***WATCH: SENATOR MURRAY’S REMARKS HERE***
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at Senate Democrats’ weekly leadership press conference to discuss the path forward on government funding and to discuss her efforts to seek unanimous consent to pass her resolution affirming the right to lifesaving emergency care for women.
Senator Murray’s full remarks as delivered are below:
“After some completely unnecessary drama from House Republicans, we do now have a bipartisan compromise to avoid a shutdown, and we are working to get it passed in a timely way.
“And, I should mention, the path forward, the way we got a bill we can actually pass, was exactly the way Leader Schumer and I have been calling for.
“No poison pills, no bending over backward for the far right—a bipartisan compromise on a fairly straightforward CR, something all sides can agree on, so that we can avoid a government shutdown, and negotiate full year funding bills in a bipartisan way in order to tackle the many urgent issues left unaddressed.
“We should all be very glad we won’t have a painful shutdown, but let’s also remember the pattern we saw play out here yet again, so that perhaps we can finally avoid another pointless repeat.
“The simple trick here is just this: If you want to avoid a shut down—don’t focus on appeasing the people calling for a shutdown!
“It’s really that easy. We have shown here in the Senate there is BIPARTISAN interest in writing serious funding bills. Vice Chair Collins and I passed 11 bills out of our Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.
“Compromise takes time and it takes hard work, but I think it has been proven this Congress, many times over, that the path of bipartisanship is far easier—and far and away more productive—than the dead end MAGA extremism House Republicans keep making their first priority.
“So I hope once we get this CR passed, we can all skip that drama, get to the negotiating table, and cut to the chase to write serious, bipartisan full year funding bills that can get signed into law.
“On another important issue: last week I introduced a simple resolution with Senate Democrats which reaffirms a very basic principle that when a woman needs emergency care—including abortion care to save her life—no politician should stop her from getting that.
“But the reality is in America, Donald Trump’s abortion bans are killing women. The reality is that a majority of Senate Republicans actually signed onto a brief to the Supreme Court saying essentially, ‘No, we DON’T think doctors should be required to provide abortion care when a patient’s life is at stake.’
“26 of them to be exact. Their brief rejected the idea—the basic medical reality—of abortion as stabilizing care.
“You should ask every one of them, what concrete policy changes in federal law they would support to save the life of a mother whose doctors can’t treat her because of a Republican abortion ban.
“We should all refuse to accept a status quo in America where pregnant women are dying not because doctors can’t save them, but because doctors don’t know if Republican politicians will let them.
“Later this afternoon, on the Senate floor, I will put forward our resolution on emergency care and we’ll see if Senate Republicans will join Democrats in saying, ‘Yes, women have a right to get abortion care when their life is at stake.’
“This should be the absolute bare minimum, but no matter what, Senate Democrats will hold Republicans accountable for the cruelty of these abortion bans and fight to fully restore the rights Donald Trump ripped away.”
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