WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, released the following statement about the latest proposed continuing resolution (CR), which would be the fourth temporary stopgap funding measure for Fiscal Year 2018.
“This is no way to govern. Republicans have control of the White House and the entire Congress, yet they continue to drive the country from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, missing deadline after deadline to fund the federal government. The leadership vacuum in the White House has spilled over to congressional Republicans, forcing a shutdown of essential services that the American people rely on every day in every state across the nation.
“Enough is enough. We do not need what President Trump called ‘a good shutdown.’ There is no such thing as a ‘good shutdown.’ It is unacceptable that Republicans have taken us to a point of locking the American people out of their government and federal workers from doing the people’s business. I want Congress to finish its work. Senators on both sides of the aisle have come together in good faith to find reasonable solutions to the outstanding issues. We believe an agreement is within reach and that we can come together, setting aside party labels to end the sequester that threatens our national security and non-defense priorities. We can shore up disaster relief funds, secure our border and extend urgently needed children’s health insurance and community health centers. And we can do this while helping the hundreds of thousands of children who have been threatened with the precipitous end of the Dreamers program.
“Compromise is within reach if we have the political will to put the good of our nation first. Our country needs predictability and stability that repeated continuing resolutions cannot provide. The federal budget is rightly complex but it should not be about partisanship. How we proceed needs to be about setting bipartisan priorities for our country and ensuring that our domestic and national security budgets will fund essential programs while protecting hard-working families, our military and the most vulnerable in our communities. We need to get this done now.”
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