A week ago, the government shuttered its doors. For roughly 68 hours, the men and women of our armed services did not know when they would receive their next paycheck.

When the government reopened, it was because Congress passed and the President signed a Continuing Resolution (CR) that allowed the government to be funded – but only for three weeks. And the CR passed this Monday was needed because the four-week CR before that ran out. And that CR was preceded by another CR that passed right before Christmas.

This of governing-by-cliff has unfortunately become the status quo in Washington. The fact is, Congress has not completed all twelve regular appropriations bills by the October 1st deadline since 1997, and between 1985 and 1997, this important budget marker has only been met twice.

Instead we’ve been governed by a quilt work of Continuing Resolutions, Omnibuses, and rushed budget agreements, many of which are held until the last minute so lawmakers are unable to read their contents in full. The result is instability and unpredictability not only in our government organizations, but also for the many families and businesses that interact with the federal government.

This is not a responsible way to govern. It’s bad for our military, it’s bad for our citizens, and it’s bad for our form of government.

Who it is good for is a small handful of people who are responsible for making these decisions. Every time one of these CRs pass, they gain a little more power for themselves.

This is why I have yet to vote for a CR during my seven years in Congress. We cannot change the system while constantly voting to support it. And more and more of my colleagues are coming to agree with me.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-PA) re-introduced the End Government Shutdowns Act in April 2017. This bill would automatically keep discretionary programs, like our military, funded at their pre-deadline levels for 120 days, but then as every additional 90 days passes without a new appropriation bill, their funding drops by 1%. All discretionary spending is treated equally; no partisan carve-outs and no exceptions.

This strikes a necessary balance between incentivizing good budgeting habits while discouraging last-minute, haphazard stopgap funding measures. And it provides stability and predictability without allowing Congress to pat ourselves on the back for averting a self-made crisis.

One of the primary goals of the Obama administration was to use the full force of the federal government to force red state, suburban, and rural areas to adopt policies designed to change them into urban blue state communities.

On the environmental side this policy invasion took the form of punitive regulations against the mining industry and million-acre land grabs that undermined the grazing industry.

In education this meant using the carrot of Department of Education grant funding and the stick of No Child Left Behind testing punishments to force local school boards to adopt the federal government’s preferred curriculum.

And in housing, it meant using Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant programs to force local communities into building dense low-income housing.

President Trump has begun to free local communities from Washington’s forced conversion. He has rolled back multiple punitive mining regulations. He undid President Obama’s 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument. And just last week he delayed enforcement of the HUD regulation President Obama was using to dictate zoning policies to communities across the United States.

These are all good first steps, but particularly on the housing front more needs to be done. Specifically, HUD Secretary Ben Carson ought to begin the process of rescinding President Obama’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule entirely.

Promulgated pursuant to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the AFFH has already proven to be an invasive and burdensome mess. While no one disputes that the Fair Housing Act’s ban on racial, religious, and sexual discrimination fully fits within the federal government’s power, the law’s call for communities to “affirmatively further” other housing goals has proven controversial and divisive.

Should suburban communities be forced to build high-density low-income housing? Should small towns be forced to advertise their low income housing stock to large cities? Should cities be forced to spread subsidized housing options throughout their jurisdiction?

The Obama administration believed the answer to every above question is a strong “yes” and their AFFH rule is designed to use Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to turn HUD into basically a national zoning board.

Defenders of Obama’s housing power grab will tell you that federal law already prohibits HUD from mandating that localities adopt specific changes to their zoning laws. And that is true. But HUD has also figured out a way to circumvent that ban and it works like this.

Instead of saying “you are mandated to adopt these zoning laws and construct low-income housing” which would be illegal, they say “if you want CDBG funding you must first create a zoning plan. And if we approve your ‘voluntarily’ created plan then we will give you grant money. If we don’t approve your ‘voluntary’ plan, then you get nothing.”

This is nothing short of federally funded blackmail.

I’ve made an effort to address this overreach by introducing S. 103, the Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act in the Senate (Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has introduced a companion bill, HR 482, in the House). Our bills would stop federal funds from being used to implement, administer, or enforce President Obama’s AFFH rule, making it truly voluntary and giving local communities the ability to make their own housing decisions without financial threats from the federal government.

Our legislation is a long-term solution to the threat of a national zoning board, but HUD can take a more immediate step by rescinding the rule entirely.

Too often, legislators pass bills that seem to be solutions in search of problems. But those problems are rarely as straightforward as they appear to be.

This is why my staff at the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) have worked so tirelessly on the Social Capital Project – a multi-year research initiative that explores the evolving nature and importance of our associational life, specifically why the health of those associational relationships seems so compromised.

And of all the relationships people have in their lives, the most important and formative is the one children have with their parents. This relationship is the foundation of a healthy associational life, which is why the JEC’s most recent study focused on parent/child relationships and how they’ve changed in the last few generations.

As many of you already know, there has been a significant uptick in children born to unwed parents since 1960. And numerous studies show children of stable, married couples outperform children born to single parents, especially when it comes to laying the foundation for engagement in associational life.

This isn’t to say a child born to single mother or father will necessarily face more challenges in life, or that a child born to a married mother and father will automatically succeed. But there is a statistically significant pattern that shows having two stable parents in a committed relationship does give a child a leg up.

Yet, in the past few decades, we’ve shifted from this two-parent model of child-bearing. In 1960, just 5.3% of children were born to single mothers. As of 2008, that number jumped to 40%, and that number is even higher for children born to mothers who are under 30. This means 35% more of the children born today are born into a situation that disadvantages them.

While it would be simple to point to increased sexual activity as the obvious cause, our research found two even larger factors: 1) there are fewer married women, and 2) the cultural norm often referred to as the “shotgun” marriage has all but disappeared.

The causes for these two trends are also very complicated, but they appear to be a result of an increase in affluence and opportunity in society as a whole. Rising affluence and opportunity is absolutely something we should celebrate, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the uptick in non-married births is something that should be addressed.

Problems are rarely as straightforward as they appear to be. I am proud of the work my staff on the JEC is doing to shine a light on the complexities of this issue, and we will continue to pursue this line of inquiry to ensure all children are born with the leg up they deserve.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was signed into law in 1978 to curtail the relatively unbridled surveillance power the executive had possessed since President Franklin Roosevelt. The intent of the act was to limit the government’s ability to spy on Americans abroad and all people at home.

Despite their good intentions, the authors of the bill included one provision that accomplished just the opposite. Section 702 of FISA has allowed the government to collect vast amounts of information from the Internet and other technological platforms, effectively undermining the law’s original intent of protecting civil liberties.

Government agencies have exploited this provision to expand their spying powers. The tech trails and geotracking used by government agencies today would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction in 1978, while PRISM would have seemed like something out of 1984.

We’ve made progress in rolling back some of these abuses—for example, by passing the USA Freedom Act in 2015—but we still have a way to go.

That is why I am pleased that the USA Liberty Act passed out of the House Judiciary Committee last week.

The USA Liberty Act would create a new framework of protections and transparency requirements to ensure that the government uses its surveillance powers without abusing citizens’ constitutional rights to privacy and due process.

This bill would define more strictly what information can and cannot be collected by the government, whether incidentally or intentionally. It would end the collection of information that is bundled incidentally with more important information about a person or topic of interest. It also would implement higher accountability thresholds for heads of government agencies responsible for protecting civil liberties, whistleblower protections for federal employees and contractors, and privacy and due process safeguards for American citizens.

Today, Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) and I introduced a companion bill to the USA Liberty Act that includes all these protections. Our Senate bill also includes an amendment originally introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would close a “back-door” surveillance loophole by requiring domestic agencies such as the FBI to obtain a warrant before accessing any information about American citizens collected under Section 702.

Fifty years after FISA’s passage, we are still reconciling the need for public safety with constitutionally protected rights to privacy and due process. The USA Liberty Act would send a clear bipartisan message that our government must protect Americans’ safety and constitutional rights—not one or the other.