I wish to speak for a moment about manufacturing. As you know, I am passionate about manufacturing, about the good-quality jobs manufacturing brings to our communities.
What I am also passionate about is that this body needs to stop manufacturing crises.
What we just heard in the last few minutes was an exchange between my friend, the Senator from Tennessee, and two of his colleagues, the Senators from Texas and Utah, that summarized that what has happened in this Chamber today is the extension of a manufactured crisis, a purely artificial extension that is continuing, as the Senator from Illinois said in great detail and with great insight, to put at risk our recovering economy, our men- and women-at-arms, and our nation’s standing in the world. This is a wholly manufactured crisis without purpose.
It seems to me in the three years I have been here in the Senate–it feels an awful lot like Groundhog Day. I was sitting in that very chair presiding over this body as we were closing in on a government shutdown when I had only been here for a few months.
I have never forgotten getting a message from a constituent at home. Her husband was at that very moment serving our nation flying Medevac missions in Afghanistan. I got a simple note:
“Is it possible that because you all can’t do your jobs that my husband and I won’t be getting a paycheck next week while he does his job for our nation overseas?”
We have, in the three years I have been here, seen needless fights, a near default on our nation’s debt, a near defunding of our federal government’s operation.
Today we see not a difference of meaning but a difference purely of substance and style–purely of superficial style.
As the Senator from Tennessee pointed out, the objection to the majority leader’s request that we proceed now to a vote was purely for the convenience of two Senators who have sent out a lot of press releases and who want more attention. We can’t continue to play chicken with the American people, the American economy, and continuing the services of the federal government.
I know my colleague, the Senator from Louisiana, who is one of the leaders from the Appropriations Committee, is here to offer some insight and comments about the value of appropriations, about the great work our chair Senator Mikulski has led us in this year.
There are so many other ways that this manufactured crisis is just the latest in a series of disappointing failures to lead by a few of our colleagues. The chair has allowed us to go through subcommittee markups and full committee markups on 11 appropriations subcommittee bills. If those bills could be taken up and passed on this floor, we could fix a lot of the things that challenge our nation.
I yield the floor to the Senator from Louisiana so she might inform this body about some of the important work that she, in her subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee, on which I am honored to serve, has been able to do this year.
Senator Landrieu: I thank the Senator for yielding for a question. I appreciate his leadership as an appropriator.
Senator Mikulski was on the floor earlier today, the leader of our committee and the debate about how much to spend and what we should spend our money on. Does the Senator understand that that could be done and it is done in the appropriations process? And if we could just get past this manufactured crisis we could actually accomplish what many Senators want to do, which is to discuss the level of spending? We can’t even get there because we are stuck in a manufactured crisis by the Senator from Texas.
Is that the sense of my colleague as to where we are?
Senator Coons: That is absolutely my understanding. My friend the Senator from Louisiana knows better than anyone that the role of the Appropriations Committee and its subcommittees is to perform oversight, to weed through programs in the federal government, and to strengthen and support those that are effective and making a difference, but to narrow or shut down or trim those that aren’t. If we continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, from short-term continuing resolution to continuing resolution, we will never get that good work done.
Madam President, I welcome any further comments my colleague would like to make about what the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Appropriations Committee has made possible, and why that matters, what difference that makes to the people of Louisiana and of our country.
Senator Coons: Madam President, I want to thank the Senator from Louisiana for her leadership of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.
We just heard a detailed description of how the Senator has worked in a bipartisan, thoughtful, and in a detailed and decent way–in a way that crafted a bill where there was compromise, where there was give and take, and where ultimately the bill that has moved through that subcommittee and full committee and should be ready for action on this floor meets the real needs of our nation, of our homeland.
That bill provides resources and support whether for the State of Colorado, the State of Minnesota, the State of Delaware, or all over this country. And shutting the government down over a needless manufactured crisis between now and Monday is the height of irresponsibility.
Madam President, if I might, I will now yield for the Senator from Colorado.
Senator Bennet: I am sorry the Senator from Delaware has left the floor for a moment, because he has been holding it down and I wanted to ask him a question about his previous work. He was a county executive in Delaware before he was here. I was a superintendent of schools. I worked for the mayor. Senator Klobuchar, who is here from Minnesota, was a district attorney. I think every one of us is completely perplexed by the hostage taking that is going on around this place.
I ask the Senator from Delaware, he was the county executive of a county in Delaware?
Senator Coons: I was.
Senator Bennet: I say through the Chair, does the Senator think that any county executive or mayor or local official in the Senator’s State wouldn’t be run out of town if they threatened the credit rating of their community for politics?
Senator Coons: Absolutely. I might say to my friend from Colorado, I had direct experience with this. In the State of Delaware, folks expect us to balance our budgets and pass them on time, to deliver good services, but also to defend our credit ratings. The city and county and state in which I lived and served all enjoyed AAA credit ratings. The folks in my communities understood that meant we could borrow money for building sewers, building roads, and building schools less expensively and sustain the quality of our community. Our business leaders and civic leaders understood that to put that at risk was reckless and irresponsible.
Yet for a manufactured crisis by a few Senators, we are facing the shutdown of this federal government a few days from now–and, I am afraid, just a few weeks later the possible default on the sovereign debt of the United States. No responsible elected official where I am from would do that.