Lisa Murkowski

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I call up Murkowski amendment No. 112.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we are at a point we have been hoping to get to for some time, which is debate on S. 47, the Natural Resources Management Act. This is a compilation, if you will, of various lands bills, water bills, and sportsmen's bills. This is a lands package that Senator Cantwell, Senator Manchin, and I recently introduced, but it is the result of years--multiple years, actually--of regular order process in the committees of jurisdiction--most notably, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It is the result of months of intense, bicameral back-and-forth negotiations with now-Chairman Raul Grijalva and now- Ranking Member Rob Bishop of the House Natural Resources Committee. In that back-and-forth, we said: We are going to be very specific to our jurisdiction here, and we are going to stick to a four-corners agreement that we reached late last year and had actually confirmed here on the Senate floor in late December. This package contains more than 100 public lands, natural resources, and water measures that have good, strong support in both Chambers. We are at that point where we can not only do the back-and-forth, but we can work through the back-and-forth that comes when we are able to advance a package like this to the floor. I would like to thank Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer for agreeing to add our lands package directly to the Senate calendar. This was an agreement that was made back in December. We were teed up and ready to go, but in fairness, you run out of time at the end of the year. There was an agreement that was reached here on the Senate floor between the two leaders and other colleagues to make sure that we would take up this package quickly and that we would work to address it early in this new Congress. A lot of thanks go out to our leadership, and special thanks to my former ranking member, Senator Cantwell, for working with me to get us to this point and to my new ranking member, Senator Manchin, for really stepping up and helping to manage this package just weeks into his new role as the ranking member. Before I get into my full remarks, I also want to recognize the efforts of several of the other members of the Energy Committee who have really gone the extra mile to help us get to this point. On our side of the aisle, Senator Gardner and Senator Daines have been just dogged in making sure that--as issues arose and as we tried to cobble together different proposals, they were in the thick of it and have been helpful every step of the way. On the other side of the aisle, Senator Heinrich and Senator Wyden have been equally aggressive and helpful in all they have done to help advance and build support for this package. It is probably true, if you were to look through this package, you are not going to see something that stands out with bright lights and flags that says these are sweeping changes in Federal policy. Most of the items we have included are probably considered too parochial, too local, too discrete to merit floor time on a standalone basis. That is the problem with lands packages, generally, in that they don't take up a lot of space when it comes to a Senate calendar, but I can tell you that every one of the provisions in this package matters to a community, matters to a constituency--many of them in Western States, States like mine, that have a great amount of public land, of Federal lands. These are, again, important at a host of different levels. So working with colleagues to understand their local priorities, their constituency, has really been a real pleasure as part of this process. We worked very hard within the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this last Congress to prepare the vast majority of bills in the package, and our colleagues on the House side did the same. What we were able to agree to is a package that is sponsored by 50 different Senators in this past Congress. When you count the cosponsor provisions, this package addresses the priorities of close to 90 Senators. You have just about everybody in this body, Republicans and Democrats, who have come together and said: This is an issue in my region, in my State. These are issues we need to be working on together. I think it is a real reflection of the priorities--the wide range of priorities--that Members have for their home States. I think it is also a sign, when you have more than 100 of these smaller, more discrete bills packages together--it is a sign that we are really overdue in moving these lands bills. The last time we had a significant lands package on the floor was 2014. It has been 5 years since we have had an opportunity to move, again, a significant number of Members' priorities. I think it is also a testament to the long hours we have spent and our staffs have spent reviewing and working through and really trying to build the agreements on what we hope is soon to be ready to be signed into law. It is important this bill, this package, becomes law in the near future. What we do through this legislative package is we really provide new opportunities for economic development through land conveyances and exchanges. We expand and we enhance access for sports men and women on our Federal lands for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation activities. This should be noted. We have been trying to work a sportsmen's package--a compilation of bills that relate to access on our Federal lands for hunting, fishing, and shooting sports. We have been trying to do this for three Congresses running. It is long overdue. We also feature provisions related to western water management, national park units, other Federal lands administered by the BLM and the Forest Service. One of the provisions that is probably most strongly supported in this package reauthorizes the deposit function of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This expired last September. Instead of leaving that program subject to repeated lapses and short- term extensions--we see a lot of that around here--what we have done is we have agreed to remove that expiration date. We effectively make that permanent, and we paired it--this is very important to us. We paired that permanent authorization with meaningful reforms, with meaningful reforms that will help ensure greater balance in the funds that are allocated to the program. I mentioned that many of these provisions might seem very local, very parochial. We have a provision that will facilitate the expansion of an airport in Custer County, SD. I have never been to Custer County, but when you have a constriction, a limitation on your ability to expand an airport because you need a land conveyance, it literally takes an act of Congress in order to make that happen. Another provision in the measure will enable the construction of a large-scale solar project in the State of Arizona. This is going to bring about jobs, and it is going to bring about renewable energy opportunities. We have several more provisions that will designate national monuments but done the right way. The right way is with Congress in the lead, rather than the President exercising his authorities under the Antiquities Act--so making sure you have that level of consensus that is so important when designations like this move forward. On some of the more Alaska-specific provisions, we have upheld our promise, a promise made decades ago to Alaska Natives who served during the Vietnam war. During this time of their service, they basically missed out on their opportunity to receive the land allotments that had been promised to them by the Federal Government under the land rights. What we have done is we have worked to address that inequity in a way that is fair to our veterans and fair to the process. We provide routing flexibility for the natural gas pipeline that has been proposed for some time. We are able to create new opportunities for small, small, small communities, like down in Kake in Southeast Alaska or Utkiagvik up in the North Slope. We also reached agreement to improve our volcano warning and monitoring system. Some of you might not think about why we need to be paying attention to our volcanoes. Believe me, you don't want to be in an aircraft when you are flying through volcanic ash. Knowing what is going on is important. Whether you are in Hawaii, Alaska, or another State, it is really just a matter of time before we see more eruptions. We saw it in Alaska with Mount Cleveland last year and Kilauea in Hawaii. So we are paying attention to that. These are just a few of the highlights. I am going to be talking to more of them on the floor as debate goes on, but I also want to close with kind of an explanation of where we are in the process right now. As I mentioned, when you have a package that has 100-plus bills--and we haven't done something like this in now 5 years--there is no shortage of provisions that we could include. We really worked hard. We did our best to work through everything we had on the table and included as much as we could reach agreement on. I think we all can agree there is more we can do, and we should try to do, and that our work on our lands and our resource issues is not going to end just because we passed this bill. That is why I would encourage folks to view this as a first step. It is literally a downpayment. We say we are clearing the decks of the provisions that have been outstanding for a long time right now and that are ready to go right now. I know we have several Members who would like to have amendments. We want to try to find a way to accommodate some of those, but that is going to take a level of cooperation. It always does. We may be able to take some by unanimous consent or by rollcall vote, but there are also going to be some we are just not going to be able to accept at this time and on this package. Again, I would take back to the bipartisan agreement that we had and the spirit of that agreement, that we want to stay away from things that are outside our jurisdiction or that would create problems with the House. The House has been good--a cooperative arrangement up to this point in time. I think it is fair to say we have had some very good signals that they are anxious to receive this from the Senate and thus help us facilitate its passage into law. For those who aren't able to add their specific provisions, you certainly have my commitment to work with you in this Congress, but in the meantime I think what you have in front of you is an excellent package. It is time for us to pass it. It is time to show our strong support, send it to the House of Representatives, and then to the President's desk. I am pleased to yield and recognize my friend and new colleague on the Energy Committee--not a new colleague but certainly my new ranking member--who has been a great person to work with and a real help in all of our efforts.

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

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources rules of procedure for the 116th Congress be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I request permission to speak for up to 1 minute regarding this vote.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, this next vote is one to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 47. This is the Natural Resources Management Act. This is our long-talked-about bipartisan lands package. We have a measure in front of us that is composed of over 100 smaller lands, resources, and water bills. We have included priorities from up to 50 Senators here in this body; 90 of you have cosponsored. We reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We addressed sportsmen's priorities. We have a wide range of land exchanges and conveyances and boundary modifications, water provisions. It creates new economic opportunities and improves the management of our Federal lands. We will be talking more about this in the next couple of days, but I encourage all Members to support us on this very, very important lands package.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I think it is good that we are standing here on the Senate floor and acknowledging the news the President has just announced--that the government will reopen as early as today and that those good, dedicated, and hard-working Federal employees who have either been furloughed or who have been working without pay for 35 days now will be able to get back to work and will be able to receive just compensation for their work. This is important news. This is good news. This is long-awaited news. In fairness, this never should have happened. I concur with my colleague from Maine that there is never a good reason to have a government shutdown in the first place. We have demonstrated that we can do it, but it sure isn't something that should be done. I think the men and women who have been so directly and immediately impacted are not only relieved this afternoon, but they are saying: For heaven's sake, Congress, make sure you don't put us through this again. Count me in that camp of working to make sure we don't put these men and women and their families through this again. I have been holding Skype sessions with the spouses of our active Coast Guard in Alaska. Last evening, I had an opportunity to connect with the spouses from Sitka. It is absolutely gut-wrenching to hear a young wife, who has a baby who is now less than 1 year old, and her husband, who has been out at sea for 5 months--he has just come home-- relay the conversation of the two of them crying in bed as they are discussing whether she should leave Sitka with their baby to go back and live with either his parents or her parents because they cannot afford to stay in the Coast Guard community that they are in. I am scheduled to have yet another Skype session with the spouses of our Coast Guard men and women from Cordova and Petersburg just 40 minutes from now. I think it is going to be a much better conversation with them than with the spouses from Sitka yesterday because we will be able to share the good news. It was interesting to see, as I have visited with them and have heard their very direct stories, that they are pretty selfless. They are pretty selfless in saying: As hard as this is on us and as much as we want to be paid, we want to make sure that others who serve as public servants--our Federal employees, whether they are air traffic controllers, whether they are FAA, whether they are TSA, whether they are NOAA, whether they are NIMS--will also get paid because they, too, are our friends and our neighbors, and they, too, are hurting. Again, we need to make sure we are doing right by all of those who serve our country, who serve all of us through the good work they do through the Agencies. This has been a harsh and a difficult time, and it has been particularly painful for me, coming from a State where we are feeling the direct impacts of this partial shutdown, perhaps more so than any other State out there. I am told that, per capita, there are more Federal employees in Alaska who are directly impacted by this partial shutdown than in any other State, so I hear the urgency. It is not just from our Coast Guard men and women; again, it is from so many Agencies that have a presence. I got a readout just yesterday from those in the fishing industry who are concerned that because permits can't get issued, because comments can't be published in the Federal Register, the impact to their fisheries and being able to move forward with the black cod fishery or to move forward with the pot cod--they are not going to be able to do it. So today's news allows everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. But I don't want them--whether they are fishermen or whether they are that Coast Guard wife--thinking, am I going to be able to breathe now for only 3 weeks? What happens after that? We owe it not only to our Federal workers, but we also owe it to all of America to take the anxiety out of this process. I have supported my colleague the Senator from Ohio in his legislation that would permanently end government shutdowns. As an appropriator, I am not convinced, the way it is drafted, that it is something I am entirely good with, but I want us to take this off the table. In fact, I believe it was the Presiding Officer who used the terminology that a shutdown is like the chemical warfare agent when it comes to political weapons. At the end of the day, these are people's lives we are dealing with. These are people's lives we are messing with when we say that we are going to shut down the government for this period of time while we try to advance priorities. We cannot mess with people's lives this way. We have our work cut out for us, and I believe we will rise to this occasion. We must rise to this occasion. I look forward to doing that. I thank the President for his announcement today. I thank him for giving us the 3 weeks that we requested. I thank the majority leader and the minority leader for coming together to help advance this. It is going to take all of us--it is going to take the President; it is going to take the leadership--working together. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I look forward to my continuing role in this, but know that we owe it to the country. We owe it to the country to get this right and get it right quickly. This is a good start today, and I look forward to working with my colleagues. I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleagues being down here again on a bipartisan basis to talk about where we are at this moment. We just had two messaging votes. Both of those votes failed. I voted for both of them because my message was I want to get this government open. I want to do it quickly and with the sense of urgency that responds to the men and women who have been so significantly impacted by this partial government shutdown for the past 34 days. I also want to be fair to the President's priorities that he has articulated in the proposal that he has provided to us as recently as Saturday. I think we can do this together. My message to folks back home--my message to people is don't give up hope because now is the time that we all must come together to address these issues, but you can't do it when the government is shut down. I have indicated I am supportive of a measure the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, has introduced that will allow for a short-term CR, 3 weeks, allow us then to go through--whether it is the appropriations process, the Judiciary Committee process--but allow us to have this debate on these important priorities; allow us to do the business of the Senate, to do the business of legislating, but let's also allow the business of the government to proceed by opening up the government right now. We will have an opportunity to go back and forth amongst colleagues. I will remind folks, we have very limited periods of time. I am going to yield to my colleagues on the other side. It is so important that we are coming together now to offer some glimmer of hope.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I would ask that the Senator from Maine be recognized at this time.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask that the Senator from South Carolina be recognized.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Senator from Iowa. I have a question for the Presiding Officer in terms of how much time remains on the Republican side.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Perfect. We are down to the remaining two speakers, 3 minutes each. I ask that Senator Gardner be recognized at this time.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I turn to my colleague from Iowa.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, that is exactly why we are here--to get this government open, to get people paid, and to get people back to work. Let me turn to the Senator from Louisiana.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I now ask that the Senator from Arizona be recognized.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Georgia.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, how much time remains on the Republican side?

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Maryland and all Senators--on the Republican side and the Democratic side--who came to the floor after these two votes to express this air of optimism that we can figure this out. One of the things I have heard very clearly from both sides is enough already--enough already. That is what the American people are saying about this shutdown: Enough already--figure it out. Well, we got the message. We know what the mission is, and I think what you have seen expressed here on the floor is the good will and the good faith that will be extended in these hours and days going forward, knowing that there is an urgency to get the government open and to address the legitimate priorities that the President has outlined. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Presiding Officer. I now yield to the Senator from Ohio.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I understand there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I now ask unanimous consent for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of Senator Warner, the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 25, submitted earlier today.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, it is unusual to be here on a Saturday morning in Washington, DC, but recognizing that we have been in the midst of a partial government shutdown for now 29 days, it seems to me that this is an absolutely appropriate place where we should be. We should be here working. We should be here trying to figure out how we get back to the business of governing. I think it is fair to say that there has been a great deal of frustration. I think the four Senators who are assembled in this Chamber today are part of a group with whom I have shared that frustration on a daily, if not hourly, basis. I think there have been very good-faith efforts to try to advance discussions on a bipartisan basis and a bicameral basis, trying to allow for a process that would allow us to consider the work and the legitimate request of a President who has clear priorities when it comes to border security and what we need to do and how we might need to do it, but it is very difficult to do it when we are not fully governing, when you have a partial government shutdown, when you have men and women who we are asking to do the work within their Agencies, but then they are not being paid. They are being told they will be paid when this is all over, but the uncertainty of when that ``all over'' is is very heavy on them--very heavy on them and their families. Today, I want to share with colleagues the view from one community in Alaska. Alaska is a State that relies heavily on our Coast Guard. We have about 3,000 active Coast Guard in this State--2,972 exactly, and 285 civilians. We are proud to host the largest Coast Guard Air Station in the country on Kodiak. I thought Kodiak was the largest island in the country. It is not. Hawaii beats us. The Big Island beats us. Kodiak is a large, large island off of the southeastern, southwestern, and south central part of the State of Alaska. There are about 6,000 people in Kodiak--6,013 based on the last census. Within that Coast Guard community of Kodiak, you have 1,141 Active Duty, 102 civilian employees, and 1 Coast Guard reservist. This is a community. When they say that we are a Coast Guard town, Kodiak is truly a Coast Guard town. It is about one-third of the economy that is based off of the Coast Guard there. This is an island that--I don't know. I probably should have checked air prices before I came to the floor, but it seems to me the last time I flew down there, going out of Anchorage to Kodiak, you are probably spending $400 to $500 for an airplane ticket. So you are geographically removed. You are removed certainly from a financial perspective in terms of your ability to move back and forth. Jobs are challenging in a community like this. December, January are usually the highest months of unemployment, but in December, so just last month, we were at 8.8 percent in Kodiak. You compare that to last January of 2018, it was 8.4 percent. So there is a lot of unemployment there. There are not a lot of jobs and job opportunities in a community like this. So you have your Coast Guard, and the other economic base for the community, really, is our fisheries and our local and small businesses. So within the fisheries, you have your Federal Government Agencies that are there to provide for the opportunities. Right now, we are going into the ``A'' season for pollock, I believe, coming up in just a few days, but this requires your Agencies to be up and functioning. So it is NOAA. It is NMFS. It is Fish and Wildlife. You need to have these folks in their offices answering the phone, responding to texts. We also, on Kodiak Island, have significant refuge land, parkland, and, again, Fish and Wildlife managers on the refuge there. So we have an island community cut off from the rest of the State-- probably 4,300, 4,400 miles from where we are sitting here today--and the reliance on the Federal interest is probably pretty disproportionate relative to other communities. Much of the Indigenous population there relies on the Kodiak Area Native Association Healthcare. So the Indian Health Service is having challenges because the Department of Interior is shut down. So the impact in so many different ways on this community of 6,000 people is extraordinarily substantial. I made contact with the spouses of the Coast Guard's men and women there and asked if I could do a Skype, do a FaceTime with them while they were having coffee because I wanted to understand for myself, what does it mean when you are the Coast Guard spouse and your husband or your wife is out either flying as a C-130 pilot down in the Aleutians, whether it is a helo pilot who is looking to do a medevac out of King Cove, whether it is the wife of one of the spouses who is out on the Alex Haley, whether it is the spouse who is at dry dock on the SPAR in Seward, the aviation instructor--these are all men and women who are going out, and they are doing really important things for us in Alaska. This is a time of year when the fishing industry is going strong. It is crab season, but it is also not cruise weather for those who are out on the waters, and we rely on the extraordinary efforts of our Coast Guard's men and women to provide for that search and rescue, if need be, and fisheries enforcement--so the role the Coast Guard plays in not only supporting the local economy but making sure that second leg of our economy, the fisheries, are safe, regulated, and protected. Let me show you just the base there in Kodiak. It is nothing grandiose and beautiful and extraordinary. It is actually an extraordinarily beautiful location to be stationed there in Kodiak. This is the community. This is where they live and work and raise their families. There are others who are sitting up on the hillside in housing, but it is a pretty tight-knit community. To be able to visit with this group of spouses yesterday was really quite compelling, and so I wanted to just take a few minutes and share some of the comments from these, primarily women--and men--about what is happening right now. One individual, Sarah, mentioned that her husband is out on the SPAR, which is a cutter. Well, they are in dry dock in Seward, another Coast Guard facility, but because they are not being paid, they are sitting in a community where they really have no resources to do anything. They have to stay on the ship. It is not like they can go off and go out and about. You are really kind of stuck there. She happens to work for the Chamber of Commerce in Kodiak and so was able to share some of the stories about the impact on the local businesses, and she was saying that you go on Facebook and there will be postings of empty restaurants, empty establishments, saying: Please come. We are looking for customers. There is a discount for coming in and having a cup of coffee. King's Diner's business is down 50 percent. They are offering a 10-percent discount to those without paychecks. We got a call from a gentleman who has a welding business there in Kodiak, and he says he is out $300,000 in payments from Coast Guard projects that have already been completed. He said these contracts equal 10 to 15 percent of his gross annual income. So what is he doing? He is not a Federal employee, but it is impacting his business in a significant--significant--way, and he is saying: I am going to have to go out and get loans. So the impact on the community writ large is clearly significant. Some of the other comments we heard was about the effort to provide for food--so the effort to provide for local food distribution through a food pantry and the effort to collect donations from around the State to be able to send down to Kodiak. These are things where you think, oh, the generosity of Alaskans to come together, but in talking to these spouses, they reminded me: We are the guardians of our homeland. We are proud people. We are proud families, and to think that in order to be able to serve and to keep the family fed, I have to go to a food pantry? This is really, really very, very hard. Kodiak, as you saw from the map there, is isolated. Isolation delivers a lot of different things, and one thing it clearly delivers is that it is expensive to live there. It is expensive to live there. We were told that right now the price of gas is about $4 a gallon. There was a report that came out of NBC this week that mentioned that one individual said his weekly budget for food was three times more than his friend who happens to live in Ohio. So it is keeping your house warm, filling up your vehicle, buying groceries at the store. Childcare is something we talked about extensively because the hours at the childcare center have been cut back. There is no alternative, really, out in the community for childcare for these Coast Guard men and women. There is, I think she said, not even two facilities where they were taking children under the age of 6 months. So infants we are seeing on base--and apparently there has been a good slug of new babies who have been born. We are growing some new Coast Guard recruits here, but when you don't have the ability to provide for childcare, and you need to be working, where do you go? What do you do? The price of childcare, in talking to one of the spouses there, is $1,600 a month. So think about that. You have a child, $1,600 a month for one child, and you are paying $4 a gallon for gas. You are some 4,000 to 5,000 miles away from any family support. So it is not like you can just say to grandma or to your aunt: Hey, can you come and help me with the kids? You don't have that kind of support like we do in other areas. So when we talk about the impacts of a shutdown, a partial shutdown, and not getting pay, at least for this period, for an indefinite period, it is more than just the financial impact. We talked a lot about that, but even more than the financial impact was the stress that comes to the families because of the financial impact. The reality you face as a Coast Guard family is you move a lot. So you have that stress. You are away from your family support system, like I mentioned. You have a lot of families with new kids. Now you don't know when you are going to see that pay. You are in a place where your costs are really high. You don't have many options for short-term or short-time work. I asked: Well, what are you doing? Are any of you getting additional work to help bridge this gap? They all just kind of laughed. It wasn't a happy laugh. It was a cynical laugh, like, where do you expect us to go to work when the establishments we might go to, whether it is a restaurant or some small business, is posting things on Facebook, saying that we need customers? Do you think they are going to hire people? That is not happening in a community like this. Further, they don't know how long they may be there. If it requires some level of training and you can't commit and you say: Well, if the government gets back to business, maybe, just maybe, I don't need to be here--well, you are not going to be investing in that individual. So you have that stressor. The stress I think our families see--and I have such respect for the men and women who are staying at home while our Active are serving, whether they are helping pluck fishermen out of the sea in the north or whether they are interdicting drugs in the southern waters--spouses have learned how to hold things together and be tough, just figure it out. There is not a lot of complaining that is going on. When you have a mom tell me, as she did yesterday, that the spending money the kids got for Christmas, they said: We are not going to spend it, Mom, because we think we might need it for food or when the 13- year-old girl says: I am not going to cash the birthday check I got from Grandma because we might need it--and I was reminded by several of these spouses that this is an adult problem. This is not a kids' problem. Our children should not have to be worrying about this, but they can't help but pick it up. They know what is going on, and they are worried. To have a mom tell me--one of the moms said: We are just doing everything to pull it together, so I am having to say things like: I am sorry. We are not going to be ordering the yearbook. This is not paying for fancy sports programs even, it is: I don't know that we are going to be able to order the yearbook, and it is canceling tutors. It is making a difference in all of that. I think, again, about the weight our spouses are bearing and how they are handling it. One woman said: Hey, we are lucky. My husband is an avid hunter and a fisherman. We have a freezer full of meat. We have moose and salmon, but not everybody is so lucky here. One woman said: I have made a complete inventory of everything I have in the pantry just so I know and I can be planning ahead. This is hard on everyone. The impact to enlistment is something we need to be thinking about, and that was raised repeatedly. One woman said: My husband and I both joined the Coast Guard because we liked the stability that this offered us--maybe not stability insofar as moving around from location to location but stability in the fact that you are a Federal employee. You are going to have that support from your government. She said: You know, now, I don't think of this as a very stable opportunity. Another thing I learned yesterday is that it was apparently just a week or so ago--maybe it was a couple of weeks ago--that the Coast Guard boot camp program where the new recruits come in was completed. Where did those young Coasties go who have the new shaved, good-looking tops? They went back home. They sent them back home because they don't have any place for them to go. What do you think that does to recruitment? Another issue that came up that was fascinating to me that we don't think about in this land of unintended consequences when there is a partial government shutdown that goes on for 29 days--these Coast Guard men and women--Federal employees--when they do official travel, it goes on an official card. That card is issued in your name. So if you are the Coast Guard member who needs to go out and inspect a boat in Dutch Harbor and you are based out of Anchorage, a flight to Dutch Harbor roundtrip, last I checked, is close to $1,000. That goes on the card. The way the process works is that you are reimbursed on your government card, but during this shutdown, none of these expenses are being reimbursed. That card is tied to your name, tied to your credit rating. That was where the conversation really got lively. The spouses were talking about, do you know what happens to us when the credit rating goes south? Do you know what that means in terms of our ability to have a security clearance? Do you know what that means in terms of our ability to transfer? It would be one thing if you could say: Oh well, I will just pay for it out of my savings. That was what another spouse said to me. She said: You know, I really take offense because I feel there are a lot of people out there who place judgment on us because they say ``You should have saved for something like this.'' The response is ``I am in the Coast Guard. I move around.'' Many of these families have invested in a home, and when they are transferred, they keep that home. They try to make some money off of it. Many of them rent to another Coast Guard family. Now that family is not getting paid either. The stress compiled upon stress is just awful. We were reminded that this is not a natural disaster; this is a manmade disaster. Another woman said: The military are proud. They should be honored and respected. One really summed it up from the Coast Guard's view, in my opinion. She said: We are not going to sink. We are not going to sink. We will still float, but that doesn't mean that we are not upset and we are not angry. They shared these stories with a great deal of respect but were truly begging for us to resolve these issues. They all understand that there is this effort out there to pay the Active-Duty and military Coast Guard, but there are Coast Guard families on this base, and there are Active Coast Guard working side by side with the civilians, helping them keep those boats in tip-top shape, keeping the helicopters in the air, keeping the C-130s in the air. They are all working together. So how is it right that side by side, oftentimes sharing the same job, that one would get pay and the others would not? So they have said: Don't forget the civilian side as well. I want to end my comments because I know the Senator from Virginia would like to speak as well. I have a soft spot in my heart for Kodiak. I think that is because I myself am a Coast Guard kid. When I go to Kodiak, the gathering place in Kodiak is a great little brewery called Kodiak Brewery. It is a gathering place for not only the politicians who come to town but all the Coasties. The community comes together. This is where birthdays take place. This is where you come and have a beer after work. This is an online post from yesterday. It says: This is a sad empty brewery. We're lonely and you're thirsty, and we want to support our community in a time of need. We're doing a ``shutdown'' sale: $1 off servings until sanity prevails! Hopefully we all get through this! There is not a soul in the place. It is just a reminder of the extraordinary ripple effect. When you say it is just the Federal employees, first of all, I think that is offensive because our Federal employees do extraordinary service for our country. It affects all of us, and it is up to all of us to get this resolved. I have been so disappointed this week that we have not been able to advance a more positive solution, to work on an immediate outcome to help with this, but my frustration is nothing compared to these families'--these men and women who are serving, those who are staying at home--the worry, angst, and stress we see. We owe it to the people of Kodiak, we owe it to the people of this country to get this place working again. With that, I yield the floor.