On the recordJanuary 15, 2019
Madam President, I am not going to talk about the substance of what we are here for. To my dear friend, Johnny, whom I love and who serves the best barbecue I ever have every year, among his many other attributes, I will just make this point. He says it is not a Democratic shutdown or a Republican shutdown. It is a Trump shutdown. We all know it. Donald Trump has called for the shutting down of the government 25 times. He said at our meeting he is proud to shut down the government. We Democrats do not want to shut down the government. In fact, our slogan--our watchword--is ``open up the government.'' We have a difference on border security. We are for it. You are for it. You are for something different than we are, but we are not shutting down the government, and everyone knows it. The public opinion polls know it. There are 40 percent of all Republicans, let alone Democrats and Independents, who are for the wall, and most of those people say the government shouldn't be shut down over the wall. I know how aggravated my colleague is. I would suggest to him that the best solution is to vote for what he voted for--or the whole Republican Party did by unanimous consent--which is to open up the government. Then we can discuss our border security issues. I yield to my dear friend.
