Schumer Floor Remarks on Funding Legislation

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor underscoring the bipartisan agreement reached on legislation to fund the government. Below are his remarks:

Now, Mr. President, late last night, due to the hard work and diligence of the staffs of the Appropriations Committees on both sides of the aisle in both houses, and the staff of the leadership and so many others, we were able to come to a bipartisan agreement on a bill to fund the government through September.

Most importantly, this agreement takes the threat of a government shutdown off the table. It’s also a good agreement for the American people.

The bill ensures taxpayer dollars are not used to fund an ineffective border wall, it excludes over 160 poison pill riders, and it increases investments in programs that the middle class relies on, education, infrastructure, medical research.

• It includes a permanent extension of health benefits for the miners, and here I want to just praise – and he can’t get enough praise – the Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin,  who was relentless, even after disappointment after disappointment, at holding the Senate’s feet to the fire and making sure this was done. And many miners can rest easy tonight, these people who have worked so hard for their lives and had so much disappointment because of Joe Manchin’s work and what we put in the bill. There’s also funding to shore up Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program, and $2 billion to help states like California, West Virginia, Louisiana, North Carolina recover from recent natural disasters.

• The bill also includes a significant increase in NIH funding, which deals with cancer research, and the cancer moonshot that both President Obama and Vice President Biden pushed for continues onward. A restoration of year-round Pell Grants which will benefit about a million students… colleges often are the ladder up for a lot of students and this will help them stay on that ladder. And it includes significant increases in funding for infrastructure as well as funding to combat the scourge of opioid abuse, which affects all parts of the country… urban areas, suburban areas, rural areas. It affects the poor, the middle class, and the rich.

• Good news: It protects 99% of the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget so their quest to keep our water and air clean will be able to continue. And it increases funding for clean energy research as well, and that’s one of the great hopes for jobs in this country, as our Senator from Washington Maria Cantwell constantly reminds us.

• For my home state of New York, I was particularly pleased that the agreement supports critical programs that are very needed and very popular in my state: the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which so many smaller cities depend on; the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) to get pollution out of all the Great Lakes; and the vital TIGER grant program which has done so much to support infrastructure, building, road building, and highways throughout my state and throughout America.

• And as I said, the bill explicitly, explicitly precludes the use of any of funding for a border wall, an idea that both parties rejected. A lot of Congressmen and Senators on the Republican side of the wall doesn’t make sense. In fact, you couldn’t find one Republican on the border in the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas who supported that wall. Why? Well, unlike the President’s promise, Mexico’s not paying for it. There’s no plan for the wall. We don’t even know where we would build it. The Secretary of Interior, President Trump’s appointee, said, well, we can’t build it on the U.S. side because it cuts us off from the river. Mexico won’t build it on its side. Where are we going to build it? In the middle of the river? And mainly because it’s not really effective. You can tunnel under a wall. And drugs, which we all want to prevent the scourge of drugs from coming across our borders, so many of them come in little plans and in boats. And when they come by land, they are often hidden in parts of cars, in the carburetor, or the exhaust tank. Hidden. And they will be able to come through because the wall obviously is going to have portals in it where trucks and cars can request to go through. So no money for the border wall, not one plugged nickel. But we do of course for border protection which both parties have always supported. And comprehensive immigration reform… Senator McCain and I, bipartisan bill, supported by 68 members of this body, made sure that we had very strong border protection, but it’s got to be smart, it’s got to be cost-effective, it’s got to work.

Now early on in this debate, Mr. President, early on in this debate, Democrats clearly laid out our principles, insisted that there would be no poison pill riders in the bill. We were able to knock out more than 160 poison pill riders from the final agreement, including the border wall, anti-labor measures that hurt the working people of America, efforts to defund Planned Parenthood – so many women depend on these clinics for their health. And we were able achieve significant investments in domestic programs that help the middle class and those struggling to get to the middle class.

Of course, the bill doesn’t include all of the things we wanted, but that’s the nature of compromise. And at the end of the day, this is an agreement that reflects our basic principles – something both Democrats and Republicans can support.

It took a few extra days, but we got a very good agreement.

I want to thank my friend the Majority Leader, Senator McConnell – he worked very hard to get a good bill. I want to thank the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, particularly Senator Leahy from Vermont in our chamber. I want to thank Speaker Ryan and Leader Pelosi and all of the staffs for working so hard last week and over the weekend to forge an agreement. And I must tell you, Mr. President, and I must tell my colleagues: the negotiations between our two sides were consistently productive and always respectful. Throughout the process, both Republican and Democratic members and staff negotiated in good faith because we all wanted to get something done.                              

I believe this experience bodes well for the 2018 budget and future negotiations between our two parties on appropriations. If we can show the same desire to get things done, the same mutual respect, the same ability to compromise, we can get a darned good budget for the year 2018 without the specter of government shutdown hanging over the country’s head. And I would say one final thing: it shows that when our Republican colleagues are willing to work with us, we can get things done. All too often, particularly from the White House, this attitude is just do it our way. My way or the highway. That’s what happened on the health care bill. No consultation with Democrats. That’s what’s happened on this tax plan. When you don’t do things in a bipartisan way, it’s much harder to pass things. It’s much harder to get a product that’s at the consensus of where American is.                                  

So I hope that not only will this successful negotiation on the 2017 appropriations bill be a model for the 2018 bill, but a broader model that we can all work together to get things done for the country we love. I expect we’ll vote on the bill later this week and I believe it will receive overwhelming support in this chamber.