Ron Johnson

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. JOHNSON. In reclaiming my time briefly, let me emphasize the fact that if you pass this now--again, to the Senator from Michigan, I am literally begging him: Do not object. Do not object. It is still going to take a couple of days to actually pass this. If we have to go the route of a motion to proceed and getting on the bill, that is going to take quite some time. Our skies can't remain at this level right now. We can't continue with these airport delays. We can't continue to use public sector employees and the American public as pawns in this partisan gamesmanship. So, literally, I think the Senator knows me. He knows I am saying this in good faith: Please do not object. Let this bill pass so the House can come back, and the President can sign this into law, and these good people who are being forced to work or who have been furloughed can get the pay they deserve. Again, today, tomorrow, and in the future, they will be assured they will never ever be used like pawns in these partisan games. Again, I underscore that I will not modify my request.

Mr. JOHNSON. Absolutely.

Mr. JOHNSON. Reserving the right to object, it is important that the American public understand what is going on here. Again, I came down here 2 weeks ago. I modified my bill quite dramatically. We entered talks immediately with the Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Michigan. Within those talks--again, 2 weeks ago--they were accusing my bill of giving the President all this additional authority. In discussions staff to staff, they admitted there is no additional authority I am giving to the President in this bill whatsoever. This bill is completely silent on Presidential authority in terms of who he can furlough. As a matter of fact, everybody is included, every employee is now included. There is no discretion whatsoever in terms of who is furloughed, who gets brought back to work, who gets paid. They all get paid. The Senator from Michigan is well aware of this. Those discussions, I would say, petered out within a few days. I don't know if they are emboldened; just digging their heels in they are going to continue this shutdown; don't feel they are getting blamed for it; don't have much pressure on them. Here we are 2 weeks later, and they want to redline the bill. Well, in that 2 weeks, we have had our bill examined exhaustively by our leadership, by OMB, by the unions. Our bill is in a really good place right now. We tried to think of everything. No Federal employee would be excluded from this. The Senator from Michigan says my bill allows the President to pick and choose. That is total hogwash. Again, every Federal employee, including contractors, gets paid. There is no picking and choosing. That is completely false. Money transfers? What is he talking about? More power? There is no power. It is completely silent in terms of Presidential authority. These are false arguments. This is further evidence of the gamesmanship the Democrats are playing with people's lives. They are the party of Big Government. They have, in effect, taken a family member hostage. I see our leader on the floor here. He has been doing everything he possibly can to help Democrats release their own hostage, open up the government. Once you do that, we are more than happy to talk to you about how do we repair the damage done by ObamaCare and transition to a system that works. But they are playing politics. They are using Federal employees and, quite honestly, the American public right now, whose flights are being delayed, whose skies are less safe--they are using public employees and the American public as pawns in this grotesque display of partisanship. My bill is very simple. It is backed by the public sector unions, which generally don't support things I am putting forward. If the Senator insists on objecting to this, preventing these people, these workers, these people who keep us safe, from getting paid in this round, my guess is that we will take a vote on this to proceed to the bill. The problem with that is it will take much more time. If we can pass this by unanimous consent right now, we could send it over to the House. The Speaker has already indicated that if we pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, he will bring his people back. They are on 48-hour call. We could have this passed by Monday. Our skies would be safer again. Federal employees would be treated fairly. They would be paid. And they will never ever be used as pawns in this kind of grotesque partisan gamesmanship. So I will not modify my request.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, I came to the floor in support of a bill that we were going to vote on, a motion to proceed called the Shutdown Fairness Act. It is a pretty simple bill. The name pretty well describes exactly what it is. It is trying to be fair during these dysfunctional shutdowns. Any of the Federal workers who are forced to work because they are in our military, they are in Federal law enforcement, they are TSA, or they are air traffic controllers--they are keeping this Nation and Americans safe--if we are going to force them to work, at a minimum, let's make sure we pay them and pay them on time. I came down in as nonpartisan a manner as I possibly could and literally begged the other side to just join us, vote to proceed to the bill. They had some objections to it, things that I was willing to address. For example, my bill only addressed workers that were forced to work. They wanted to include furloughed workers. I said on the floor: I am happy to add that as an amendment. I think, working with my conference, I can get the conference to support it as well. It wasn't quite that easy, but in the end, we overcame objections within our conference to adding furloughed workers. So we have completely amended the bill now. We have added furloughed workers. In the meantime, surprising to me, we had Federal employee worker unions reach out to us, asking what they could do to help pass this bill. They are sick and tired of being used as pawns in this political dysfunction here. They are tired of it. One of the things that definitely appealed to them once I added the furloughed workers was that my bill makes it permanent. My bill says: We will never use you again as a pawn in the political gamesmanship that is being played out right now. I am happy to report that the Shutdown Fairness Act, as I now amended it by adding furloughed workers, is supported by the American Federation of Government Employees, the Federal Managers Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. We tragically had a plane go down early in the week. I am not saying it is because of air traffic control, but we understand the danger. We have to understand the risks we are taking in not paying air traffic controllers so we can fully man our air towers and keep our airspace safe. The International Association of Fire Fighters supports my bill. The Association of Flight Attendants does. Again, one of the main reasons they support my bill is, in addition to the fact that we added furloughed workers, my bill makes this permanent. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 191, S. 3012. I further ask that the Johnson substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. No, we are not there yet. I am sorry. I will conclude quickly. The bottom line is, as I talk to the Senator from Maryland, the way to pass this law--the way to protect Federal workers--isn't with the unanimous consent request of a bill nobody has ever seen; it is to vote for cloture on the Shutdown Fairness Act. Let's work out the differences. We agree on 95 percent of it. Let's work out those differences and vote for cloture. We can get this passed, I think, early next week. With that, I will conclude my remarks on that. Nomination of Rebecca L. Taibleson Mr. President, I should be speaking for about 5 minutes on the wonderful nomination of Rebecca Taibleson, but I know everybody wants to vote. She did a wonderful job in Judiciary. She is a highly qualified lawyer. She will make a wonderful judge for the Seventh Circuit. I urge all of my colleagues to vote for cloture on her nomination. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON. So now we will proceed to the cloture vote on the Shutdown Fairness Act. In response to this, quickly. It is unrealistic to expect almost any piece of legislation to pass by unanimous consent, a bill that has just been introduced that exact morning. No matter how simple it is, there are going to be people who are going to object. So that is why the process is to file a bill, to file for cloture, and to proceed to get on the bill, to have the amendment process, and to go through the process. It can go very quickly, but doing this by unanimous consent is just unreasonable. So that is unfortunate. Again, the solution here is to vote for cloture to get on the bill, the Shutdown Fairness Act. Now, I will try and keep my remarks reasonably short. I was allotted 20 minutes, but I know people are already here on the floor to vote, so I am mindful of that, but this is just a quick, little history of my experience since I got here in 2011. This is our fourth shutdown now, and we are on the 23rd day. We have had 55 continuing resolutions. Again, I didn't vote for all of them, but I voted for many of them. You know, other colleagues on both sides have voted for those. I mean, generally, the fight is over. Let's just have a clean CR; let's not junk it up with policies. That is the loggerhead here. One side refuses to just do a clean CR. We have had 12 either increases or suspensions of the debt ceiling, and we have just surpassed $38 trillion in debt. I realize people work in good faith on the budget process. I am on the Budget Committee and have been on the Appropriations Committee. I see the former chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee on the floor here. The sad fact is, since I have been here, we should have passed 180 appropriations bills prior to the end of the fiscal year that we are going to fund, but we have only passed 6. That is a 96.7-percent failure rate. It is clearly broken. The budget and appropriations process is broken. Rather than spending weeks arguing over how do you get the government back open, I would much rather sit down in a nonpartisan way and go, How can we fix this? Can we go to 2-year appropriations cycles? I mean, what can we do to the budget process? I mean, I would much rather talk about that. I understand that there is a lot of bipartisan agreement on proposals, but we will never get to that if we are literally mired down. Last year, it took us 6 months to finally fund the government with a continuing resolution. This is beyond ridiculous. So, again, this is a bipartisan problem here. I am not placing blame anywhere. It is just a bipartisan problem. Unfortunately, we haven't passed any appropriations. I have pointed out before that the Democrats voted 13 times during the Biden administration for a clean CR at Biden's spending levels. Now they are saying, no, they won't. Of course, their leader, in doing that on January 16, 2024, said: Passing a clean CR this week is important for two main reasons: First, passing the CR will avert a harmful and unnecessary government shutdown. No reasonable Member of either side, Democrat or Republican, wants a government shutdown. That was not Leader Thune saying that. That was then-Leader Schumer saying that, and now he has, obviously, completely changed his tune. I did point this out, and this is important to understand because the other side is saying: Look, why don't you sit down and negotiate and compromise? The House could have passed a CR with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to match the CR proposed by the Democrats of $1.5 trillion in new spending. OK. There you go. Now you have got something to compromise on. That is not what the House did. The House said: Well, let's do what we did 13 times under the Biden administration. Let's just pass a clean CR at Biden's level and really beg the Democrats to say yes, but they haven't been willing to do that. Again, I know people are waiting to vote, and I am not going to talk about the issue: you know, the fact that ObamaCare is causing premiums to skyrocket and what they are demanding, in terms of extending the enhanced subsidies that were supposed to be temporary. They set the expiration date. It is ObamaCare that is causing premiums to be unaffordable, and they want those enhanced premiums to mask the failure of ObamaCare, but I won't get into detail on that. I will talk about--this is day 23. We are forcing about 2.8 million Federal workers to work--military, law enforcement, people who write Social Security checks, and air traffic controllers who are keeping our skies safe--but we are not paying them. That is absurd. What is even more absurd is they will get paid. Whether they are working or furloughed, they will get paid because of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019. Once this ends--I am assuming it will end with an appropriation--they will get paid. With the Shutdown Fairness Act, all it asks--all it does--is to recognize that reality. It shouldn't cost a dime. The CBO has an alternate universe score on this. There is a zero score. This doesn't cost the Federal Government a dime. It just pays the workers who are being forced to work. Pay them now and not later. It makes incredible common sense. I will end with a surprising support letter I got from the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association that pretty well battens down all the arguments against this bill. It doesn't change the government's obligation to pay furloughed employees. They will get paid. It does not single out favored political functions over disfavored ones. Again, President Trump is, by and large, honoring the past opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel's Antideficiency Act. They say that they don't believe that it is empowering the administration to pick and choose what activities it carries out. It includes to say that the American public relies on the full scope of Federal Agency missions that are funded via appropriations, and political pressures that exist to advance appropriations bills will remain to encourage resolution.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, again, I will condense my remarks because so much of what I want to say I already said to the Senator from Maryland. I think it is interesting that the Senator from Michigan supports the Senator from Maryland's bill, which is a more comprehensive bill, I think. I only saw this now and hope I get it right. But I think yours is just limited to the time period from the shutdown until the bill is passed, and then we are in the same situation: The shutdown continues. Hopefully, it won't. You know there is a way of doing it. Just vote for the clean CR. But, again, I really don't want to object to these bills, but in this case, I understand the way to pass this into law--as I was speaking to the Senator from Maryland today, as he exited the Chamber: Wouldn't this be a wonderful demonstration for the Senate, the Congress, for America of how you pass a piece of legislation? If you take the bill--I realize you don't 100-percent agree with my Shutdown Fairness Act. Fine. I think we are 90-plus percent in agreement on it. You vote for cloture to get on the bill. Then you work in good faith on the areas of disagreement. Let the Senate work its will through the Member process. This is a small piece of legislation. It is an incredibly important piece of legislation. It is incredibly important because we all agree that we don't want to make Federal employees pay for the dysfunction of this body. Let's first demonstrate that this body can actually function the way it is intended to function, which is to write a bill, get it filed, have the leader file cloture on it, and have the body vote to proceed to the bill with 60 votes. We don't need all of you. We need about seven of you, eight of you. OK? Have eight of you agree to get on the bill. Then we will work in good faith and make sure that we don't make Federal employees pay for our dysfunction. Again, I do have to object. But, again, I am urging--I am begging-- colleagues from the other side of the aisle to vote for cloture, and let's iron out these differences and make the Federal employees whole. I object.

Mr. JOHNSON. Let's get on the bill.

Mr. JOHNSON. Let me address that. I think this brinkmanship has got to end. I have been here 15 years. We should have passed 180 appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. We passed six. A lot of people worked in good faith to do that. OK. It is obviously broken. We have got to start working on appropriations and budget reform. We have to start working on that together. OK? But my guess is, part of what has happened with the reduction in force is that brinkmanship, trying to get you folks to just agree to what you have done 13 times. Just open up the government, and then we will talk. OK? We are more than open to talk. But anyway, again, I am literally begging you, please, when we vote on cloture, vote to get on the bill, and then let's go through the amendment process, and let's get it done quickly. Again, there is not that big of difference. We can get this done. Again, I hate to do this, but with that, I will object and just, again, beg you.

Mr. JOHNSON. Sure.

Mr. JOHNSON. Let's get on the bill. And then let's sit down in good faith. Let's hammer out amendments, and let's get the thing passed next week. Let's do that. That is all I am asking. I honestly hate to object to this. I don't want to. OK? But, again, this is not the way to pass it. So, again, I will speak to my bill. I know we have got to get to votes and that kind of stuff. But again, truthfully, in as good of faith as I possibly can be, we have to get this done, and the way to do that is vote to get on the bill. Let's sit down and talk in good faith, and let's hammer out--it might be pretty minor differences when all is all said and done. With that, Mr. President--

Mr. JOHNSON. I have to dispute that because even the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, which has endorsed my bill, says that the bill does not single out favored political functions over its favored ones. You understand, under the Antideficiency Act, opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel, ``excepted employees,'' it is pretty well standard. There may be some tweaks back and forth, which is what you give latitude to the executive branch. Again, I am willing to sit down. I am sure the Republican conference is willing to sit down and say: OK. What should we do? I think Congress has given way too much authority to the executive branch. I don't mind dialing that back a little bit. But, again, the way to approach that is let's get on the bill; let's talk about it; let's offer amendments--amendments that pass by voice vote--and let's get it done. There is a lot of pressure on all of us. We all want to get this done. But, again, passing by unanimous consent is not the way to get it done. The way to get it done is the way the process should work. I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful to actually see the process work in the Senate? You know, again, I realize you don't like--

Mr. JOHNSON. Like I said, I really didn't want to come and argue.

Mr. JOHNSON. I am willing to come a long way in terms of including furloughed workers. So, again, what I am suggesting is the way to do it--by the way, this could be a wonderful example for this body, working on a piece of legislation that, again, you bring it to the floor. We filed it--it got rule XIV'd, but we are doing it the right way. We are going to ask for a cloture vote on it, get it on the floor, open it up to amendments--perfect it. See what the body of the Senate wants to do with this piece of legislation that, again, we probably agree on 95 percent of it or higher. The way to do it is, when I offer my bill and we vote on cloture, vote for cloture. Let's get on the bill. Let's start discussing today. I mean, maybe if we are so successful, we find the differences are so slight, we can pass it by UC later in the day. But we do need to take this back to our conferences. We do need to go to the leg staff. We do need to perfect this. It will probably take it more time. Passing it by unanimous consent is not the way to do it. I appreciate the attempt. I appreciate the dialogue. That is not what I am asking. In all sincerity, for the benefit of those 2.8 million workers--our military, our law enforcement--let's take that burden off them today. Let's give them some hope to know this body is going to finally do something in a nonpartisan--I call it nonpartisan--way that we all agree on. We are going to iron out our differences the way you would generally do it, the way it used to be done: By getting onto a bill, voting for cloture, having the will to work its way, and then hopefully pass it early next week. That would be my suggestion. I would be willing to do it today. I don't think we could probably handle that. There are things to discuss. That is all I am asking. Would you like to respond?

Mr. JOHNSON. Again, I am trying to keep this--let's not argue. OK? Let's focus on areas of agreement. So reduction in force, again, I think we probably have a philosophical disagreement there. I am not associating myself with anybody else's remarks. That is something that I think reasonable people can disagree with, and I think reasonable people can come to an accommodation. Again, we are talking about making sure that 2.8--I think is about the number, 2.8--million Federal employees aren't worried about getting their next paycheck. That so overwhelms, quite honestly, the smaller differences about the length of the bill or what reduction in force. Again, I am willing to come a long way in terms of--

Mr. JOHNSON. Again, I--

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, yes.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have come here today on the floor in good faith. I have come here not to argue. I have come here trying to find agreement. And I have listened to the Senator from Virginia, now the Senator from Maryland, and I have to say, I don't know exactly what percentage, but probably 95, 98 percent of what they have said, I agree with. I do have to point out, and this would be the most--I would say this is a partisan comment. We have voted now 12 times on a measure that would open up the government. It is what the House passed as a clean CR, similar, if not identical, to what happened 13 times during the Biden administration--just a clean CR to open up the government at President Biden's levels, funding levels that Democrats voted for. By the way, you know, House Republicans could have come to the table with a CR with $1.5 trillion of spending reductions to match the $1.5 trillion of spending increase the Democrats wanted, and now there would be areas of compromise. But the House Republicans basically said here is the deal: Let's not shut down the government. Let's not make Federal Government workers pay for our dysfunction. So pass a clean CR at President Biden's funding levels. So, again, that has been voted down 12 times, regrettably. But let me set that aside. I found out about the Senator from Maryland's proposal last May. I got the language this morning. I have got the bill here. And, you know, first of all, I kind of chuckled because the name of the bill is--I have actually got the true Warren Buffet tax, and we ought to talk about that later on. You might find that interesting. So he has taken my bill, the Shutdown Fairness Act, and now this is his bill, the True Shutdown Fairness Act. And, again, I haven't done a word comparison, but it is probably like 95 percent of the Shutdown Fairness Act. That is a good thing. That shows there are a lot of areas of agreement. I come from the private sector. You don't get a whole lot accomplished arguing all the time. It is all about finding areas of agreement. I have got a product; you want to buy it. Now, we will haggle over the price. I have got a product; you want to buy it. Now, we need to haggle over the price. Now, the three areas of--the differences in these bills--I think I have got this right. I would ask the Senator from Maryland to confirm that. Your bill is only for this fiscal year. My bill would just end this punishing Federal workers for our dysfunction forever. I mean, I think we should make it permanent. The Senator from Maryland's bill includes furloughed employees. Now, the fact of the matter is, when all this is said and done, when we finally end this dysfunction, we fund the government through an appropriation, and because of the 2019 Government Fair Treatment Act, they will get paid anyway. So my bill is obviously targeted to the people we are forcing to work, but I am not necessarily opposed to paying furloughed workers as well. That is something we can talk about. The last difference is, it limits reduction in force. And I come from the private sector. Nobody likes to terminate employees--nobody. But in the private sector when a business is facing bankruptcy, sometimes business owners are forced do that to preserve the other jobs. The Federal Government is $38 trillion in debt. I don't think we should limit the President's ability, the Chief Executive's ability, to properly manage the Federal Government and make the tough decisions, sometimes, to reduce the workforce, cut out some government functions. Again, that is something we can talk about. So, again, I think, in fairness to the more than 2 million Federal employees that are now being forced to work because--the term is ``excepted,'' but that means they are essential--they are protecting our Nation; they are protecting our safety and security; they are writing Social Security checks. We need to see that they get their paycheck so they don't have to work Door Dash, so they don't have to go to food banks, so they are not under that stress. I am asking in good faith, let's figure out how to get that done. Now, I mean, I could propose--I will change the name of mine, by the way, if you want to call it ``true'' because I think it is the True Shutdown Fairness Act. Today, right now, I would be willing to add furloughed workers because we are going to pay them anyway. I am just asking: Would you substitute your bill; take my bill, substitute it in? I have actually got my staff to write the language to do this. It is probably not ready for prime time. You really need to get through leg counsel and that kind of stuff. But you would take my bill, add furloughed workers, and say it is a done deal? Is that something you would accept here today?

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I will ask you, I will ask everybody in the Chamber, everybody listening to me on C-SPAN: Aren't you getting sick and tired of the shutdown showdowns? I am. In 15 years, we should have passed 180 appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year. We passed six--3.6 percent. That is a 96.7-percent failure rate. I am sorry the appropriations process is broken. This bill does nothing to diminish the authority of the appropriators. What it does is it removes all the turmoil, all the disruption of people's lives. It takes away the partisan bickering, and it just--every 14-day rolling appropriations bill to keep any Department open, where we haven't passed an appropriations bill, gives appropriators time to find areas of agreement and work on compromise in disagreement. Let me be clear, a vote against the Eliminate Shutdowns Act is a vote to continue the chaos and to continue the partisan game playing with people's lives. And by the way, this won't be the only time we will vote on this. I will guarantee you that if we go into a shutdown. Please, do right by the American people. Vote for the Eliminate Shutdowns Act. We can do away with shutdowns for all time. A simple vote yes will do that. I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I will ask you, I ask anybody in the Chamber, anybody who will listen to me on C-SPAN: Aren't you getting sick and tired of these government shutdown showdowns--with the drama, the turmoil, partisan bickering, the holding American people and our economy hostage for demands for billions and billions of dollars and more spending that we can't afford? I know I am. This madness doesn't have to continue. We can begin ending this madness tonight by voting on a very simple piece of legislation: Eliminate Shutdowns Act. Again, it is very simple. All it does is say, if we don't pass appropriations bills for all of government or any department, we don't shut those departments down. We don't shut all of government down. We do, literally, what the State of Wisconsin has done since the 1950s: We keep spending at last year's levels. I mean, how more common sense can you get? We accomplish that by enacting 2-week rolling continuing appropriations to fund all of government or any part of it that doesn't have an appropriation passed for it on a rolling basis. I ask the Chamber: Who could be opposed to something so simple that, again, it prevents all this turmoil, all this drama, all this partisan bickering? Well, my guess is Democrats will oppose it. My guess is also some of our appropriators will oppose it. I have heard some of the rationale. I don't think it really holds water. But what one point made is the problem with continuing resolutions is they fund programs that should be reduced or canceled and prevent important new programs from being started. Well, again, that will create the incentive--I agree with that, by the way; I don't like CRs either--that will create the incentive, under these automatic rolling 14-day continuing appropriations, to pass appropriations bills. It doesn't in any way, shape, or form diminish or detract from the authority of appropriators or the Appropriations Committee. I also heard the appropriators want the pressure of government shutdowns to allow them to pass appropriation bills. I guess I somewhat understand their point. But I would like to point out that pressure certainly hasn't worked. I got here in the year 2011. I don't think anybody can dispute the fact that at least since that point in time--and probably before that-- the appropriations process is broken. It is dysfunctional. In 15 years, what we should have done in Congress is pass 180 appropriations bills during those 15 years: 12 a year times 15--180 bills. Do you know how many we actually have passed? Six--six bills-- one for fiscal year 2017, five for fiscal year 2019--six bills. That is a 3.3-percent success rate or, stated a better way, that is a 96.7- percent failure rate of the appropriations process. During that 15 years, we have had three shutdowns, and we have passed 55 continuing resolutions--55. And people are going to oppose an automatic rolling continuing appropriation? By the way, this year, the continuing resolution that we did pass took us 6 months. It took us 6 months of dysfunction before we finally passed the appropriations for this year, which, of course, is going to end in a day and a half. What the shutdown pressure did produce is the pressure to mortgage our children's future for it. It produced the pressure to pass multiple, thousand-page omnibus spending bills. We have increased or suspended the debt ceiling 12 times in those 15 years, since I have been here. Our debt has gone from $14 trillion to over $37 trillion. Clearly, this is a broken process. Spending is completely out of control. I don't think it is going to surprise anybody to find out that I brought a couple of charts to basically make my point. I would like to talk about a few facts, a few figures. This Chamber is generally not really interested in talking about, like, figures, but with my accounting background, I would like to. So let me give you a little history lesson. This dates back--these are 4-year average deficits going back to the year 2001. You will see, in the two terms of President Bush's administrations, average deficits were $200 billion and $300 billion. So the average over his 8 years is $250 billion worth of deficits. Again, those were unacceptably high back then. That is when $100 billion or 2, actually, was real money. People were concerned about it. President Obama came into office with the great recession. As his adviser Rahm Emanuel said, ``Never let a good crisis go to waste.'' And he didn't. So, in his first term, President Obama's average deficit was $1.27 trillion. That sparked the Tea Party movement. I am part of that. When the Tea Party came, we actually made a difference. We did dig our heels in on that out-of-control deficit spending. So for President Obama's second term, deficits averaged $550 billion. Again, $550 billion--that is a lot of money, except in Washington, DC. President Trump came into office with a divided government, and he had to do deals to get spending bills passed. So his deficit increased to $810 billion for the first 3 years. Then COVID hit. We went on a massive, bipartisan, ``uniparty'' spending spree: a $3.1 trillion a year deficit--$3.1 trillion. We went from $4.4 trillion in spending to 6.5 and never looked back. Now, responsible leaders would have recognized that that was an aberration. We can't keep spending once the pandemic has passed. You know, back in World War II, we had responsibilities. We started World War II by spending 11.7 percent of GDP. During World War II, that increased to 41 percent for the war effort, but responsible leadership brought that spending back down to 11.4 percent of GDP, after the war, in 1948. That is not what the Biden administration did. They kept spending at pandemic levels. We averaged, during the Biden administration, deficits of $1.9 trillion, and we will have a deficit this year of about $2 trillion. And the very sad fact is, over the next 10 years, based on the CBO's most recent figures, the total 10-year deficit is going to equal about $26.4 trillion. That is $2.6 trillion per year. It starts out at about $2 trillion and ramps up to over $3 trillion by the year 2035. Most of our party leadership says the problem here is we have a spending problem. We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem. Let me just prove that point. This is one of my favorite charts. It literally shows that no matter how much we try and punish success with the top marginal tax rate--we had, back in 1959, a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent. How much would you work if the Federal Government took 91 cents of every dollar you made? I wouldn't work very hard, personally. It has been as low as 28 percent. I would say, for a brief period of time, we were 72 percent free under Ronald Reagan. Now we are at 37 percent for the top marginal tax rate. But, again, you can see the ups and downs. What is noteworthy about this chart is that no matter how much you try and punish success, over time, it has been very consistent. We were able to extract 17.1 percent of the American economy in Federal revenue. We have had a high of 20 percent, but that was after the dot- com bubble, and that quickly came back down to a 17.1-percent average. It is time we recognized that reality. If we ever balance our budget, what we need to do is get spending under control. We have a spending problem, which I think this chart clearly demonstrates. Back in 2000, we spent $1.8 trillion--$1.8 trillion. That was 17.7 percent of GDP. That was the year that we had 20 percent of revenue. We had a surplus for 4 years. We had a surplus for 4 years, and we frittered that all away. We finally broke the $2 trillion mark in the year 2002, after 9/11. All of a sudden, we were on a war footing. We had to spend more to defend this Nation. Again, we have never looked back. The absolute high point--other than World War II, the high point in spending was with President Obama, after the great recession, at 24.4 percent of GDP. By the way, that year, because of the recession, revenue went down to 14.4 percent. That is what produced those massive deficits of $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion. In 2014--again, as a result of the Tea Party--we pretty well held spending flat at about $3.5 trillion for about 5 or 6 years. So spending, as a percent of GDP, which is a relevant figure, dropped down to 20.2. This year, we are going to be spending over $7 trillion-- greater than 23 percent of our economy--and we are going to collect about 17.1 percent. We have got in excess of a 6-percent structural deficit. It is clearly unsustainable. I hear a lot of talk about, ``Well, Ron, it is all mandatory spending,'' which is a problem. All of these government shutdowns are all about 25 percent of Federal spending--the discretionary accounts. We have 75 percent of our spending in mandatory, but you have to understand this is not all Social Security, Medicare, or even Medicaid. Over the decades--I am researching to see exactly how this happened-- we have transferred what I would consider and what probably formerly was discretionary spending into other mandatory. So, this year, we will spend about $1 trillion in other mandatory spending. What this chart shows are the variants between 2019 spending, plussed up for population and inflation, leaving Social Security and Medicare and interest alone with spending at 2025 levels. If we were to do that, instead of spending $7 trillion this year, we would be spending about 6.5. In other mandatory--again, not Social Security and Medicare or even Medicaid--we are spending $239 billion more than inflation and population adjusted for 2019 spending. I don't think we were spending too little in 2019. Nondefense discretionary is up about $145 billion over fully inflated 2019 levels. So that is not the problem. There is just one other fact I want to dispute, particularly for defense hawks in my party, because I hear it a lot. Well, the good news is we have got parity between defense spending and domestic spending. I don't know what figures they are looking at, but if you only consider nondefense discretionary--yes, it increased from Bill Clinton--it is pretty close to 1 to 1. But that was before 9/ 11, before we were on a war footing. Under Trump, it is 1.64 to 1. But, again, you can't ignore the other mandatory--that other trillion dollars--nowadays. If you factor in nondefense discretionary and other mandatory, we have increased spending on domestic programs 2\1/2\ times to 1. In defense, from Obama's spending, the increase is 3\1/2\ times to 1. Under Trump, it is 3.65. So we don't have parity. I am sorry, defense hawks. You have had--you know, lights out. You have lost that battle. We are not even close to parity. Whatever you think you are getting in defense, they are getting 3\1/2\ times that in domestic spending. Again, we can't afford it. So, again, those are just some basic facts, some basic figures that explain our current fiscal situation. Let me go back to where I started. Here we are again in another shutdown showdown. The Democrats' opening bid, by the way, was: OK, well, we will give you a 4-week CR--4 weeks--and all we are asking is for another $1.5 trillion in spending. So we are willing to end the turmoil, and we will quit playing games with people's lives for 4 weeks, as long as you agree to roll back everything you passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill and increase spending by $1.5 trillion. Is that a serious starting negotiation point? I don't think so. What I am asking from all of my colleagues is, please, imagine a world in which these ridiculous shutdowns are no more than a ridiculous relic of the past, where we are not wasting our time and effort and energy and angst over this partisan bickering. Again, I have to remind you that the Eliminate Shutdowns Act does not diminish the authority of the Appropriations Committee. If we do these rolling continuing appropriations, now the appropriators can get together, and they can find areas of agreement, like we did in this Chamber on Veterans Affairs and Military Construction, in that minibus. Where there are areas of disagreement, we will take some time and find the compromises. As I said, I agree with the point that the problem with CRs is that they fund programs that should be reduced or canceled, and they prevent important new programs from being started. There, again, is another incentive to do appropriations, and now you have the time to do it. We won't be wasting our time and effort and energy and angst on these charades. These are charades. I can't predict exactly what will happen if we pass the Eliminate Shutdowns Act. Nobody can. I can predict we will never have another shutdown--ever--in the Federal Government. I am OK with that. Again, I don't like CRs. I don't like our current spending level. I am willing to concede much higher spending levels than I think we can afford to eliminate government shutdowns for all times. So I can predict that. But here is something else I think could happen: If we are not wasting our time on this partisan bickering over shutdowns, there have been so many discussions about bipartisan appropriations and budget reform, things like 2-year appropriations cycles, where, instead of 12 bills, which, obviously, we can't pass, how about doing 6 and making it manageable? In the year you don't appropriate for an account, you are doing oversight, and just reverse the cycle. I mean, I would even consider 3-year appropriations bills--4 a year--but that could impinge on future Congresses. Again, I understand there are complications to all of these things, but think positively about what ending shutdowns could do for this body, for this government, for people's lives. Passing the Eliminate Shutdowns Act, eliminating shutdowns for all time, would be a signature achievement of this Congress. Think of that. We together, on a bipartisan basis, can say we are the group after the horrible assassination of Charlie Kirk. Recognize this is the moment to come together as a nation, as a Senate, as a Congress. Do the right thing for the American people. End government shutdowns. That would be a signature achievement in this Congress, and I am hoping and praying that we do that. But let me be honest. Voting no on this bill--voting no is basically voting yes for continuing the chaos and for continuing to play partisan games with people's lives and our economy. That is what a ``no'' vote is. Voting yes would help cement this as a lasting legacy for this Congress. So, again, I urge all of my colleagues, please put the partisanship aside. Recognize the value of eliminating shutdowns and vote yes on this very simple, very commonsense bill that I think quite honestly the American people want to see passed. With just a couple more minutes, I sat in the Chamber, and I listened to all the arguments about the ObamaCare subsidies--the temporary, COVID, enhanced ObamaCare subsidies. Nobody is talking about doing away with the ObamaCare subsidies. But for sure it should be pointed out that the reason health insurance is so expensive on the individual market is because of the faulty design of ObamaCare. We had high-risk pools to take care of people with preexisting conditions. It needed a couple of tweaks to cover everybody. But that wasn't good enough for Democrats because they want a single-payer system, so they threw out and outlawed high-risk pools, and in its place forced people on the individual insurance market to pick up the full cost of covering people with preexisting conditions. That caused insurance rates on the individual market to skyrocket. That is why insurance prices continue to skyrocket on the individual market in particular. What Democrats did during COVID is they basically removed any participation in the ObamaCare exchanges from many millions of people who qualified. The result of that is massive fraud. You have unscrupulous agents and brokers who are signing people up, just using their name and their birth date, for health insurance that these people don't even know they are signed up for. So they don't make claims. Something like 12 million people on the ObamaCare exchanges out of 20\1/2\ million had no claims. It is typical that maybe 10 to 15 percent of people on insurance don't make claims because they are healthy but 12 million out of 20\1/2\? That means 6 million don't even know they have a policy. So we are literally pouring tens of billions of dollars per year into insurance companies for policies for people that they don't even know they have and they don't use them, while we are paying commissions to those dishonest brokers. That is a massive level of fraud that apparently Democrats have no problem perpetuating. Republicans have a problem with that. We want to lower premiums by doing commonsense reforms and repairing the damage done by ObamaCare. Again, I think what I heard on the floor needed some response. That is my response to that. I will just end again by encouraging all of my colleagues--the American people don't like these shutdowns. They want them ended. We have a very simple bill--not partisan--that really offers no advantage to anybody, which is perfect. It just keeps the government open. It gives appropriators time to do appropriating, appropriate those Departments, and end all the chaos and all the turmoil and all the playing games with people's lives. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. We are behind schedule, so I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 25 minutes before taking the vote.

Mr. JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. I ask for the yeas and nays.