After returning to Washington from the August recess, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) took to the Senate floor to wish his Republican colleagues in the House "success" as they work to "rein in reckless spending" in the final days before the September 30 deadline to fund the federal government — while the Senate's Democrat leadership continues ramping up government shutdown gamesmanship.
As Cornyn reminded, "several months ago, Speaker McCarthy and President Biden reached a deal that raised the debt ceiling in exchange for deeply-needed spending cuts." As such, House Republicans have been proposing cuts to the spending spree undertaken on former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) watch to deliver for President Biden's radical inflation-triggering agenda.
Cornyn noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) didn't take much of an August recess from attacking his GOP counterparts in the lower chamber. "Just last week, he referred to the Republicans in the House — their spending cut discussions — as political games," Cornyn noted. "Well, if this isn't a game, I don't know what is: planning for the failure of the appropriations process and trying to jam through a spending bill with 16 legislative days left," he said of Schumer's apparent scheme while gesturing to a floor chart showing "Schumer's September To-Do List" that includes advancing 12 appropriations bills, passing a farm bill, reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, and voting on a final defense authorization bill.
This countdown clock, Cornyn said, was "designed to fail" by Schumer and is set to usher in "a bumpy few weeks" for lawmakers. "This is all according to Majority Leader Schumer's plan. Why? Well it maximizes his leverage on the final product to the detriment of every other senator," Cornyn explained.
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"I suggest the Majority Leader look in the mirror for the identity of the person who has brought us to this point, the one who has been playing the games," Cornyn quipped of Schumer and Senate Democrats. "If the majority leader had used the authority that he has to schedule a vote on 12 appropriations bills that we could take up and pass out of the Senate, the House could do the same, we could reconcile the differences and avoid all of this drama."
Schumer, Cornyn noted, is "already trying to blame Republicans in the House for a potential shutdown, and already the press has started the drum beat driving that narrative."
"Thank goodness our Democratic colleagues no longer control all levers of government," Cornyn expressed, as members of Biden's party now "only have some say, not total say, over legislation" and "no longer have the power to jam spending bills through both chambers of the Congress."
Still, Cornyn said Schumer "has to be willing to engage in a negotiation in good faith" and "accept his responsibility" in the process of funding the government, "not threaten another government shutdown" or engage in a "preemptive blame game."
"The American people elected a Republican majority in the House, which has pledged to rein in reckless federal spending," said Cornyn.
Indeed, one point of Speaker McCarthy's 2022 midterm "Commitment to America" includes a pledge to "Curb wasteful government spending that is raising the price of groceries, gas, cars, and housing, and growing our national debt."
"I hope that Speaker McCarthy and other Republican colleagues in the House will succeed in their efforts," Cornyn said of their work ahead to put forward and pass spending bills that deliver on the House GOP's commitment. Bills which, according to Schumer's blustering so far, face an uphill battle for passage in the upper chamber while the clock ticks ever closer to a shutdown.
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