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Floor Speech
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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, since 1790, the Coast Guard, our Nation's oldest continuous seagoing service, has been the world's premier force in maritime safety, security, and stewardship. Guided by its core values of honor, respect, and devotion to duty, the Coast Guard is a symbol of resolve to our adversaries and of hope to those in peril at sea.
Our Nation relies on more than 50,000 members of the Coast Guard each day to keep our country safe, to project national power, and to champion the rule of law and governance on our waters and beyond.
In Texas, Coast Guard members are on patrol 365 days a year. From Station South Padre Island to Sector Houston-Galveston and beyond, Coast Guard members keep our citizens and our country safe. Just this week, a Coast Guard Air Station Houston helicopter crew completed a daring rescue, saving the life of a mariner 10 miles off the coast of Galveston, TX. When our Nation calls, the Coast Guard is always ready to answer.
As the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has responsibility for policies affecting the Coast Guard and Coast Guard servicemembers and their families, I believe that in the event of a shutdown, the Coast Guard must be paid without question and without delay.
That is why, last week, I introduced the bipartisan Pay Our Coast Guard Act, which would treat coastguardsmen the same as all other servicemembers for purposes of pay and benefits if there is a lapse in appropriations. If a continuing resolution is not passed, the prudent thing to do--the right thing to do--is to agree now that we will pay the men and women of the Coast Guard. That is what this bill does.
If there is a shutdown, military personnel from all branches of the Armed Forces will keep working. In past shutdowns, Congress acted swiftly to pay our troops. But since the Coast Guard is housed in the Department of Homeland Security and not the Department of Defense, coastguardsmen were left out; they weren't compensated.
Our bipartisan legislation, which I introduced along with Senators Cantwell, Sullivan, and Baldwin, avoids that scenario by saying if there is a shutdown, all of our Armed Forces, including the Coast Guard, must be paid. This bipartisan bill makes clear, here and now, that we will not take the Coast Guard hostage to a shutdown fight.
While the American people can always count on the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard has not been always able to count on this Chamber to do the right thing. During the last government shutdown, which was precipitated by the Democrat majority in this Chamber in 2019, members of a single branch of our Armed Forces, the Coast Guard, worked without paychecks for 34 days, oftentimes alongside servicemembers of other branches who were still being paid. The Defense Department was funded, but the Homeland Security Department was not. So I joined with several Senate colleagues to advance a bill that would have treated members of the Coast Guard the same as those of the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps.
That bill was brought up before the entire U.S. Senate, but it was blocked by the Democratic leader.
The only thing necessary to ensure timely payment of every Coast Guard servicemember was for my colleagues across the aisle to withdraw their objection. Regrettably, that did not happen. While coastguardsmen put their lives in danger protecting our maritime borders, some of their families were forced to resort to food pantries and short-term loans to pay for housing.
We have the opportunity today to get that right. Last month we marked the 233rd birthday of the Coast Guard. To commemorate the occasion, this Chamber unanimously passed a resolution that I introduced honoring the Coast Guard's excellence in maritime border security. The resolution also expressed the Senate's gratitude for the Coast Guard's work in protecting our people and our borders from illegal immigration and keeping deadly drugs like cocaine and fentanyl from entering the United States.
Again, that resolution passed the Senate unanimously in July. I hope to see similar unanimous support for the Coast Guard from my colleagues today. Let's not wait until we know if there is going to be a shutdown or not to make sure that coastguardsmen are treated fairly and equitably. Let's act now to show the coastguardsmen who keep us safe that we have got their backs as well.
Let's do the right thing by making clear that if we pay our Department of Defense groups, we are also going to pay our troops from the Coast Guard.
At this point, I want to yield to my colleague, the Senator from Alaska, Senator Sullivan.
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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I thank Senator Sullivan for his excellent and heartfelt remarks.
2791, the Pay Our Coast Guard Act, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I want every member of the Coast Guard to understand what just happened. We are 9 days away from the expiration of current government funding. No one here knows whether a shutdown will happen or not, but it is not complicated, with partisan divisions in Washington, that there is a very real risk of a shutdown.
I believe President Biden and the majority leader of the Senate-- Senator Schumer--want a shutdown. Whether they want it or not, it is clear there is a very real risk. And if, 9 days from now, what happened in 2019 happens again, which is that our soldiers are paid, our sailors are paid, our airmen are paid, our marines are paid, but our coastguardsmen are left in the lurch--that is what happened in 2019, when Senator Sullivan and I came to the floor, tried to take care of our coastguardsmen then, and the Democrats objected. And understand that this legislation, as Senator Sullivan pointed out, is bipartisan legislation. It is authored by the chairman and ranking member of the Commerce Committee and the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Coast Guard. And yet Democrat leadership wants to engage in a partisan battle with the House of Representatives, and they want to hold the men and women of the Coast Guard hostage.
I am going to urge the Democrat leadership to reconsider. I don't know whether we will have a shutdown or not, but I know it is unfair to treat coastguardsmen like the red-haired stepchild of our Armed Forces.
The men and women of the Coast Guard, when disaster strikes--and, look, I saw firsthand, when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, the incredible heroism of coastguardsmen who risked their lives to save people in harm's way.
What just happened on the Senate floor is not right, and I would encourage Democrat leadership to listen to their own Democrat chairman of the Commerce Committee, their own ranking member of the Coast Guard committee and say: We are going to end this unfair discrimination against the Coast Guard. We are going to treat our Armed Forces with equity, and regardless of dysfunction in Washington, we are going to pay our Coast Guard.
It is the right thing to do, and I would urge members from both sides of the aisle to come together and say: Just as we know the Coast Guard has our back if we are in trouble, that we have got their back as well. It is the right thing to do.
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