Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. COATS. Mr. President, as my colleagues know, I come to the floor each week to deliver a ``waste of the week'' speech. My concern over excessive government spending and spending on nonessential programs in wasteful ways needs to be shared with the American people, and my colleagues need to know that a lot of hard-earned tax dollars are wasted through waste, fraud, and abuse.

Some of these have been very serious, resulting in literally billions of dollars of waste. Some have been smaller expenditures but ludicrous expenditures, the kinds of expenditures where people say why in the world does the Federal Government have to do that? Or why--where's the common sense here? The American people work very hard to earn the dollars they send to Washington.

A lot of them are scraping by to pay the mortgage that's due at the end of the month, to pay the rent that is due at the end of the week, to get the groceries in the house or the savings to put in the savings account for an education; any number of ways the American people today, as the statistics are showing us today, have less spending money. The average American worker today has up to $3,000-plus less per year in earnings than they did at the beginning of this administration.

I don't know how the President keeps going on the airwaves saying things are just great and look how much better we are doing when people are earning on an average $3,000 less than they earned 8 years after the President first took office.

However, walking over to the floor to deliver this--and this one is one of those speeches--you can't make this up. It's so ridiculous. Can you believe that really an agency that is held in high regard, the National Science Foundation, actually is issuing grants of taxpayer money for these kinds of projects? Normally it would bring a lot of laughs and a lot of outrage over this waste of money.

I couldn't help but think of what is plaguing most Americans this week, after the tragic shooting in Orlando, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, and all of the other breaking news and tragedies we have been hit with as Americans. I am having trouble with it, as all Americans are having trouble with it. We are trying to fight toward a solution. I am not sure what that solution is. It is not a simplistic solution. Clearly, in a democracy as free and as open as America, whether it is ISIL- inspired or terrorist-inspired or whether it is just someone mentally ill, someone whose hatred drives their life, or someone sitting in their basement at 2 a.m. Being inspired by ISIS web sites or just simply some of the stuff that comes across the internet, we are facing a tough situation here. But this week seems to be importantly difficult, and we are searching for ways--and the last thing we need to do is to politicize this issue.

We have to address issues to make sure we have done everything we possibly can to prevent the wrong people, to prevent terrorists, from purchasing and owning weapons of mass destruction or that can cause the kind of issues we are dealing with in Orlando and other places. There is not a Member of this body, Republican or Democratic, who has not been impacted by what is happening not just in Orlando but by a series of events similar to this. There is not a Senator here--Republican or Democratic, liberal or conservative--who doesn't want to find a way to address the situation in a way that would reduce the incidence or hopefully eliminate the incidence of these issues.

We are working through that now, and working through that is difficult because we do want Americans to have the ability and the rights that are promised to them under the Constitution and the Second Amendment, which is to protect themselves. We want to make sure their constitutional rights aren't breached for their own self-defense.

What do we say to a woman living alone in a neighborhood where there is a lot of drug dealing going on and a lot of random shootings and a lot of home invasions that she can't protect herself? We don't want to do that. We don't want to say to someone who owns a business and wants to ensure that the business is not broken into and they lose everything they have invested and who hires a security guard or someone to provide protection, that we are going to take away that right. By the same token, we don't want these kinds of weapons used in these mass killings to be in the hands of the wrong people. So we are trying to find that balance.

The best way to do that is for all of us to work together to find that balance, instead of blaming one side or the other side for not doing enough or for doing too little. This is not an easy issue to resolve.

It just doesn't seem appropriate for me to come to the floor and talk about the waste of the week because that involves something people normally would laugh at. This is not a week to laugh. This is a week to mourn. This is a week to work together to find a sensible way of trying to prevent these kinds of things from happening, and we are working through that. So next week I will come down and do two waste-of-the- week issues because this waste keeps going on, and it is an issue we all need to be aware of because the people we represent are forced, through the tax system, to send money to Washington, and they want it reasonably spent and reasonably used for necessary purposes.

With that, let's keep our focus and our eyes on the task at hand in respect and in mourning for what has happened in Orlando and what has been happening across our country far, far, far too often. Let's work together to find a reasonable solution that can take us in the right direction toward preventing these things from happening. Not one of us--not one of us--wants to have a process which puts these weapons in the hands of terrorists or those who mean to do us harm.

Mr. President, it appears there is an absence of Members here, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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