Exchange between Leaders Thune and Schumer on Government Funding

Does the Senator from New York want to enter into a conversation about this? I want to make my point. Go ahead, make your point. Here's my point. On every one of these... The Democratic leader is recognized. Thank you, Mr. President. And if we can get an easel, bring it over, please. I thank the leader for letting me borrow his chart for a minute. So he's pointed to each of these bar graphs, percentage of Democratic Senators who are supported by CRSs. Yes, that's true. Guess why? In each case, Democrats negotiated with Republicans and said, let's have a bipartisan bill. The leader says it's a clean bill. It's a partisan bill. Not once were Democrats asked for what input should be in the bill. We were not told about it. We were not asked about it, etc. Nor did Speaker Johnson talk to Hakeem Jeffries. You cannot pass legislation in the Senate when it comes to appropriations unless it is bipartisan. So the leader will say it's clean. No, it's not clean. Because there was no discussion. Every one of these times, I went to the Republican leader and said, what do you need? What do you want? And in many cases, we had to significantly change the bill. One of our bills had aid to Ukraine. The Republicans didn't want it. To avoid shutting down the government, we talked to them, negotiated, and took it out. But not once, not once, was there any bipartisan discussion or talk on this bill. We wanted to give our Republican colleagues a chance. That's why some of us back in March said, okay. But we saw what happened after that. We saw a decimation of health care in the BBB. So bad right now that 80% of Americans support renewing the tax credits of the ACA. We saw them use rescissions, pocket rescissions, impoundments to undo what was done in the legislative process. So the world has changed. But one way it's changed, and there are several, and I'll get to those. One way it's changed is there was no discussion. And we asked to have meetings. Hakeem Jeffries and I asked the leader and the speaker to sit down with us as early as July. They didn't. The job of a leader is a bipartisan negotiation. And the appropriators, which you'll say, are discussing things. But the two issues we care about, the two issues we care about, extending the ACA credits, broadly popular with the American people so they don't want to talk about it, they want to change the subject, and ending these rescissions and impoundments which would undo what we would do, the four appropriators, when they got down and discussed it, they said, that should be for the four leaders to discuss. That's what Thune said. I mean, sorry, that's what Cole said, the Republican head of appropriations in the House, that's what Collins said, that's what Murray said, that's what DeLauro said. They did not discuss it with us at all. So to say the appropriations process is working is wrong. It's not working. It's not working because the leaders wouldn't discuss it with us as we discuss with Republicans on every single one of these what should be in the bill and at the bill. Please. So the Senator from New York, the way that we've done it, and it's a different business model than the one he used, we actually have the appropriations committee sit down, and the date that they came up with, November 21st, was agreed upon by the House and Senate appropriators, Republican and Democrat. Would the Speaker yield? Would the leader yield? I will. I will. And the Ukraine issue you're talking about wasn't a CR. That was an entirely different issue. So don't throw that into this mix. It was not. It was not an entirely different issue. The Democrat leader and his colleagues have the same leverage on November 21st. This is a short-term CR. This is what we do all the time around here, as witnessed by the chart that you're just using there. 24 pages long. Funds the government until November 21st, at which time you have the same leverage then that you have right now, and we have until the end of the year to fix the ACA credit issue, and we're happy, as I said yesterday and have said on multiple occasions, to sit down with you to do that. Thank you. Now, reclaiming my time. They did not agree to the bills that the leader is talking about because they said explicitly, Democrat and Republican, there are two issues they can't resolve. Impoundments and rescissions and ACA tax credits and health care. And they all agreed, the four of them, that they couldn't agree to a bill until the leaders discussed it with us. We asked the leaders to discuss it with us in July, in the middle of August, at the end of August, in September. They refused. And now he says, give us another 45 days. Well, frankly, the Republicans have had 45 days since March. One 45 days, another 45 days, another 45 days. And in the room yesterday, Johnson said he doesn't want to do it at all. He doesn't want to have any compromise. So the time to do it is now. And the idea that we can do it until January, when we talked to the president yesterday, he didn't understand this. But I know that the leader does. On October 1st, in a day or two, millions of Americans, millions, are going to get notices that their insurance premiums will rise an average of $400 a month, $5,000 a year. A middle-class family can't afford that. We want to renew those credits, among other things in health care, but renew those credits so that people won't pay that horrible increase. You can debate health care all you want, but the overwhelming majority of Americans, Democrat, independent, and even a good number of Republicans, want us, want us, to renew those credits. And the impoundment, rescission, I mean, what does the leader think? That we should go along, come to an agreement, and then let them undo it unilaterally, as they've done once, and now have asked to do it more? No way! That's not how you deal with this, and we never had another president who did it. So I repeat, I love this chart. Democrats negotiated with Republicans, and on through the whole chart. Didn't happen this time. Leader Thune did not come once to me and say, is this bill acceptable, what do you want in the bill? So they call it clean, we call it extremely partisan. Not one discussion, House or Senate, between the two leaders. That is not how you negotiate, and that is not how you pass appropriation bills. And the Appropriations Committee is stalled by their own admission, because the leader will not come and talk to us about it.