On the recordJanuary 20, 2018
as we all know, right now the government is in a shutdown. It is unfortunate. I certainly don't think it should have happened last night. But I think there is some good news. Watching some of the speeches today, we see a lot of ideas coming to the floor, a lot of bipartisan ideas on a lot of key issues that hopefully our country is going to make some progress on. Let me give a few examples for those who have been watching and those who haven't. The Presiding Officer, my friend from Arizona--I am not trying to embarrass him or anything. I watched his speech a couple hours ago on the way forward and what we can do to break through this unfortunate circumstance we have right now, and he certainly has a lot of good ideas. I commend him and appreciate his leadership on those issues. My good friend, the Senator from Maine, Senator King, was down here talking about continuing resolutions and these huge omnibuses, and I would agree with him completely. As a matter of fact, Senator King and I had a long discussion on the floor last night about how the system is broken. There are a number of Senators--I think some of the newer Senators--who see it that way. This is no way to move forward, to fund our government with these continuing resolutions and huge omnibuses at the end of the year. So a number of us--and I think it is bipartisan-- want to look at reforms to fix this. Senator Perdue of Georgia has been leading efforts.…
