Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I will conclude by quoting one sentence from it. We call on Congress to avoid raising marginal tax rates on employers, either as part of negotiations over the fiscal cliff, or as part of a larger effort to reform the tax code. Instead, Congress should seek to enact comprehensive tax reform that simplifies the tax code and encourages economic growth for both passthrough businesses and corporations. As I said, the passthrough entities are those small businesses, and the corporations are those that pay under the corporate tax rate. So I think the data, as well as the voices from employers around the country, make it clear that the Senate bill, combined with the tax increases from ObamaCare, would have a devastating effect on economic growth and our ability to create jobs. What should we do instead, just to summarize? I think the better approach is the one the Republicans have been proposing. We actually have a plan, as opposed to the administration's plan--the only part of which I can discern is to pass the Senate bill, which raises tax rates. Our plan is to avoid the tax rate increases that would otherwise automatically occur on January 1 and commit to tax and entitlement reform that raises revenue through economic growth, eliminates wasteful credits and deductions and loopholes, and cuts spending in the future. Recall that, in 1986, President Reagan signed into law a historic tax reform bill that lowered corporate and individual tax rates and eliminated a lot of loopholes. It wasn't a perfect bill, but the 1986 reform package can serve as a guide for revenue-neutral tax reform moving forward. Cutting our corporate tax rate--which had a combined rate of 39.2 percent as the highest in the industrialized world--would dramatically boost American competitiveness and improve our standard of living. Many studies have found that lowering our corporate rate will increase growth, including one which found that cutting the corporate tax rate by 10 percentage points can increase the annual growth rate by around 1.1 percent. Since we are only a little over 1.1 percent as it is, cutting it by that much would have a dramatic impact. Comprehensive tax reform also means lowering tax rates on individuals, including the 95 percent of passthrough entities that file as individuals. The Reagan tax reform also provided relief for businesses that are not structured as C corporations. During Ronald Reagan's 8 years, 20 million new jobs were created. More specifically, after tax reform became law, inflation and unemployment fell.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed an additional 1 minute.

Mr. KYL. If we are interested in growth, Congress must avoid raising tax rates in the lameduck session and instead pursue tax reform, which sends a signal to the world that we are open for business. Short of going off the fiscal cliff entirely, passing the Senate tax increase instead of pursuing these progrowth and fiscal reform ideas is the worst idea on the table. Raising the top two marginal rates would reverse longstanding tax policy and hit nearly 1 million business owners in the process, and it would eliminate over 700,000 jobs. So if the President is genuinely interested in economic growth and higher tax revenues that come from it, he should drop his demands for the Senate bill and listen to the growing bipartisan consensus that higher taxes hurt growth and lower taxes help create jobs and prosperity. Exhibit 1 November 27, 2012. Hon. Harry Reid, Majority Leader, U.S. Senate, Capitol Building, Washington,

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. First, I would like to speak to the Senator's amendment. I want to compliment her, commend her and her other cosponsors--Senator Lieberman, Senator Collins, and others--in their effort to bring attention to what is clearly a great need that is going unmet. I agree the House's action is very important to begin to move this process forward. The Senator's amendment is even less specific than the action taken by the House. We are going to need a study of the environmental impacts and evaluate possible locations. It is going to have to be done. It seems to me to make sense that this amendment would begin that process, and so I support that very strongly. I would also like to speak to some of the military requirements which go to the fundamental question of whether we are going to move forward. If the Senator does not want to speak further right now, I would like to speak to that issue.

Mr. KYL. All right. Mr. President, as I said, this particular amendment doesn't require that the administration actually establish a site for an east coast defense, but I do believe such a site would provide an important and critical measure of protection for the east coast of the United States and also those in the southeastern part of the United States. This has become more important due to the cancellation of earlier plans to deploy long-range ground-based interceptors in Poland. That is what it originally was going to provide, full protection for the United States. That would have provided what is called an ``early shot'' or a shot early in the trajectory of a missile coming from someplace--for example, the Middle East--toward the United States. In conjunction with the missile defense sites that we already have in Alaska and in California, a site further to the east would provide what is called a multiple-shot opportunity or an ability in the event that there was more than one missile or one had to distinguish between decoys or one of our first missiles wasn't effective in reaching its target; it would give us, in effect, a second chance to shoot down the missile, which is always what we want to do in planning these kinds of missile defense systems. In fact, this was the actual rationale for, the actual basis for the third site deployment in Poland, to improve protection of the United States, while at the same time affording protection for our European allies against longer range ballistic missile threats from the Middle East. This is a critical point. We are involved in missile defense not just to protect our allies, say, in Europe but also to protect the homeland of the United States of America. But the current administration's plan seems to be oriented toward protecting allies in Europe and not strengthening the protection of the people in the United States of America. The administration says it can cover the ballistic missile threat from the Middle East with the current inventory of 30 ground-based interceptors. First of all, I seriously disagree with that assessment. In any event, there is no way to know if that can be done for sure. Let me cite the President's own Ballistic Missile Defense Review report, which says: Looking ahead, it is difficult to predict precisely how the threat to the U.S. homeland will evolve, but it is certain that it will do so. So you can't say based upon what happened a couple of years ago, or the deployment of the ground-based interceptors, that only 30 of them, bear in mind, are going to protect our homeland at all. Now how does the administration then plan to make up for what it has done in terms of canceling programs that further develop the so-called Ground-Based Interceptor. Well, it plans to compensate for this loss of original Ground-Based Interceptor deployments with something that is called the IIB missile, the SM-3 Block IIB. That is a missile that would be deployed in Poland, for example, but the problem is there is no SM-3 Block IIB missile. That is something that is in the minds of some scientists. It is on vu-graphs. There are pictures of what it might look like, but there is no such missile. Indeed, without discussing classified material here there is no way to know whether we are actually even going to be able to develop such a missile. In fact, its development, rather, has already been delayed to the year 2021. Now, think about it. Think about it. This is 2012, and we wouldn't even begin developing such a missile for another 9 years? This is something way off into the future, if it works, and there is no commitment to deploy it and, indeed, the President has already talked with President Medvedev of Russia about further flexibility in designing our missile defense system. It is no secret that this is potentially on the chopping block, notwithstanding the commitments of the President earlier to deploy it. The NRC has, in fact, recommended that there be an interceptor site on the east coast of the United States as a possible substitute for this Block IIB. This concern has been raised before, and the administration has yet failed to provide a hedging strategy that the fiscal year 2012 NDAA required. So we have known of this deficiency, the fact that the GBI system is not adequate, the fact that the SM-3 Block IIB system may never be deployed. We have asked for a hedging strategy. So what do we do if none of this works, if we don't go forward with it? We don't have that even if the law has required it. What this amendment does is to shine an even brighter light on the concern that I have had for a long time, which is why the administration hasn't provided sufficient resources and attention to our missile defense efforts to protect the homeland of the United States. That is precisely what this would do. Sure, it would help with regard to our friends in Europe, but the primary point of this is to protect the American people. What is wrong with that? Some examples that lead to my concern are that in his first budget, the President reduced funding for the ground-based system. That is the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System that is also known as the national missile defense system, by $500 million, $\1/2\ billion. Then another billion dollars was reduced between his fiscal year 2011 and fiscal year 2012, 5-year budget plans. So they have taken an enormous amount of money out of the development of the system that was supposed to protect the United States. The President cut back the number of Ground-Based Interceptors for the defense of the homeland. Originally, under the Bush administration, it was going to be 44. Well, that is a pretty small number when you stop to think about it, but they have cut it back to 30. Then in addition they subsequently cancelled the 10 GBI interceptors that we were going to send to Poland for defense of Europe as well as the United States. So they have not only cut back on the funding for the development of the program, they have cut back on the actual number of the interceptors that we have already developed. Third, the President curtailed any significant development and modernization of the GMD system, and he cancelled the Multiple Kill Vehicle Program, which was intended to be a significant upgrade to the current Kill Vehicle. The current design is over 20 years old. When we talk about a kill vehicle, of course, we are talking about what is on the nose of the missile that goes up, the interceptor missile, how it intercepts the ballistic missile in flight, how it finds it, how it triggers the final phase of the intercept, and how it actually impacts the offending missile. The technology has improved dramatically since the 20 years that has elapsed from the design of the original kill vehicle of the GBI. First of all, they have reduced funding for the program. Secondly, they have cut back the number of missiles in the program. Third, they have stopped the development of the next generation of the real business end of the missile, the kill vehicle, so that it can't improve with technology and improve to meet the evolving threats of those that are developing missiles against us. Remember, countries such as Russia, for example, have extraordinarily sophisticated multiple-entry vehicles with decoys and other technology to try to evade a missile defense that the United States has produced. If we don't develop our technology and deploy it to keep up with these developments, we are not going to have an effective system. Over the next 5 years the administration intends to spend $20 billion on regional missile defense compared with only $4 billion for homeland missile defense. So we are going to provide protection for our allies-- European allies and so on--but only $4 billion over the next 5 years. That is about $1 billion a year on a system that is critical for the protection of the United States. I would ask my colleagues to recall the Missile Defense Act of 1999, going all the way back then, which requires the United States to build a missile defense system capable of protecting our Nation against limited ballistic missile attacks from rogue nations and protect against any accidental and unauthorized launches from any source. We need to ensure our homeland missile defense system is as robust as possible, and a missile defense site on the east coast may be one of the best means for accomplishing this. In other words, of course, we are concerned about North Korea or Iran, but there are a couple other countries in the world that may not wish us any harm but that have extraordinarily capable systems--I speak specifically of China and Russia. We have always wanted--and the law requires us--to provide protection against the kind of unauthorized or accidental launch that can occur. This is not an idle concern. We spend enormous amounts of time and energy and money trying to make sure these extraordinarily lethal weapons are never launched by accident or by some unauthorized event. That is one of the reasons for a missile defense system, to ensure that kind of accident never would result in harm to the United States. Of course, what they are also worried about is, if that ever happens, then there is the question of retaliation. How do we know this is not intentional? How do we know we shouldn't retaliate? Wars can be started almost by accident, and the best protection against that is a missile defense system that can ensure no harm is done even if there is such a launch. In the meantime, we can find out whether this is real, whether we need to respond, whether we need to start another war. That is the benefit of a missile defense system. It is beyond me why the administration reduces the funding, cuts back the numbers, and kills the advanced technology we could put into our system to protect the people of the United States of America. I understand the difficult choices that have to be made in a time of austerity, but we are not talking about extraordinary amounts of money. The amendment of the Senator from New Hampshire simply calls for a study of the location of the site and what the impact of that would be. That is the first step in deciding where to put this additional bit of protection. I think this is a priority. To oppose just the idea of investigating how we are going to be proceeding, especially with the little bit of money that entails, is difficult to understand. It is not too much to ask. We have a moral responsibility to protect our people. It makes strategic sense because of the exposure of our American homeland to these long-range missile threats and because of the critical vulnerability we have right now. The commander of NORTHCOM, the military entity with responsibility here--General Jacoby--told Congress last March: No homeland task is more important than protecting the United States from a limited ICBM attack . . . we must not allow regional actors, such as North Korea, to hold U.S. policy hostage by making our citizens vulnerable to a nuclear ICBM attack. That is part of the problem. There are some people in the United States who actually believe it would be beneficial for the United States to be vulnerable to a missile attack from another country. They actually believe that would be advantageous. The reasoning is rather weird, but it goes something like this: If we develop defenses that could protect the American people, then other countries will want to develop even more effective systems that can try to override those defenses, and that puts us into a spiral of arms development that would be very costly. One can argue that theory, but there are a couple things wrong with it. First of all, recall this was the argument used against getting out of the ABM Treaty to enable the United States to develop an antiballistic missile defense. It was going to create this big arms war between then-Soviet Union and the United States. It didn't. Both sides have reduced our warheads. One of the reasons why is because it is so expensive, and the Soviet Union, now Russia, realized we could have driven them into bankruptcy. It is one of the reasons--one of the reasons--Russian officials have cited for the collapse of the Soviet Union. They knew Ronald Reagan meant it when he said he was going to develop a missile defense system. They knew they couldn't spend enough money to overcome it or, if they tried, they would go into bankruptcy. It is expensive. I don't necessarily think we have to fear a new expensive arms race because there are very intelligent people in other countries, such as Russia, for example, who appreciate the fact that would be a fools's errand. They may want to threaten, but they are not going to do it because they can't afford it any more now than they could back in the days of the Soviet Union. They know the United States has the resources to trump whatever they do come up with. That is the first point. But the second point is the moral one. Is it moral for leaders who have responsibility for the national security of the American people to deliberately--knowing this is the case--leave them vulnerable to an attack that could kill millions of Americans at a time? If we have the means of avoiding that result, we should. We do. We have that means. It may require a little bit more money. It may require not cutting back the number of interceptors we have deployed. It may require continuing with the advancement of technologies we know are out there. It may require siting missiles in a country of Europe, on Aegis cruisers or on the east coast of the United States. We know how to do all these things. Is it moral for leaders of the United States to leave our people deliberately vulnerable to an attack by others when we know we have the means to prevent it, and there is a cost-benefit that obviously favors the deployment of an additional site of ground-based interceptors? I think for the Senator from New Hampshire to propose that we begin looking at where a new site might be and determine what the environmental impacts of that are as a complement to what the House of Representatives has already done in passing the bill that says we need to move forward is a perfectly reasonable step, and I commend her and the other cosponsors of this amendment for bringing this matter to the attention of the Senate and to the people of the United States. This is part of our responsibility to our constituents and all the other citizens of our great Nation.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Heller), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would indulge my colleague, apparently there are two people on our side we would have to check with. I ask if our colleague could withhold that request to see if we can work it out. I would also ask, is it not possible that if further amendments can be worked out to be voted on tonight after the two that are scheduled to be voted on, there could be other votes tonight to try to continue to dispose of amendments on the bill; is that correct?

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk No. 3123.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. KYL. Let me begin by saying that I send this amendment to the desk with an understanding of the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and of the Armed Services Committee that before I would request a vote on this amendment, we would work out the language, the specific language of this amendment, along with the ranking members, and would not ask for a vote unless that is achieved. This amendment has been offered not only for myself, but also Senators Lieberman, Inhofe, Risch, Lugar, Sessions, DeMint, Cornyn, Rubio, Wicker, Ayotte, and Collins. Our purpose is to get a greater involvement at an earlier stage of the Senate in discussions between the United States and the Russian Federation regarding nuclear arms, missile defense, and potentially long-range conventional strike systems. These are all three matters that have been the subject of treaties and agreements. There has been an indication by different people within the administration, indeed even the President, that he may be wanting to talk to the Russian Federation representatives about additional agreements in these areas. There have been concerns that the Congress is not adequately briefed on those discussions and certainly not at an early enough date. Clearly, if these agreements reach a formal stage, they can require ratification by the Senate. We think it is important that they not be, in effect, negotiated in their entirety before they are known to the Senate and before some input from Members of the Senate can be provided to the administration. What the amendment as originally introduced therefore would do is to require regular updates of Congress on the military implications of proposals that the United States and Russia have under consideration in their negotiations on nuclear arms, missile defense, or long-range conventional strike systems, and in its current form would require the Secretary of Defense to brief the Foreign Relations, the Armed Services, and the Appropriations Committees. One of the changes that we might want to make here is that the briefings might include other groups within the Congress as well. These briefings could occur, under this proposal, no later than 30 days after the act goes into force, and would affect the quarterly briefings where the administration would, on a quarterly basis, provide consultation between the Congress and the Secretary of Defense regarding any proposals to limit or reduce nuclear arms, missile defense or, as I said, long-range conventional strike systems. The amendment also does something else which we may have to modify the language of, but it would express the sense of Congress that any agreement between the United States and Russia that would limit or constrain or reduce our missile defense or our nuclear weapons or long-range conventional strike systems in any militarily significant manner could only be done pursuant to the treaty-making power of the President as set forth in the Constitution. And that, of course, is in order to protect our right to consult, provide advice and consent to any matters that reach that level of negotiation between the administration and, in this case, the Russian Federation. We will have more to say about this if we have an opportunity to further debate. As I said, I am happy to sit down with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee to consider any changes they might want to make to this language with the purpose of getting it adopted, rather than just having something to talk about. This is something we need. Congress needs to be advised. We need to be consulted on matters this important. I do not think the administration would argue with that; it is a matter of coming to an agreement on how we would actually do it. I appreciate the cooperation of the chairman of the committee and the ranking member.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would like to continue the conversation that our two leaders were engaged in earlier and also on yesterday. This is going to be a very important issue for the Senate. To put it into perspective for the American people, let me just say that a rules change in the Senate is not a small or an inconsequential matter. It is even more important if it is attempted to be done without going through the normal process of changing the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority. This is important because the Senate has always considered itself a continuing body. It does not end and then begin again as the House of Representatives does because the House has an election every 2 years. In this body, Members are elected for 6-year terms. As a result, every 2 years we have some turnover in the body, but two-thirds of the body has already been here and continues forward. So the rules of the Senate have always been continuing rules of the continuing body, amendable by a two-thirds majority of the body. To suggest a nuclear option by which a mere majority of the body can amend the rules is itself a violation of the rules. It is an assertion of power. But as the old saying goes: Might does not make right. And the fact that the majority may have the power to overrule a ruling of the Chair, thus establishing a new precedent and a new rule of the Senate, does not make it right. That is why it hasn't been done. In point of fact, there was a time a few years ago, as has been discussed, when some members of the Senate Republican majority were considering the use of the same parliamentary tactic to ensure a vote on nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court and also for the Court of Appeals. The feeling was that the Democratic minority had filibustered over and over and over and had prevented votes, I think, on Miguel Estrada, who was being nominated for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. I think he was filibustered seven separate times. The Republican leadership was investigating the possibility of ensuring that we could get a vote. The only way that seemed possible was to assert this power of overruling the Parliamentarian's ruling through the Chair and thus establishing by 51 votes--or a mere majority--a new rule of the Senate. That was deemed to be such a change that it was called the nuclear option because it hadn't been done, and we could say that it was comparable to the use of a nuclear weapon in a war. It was such a game- changing proposition, to say the least, that Members on both sides of the aisle got together in what they called the Gang of 14. I think almost everyone in this body is glad that cooler heads prevailed; that those 14 Members decided they would reach an agreement amongst themselves that would make it impossible for either the Democratic Party to automatically filibuster nominees or for the Republican Party to have this right to change the rules just because they had 51 votes. Therefore, they reached the compromise which, for judicial nominees, was that there would be no filibuster except in extraordinary circumstances. Both sides deemed that a sufficient way of resolving the issue that came before us at that time. Everybody stood down. The war did not occur. The nuclear weapon was not used, and that was for the best of the country and certainly for the best of the Senate. We avoided a crisis and, certainly, there would have been a crisis. I can't imagine that my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle would not have reacted very badly to the use of that nuclear option had it been done by the Republican majority. Well, today the shoe is on the other foot. The Democratic majority now has reason to believe that it would like to move forward with more alacrity on legislation. Therefore, it believes that by this same nuclear option procedure it should change the rules so that the ability to filibuster at the beginning of the consideration of the bill is eliminated. The Republican minority naturally has said: Wait a minute. That is wrong for two reasons. First of all, just as you accused us of doing, you are changing the rules without going through the rules process change. This is your own version of the nuclear option. If it was wrong then, it is still wrong now. And most of us agreed after the fact that it was wrong then. But, secondly, what you would do, if you eliminate the requirement for cloture and a cloture vote if there is an objection to a unanimous consent request to take up the bill or motion to proceed to a bill, what you are doing is putting all of the power into the hands of the majority leader--in this case, the Democratic leader--to decide whether there will be any amendments at all from the Republican side or even from the Democratic side. The only leverage that the minority has to ensure that it will be able to offer amendments is to negotiate with the majority leader and ensure that right exists. And the only leverage it has is to deny cloture on the motion to proceed in order to instigate that negotiation. It is political leverage. Let's call it by its true name. But without that political leverage, that check and balance, the majority leader in the Senate takes a very giant step toward becoming exactly what the Speaker of the House is, in effect, a dictator. Now, I use that term in a very kind sense because the Speakers of the House under whom I served as a Member of the House of Representatives, and certainly the current Speaker of the House, are fine people who care a lot about the institution of the House of Representatives and, in some cases, care for some degree of minority rights. But they all have one thing in common: They run the House. If they decide, through the Rules Committee, there aren't going to be any amendments offered by the other side, there aren't any amendments offered. Frequently the minority is in the position of complaining about the fact that the Speaker, through the Rules Committee, denies them the right to offer amendments or controls which amendments they can offer, controls the time. So if you are a Member of the House of Representatives and you want to offer an amendment, you can't automatically do that, as has been the case in the Senate. You have to go to the Rules Committee--which is hand-picked by the Speaker--and you have to ask them for permission to offer an amendment and how long you will have to talk about that amendment and the wording of the amendment and all of the other conditions that the Rules Committee establishes for debate of the matter on the floor of the House of Representatives. When the Constitution was originally written, the Founders' idea was that we would have two different legislative bodies that would provide a check and a balance on each other. One would represent the immediate passions of the people, the House of Representatives, the people's body. If the people were emotionally invested in a particular issue, the House was elected, and they would hurry up and pass that legislation. They could do it with a majority because the power of the Speaker was able to run over any minority rights. The minority wouldn't be able to get in the way. But when it came to the Senate the idea was, slow it down, think it over. Let's make sure we want to do this. That is why we have the 6- year terms, the continuing body, and the minority rights to offer amendments. That right to offer amendments is perhaps the most important way in which the Senate is distinguished from other legislative bodies around the world and from the House of Representatives because it does guarantee minority rights. And not just party minority. If you are a member of the majority party from a State that has a very distinct and serious interest in a bill, the majority leader can simply say: I don't want to consider your amendment. You are out of luck under this proposal, whether you are a member of the minority or the majority. It is not just minority rights in the sense of political minority, but also, let's say, you are from a small State rather than a big State, and there is a bill on the floor that helps the big States, and you want to offer amendments from a little State. It will be up to the majority leader to decide whether you can even offer that amendment if this rule change is adopted. So there are two very important reasons the Senate should be very careful about proceeding down this path. That is what the Republican leader has been talking about the last couple of days here on the floor. It is important for the Senate to reflect in a longer view not only the views of the majority--political or otherwise--but also those who might have some disagreement with the majority, the theory being that the majority isn't always 100 percent right. In any event, people around the country have a right to be represented through their Senator to get their points of view argued and discussed and perhaps considered for a vote here in the Senate. That has always been the way it is. It is a tradition that has served this country well. To eliminate that with this so-called rules change would do great disservice to the American people, to the legislative process, to our Constitution, and to the great ability of this body to perform its function in the way that has been deemed so important for over 200 years now. There is a reason this is called the greatest deliberative body in the history of mankind--because we deliberate. We think about things. We debate them. We have all kinds of points of view offered or potentially offered through the amendment process, and if that is denied, this will no longer be the body it has always been. People before us have cautioned both Democratic and Republican majorities not to take advantage of their sheer majority, Democratic and Republican leaders. In fact, there is a very interesting new book out by I believe the former chief of staff of the great Democratic leader George Mitchell--I think joined in by a Parliamentarian at a time when Republicans were in control, so it is a bipartisan-written book--that talks about the necessity of maintaining the rules the way they are and not using this nuclear option to change the rule, denying minority rights. It is a book worth reading, and it is a book I commend to my colleagues before we embark on what might be a very fateful step in this body. Let me make a couple of other points. Under Senate rule V--not to be too in the weeds on this, but I think it is important for us to actually know what we are talking about here. Here is the Senate rule speaking to the amendment process. I am quoting now: The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules. And then Senate rule XXII says that to end debate on a motion to amend or change the Senate rules: . . . the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting. What I said earlier, that it takes a two-thirds vote to change the rules of the Senate, is very clear in our rules. They are continuing rules. So the notion that somehow this can be done with just a 51-vote majority is explicitly rejected by the rules themselves. As I said, when this issue has previously been raised, we have been very careful not to use the mere power of the majority to change the rules but have abided by the requirement of our own rules to do it according to those rules with a two-thirds majority. I spoke before about the rights of the political minority. I think it is worth noting again that each Senator represents a lot of people in a separate State, two of us per State. Our constituents deserve the right to be heard in this body. It is one of the great opportunities that as a matter of comity we have always accorded to each other. We are courteous to each other on the floor because we understand it is the best way for all of us to be heard. If a colleague wishes to raise a matter while I am speaking and says, ``Will you just give me 2 minutes so that I can raise this matter on the floor, and then I will be done,'' of course we grant that request because we understand how important it is for our constituents to be represented, to have a voice. If another Senator needs to raise a point on behalf of the voters in his State, we acknowledge that as necessary and important. That is why we think it is virtually sacred that all Senators should have the right to represent their people, their State. No State should be disenfranchised, whether it voted Democratic or it voted Republican. There are a lot of Democrats and Republicans in every State and a lot of folks who do not belong to either party. They need a voice in the Senate, and each of us represents those people. It is not right that the voice of some Senators, and therefore their constituents, be silenced because of, in effect, a power grab here through what has been referred to as the nuclear option. As my leader Senator McConnell noted yesterday, what is potentially being proposed here would undermine the very purpose of the Senate as the one place in our system where minority views, whether they are a political minority or any other kind of minority, and opinions have always been respected and in most cases incorporated into law. That would be lost to the U.S. Senate. Here is what the late Senator Robert Byrd, who all acknowledge was an expert on the Constitution and the Senate rules, once said: The Senate is the only place in government where the rights of a numerical minority are so protected. The Senate is a forum of the states where, regardless of size or population, all states have an equal voice. . . . The Presiding Officer and I can appreciate that because we don't come from one of the bigger States. Senator Byrd goes on: Without the protection of unlimited debate, small States like West Virginia might be trampled. Extended deliberation and debate--when employed judiciously--protect every Senator, and the interests of their constituency, and are essential to the protection of the liberties of a free people. He was specifically speaking to the point I made there: to ``the interests of their constituency.'' It is not a Senator's right that we are arguing about here; we are the voice of the people we represent. It is our constituents' rights that would be denied by this process. They deserve a voice. They have been guaranteed a voice through us, the temporary stewards of their voice. To deny that voice, especially through the procedure that has been suggested here, as the late Senator Byrd said, would be a denial of something essential to the protection of the liberties of a free people. The current Democratic leader was one of the staunchest defenders of the Senate's protection of minority rights for all of the reasons I mentioned. He spoke eloquently about this on earlier occasions. He believes and he has said that he is frustrated by the process that he sees not working as quickly as he would like to see it work and, as a result, has apparently changed his mind as to the process for changing the rules as well as the rules themselves. But I think the whole question of the filibuster needs to be properly understood here as really meaning different things to different people. It is essentially a tool that brings the Senate to the center because it requires compromise. It requires people to get together and talk. As I said, the right the minority has to filibuster the motion to proceed is to say: Mr. Leader, unless you are willing to guarantee us that we can have some amendments on this bill and that we get to pick our own amendments, then we are going to force you to get 60 votes lined up in order to proceed to the bill. That is the only leverage we have. So you are not really filibustering. You are not trying to talk the bill to death. You don't have any intention of taking a lot of time. You just want to be heard. You want to have your amendment up. A lot of times we say it will take just 10 minutes a side to debate it and have a vote, but if the majority leader can say, ``Nope, you are not going to be able to do that,'' then he can say Republicans have engaged in a filibuster when all it is is an objection to his motion to proceed without having the right to offer any amendments. So it is an important tool but not the way most people think of it--to delay and to talk things to death. That is not what has happened here. In most cases, the majority leader has filed a cloture motion on a Friday and we voted on it on Monday, so no time of the Senate has been taken in the intermediate time period. I know there is a narrative that the Senate has not been able to get anything done during the past couple of years, but it is not because of some unprecedented use of the filibuster. As I said, have you seen Members down here talking hours on end about a particular issue or all through the night or whatever? No, you have not seen that. That was kind of done in a bygone era, when Strom Thurmond was here and some others, but it has not been done. We have not done a budget in 3 years. That has been a sore point among a lot of people. You cannot filibuster the budget. So is the reason we have not done a budget because there has been a filibuster? Absolutely not, because the rules don't permit a filibuster of the budget. There are a lot of misconceptions here. I hope my colleagues will take a deep breath, step back. Those who came from the House of Representatives, as I did, remember what it was like when you were in the minority in the House. Essentially you had no rights. Is that the way you want it to be here? Because someday you are going to be a minority in the Senate. This body will change majorities. In any event, whether we are talking political majorities or not, as I mentioned with respect to the Presiding Officer from the same State as the late Robert Byrd, his State did not always have the power to be heard because it is a small State, as is mine. So it doesn't matter whether you are Republican or Democratic, your constituents have a right to be heard. Our current Senate rules protect that right on behalf of our constituents, and I believe it would be a grave error for the current Members of this body or those who take office next year to conclude that because they have been frustrated sometimes in what they wanted to accomplish, it is worth it to just brush the minority aside and say: Because I couldn't get everything I wanted, I was frustrated with your desire to offer amendments, I am going to take that right away from you by changing this rule in this way. I think it would be regretted later in time. I think the reaction would be the same as occurred with regard to the so-called Gang of 14 when this nuclear option was considered several years ago. I think most people in this body now say they were wise people who brought us back from the brink of this precipice. Had we gone over that, this body would not be the same as it is today and we probably would be regretting that decision greatly. I urge my colleagues, who I know in good faith are frustrated at their inability to do exactly what they want to do because they are in the majority, to just stop and reflect on the damage this would do to this institution, how they would feel if they were in the minority. Members of my party are going to be pretty hard to convince we should go back to the rule the way it is today if the rule is changed to our disadvantage. That is really starting a nuclear war--from a parliamentary point of view, I mean. It is not a good idea for anybody, least of all for the American people. I urge my colleagues who are considering this to be open to alternatives, have an open mind, be willing to think this through, talk it through, to have a congenial debate on the floor about the possibilities, and eventually, I suspect, as has happened so many times in this great body, reasonable positions have prevailed--maybe after a lot of unreasonable ones were proposed, but generally we have come to the right conclusions. We have done so because we respect each other's rights. That has produced the best legislation in the 230 years of our country's history.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk),

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I know they talked all evening long, but I am not sure that Senator McCain was made aware that the Senator would propose this tonight.

Mr. KYL. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller) would have voted: ``aye.''