On the recordJune 6, 2017
we have 50 workdays in the Senate before the end of this fiscal year--50 days. That does not include the 5 weeks we will be gone during the August State work weeks. I rise tonight to talk about what happens September 30. September is the end of the fiscal year. That means we have to have the Federal Government funded for fiscal year 2018, which starts October 1 of this year. Like most years--as a matter of fact, like every year since 1980--the Federal Government will probably not be funded by the end of this fiscal year in the manner it was supposed to be, according to the law that was done in 1974, the Budget Act of 1974. In the last 43 years, the Federal Government has only been funded four times, according to that bill. We have used 178 continuing resolutions, and therefore ongoing omnibuses and so forth, where six people get in a room, basically decide how we are going to spend $1 trillion. This is the only enterprise I can find anywhere in the world that funds its operations this way. The problem is, we have a system that is absolutely totally broken. It is a fraud that is being perpetrated on the American people. We have been asked, between now and September 30-- this is the way the budget process works. By the way, we should have started this back in January, but we couldn't do it because we were working on the fiscal year 2017 budget to do reconciliation so we could work on healthcare. Now we are going to, when that gets done, do a budget for 2018.…
