it was president trump who shut down daca for no reason other than political retribution. it's up to congress to fix the problem. but republicans didn't let us fix it in october or november or december of last year. well, now it's nearly february. daca ends on march 4. so when i hear leader mcconnell say, there's no rush, no urgency, it doesn't expire until march 4, well tell that to the 16,000 young people who lost their status already.

tell that to the 122 dreamers who lose their status each and every day. tell that to the thousands of american children now living with the fear that their airports will be taken away -- their parents will be taken away. nearly 25% of daca recipients have started families of their own. is this the party of family values that refuses to keep -- to have action to keep families together? that's what i thought was a core element, keeping families together. we presented the president with a real bipartisan compromise that protects the 800,000 dreamers from deportation, embraces the call for more merit-based immigration, gave billions of dollars to the president's border security priorities. hard choices. i don't like some of those, but i agreed to them. that's what the president asked

for. but how can we strike a deal with someone who won't take yes for an answer, who continues to betray his own instincts in order to satisfy the most far right elements of his party? and how are we supposed to believe republicans who say they want to do right by america's dreamers when at every chance you have the opportunity to do something about it, you don't? likewise, how are we supposed to believe you are going to start treating your responsibility to govern seriously when you can't keep the government's lights on for more than a couple weeks at a time? republicans keep asking for short-term extensions. when they had months to chart a real course forward for our domestic and defense spending priorities. instead, the majority spent all of their time trying to strip health care away and then saddling our grandchildren with

debt and padding the pockets of the rich and powerful. make no mistake, democrats are willing to work across the aisle. i have on many occasions, on foreign policy, on the children's health insurance, that legislation as it passed the finance committee had seven republicans on it, and on many other things, including immigration. part of the gang of eight, four republicans, four democrats. part of the gang of six, three republicans, three democrats. we're ready to help our colleagues in the republican majority finally answer the hard questions and come up with solutions that fully fund the united states government. but what we don't want is yet another month in which the congress perpetuates the mindlesmindless sequestration cs hampering our military. we don't want another month no which we fail to deliver to the

opioid crisis. we don't want another month kicking a man on disaster relief that americans in california and texas andful and puerto rico deserve so much. we don't want another month without long-term commitments to our in uniform, our veterans, our health workers, our children. we don't want the trump shutdown. so let's reopen the government with a short c.r. that keeps everyone here in washington at the negotiating table working on a long-term bill that reflects the priorities of the american people. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from mississippi. mr. wicker: mr. president, as we all know, our government is now in its second full day of a shutdown. public opinion is swinging

against what is happening, and as that occurs, it has been interesting to me to see that the talking points have changed on the part of congressional democrats. we've just seen an example of that here on the senate floor. but let's first look at a few uncontested facts. our government has been operating since september 30 of last year under a series of continuing resolutions, c.r.'s. in other words, congress has passed a series of temporary funding bills instead ever enacting aopenings pros -- instead of enacting aopenings pros. there's plenty of blame to go around. but it is generally considered better than allowing a funding lapse and the government to shut down. we heard about jennings and pentagon officials -- with each heard about jennings and pentagon officials decrying the

practice of continuing resolutions. i can assure you, mr. president, and i can assure my colleagues that generals and defense officials like government shutdowns far less than temporary spending bills. so let's not say that we are taking the advice of our military leaders in shutting the government down. the last c.r. was adopted to run until midnight of january 19, this past friday night. and that's the date on which our democratic colleagues decided not to extend temporary funding for the entire federal government for one more month. the specific reason the democratic leadership gave for not agreeing to another c.r. was the daca program, deferred action for childhood arrivals, a program designed to protect those young immigrants brought to america illegally through no fault of their own.

president obama implemented this program through executive order, and president trump, believing that it was better to handle this issue through legislation, decided to end the program in march of this year. and in ending the daca executive order, president trump has called on congress to formulate a legislative statutory fix for daca recipients. we should bear in mind that republicans and democrats have been working 0en a daca solution and continue to work on a daca solution, and we'll continue to do so. there are other important immigration issues i believe that should be attached to the daca issue, including the funding of a border wall and the replacement for chain migration. chain migration, as we know, is the practice of allowing immigration lottery persons to bring if a host of relatives to the united states. the good news in this regard is

that negotiators have until march to reach a deal on daca. it is also a fact -- it is a fact that this government shu shutdown is happening because an overwhelming majority of senate democrats voted no on a cloture motion to bring a new funding bill to a vote. now, cloture votes take 60 votes, and my democratic friends can say it until they're blue in the face -- the republicans are in charge of the entire government, that we're in charge of the senate, in charge of the house and the presidency, but that does not get away from the fact it takes bipartisan support to end a filibuster. it takes 60 votes. in takes democrats and republicans in this senate to move to cloture on a new funding bill. and it is simply a fact that a majority of democrats won'ted

no, and that's why we're in a shutdown. the most recent c.r. would have run until mid-february and the daca program, this program for childhood arrivals, is not set to expire until march. so how does it make any sense to shut down the government over a program that will last longer than the temporary funding bill? it doesn't. and yet that is exactly what our democratic friends decided to do. to shut down the government on an immigration issue. here is a front page of friday's "new york times" -- not exactly known as a great friend to the republican party. it says, mr. president, "senate showdown looms as spending bill advances." this is the morning before the evening when our democratic friends refused to fund the government.

house approves a non--- house approves a stopgap measure while democrats dig in on immigration. it was an immigration issue thatted the democrats to dig in, according to "the new york times" "the washington post" reports the same. shutdown looms despite house action, and the subhead said, democrats tied dreamers -- another way to say the daca recipients. the democrats tied dreamers to passage of a budget deal. again, the headline by not exactly the strongest republican paper in the country, "the washington post." so i find it interesting, mr. president, to hear democrats now talking about other reasons for their votes to shut down the federal government, reasons

unrelated to the immigration issue, which was their real reason. we've seen it on the senate floor tonight. we saw it yesterday on the senate floor, a colloquy of distinguished democratic senators talked extensively about the schip program for children's health, as having been somehow inadequately treated in the c.r. they helped to defeat. my colleague from south dakota pointed out just a few moments ago that in fact the -- that the continuing resolution provided for a six-year extension of the schip program for these 9 million americans. and yet somehow that became a reason -- it was a reason listed by my good friend from new jersey just a moment ago. i tuned into house proceedings yesterday and heard democrats there going on at length about community health centers a sudden. and then about flood and hurricane relief.

we've heard on the floor tonight that a good reason to vote against the c.r. was that we just done it too many times. three times is okay. four times is just too many. of course, they propose yet another fourth c.r. -- it's only a c.r. that they would prefer to vote for. we hear them talk about tax cuts for the wealthy. the national institutes of health, opioids. this congress has done marvelous work for this pressing opioid program. medicaid has been mentioned -- medicaid, mr. president, is a mandatory program, has nothing whatsoever to do with the year-to-year appropriations bills. we just heard every reason in the world other than the reason that the national press has pointed out. this is an immigration dispute that doesn't even ripen until

march, and our friends have refused to give us 60 votes to bring that to a close o i wonder why that is. could it that be our democratic friends are beginning to realize that shutting down the government over an immigration dispute is not turning out to be a winner for them? it may be that they've read the most recent cnn poll. that poll showed 56% of americans saying that approving a budget to avoid a shutdown is more important than continuing the daca program. let me repeat that. 56% of americans said approve a budget, avoid a shutdown. only 34% chose daca over a shutdown. maybe that poll and other indications of public

disapproval have caused those who voted for the shutdown to modify their reasons. i hope it causes 60 of us later on tonight to say yes to a solution that will get the government back open. i say to my democratic colleagues, it might have been nice or even desirable to include a daca bill in the most recent c.r. proposal, but there's still at least a month and a half to resolve that issue. we have time to tend to the daca issue, and we don't need to shut down the government over that issue. what the people cannot understand is how it makes sense to force a shutdown over an issue that is completely unrelated to the temporary spending bill. my democratic friends now seem to be searching for a fig leaf of a solution so that they can

relent and allow the federal government to reopen and to function. i hope they find that reason. maybe a three-week c.r. is that vehicle. if a solution is agreed to, it will take about that long to actually write the legislation, but something needs to give, mr. president. and it needs to give tonight. the american people need this shutdown to end. our adversaries around the world need to see that we can get our act together, and our military, our security personnel and all of our public servants deserve the right to get back to the jobs they've signed on to do. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: