David Perdue: “here we are again at the end of a quarter and the end of a calendar year--not the end of our fiscal year. But here we…”

“here we are again at the end of a quarter and the end of a calendar year--not the end of our fiscal year. But here we are again with late-night sessions and people running around in a very unprofessional manner, in my opinion, talking about how to get our government funded. Let me put this in perspective. This is the end of December. October, November, and December are the first fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2019. We are already one-fourth through this fiscal year, and we are still talking about the completion of authorizations and appropriations to fund the government for this year--not next year, this year. In 2018, the Senate and, indeed Congress did something we haven't done in a long time. For the first time in 22 years, we did get 75 percent of the Federal Government discretionary spending funded. By the way, that is only about 25 percent of what we spend as a federal government, but that is a conversation for another day. On July 31 this year and earlier than that--we started the appropriations process earlier this year and had an opportunity in the Appropriations Committee. The subcommittees and the committee did a fabulous job this year. Democrats and Republicans got together behind closed doors, no cameras, and really argued the points and came to compromises on most of the issues, so that by July 31, we had funded 12.25 percent of this year's Federal budget for discretionary spending.…”