And with that, mr. President , i would yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Senat . The presiding officer the senator from lie high. Ms. Hirono from hawaii. Ms. Hirono mr. President , the republicans control every level of the federal government. They hold majorities in the house and senate. They have the presidency. And yet the very people, republicans who set the agenda in washington and have majorities in both the house and senate are desperately trying to convince the American People a Government Shutdown should be blamed on anyone else but them. Give me a break. Nobody wants a shutdown except maybe the president who seems to relish a Government Shutdown as a way of, quote, shaking things up, unquote, regardless of who gets hurt. But members of congress should know better and republicans should get down to business and negotiate with democrats in good faith. Republicans in the house and senate have brought us to the brink of a shutdown because they are terrified of the ideological extremextremists in their own py who reject even the most reasonable bipartisan compromises. They are terrified of a her cure yal mercurial president who changes his mind on a whim and who has repeatedly said that maybe we need a good Government Shutdown so he can get his vanity wall. Donald trump and the republicans will be held responsible for any Government Shutdown. Theyve created the situation and the American People will hold them accountable. Democrats have been open and transparent about the things that were fighting for. Were fighting to reauthorize the Childrens Health insurance program, chip, so that nine million kids across the country can continue to access the lifesaving health care that they need. Were fighting to restore funding to Community Health centers that serve millions of underserved americans in Rural Communities, whether they live in kansas, ohio, or any of the other states that trump won. Were fighting to protect the dreamers who could be deported to countries they no little of because the president unnecessarily and cruelly ended the daca program. And were fighting for parity and funding for defense and domestic spending in any budget deal. These are not partisan democratic priorities. If you put each of these priorities up for a vote, they would all pass with bipartisan support in the house and the senate. In fact, we could have passed each of these bills a long time ago, but instead of doing something that would actually help people, republicans spent months working as hard as they could behind closed doors to give the wealthiest 1 of the people in our country and corporations huge tax cuts. And now theyre trying to convince the other 99 of the American Public that this tax bill was a good deal for them. But thats another story and thats another example of misplaced priorities. Getting back to the matter at hand, which is the urgency of preventing a Government Shutdown, the house is trying to pass another shortterm spending bill that only includes al reauthorization for a reauthorization for Childrens Health and not the other important priorities that we need to support. Republicans in congress are trying to pit communities, children, families, and dreamers against one another in an attempt to divide and conquer. They are hoping that we will support yet another government funding bill that kicks the can down the road because they funded Childrens Health, even as in their bill they abandon the dreamers and the Rural Communities who depend on Community Health centers. We cannot allow this cynical republican ploy to succeed. We need to keep fighting for Childrens Health, Community Health centers, for dreamers, and for parity. And i will not vote for any government funding bill that does not include all four of these important and urgent priorities. We cant leave anyone behind because its clear that donald trump wont keep his promise to protect those you call the daca kids. I was at the white house last week when the president looked us in the eye and said on national tv that he would sign a bipartisan compromise on dreamers. He barely waited for us to leave the white house before reneging on that promise. And we all know what happened last week during the meeting with senators durbin and graham at the white house when he was presented with a bipartisan compromise. We cant let the president s irresponsible behavior stop us from fighting for dreamers who deserve our support and protection. Dreamers like getsy from beaver, oregon, who i met last month when they traveled to d. C. To fight for passage for the dream act. Her parents brought her from mexico when she was only four years old. The journey was long and hard and her sister was left behind. Growing up, her parents warned her not to talk about her immigration status because even mentioning it to the wrong person could result in their deportation. She lived in constant fear. Growing up getsys parents always emphasized the importance of obtaining higher education. While her mom and dad only completed fifth and 12th grades respectively, they instilled a level of learning in their daughter and a deep desire for her to go to college. After working hard in high school, getsy enrolled at Western Oregon University where shes studying to become a gerontology nurse. She works incredibly hard. Shes taking 20 credits a semester. I remember whether i was in college, 15 credits was a lot. Shes taking 20 working full time at an assistive living facility and has recently become a certified rock climbing instructor. Shes scheduled to graduate a year early shes taking 20 credits a year early from western oregon in may. After graduation, shes planning to enroll in an accelerated nursing Masters Program so that she can realize her dream of becoming a jarenology gerontology nurse. She talked about wanting to care for people like her grandmother back in mexico and for her parents as they got older. Without the protections daca provides, getsy would lose her Work Authorization and if she isnt able to work, she would not be able to pay for school and would be unable to pursue her dreams. Wh i asked her why she traveled for days to come to washington to share this message with congress, her response was very moving. She said, quote, i have so many dreams and aspiration and i urge people here to understand how much these dreamers have to give to the u. S. We were brought at such a young age. We dont know anything about our homelands. I want to be able to stay in the u. S. , to stay with my family and friends, my nieces and nephew, everyone who is looking up to me. I want to prove that my parents sacrifice meant something. End quote. This is a Pivotal Moment for congress. Are we going to do more than Pay Lip Service to dreamers like getsy by doing our jobs to protect them and provide health care to millions of children and families across the country . Or are we going to bend to the whims of an unpredictable and unreliable president . Rather than waiting for the president to make up his mind, i call on the majority leader to recognize that as a separate branch of government, congress should be a check on the excesses of the executive bran branch. Its about time the majority leader and republicans in Congress Step up to do their jobs. Vitiated. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Tillis thank you, most pee watching tv or watching cspan know were at a very important place here. Were in a position where midnight tomorrow night if congress doesnt act, we shut down the government. And what does shutting down the government mean . It means a lot of things. It means that there are going to be a number of employees that are wondering when they get their next paycheck or whether or not theyll get repaid depending on whether or not we make a decision to pay them for time worked. It means people who have desperately needed services may be wondering where to get those services. For no other reason, if the money is there, is the distraction going to slow down services for a number of people who rely on the federal government for their safety net. The games here that were planning playing in the senate are more important than the work that theyre doing to protect the nation and protect our allies. Its going to mean a lot of very negative things that should be avoided. Im going to talk a little bit about it. What i first want to do is just summarize what were trying to do, people like me who are going to support the continuing resolution. Now, to be honest with you, i hate the whole continuing resolution process. When i was younger, there was a time when our family was struggling and my father was doing construction work. And he literally had to borrow money to pay for the materials he needed to actually do the job so that he could pay the bills for the family. And the way you did that and the way you do take still struggling families, you get these 90day s. You go to a banker. You tell them you have a project to work on. You pay the money back in 90 days. Thats how were running the most important nation thats ever existed, on 90day nets, a onemonth c. R. , 12month c. R. , thats not the way you run the greatest nation on the face of the planet. It has a number of problems with it, not the least of which is you cant give the military any certainty on what they can invest in in the next new generation weapon for the Defense System because they dont know if the money will be there for them to make the investment. It means were getting far less production for our dollar. Were inefficient. And were sending a message to the world that were not serious about longterm investments that we need to make for our safety and security. It also affects a number of other agencies, but i think its every important its very important in these times with all the heightened threats across the world that we send a message were not here for the long term and are not willing to make the longterm investments. Thats a bad message to assume and thats the problem with c. R. s, what we call regular order, sit down, pass appropriations bills, give the men and women in uniform, give the government employee, give the people that rely on our safety net some certainty. Thats the failure of our job. Thats why i support a bill senator heller is proposing. Its called no budget, no pay. I think we should stop the senate members, the members of the house should not get a paycheck when they fail to do their job. Doing their job means you pass appropriations bills, you pass a budget and you do the job that you swore that you would do if you won a race in the United States senate or u. S. Congress. I hope that bill gets a debate on the u. S. Floor. I look forward to supporting it when it does. Lets go back to the c. R. Its pretty simple. Its four weeks long. All it really does is make sure we have funding for our Service Members and make sure we have funding for our veterans. It makes sure we have funding for a child program, the chip program. It actually authorizes it for several years. It gives certainty to states and to people who need support that its going to be there. It also provides funding for Small Business loans and funding for the National Institutes of health. It does a number of other things but those are critically important. Now we have some members that are trying to negotiate a deal for the daca population. Thats deferred action for childhood arrivals. Its a program that president obama put into place in 2012. Its something ive been working on since we filed a bill in august and long before that to try and get reasonable amount of members on both sides of the aisle to come up with a solution that makes sense. But now we have people who actually want to shut down the government because we havent reached a bipartisan agreement that i think is not that far away. The problem that i have with that is i think its going to create a toxic environment in washington, d. C. That its not only going to provide all the uncertainty that i talked about on the prior slide, but its even going to alienate people who are coming to the table trying to negotiate a bipartisan agreement. So now were at a point to where were trying to figure out if we can Fund Government either through a vote sometime tomorrow or a shutdown tomorrow night. What i find interesting, and ive only been here for about three years ive been in politics for about a dozen years. I find it interesting how things change overnight, how things that were untenable and awful a couple of months or couple of years ago are justified today based on the disagreement that we have on the daca deal that im convinced that we will get done before the march 5 deadline. And i hope a lot sooner than that because theres a lot of young men and women, good people, kids that came to this nation through no fault of their own, through a decision made by an adult, who deserve a path to citizenship, who deserve the respect of this nation and who should welcome them because there are a lot of good kids. And im going to keep on working on a solution. But now ive got people that want to distract us, not only distract us from trying to negotiate a reasonable outcome from daca, but add to distraction and create the toxic environment that shutting down the government will cause. If you go back, whats amazing to me is the very people who are now saying we should shut down the government made these kind of statements in the past. This is from former speaker pelosi, minority leader in the house. Not too long ago it was an unthinkable tactic to use in a political debate. Theres a long list of people. Senator nelson, you dont hold the country hostage. But thats exactly what theyre proposing today. Senator king, the constant hostagetaking situation to get something that the process that in the process you cant get through the normal process. Its a hard quote to read. But the point is now they want to take hostages. Now they want to to do exactly what they thought not long ago was inappropriate, unkind, unfair, uncompassionate. Then we have senator heitkamp, its really bullying behavior when the small minority does this. Well, i think it will be a minority that will oppose funding the government. So now people who didnt like the bullying behavior are trying to rash nalaxone it that rationalize that its okay. Weve been getting close on a funding discussion and daca. I cant speak to yall directly, but if i were speaking to the pages, i would ask them whether or not they saw the peanuts cartoon because theres a common thing that we talk about that lucy and the football. Youve seen the scene where youre running down, think youre about to kick that football and just about the time youre going to do it, theres a group of people here that want to pull the football away. Thats what theyre doing again. Honestly, you know, it gets tiring to see us come so close, to have so many reasonableminded people. Now, guess what . There are unreasonable people. Its a bipartisan situation we have here. We have, i have friends, they are friends of mine, but on certain issues they become unreasonable. Theyre not part of the solution. But all of a sudden they create these coalitions and they are the lucy taking away the football from those of us who just want to score, want to actually make progress, want to fund the government, want to actually provide a solution for the daca population. But now weve got another lucy in the football scenario on both the spending bill and also the daca bill. Now i also have to talk about the chip program. The clip chip program is something i wanted to reauthorize since september of last year. September of last year was the month before the program technically expired. However there was sufficient money in reserves for states to run the program. Those states are starting to run out of money including states like mine in north carolina. Now we have an opportunity to reauthorize it for years, to provide certainty to this child population for years. And were going to hold it hostage because we have an honest disagreement over things that i think we can work out with the daca program. We see what people have said in the past. In fact, one of these senators has had a countdown on how many days we failed to authorize daca. It may very well be when we take the vote tonight that very same senator is going to actually vote against a multiyear authorization for the chip program. That doesnt make sense. Its i are rational. It doesnt solve anything. It creates a bigger problem when it comes to the funding discussion and when it ultimately comes to a reasonable outcome for the daca population. And then finally, we can talk about the words of the democratic leader. And again, its amazing to me how things have changed. So, did you believe what you were saying then . Or what position youre taking now, is that who you really are . People need to come to the floor and let me know. Is this what you really meant or is your new position what you really meant . You cant have it both ways . In politics people try to, but you need to Say Something and stick with it. They need to defend which is their really position. If it really are the positions of the past, lets pass the spending bill, lets work hard on getting daca done and stop this theater thats not helping anybody. All this is doing is making people work who rely on governmental funding, worry who rely on government funding, and making the daca population even more worried. Every night they go to bed thinking theyre one day closer to having illegal status here. The speeches you see on the floor about the dreamers, the people doing it well most of them are, going to school, working, serving in the military, i believe every single one of them. And there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of more examples. Thats why im so motivated to come up with a solution and thats why im so frustrated were playing these games when were so close. So, now lets talk about daca. There is a socalled gang thats putting together a bill. Let me back up and talk about a meeting that i attended in the white house last tuesday. The meeting i had the prior thursday where republicans met with the president and said mr. President , the way for us to get to a solution is to call democrats and republicans into a room, members of of the house and senate, have us air our differences and then agree to a time line for negotiating the deal that we can bring to the American People and solve this problem. We asked the president , and he responded by calling a meeting on that tuesday. Some people may have seen it. It was about 15 minutes of press coverage. Senator grassley, the chair of the Judiciary Committee who just came in here, was a part of that meeting. And we all felt great about it. We aired our differences. We agreed to four different pillars that we would use as a basis for negotiation. Come up with something that the daca population needs. Something close. Something compassionate. Something very similar or something between a bill that me and senator lankford and senator hatch proposed. Bridge the differences. We were making progress. But we knew we had to deal with things like the diversity lottery and Border Security and what some of our colleagues call family unification, which has been abused. And it needs to be fixed. Others call it chain migration. At the end of that meeting, we agreed that what we needed to do waos have was have the leade, the whips of the house and senate, the democrats and republicans, agree to a timeline and a schedule, and then get together and work out our differences. I for one think most of those meetings should have been open to the public because then i think the public would raoeldz raoeldz realize were not that far apart. Unfortunately were a week and a half later and the parties have not even reached an agreement on a schedule to begin the negotiation. Now we have another group of people that say weve got something thats pretty close and we may file a bill, or you need to get on to the bill. Let me tell you the problem i have with that bill. Or the concept of a bill. Number one, has it been introduced . No. None of us can really talk about the specific provisions because we dont have something that we can score, that we can look at, that we can understand the benefits and the risk and the issues associated with it and whether or not we can get the votes. The question is does the bill have the support of the president. I think you saw what was vetted on thursday which was not specific provisions. That meeting last week didnt go too well on several different levels. But we dont have an agreement. The other question is if you dont have an agreement with the president , you have to understand the process of the congress. If the president were to veto the bill, were struggling to get 60 votes. But now wed have to get 67. Does anybody here honestly believe well get 67 votes to withstand a veto override. Weve got it to get back to this one. Get the president behind it because thats not going to happen. And even if that could happen, then we have to go to the house, and you cant think about a simple majority of the house members. Youve got to think about a supermajority of house members that would override a president ial veto. Right now based on the number of members who are in the house, theres a couple of open seats, thats 288 votes. That isnt going to happen. Thats not a very good score card. Its not a recipe for success. Im one of the ones who want check boxes next to a bill that the president supports, that the senate will get 60 votes and the house will get more than half so that we can solve the problem for the daca population. So i hope, and theupbgdz happen quickly here and hopefully this is another example where they will, i hope that my republican colleagues recognize that voting against the funding bill is a bad idea. How do you work out of a shutdown . Almost certainly it will not end well. So i hope my republican colleagues will vote for the spending bill, and i hope a majority or a good number of my democratic colleagues will so that we get the spending issue off the table. And then i hope that same group of people will come together and recognize that the gaps are not that hard to bridge for the daca solution, that the Border Security measures are reasonable, that the changes and the elimination of the diversity lottery and a more reasonable way to allow meritbased immigration makes sense. We can deal with underrepresented countries to make absolutely certain that the good, hardworking people from those countries who want to come and live and work in america can do it. This is not a difficult thing to do. Its almost as if people are going in the back room trying to figure out how to make this more difficult than it really needs to be. But im telling and imploring the members of senate, whether youre a republican or democrat, vote for funding the government. Vote for our soldiers. Vote for our veterans. Vote for our children who require these programs, who are desperately in need of certainty. And then quickly get on daca. And vote for the dreamers who need our support. Vote for Border Security so that we can know whos coming across this border and we can make the nation safer. These are commonsense, rational and reasonable expectations. And if we lower the temperature here, if we treat people with respect, and if we actually not let the polar opposites impact what those of us in the center want to do, then we can avoid this crisis and we can do great things for millions of people. Thank you, mr. President. I yield thehe quorum be dispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Leahy you know, madam