Tommy Tuberville addresses potential government shutdown; “What a mess we are in”
On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) spoke with the Alabama press about the growing possibility that Congress will not get a budget passed in time to prevent a government shutdown at midnight on Saturday. “What a mess we are in,” Sen. Tuberville said. “I don’t like shutdowns. No Republican wants to shut the government down. Senator [Susan] Collins and Senator Pattie Murray of the Appropriations Committee did their job. They want regular order, and so do I. Regular order means that you have 12 bills, and you do each one of them individually. We haven’t done that in a long time. It is time for the Senate to have an amendment process on each one of these bills. It gives everybody an opportunity to express their thoughts, but (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer, he doesn’t want to do that. He is doing everything he can to prevent the Senate from acting on any of these bills. That will eventually lead to a shutdown if we’re not careful. You have got to remember Chuck Schumer controls the floor, so this will be a Schumer shutdown. If a continuing resolution gives us time to consider all 12 of these bills, then I am for it, but we will have to see what the House does also.” Tuberville responded to a reporter’s question about criticism of the Senate by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-California). “It is hard to compare both the House and the Senate, to be honest with you,” Tuberville said. “They have got different personalities over there – as me. I didn’t vote for a supplemental for Ukraine. We are spending somewhere around $260 million a day, somewhere in that range in Ukraine. We are spending it for their farmers, helping them plant their crops. We are spending it for their borders when we have farmers here who need money. We have a border that needs to be shut down. There is a lot of things going on behind the scenes. I am real interested in how McCarthy handles this. He has got not just a division between Democrats and Republicans but also division in his own caucus, so we will see what happens. We have done our 12 bills over here. We have got them out of committee. If we would do them one at a time like Chuck Schumer should, I think we could really encourage the House to do the right thing, but right now, we are in the middle of the road with no way to get this thing going.” Sen. Tuberville and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) both have cosponsored legislation to end the repeated government shutdowns and force Congress to pass the budget. Tuberville was asked about why that legislation did not pass. “First of all, there is a lot of people up here that when they do a budget, they just want to jam this thing full of pork, and that has gotten us $33 trillion in debt,” Tuberville responded. “We need to spend what we need to spend. Take care of all of our bills. Get that done. Take care of the American taxpayers, but we need an opportunity to tell everybody: OK, here is the deal: we run out of money at the end of September every year. We have got all year long – eight, nine months to put these bills together and get it passed. I think we need a bill that says we run up to a time restraint, which, at the end of this week, we are basically done. We do not go home. We stay here seven days a week until we get a budget passed for the American citizens and the taxpayers of this country. There is no reason that we need to keep kicking this can down the road and give people up here an opportunity to jam-pack this thing full of pork with things that we shouldn’t spend money on, but take care of the people of this country. That is what we are here for.” Alabama Today asked why the Alabama Legislature can pass two budgets months ahead of the same deadline and roll a surplus over into the next fiscal year while Congress having a budget crisis is almost expected. “Yea, you know there has been a lot of shutdowns,” Tuberville admitted. “A lot of people say this is a terrible thing to do to shut the government down, but sooner or later, we need to wake up and say we are $33 trillion in debt. But we have got to be more competent on understanding what we can and we can’t spend money on. Every year, we just bump it up. If you look at what happened after 2019 in COVID, there is trillions of dollars that we spent then that we don’t need to spend now, but the Democrats want to leave it in the budget. It makes no sense. We should go back to the 2019 budget and look and see where we are at, but you have so many people up here from different states that say, hey, let’s push it all the way to the end where we have to do a budget so we can do whatever we need to do. That’s the reason we want to get to regular order. Really, the Senate Appropriations Committee did their job. Susan Collins really pushed the Republicans to get this done the right way. They are done. We are done with the Senate version. We just can’t get it to the floor where Chuck Schumer will vote on them one at a time. He wants to control this process because he wants to get pork in there for New York. He wants to spend more of the taxpayer money than we should, so it is unfortunate that we have got people who try to do things to benefit themselves rather than the country. That is what we are seeing now. We are $33 trillion headed to 34.” Tuberville was elected to the Senate in 2020 – defeating
