Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, and thank you to my colleague from Oklahoma. The issue we are addressing needs to be addressed. The nomination process is entirely broken. People are sick and tired of bringing their expertise to the Senate and basically being an automaton in a nomination factory. So that is why there is great sympathy for us working together to resolve this. I put forward a somewhat different version of the world from my colleague from Oklahoma and said: Let's do a block of time where multiple people can be debated simultaneously. That alone speeds things up by six to eight times because it is not 2 hours or 120 minutes per nominee. Let's create a motion where we go directly to that block of time, and because of the block of time, you don't have to have cloture on it in order to vote. Let's speed up how we hold those votes. I felt we could get to wiping out the backlog through some of the agreements that were done before August and by accelerated consideration and preserve the ability to vote on each nominee. I had concerns about the en bloc because I think we have a constitutional responsibility, if there is a bad apple, to weigh in on that and be accountable to our constituents on whether we favor or disfavor that individual. So I proposed an amendment. I do appreciate my colleague working to arrange to have a vote on that amendment that said 10 Members in the minority, or minority- majority, could sign a petition to have someone pulled out of a group of 15 if they felt that person merited more scrutiny or presented particular problems. I heard about kind of the distrust that that might be used to dismantle an entire block of 15, so I am open to modifications of that that could address that. But I was one of the people who said, as written initially, I couldn't vote for unanimous consent to just adopt it. But to consider it on this floor--yes, I can vote for it to be considered on this floor because that is what we should be doing. We should be bringing rules ideas to this floor to be wrestled with in order to make this Chamber work better. And so I appreciate that the plan wasn't to just try to get UC on the proposal but to get UC to consider it. Why shouldn't we all agree to that? So I am not sure where the reservation is, the holdout. I have heard that there are folks who like the idea of a supernova nuclear option and therefore want to blow up normal consideration of a standing order, of a new proposal standing order. But I just--I guess, having missed the presentation, if I missed it, from the majority leader, I would say maybe we should take an hour and try to resolve that or adopt what my colleague has said, to iron out the details over the weekend--because it is a big deal. It is a big deal to go nuclear. It is a big deal to adopt a new idea that hadn't been widely circulated until the last few days. So I cast my heart and my vote with the idea of let's try to figure this out. I thank the President.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, would my colleague yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the Senate process and specifically the challenge we have in exercising our constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent on nominations. But I just heard moments ago about a shooting of a podcaster. Each and every assault on any individual is outrageous, and assaults that are motivated by suppressing viewpoints is so horrifically against the vision of our country, where we believe in the power of free speech, we believe in the power of protest, and we believe in the power of assembly. Let the best arguments win the day, not in violence to suppress any viewpoint. So I hope the individual who--I have not heard the details yet--is going to be OK. I hope he is going to recover. But let's all remind ourselves, as we carry on a debate and often carry on that debate passionately, that the place to decide issues is through speech, debate, and our democratic Republic, electing people to represent your viewpoints, having them cast votes in the House of Representatives down the hall and having them cast votes here in the Senate. So let's talk a little bit about what has unfolded, basically, since 1975. I put up this chart about something called the cloture motion. ``Cloture'' means a motion to close debate. Early in the Senate, there was no such thing as a cloture motion, but there was the guidebook that Jefferson put forward for how the Senate should be conducted. That guidebook said do not speak superfluously. Get right to the topic. Make your point. Listen to others and get to a simple majority vote. Everyone should be heard, and then you should make a decision. And, always, it should be the majority making the decision, not the minority, because to do otherwise is to turn democracy on its head. But along came the 1830s and tension increasing between the northern manufacturing economy and the southern slave economy, agricultural economy--particularly, the production of cotton and tobacco. Those tensions, really, were manifested around the tariffs. The North wanted protective tariffs in order to enhance the success of their manufacturing, and the southern part of the United States was concerned about retaliatory tariffs against cotton and tobacco that would hurt the economy of the South. This came to the point in which Calhoun called these the ``Tariff of the Abominations,'' was the phrase, like that is scary and damaging to the South that these tariffs were an abomination. There was a concept exercised that possibly States could decide that a particular Federal bill would not apply in their State. Now, this was not some crazy theory. This, in fact, went to the tension between the United States and whether it was an association of States or it was a single Nation. Jefferson and others had argued that, in fact, States should be able to nullify Federal laws that didn't work well in their State--nullification. So as this debate unfolded on the tariff of the abominations, South Carolina decided to actually pass a nullification law. Calhoun, who had been Vice President with Jackson, had gone back to the Senate and advocated for South Carolina to do this. But it didn't unfold as Calhoun expected because President Jackson, who was a slaveholder, who was from a slave-owning State, proceeded to say: No, nullification is not in concert with the U.S. Constitution, and, therefore, if South Carolina persists, the United States will declare war on South Carolina. And that happened right here. The United States declared war on South Carolina; South Carolina relented; and that was the end of nullification. But then the question became for Calhoun and others: How do we stop bills that we don't like? In the beginning, the conversation was about tariff bills, but as it unfolded over time, it became about civil rights bills because the South did not want Black Americans to be voting; thus, came the idea that really gained traction in the 1850s of talking a civil rights bill to death, continuing floor speeches until everyone was exhausted and you couldn't get to conclude debate and have a vote. That is the beginning of the idea of a filibuster. ``Filibuster'' is a word coming from the Dutch word for ``freebooter'' or ``pirate.'' So piracy overcame the Senate; that is, you had Jefferson laying out that everyone should speak succinctly and to the issue, get to a simple majority vote; and then you had southern Senators saying: Wait. Wait. We want the opposite. We want to celebrate lengthy speeches as a victory for free speech, the First Amendment, glorification of long speeches here as a way to stop bills from getting passed. That is where the filibuster comes from. Why do I tell you all of this? Because that is how we came to have a motion called cloture here in the U.S. Senate because in 1917, there was a debate over putting armaments over commercial ships. And a group of Senators said we are going to talk that bill to death because that is the equivalent of declaring war, and declaring war is our responsibility under the Constitution. We haven't done it. Therefore, since we haven't done it, we shouldn't arm the ships, and honoring our constitutional responsibility, we are going to talk this bill to death. That was a national outrage, and President Woodrow Wilson rallied the Nation to condemn that small group of Senators who were standing in the way of arming our civilian ships back in 1917. In fact, the day after the transition from one Congress to the next-- the next day, essentially--the Senate acted, and they acted and created a cloture motion to close debate. Here, I have for you a chart for cloture motions. You can see that in the entire history from 1917, when that motion was created, on through 1974, it was only done 125 times; so less than twice a year. The motion was thought to be an occasional way to interrupt lengthy process by a few Senators to get to a vote, and, therefore, it was created with a lot of time associated with it. Initially, you filed a motion. You have to wait 2 days to vote on it. Even if it succeeds to close debate, you debate for another 100 hours on a bill. Well, that is a very, very lengthy process. It means a single cloture motion takes up several weeks. But when it only happened once or twice a year, that was acceptable to the Senate. But let's fast forward and realize that that started to change, and this change really began in 1965. In 1965, 1964, we passed the civil rights bill, and we passed the Voting Rights Act. And as a consequence, the cloture motion--or the filibuster, which had been used primarily to block civil rights bills, lost some of its racist tint because we finally passed a civil rights bill, and we finally passed a voting rights bill. People started saying: Well, maybe we will talk other issues to death, not just civil rights issues. And maybe rather than just using it on final passage of bills, we will also use it on amendments and we will also use it on motions to proceed to bills and we will also use it on nominations, which brings me to this next chart. This chart displays how the use of cloture motions on nominations has accelerated in recent years: rarely used in the past on nominations. Even when it was filed, it rarely had to be voted on. And now in the decade from 2010 to 2020, 545 times. And only halfway through the next decade, if you include the additional uses of cloture on nominations that have happened just this year, which are not on this chart, we are already exceeding the previous decade, and we are on pace to double it. This reflects the kind of growing tension between the parties and the growing use of this tool to slow down the process in which people fill the executive branch. This is not good for our country to make it so difficult to debate and vote on a nomination, make it so difficult that there are more than 100 sub-Cabinet nominations awaiting action in this Chamber. It was not good when the Republican majority really initiated this strategy during the second term of President Obama, which led to a 2013 change, where we went to a simple majority to close debate on most nominations except for the Supreme Court. Fine, but that still required the cloture motion to be gone through, even with the simple majority. And it still meant significant delays. That process kind of just has continued to increase in the tension between the parties. Now we have about 150 sub-Cabinet nominations awaiting action on the floor and dozens more that are likely to come out of committee in the next few weeks. And my Republican colleagues are saying this is unacceptable. Indeed, if we turn the tables--if it were the Democrats in charge and the Republicans doing the same thing--it would be unacceptable. We are spending way too much time in this Chamber on nominations; way too much time that takes away from considering bipartisan bills; way too much time from addressing the fundamentals of healthcare and housing and education, investment in infrastructure, the creation of good-paying jobs, strategies to reduce pollution in our Nation. Therefore, we need to work together across the aisle to improve the process. I and others have been in conversation with our colleagues across the aisle--my Republican colleagues--to say we understand there is a problem afflicting this body, and we are ready to work with you to accelerate the processing of sub-Cabinet nominations. In fact, there is also a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over this body at the moment, where there has been a proposal put forward for a nuclear option that is not done in a bipartisan fashion that would severely damage the ability of this Chamber to well represent our States when it comes to nominations. And this idea--which I fiercely oppose--is to vote on big blocks of nominations. Here is the problem with that: The bad apple gets thrown in with a pile of good apples, and there is no accountability to our constituents or to our Nation, and, therefore, we fail the test that we are placed with by being Senators of advice and consent on nominations because we don't consider the pros and cons of a particular nomination. Second of all, if you do block nominations, that would just expand and expand. And the first thing you know, it is like 1 vote; it is 100 nominations. There is no scrutiny. And, again, we fail our constitutional test. The third problem, if this Chamber is led by a majority as the opposite Chamber from the President, it will be tempting to use that same block process in order to extract kind of big action by the President. That use of the advice and consent as to blackmail the President, that is not healthy. That was certainly not the intent of our constitutional responsibility. So if we look at all of those pieces, there is a better way. There is a better way. We can accelerate massively the consideration of sub- Cabinet nominations. We can consider a set of tools. One is you don't have to go in and out of executive session to consider them. The second is, you can have a set time for consideration of a nomination or a debate period for a combination of a group of nominees. And because it is a set time, you don't need a cloture motion. If you don't need a cloture motion, you don't need an intervening day. If you don't need a cloture motion, you don't have to carry out that extra 20-minute vote. And, in addition, we could greatly accelerate the votes that occur at the end of a debate time for a group of nominees so that those votes happen rapidly, one after the other after the other. These are all things we could consider in dialogue. But let's have that bipartisan dialogue. Let's not have a nuclear option that blows up the responsibility of all of us as Senators under the Constitution.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, just minutes ago, I was outside and was running up the steps to the Senate Chamber in order to cast a vote on the issue before the Senate, and the issue before the Senate was whether or not we would pass a bill to release the Epstein files. As you run up those stairs, if you look back over your shoulder, you see there, carved into the facade of the U.S. Supreme Court, the four words: ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' Equal justice under law, what does that mean to us who grow up in America? It means that nobody is above the law--not a politician, not a celebrity, not a billionaire, no one. Now, we certainly know that this vision to which we aspire--equal justice under the law--has not been fully accomplished, but we wrestle to move closer to that vision, to realize that vision. And today we had a chance as the U.S. Senate to move significant strides in the direction of saying: No one is above the law. The legislation that was considered was an amendment form of a proposal that I had drafted to say, ``Release the Epstein files,'' and my copilot Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico saying, ``Release the Epstein files.'' And, indeed, many Members on both sides have believed in this vision of transparency and accountability. Why? Well, because they value those words that are carved above the pillars of the Supreme Court: ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' They cherish that value in their heart that we aspire toward a vision where everyone is accountable. Plus, in this particular case involving Jeffrey Epstein, every single one of us, all 100 Senators, know that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster, a monster who groomed and abused underage children, a monster who trafficked girls to rich and powerful men, a monster who destroyed the lives of hundreds of young women. As I speak, the U.S. Department of Justice has files detailing the names of those connected to Mr. Jeffrey Epstein. It has been widely reported that in May our Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump that his name appears in the Epstein files. But, to be clear, just because a name is listed in the Epstein files doesn't mean that that person was a collaborator in abusing young women. There may be lots of names in that file related to just casual acquaintances or people met on trips. Who knows? But some of those names in that file may well shine light on people who abuse young women. So let's bring it to light. If we believe in that vision of equal justice under law, if we believe in accountability for all, then release the files. Let the chips fall where they may. It is the right thing to do. Everyone involved in assisting Jeffrey Epstein in running an international trafficking organization or involved in directly purchasing access to young women through Jeffrey Epstein or directly abusing young women proffered by Jeffrey Epstein--every single person, let the chips fall where they may. No matter how rich the person is, no matter if they held office in the past, no matter if they aspire to office in the future or sit in an office right now, no matter how famous or not famous they might be--let the chips fall where they may. That is the vision of equal justice under the law. Everyone involved in Mr. Epstein's crimes must be brought to light and must be held accountable. My colleague from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and the Senate Finance Committee have been investigating Mr. Epstein's financial network for the last 3 years. The Biden administration fully cooperated with the Senate investigators on that case. The Finance Committee staff went to the Treasury Department to see the Epstein files and suspicious activity reports. Democrats understood that this was an ongoing investigation. We applauded the Biden administration for cooperating, and that was the right course. But now we are under a different administration. Instead of cooperating, the Trump administration is obstructing. The Trump administration, Attorney General Bondi are refusing to cooperate, and they are refusing to investigate further. They are simply saying two words: ``Case closed.'' Case closed? When they have their hands on information potentially regarding dozens or hundreds of individuals who abused young women? So today we had a chance to vote on whether the case is closed. We have before us an amendment which said: Deliver the files. Create the force of law, deliver the files. And 51 Senators in this body, I am ashamed to say, said: Hell no. We want them kept secret. We want to protect the perpetrators. Why? Because the man in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump, told us he wants us to protect those files, does not want them public. On July 17, the Wall Street Journal reported on a letter allegedly written by Trump to Epstein as part of a birthday book for his 50th birthday in 2003. The letter is signed at the bottom ``Donald.'' It features a drawing of a woman's body with very suggestive text. I debated putting that letter up. There is a chart of it in the door behind me. But it has already been made public. The public has seen it. I find it a profoundly offensive letter. And as I passed by a stack of newspapers today, I saw a series of examples of Donald Trump's signature because Trump has said to the world, ``That is not my signature.'' But, of course, the experts say that is not true. The birthday book contains another photo of Mr. Epstein holding an oversized novelty check from D.J. Trump for $22,500. What is that check for? Underneath the photo taken in the 1990s, a handwritten note says: Jeffrey showing early talents with money and women! Sells ``fully depreciated''-- And then there is a name of a woman who has been blocked out. to Donald Trump for $22,500. I don't know if a woman was sold to Donald Trump for $22,500. I don't know what it means to call a woman ``fully depreciated.'' I don't know if it was just kind of a brazen joke between a couple of very powerful men, but it is certainly not a funny joke. It certainly implies and suggests a camaraderie in the idea that young women are for sale. On July 15, House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN: We should put everything out there and let the people decide it. Well, actions are more powerful than words. The words were: We should put everything out there. The action was he adjourned the House of Representatives early for August recess to avoid voting on releasing the files. Well, the House is back in session now. So I call on Speaker Mike Johnson to stand up for the principle carved above those pillars on the Supreme Court: ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' Hold a vote in the House of Representatives on release of the files. The leader of the Senate told FOX News: I'm always a believer in transparency--I think more is always better. Today we voted on transparency, and the vote from across the aisle was: Case closed. No transparency. No accountability. I certainly agree with the sentiment it is time to put everything out there. The American people have been clear. They want these files released because they still treasure the idea that possibly powerful people in this Chamber actually believe in the principles that we were raised on here in the United States of America of equal justice under law; that nobody is above the law, still cherish that little seed of hope that maybe when we have a vote in this Chamber, 100 Senators will say: Hell yes. But today they were crushed because the majority said: Hell no. Seal the file. Protect the President. Protect the powerful. To hell with justice for the victims, the young women who were so impacted, devastated, by the activities of Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. The American people know better. They demand transparency. They demand accountability. They demand justice. The victims demand transparency. The victims demand accountability, and the victims demand justice. And we had a chance to deliver it today, and we failed them. My bill, which was introduced as the amendment by Senator Schumer, requires the Attorney General to release all materials and records related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, including the flight and travel records, the names of individuals, the names of businesses and nonprofits and other organizations, any immunity deals, any nonprosecution agreements, any plea bargains, any settlements, internal Department of Justice communications about decisions to charge or not charge those involved, all communications about attempts to conceal information or documents, and any documentation related to Mr. Epstein's detention or death. It makes one exception, and that exception is deleting the names of the victims involved. They should only be named if they choose to come forward. Let me quote from what this bill requires: No record should be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of any of the following: embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary. But it will redact names of the victims and underage witnesses, including their personally identifiable information, depictions of their abuse, or information that would jeopardize an active Federal investigation or national security. This was carefully crafted with the insights of law enforcement to hold people accountable and redact only what was necessary to protect either an ongoing investigation or to protect the victims. We had a chance to do the right thing today and 49 Senators said do the right thing and 51 said no and tabled this bill. I hope my colleagues who voted to table the bill today will search their hearts and come back and say: Bring it up again because I want to be on the right side. I want to be on the right side of the principle. I want to be on the right side of the victims. I want to deliver on that little seed of hope that somehow, when push comes to shove, some powerful men in this Chamber will hold other powerful men accountable. On behalf of every citizen who shares that vision across our country, who believes in the words carved above the Supreme Court, I and others will continue to press for accountability, for transparency, for justice. May it be so that we reconsider and 100 Senators team up together to say ``hell, yes'' on those core principles we cherish as Americans.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, nobody in our country should ever be above the law, certainly not powerful people who believe that they can perpetrate crimes on victims and get away with it because they have so much wealth and so many lawyers and so many friends in high places. If you go outside the doors of the Senate Chamber, to my right, and you continue straight ahead and you go out the second set of doors to the steps of the Capitol, you are looking straight across at the Supreme Court. And while scaffolding is up right now, making it hard to see the words, the words that are engraved above those pillars are those words ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' Powerful words. A powerful vision that all Americans are subject to the law. There is no special get-out-of-jail-free card under that vision for the powerful, but all too often the combination of reams of well-paid lawyers and a whole lot of friends ready to help you, the powerful commit crimes and get away with it. We should aspire to the vision that is there above the Supreme Court, that vision of ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' that no politician, no celebrity, no megamillionaire or billionaire can buy their way out of justice when they commit crimes and particularly not crimes that involve life-altering damage, crimes in which people are killed, crimes in which people are mutilated, crimes in which people are raped. No matter how powerful someone is, they need to be prosecuted when they commit these crimes. And the American people have a right to know what information the government is suppressing to protect these individuals. So this brings us to the conversation of the Epstein files. There is only one right answer, complete and total disclosure. That is the only pathway to justice. We have a lot of suspicions across this country about what is contained in those files hidden in the Department of Justice, those files that are hidden in the Department of the Treasury. My colleague Senator Wyden, on the Finance Committee, has been working on this for years. I heard an objection from across the aisle, Why are you interested now? Well, Senator Wyden has been leading the search to understand what went on. There is a billion dollars of money that was transferred, thousands of transfers that were ignored by key banks that would have painted a portrait of a criminal empire in motion. And yet, somehow, none of those transfers triggered the attention that they merited. So here is what we know: We know that Epstein ran a massive network of sex trafficking, sex trafficking of young girls to powerful men. Now, we don't know who they are, in terms of those powerful men, and there may be many names in the files--the Epstein files--that involve people who had nothing to do with those crimes. They may simply be friends in a network; they may be business associates in some other legitimate way; but some of them may well be these powerful men who raped young girls. So those folks who were not part of that shouldn't be objecting to the release of the files because the files would simply show that they had nothing to do with those crimes against young women. But the folks who were the perpetrators, whose names might be in that file, right now, I can guarantee you, they are working the system of every high friend across this country, every megamillionaire and billionaire who participated in these violent acts on the innocent young, and they are trying to make sure this information never comes out. So far, they have succeeded, and that is wrong. Several of my colleagues are preparing to speak to this, and Senator Durbin--I am looking to see that he is here, yes, he is--is going to speak to it next. My colleague from across the aisle is here to respond to a request to hear and vote on a bill that will tell the Department of Justice, you must release these files; transparency must happen. Now, why did I write this bill? I wrote this bill because the Attorney General said we don't have legal permission to release the information. So let's give her the legal permission to release this information. In fact, let's pass a law right now, today, here in the Senate, that says you not only have permission to release the Epstein files, but we are passing a law saying you must release the Epstein files, with the names of the victims redacted to protect them. So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged and the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of S. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, my colleague has come to the floor and said that there is a provision in a bill, but will he yield for a question about that provision? He will not because he has just left the floor because he doesn't want to answer the question. But I invite him to come back because the provision he is talking about does not require the release of the Epstein files--not at all. And so he has come to the floor, and he said Democrats blocked a provision, and he won't tell you what I am telling you right now, that provision does not require the release of the Epstein files. So it is misrepresenting the situation. And you saw him change the topic. Why change the topic from this topic? Americans have been very clear that they want these files released. This is the bill that will do it. And I yield to my colleague from Illinois.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, would my colleague from Maryland yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. Did I understand you to say that the President of the United States has put forward the possibility of a favor to someone who could testify about Epstein's conduct over many years?

Mr. MERKLEY. In any ordinary world, wouldn't this be considered witness tampering?

Mr. MERKLEY. To my colleague from Maryland, did you also mention that the FBI redacted President Trump's name from certain documents?

Mr. MERKLEY. I so much appreciate your amendment, which we advocated for, which you presented very well in the Appropriations Committee, that said that all the files have to be retained so that nothing is destroyed--no missing minutes on a White House tape or anything equivalent. Why is it necessary to express this concern?

Mr. MERKLEY. If that is accurate, I am just trying to understand why they would do so. If his name is in the files and it is simply in the context of he attended a certain event, something of that nature, or maybe Mr. Epstein went to an event at one of the President's properties, that would be a completely innocent role. Why would the FBI redact such a reference?

Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely. I so appreciate your bringing this additional information to bear. Our colleague across the aisle who objected noted the Republicans also voted for this amendment--your amendment--in committee. So I am wondering, if we bring it back as a UC, as a bill to pass right now, saying all information is to be retained, I wonder if our Republican colleagues would join us in that effort.

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I do hope you will bring that back as a unanimous consent request later today based on your amendment to retain all of the files. We have already heard our colleague's objection to releasing the files, but, certainly, they should join us in a unanimous way in retaining all of the evidence.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, as a point of information, are we going to proceed with the vote at 12 noon?

Mr. MERKLEY. At 12:46? I thank the Presiding Officer for that information. Mr. President, I believe Senator Markey has come to the floor to make some comments, so I will just close with this notation. All across America, ordinary men and women know that, if they commit a crime, they will pay the fine. If they commit a crime, they will do the time. They don't have fancy lawyers. They don't have friends in high places. They don't have the FBI redacting their names from documents. They don't have one caucus of the U.S. Senate blocking information from being released. On behalf of every ordinary citizen across America, we are going to continue to press for the powerful and the rich to be accountable. If they, in fact, participated in the abuse of young women and in the rape of young women, we want them to be brought to justice no matter what political party they are from or what bank account they have or what part of the country they live in or what friends they have.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Would my colleague yield to a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I was hoping my colleague would stay on the floor to have a little bit of discussion about the topic he just raised because there seemed to be some missing elements in his discussion. And isn't that kind of what happens here, where we hear from our leadership about all of these terrible things the other side is doing, and we just kind of swallow that hook, line, and sinker, rather than actually looking at the record. Now, one of the pieces left out of his story was 1974, 100 Senators on this floor said: We are going to create a special fast track, filibuster-free, for one single purpose: reducing the deficit. And think of Robert Byrd of West Virginia. And Robert Byrd was an adamant-- adamant--advocate for the filibuster. Unfortunately, he had been very supportive of using the filibuster to block civil rights bills. But, in general, he was dedicated to making sure that it stayed in place. And even he joined 99 other Senators to say: Hey, we should have a special fast track solely for reducing the deficit. That was 1974. At that same time, that same bill created the Congressional Budget Office so we would use honest numbers in putting forward spending bills because if we are going to actually reduce the deficit, we have to quit using smoke and mirrors to pretend that what we are spending is less than it really is. So let's go forward 22 years to 1996. And in 1996, we were in the middle of the first term of the Gingrich revolution. The election of 1994 had been of dramatic success for Republicans in the House, picking up dozens of seats with an agenda for America. And in that agenda was something called the line-item veto. And the line-item veto was the idea that we would delegate our constitutional responsibility of the power of the purse to the President of the United States of America and say the President can decide what is spent on what programs. And the Supreme Court said: Oh, no. You can't do that. You have a constitutional responsibility under the separation of powers. Under the checks and balances, Congress, by law, establishes what must be spent on each program, not the President of the United States. Certainly, the President gets a role. The President provides the budget. The President has to sign the spending bills. But Congress could not take the power assigned to it and simply hand it over to the Executive. That is the way you end up in a strongman state. And so the Supreme Court wiped out, in 1996--well, they canceled, if you will, the line-item veto power that Congress tried to give the President. And so the Republican team controlling the House and Senate said: Well, we have another idea, and that other idea is a balanced budget constitutional amendment. Now, that happens to require two-thirds of both bodies here to vote for it and then three-quarters of the States to do a constitutional amendment. It easily flew through the House of Representatives. All very good. It came over to the Senate, and we needed 67 votes for that, and there were 66 votes. The 67th vote was potentially the chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Hatfield from Oregon, and Senator Hatfield said: This is a bad idea. Here is why it is a bad idea. Sometimes we are at war, and we need to spend more money. Sometimes we are in recession, and we need to spend more money. And we do decide every single year, and we are in the majority, Republican majority, we decide every single year how much is going to be spent through the spending bills, the appropriations bills. And we decide through the revenue bills how much is going to be raised. So we already have the power to do a balanced budget in the years that it should be balanced, but we need to retain the power to address these emergencies. It is kind of an interesting story in that Senator Hatfield, for standing on this principle as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, was vilified--vilified--for defending the responsibility of the power of the purse held here. And, in fact, he was so vilified that he even received a message from his son-in-law with a picture of his granddaughter, saying: For her sake, you should do this. He then went to the majority leader, Senator Dole, and said: If you feel so strongly this is right, and clearly I feel it is a mistake, I will resign. And Senator Dole decided, no, we are not going to ask you to resign. We are not going to suggest that is the right answer. And so it fell one vote short. There is kind of an interesting twist to this story because Oregon did not have a law that allowed a Governor to appoint a replacement. So had Senator Hatfield resigned, there would have been 99 Senators, and then you would have only needed 66 votes for the balanced budget amendment. But that did not transpire because Senator Dole turned Senator Hatfield's offer down. So then what happened? Well, a little bit of frustration among the Republican majority. Their line-item veto had been knocked down by the Supreme Court. Their constitutional amendment had not cleared the Senate. And they said: We really want to do a massive tax bill, particularly giving huge breaks for the richest Americans. And they said: Ah, but we can't do it. We can't get it done. Why not? Because the Democrats won't agree to massive tax breaks for the richest Americans. So we won't be able to get the 60 votes we need to be able to pursue this path. And then what happened? Well, Majority Leader Dole and others conferred and said: Let's do a nuclear option. And let's take this strategy, this tool, that we created in 1974 to reduce deficits, and let's repurpose it and allow it to be used to increase deficits--of course, not at all what the 100 Senators had voted on in 1974. Well, that was pretty dramatic to proceed to take a tool, reconciliation, invented in 1974 to reduce deficits and to say it can be used to increase deficits. Well, so dramatic, in fact, that it couldn't be done unless they overturned the opinion of their Parliamentarian. So they fired the Parliamentarian. That is what the Republicans did. They fired the Parliamentarian and they brought in a new Parliamentarian and his name was Robert Dove. Now, Robert Dove had been here in 1974. He knew about why they passed this bill with 100 Senators to have a fast track with no filibuster was only for decreasing the deficits. But where had Mr. Dove been working? He had been working for the majority leader, Robert Dole. And so he took and he came in and he ruled--or provided the recommendation to the chair--that it was just fine to completely repurpose this 1974 tool called reconciliation for decreasing the deficits so it could be used to increase deficits. That was the nuclear option. Wow. Now, my colleague didn't mention any of that. He talked about lighting the fuse. Lighting the fuse, as if Democrats had been degrading the structure of this institution. But I would suggest maybe there is responsibility on both sides of the aisle. What was done in 1996 was a dramatic--dramatic--well, contravention of the very core of the understanding that every Democrat and every Republican had agreed to. It was a deal broken--deal broken--in the exercise of power politics. Or let's go forward to 2008, and this man named Barack Obama ran for President. He was a Member of the Senate, and he was elected. At that point, something dramatic happened, and that is the minority leader decided to undertake a dramatic blockade of President Obama's nominees. I mean, couldn't fill the National Labor Relations Board, couldn't get the Labor Secretary into place. The list went on and on and on. Well, Democrats didn't respond with a nuclear option. They responded with: Let's work this out. Let's preserve the supermajority on nominations. But to preserve it, we can't abuse it in this fashion. Just the number of blockades of nominations soared dramatically. This instrument that had really almost never been used on nominations, it started being used routinely on the Republican side of the aisle. That was left out of the speech you heard a few minute ago. So we negotiated. We pleaded. It was like a 9-month process. And, finally, we all met in the Old Senate Chamber--no staff present. I don't know if there was anyone to even record the comments for history, and we basically talked to each other in very real terms about let's preserve this supermajority on nominations. But it can't be that the minority uses that as a blockade against a President to keep qualified people from being put into office. An agreement was reached that that blockade would be dialed back enormously. I recall that a month or so into that, there was us on the verge of the minority blocking a very qualified individual that there was no justification for. I remember Senator McCain grabbing the arm of a fellow colleague coming down the aisle over here and saying: We mustn't do this. We agreed to not be irresponsible in blocking qualified people. And that person just got the 60 votes and went through. All good and well, like we had resolved this conflict and preserved the supermajority, until the minority leader changed his mind and said: I don't care how qualified a nominee is from President Obama for the DC Circuit Court. We are going to block anyone--anyone--from being assigned to fill those seats. Well, that was the final straw. As much as Harry Reid tried to, as majority leader, say: Back off, don't do that; that is a violation of the agreement we reached in the Old Senate Chamber, the minority leader said: No, we are not going to allow Obama to put a single justice on the DC court. A few arguments--policy arguments--were made by the minority leader to support the position. He said: I think they have enough justices already. We don't need to fill those additional positions. But that is not an argument that had ever been used here, that even though courts had a huge backlog, they didn't need the additional justices. No, it was just a plain outpower move to block the President of the United States from putting people on the DC Circuit Court. Why was that the target? Well, for one reason, the DC Circuit Court considers--a lot of the national issues go through the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. And for another, a lot of folks who eventually get nominated to the Supreme Court serve on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That makes it kind of a pretty important place. But this pretty important place where justices consider pretty important issues and sometimes have a chance to be recognized as someone who might be a good candidate for the Supreme Court was blocked by the minority. And he has made all the efforts to undo that. The minority said: No, regardless of qualifications, we are going to back up the minority leader and not allow any justices to be appointed, no matter how qualified they are. So I am just adding to the conversation that my colleague began--who proceeded to throw in kind of a dialogue of, say, all the obstruction here stems from one side of the aisle, the blue side of the aisle--I am suggesting that there have been moments where both sides have stretched their power. There have been moments when both sides have sought--and sometimes successfully--to resolve that conflict. But in the end, there have been some big moments in which the Republicans have torn down the system. That may be true for the Democrats, as well. But it might be helpful to have a more balanced conversation. And while we are at this dialogue, recognizing factors that have occurred on both sides of the aisle, let's talk about something else that never happened in U.S. history until it happened by the Republicans refusing to hold a debate and a vote on a Supreme Court nomination. It had never happened until the last year of the Obama administration when a vacancy became open due to an untimely death and the President nominated a candidate to fill that seat. And Republicans said: We are not even going to allow a debate or a vote--the first time in the history of the United States of America. I was just reading a column the other day that referred to this as the ``stolen seat.'' I noticed it because that is what I called it at the time. I said this is wrong. Once one side steals a seat from a President, it will be horrifically difficult to fix that problem because if the Democrats have the same chance to do the same and balance things out, now you just have a tradition of stealing seats. You have a Republican President and a Democratic majority that blocks debate on a nominee until the next election, hoping that you will keep that seat empty until there is a Democrat in the Oval Office. That just means we have locked in obstruction. I came to this floor at 6 p.m. and started speaking and addressed my comments to the majority leader across the aisle and the minority leader and said: Please get together. There have been several recommendations for fixing this, because if this seat is stolen in this fashion--kept empty until the next President comes in--we will never be able to fix it. There is no path for fixing it. I proceeded to make that plea through the night up until cloture ripened--that is a motion to close debate--ripened the following morning, 15\1/2\ hours later. Why would I stand on this floor 15\1/2\ hours later? Because I was asking my Republican colleagues: Do not tear down this institution. That is three examples of what the Republican side has done. It didn't come up in my colleague's speech. Let's talk about a fourth. I see my colleague from Illinois is here and I am going to defer to him. The fourth was just recently in which, for the first time ever since the 1974 act, we passed a bill--I say we passed a bill--Republicans passed on a partisan line bill, a spending reconciliation bill that will create deficits beyond a 10-year window. They had already blown up the agreement from 1974 that there could be no deficits created in a 10-year window. They blew that up in 1996, as I referred to. Then they proceeded to blow up, just weeks ago, the second half, second pillar of that deal, that there would be no deficits after that 10-year period. Then they blew up the third pillar of that 1974 act, which was: We would use honest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office in laying out what a bill costs. I say to my colleague across the aisle who was speaking before me: You pointed out things that you feel Democrats stretched the boundaries and damaged this institution, but you left out enumerable cases that I have just pointed to. Isn't it time to not do one more damage to this institution and, instead, get together a group from each side to wrestle with the issue at hand? It is my understanding that as of this moment, this day, there is almost exactly the same number of nominees that have been approved to date under the Trump administration as there were under the Biden administration, a similar number of days under his administration-- almost exactly the same number. I think the hyperbole across the aisle is profoundly exaggerated. Let me yield to my colleague from Illinois, who stands ready to share a few thoughts.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, would my colleague from Maryland yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. If I understood your presentation right, this is, word for word, exactly the same--this bill--as the amendment you proposed in the appropriations meeting.

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I can tell you I have read through it, and it looks like, to me, exactly the same. And we heard from our colleague from Wyoming that this was a Republican proposal, which you clarified that, actually, you introduced it but also observed that it was passed unanimously. So I am confused. If my colleague from Wyoming liked it so much that he wanted to claim authorship and he proceeded to say, We liked it so much, we passed it unanimously, why is he objecting now to actually getting it passed?

Mr. MERKLEY. If the Senator would yield to another question.