Patty Murray: “I rise to strongly oppose this motion that is now before the Senate. I urge all of my colleagues to vote against it as…”

“I rise to strongly oppose this motion that is now before the Senate. I urge all of my colleagues to vote against it as well. Senator Collins and I have worked very closely together to write a bipartisan transportation and housing bill that works for our families and our communities. We have been working here together on the floor to have an open debate and accept amendments from both sides of the aisle. We just accepted a number of them a few minutes ago. In addition to six Republicans who explicitly supported this bill in committee, along with all of the Democrats, a total of 73 Senators voted to start debate on this bill. But now this motion that is now before us would take all of that bipartisan work we did on this bill in committee and it would take the strong bipartisan support coming out of committee and just throw it all away and ask us to simply now adopt the House Republican budget and start all over again. There is absolutely no reason for us to go back to the drawing board, especially not under the conditions that are laid out in this motion. Back in March we had a very vigorous debate here in the Senate about our values and our priorities when it came to the Federal budget. We debated about the future of Medicare. We talked about how the wealthiest Americans should contribute their fair share.…”