John Cornyn: “this is a new year, and we are now halfway through the 118th Congress. For those who are not familiar with the way…”

“this is a new year, and we are now halfway through the 118th Congress. For those who are not familiar with the way Congress operates, we call a Congress, really, a 2-year period; and so far, we have completed the first half of that 118th Congress. But the sad news is we have embarrassingly little to show for what Congress has done so far in the 118th Congress. Under Democratic leadership, we have drifted from one crisis to the next, doing just enough to avoid catastrophe without addressing the biggest problems that our country faces. Those failures are evidenced by the fact that the Senate is set to spend the first 4 months of this year working on the backlog of things we should have done last year. First is funding the government, keeping the lights on, paying the Border Patrol, paying our military, making sure that government services are available to all citizens. We are a quarter of the way through the current fiscal year, and Congress has not passed a single funding bill. Not one. Now we have until January 19--that is our first deadline--to advance 4 of the 12 annual spending bills; otherwise, we will find ourselves in a partial government shutdown or, what is more likely, a continuing resolution of some uncertain duration. It seems inevitable, given the timing. Then we will only have 2 weeks until the next funding bill deadline arrives on February 2, when the remaining Departments and Agencies will run out of money.…”