Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, when freedom and democracy are threatened, we have a responsibility in this body of the U.S. Senate to speak up and speak out. It doesn't matter if it is a challenge here at home or if it is happening somewhere else around the globe; we cannot remain silent. For the past year, Burma has been descending into chaos, violence, and authoritarian military rule. So I have come to the floor here tonight, the anniversary of the Burmese military's illegal coup overthrowing the nation's democratically elected government, to call on all of my colleagues to join me in passing S. Res. 35, a resolution condemning this desecration of democracy in Burma and a year of atrocities that have followed, and urging our allies around the world to join us in doing so. I also urge this body to pass the BURMA Act, which will give President Biden the tools he needs to apply pressure to try to reverse this coup and help restore democracy. For those who are not aware of the situation in Burma, a year ago, the people of Burma took to the streets. They engaged in general strikes to peacefully protest the military's overthrow of their fledgling democracy. One woman who was part of the General Strike Committee--one of the main groups behind the protests--said she was participating because ``I have a little girl. She's one . . . I don't want her to grow up under a dictatorship like I did.'' Before taking to the streets, she told her husband: ``Take care of our baby and move on with life if I get arrested or die in this movement.'' And she finished by saying: ``We will finish this revolution on our own and not hand it over to our children.'' Early last year, the country's Parliament was expected to sign off on the recent national elections in which the leading civilian party, the National League for Democracy, and its head, Aung San Suu Kyi, had won more than 80 percent of the seats that were available. The Burmese military was never under civilian control, and it wasn't happy with these overwhelming results--these results for the National League for Democracy. They had been deluded into thinking and believing that the people of Burma supported their military policies, and so they would support a strong military role in Parliament, which the people of Burma did not. Thus, the military leaders refused to recognize the outcome of the election. They tried to have the country's supreme court throw out the results as fraudulent. And when that didn't work, they declared a national emergency and surrounded Parliament with soldiers. Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders were arrested, the nation's infrastructure was seized by the military, and, almost overnight, Burma's decade-long experiment with democracy, as imperfect as it was, was thrown out the window, and the kind of brutal military rule that had governed the country for roughly half a century was reinstated. The initial reaction from the new military junta seemed restrained. The protests were allowed to go on peacefully, but only for a little while. The restraint didn't last long. The military leaders who had been leading a brutal, yearlong genocide against the country's Rohingya Muslim minority turned to violence. They turned to violence, as they had done in 1988 and as they had done in 2007, to crush the protests. One local filmmaker in Yangon, who took it upon himself to document the protests, said that at one protest in late February, ``about 100 people marched towards us quickly. I don't know if they were police or they were soldiers. Without warning, they started shooting at us with sound bombs, [with] bullets and [with] gas bombs.'' Since then, the military's violence has escalated. They have fired rocket launchers, burned down homes, launched airstrikes, cut off food supplies to starve entire communities, and shot at unarmed civilians as they fled. Just last week, there was a report that members of the military went to one village looking for two specific individuals, one of whom was disabled. After shooting and killing these two individuals, they set fire to the entire village. According to one organization monitoring the situation, nearly 1,500 Burmese citizens have been killed since this coup began a year ago; another 12,000 arrested; with warrants issued--often death warrants issued in absentia--for another 2,000 or so. Those are just the numbers that can be verified, and who knows what the total amount is. For the Rohingya people, a Muslim population in a largely Buddhist country, the situation has only grown worse. They have been the target of military oppression and genocide. Hundreds of thousands have fled across the border. But the military has continued to crack down even more on the Rohingya population in Rakhine State--a state I visited a few years ago, leading a delegation of Senators and House Members, after the horrific genocide, when some 700,000 people fled, villages were fire-bombed from the air, and helicopters carrying soldiers shot from the air. On the ground, babies were killed in front of their parents, wives were killed in front of their husbands, husbands were killed in front of their wives, and women were raped. It was one of the most horrific genocides in hundreds of villages that occurred at that moment. But the military now, in spite of all that happened then, is enacting new draconian restrictions on freedom of movement of the Rohingya that remain in Rakhine State. They have engaged in continuous intimidation efforts. They have warned of the dangers of collaborating with rogue groups resisting the military's authority. Colleagues, the Senate cannot stay quiet in the denial of freedom and the presence of massive human rights violations in Burma. America cannot stay silent in the face of such atrocities. The world must not stay silent in the face of genocide being carried out against any group of human beings. We must make it undeniably clear to any government around the world that when you systematically persecute your people; when you deny their human rights; when you murder innocent men, women, and children; when you burn down their homes and their communities; when you starve them of food, deny them the opportunity to earn a living or even travel to the next community to see a doctor, there are consequences; that a community of nations will not stand by idly as you commit these horrendous acts; and that we in the Senate will not sit by and fail to give voice about these atrocities. So for the sake of all the Burmese people who have lost their lives in this coup, for the sake of all those striving to restore democracy, let us pass S. Res. 35, and let us do it this week--``A resolution condemning the military coup that took place on February 1, 2021, in Burma and the Burmese military's detention of civilian leaders, calling for an immediate and unconditional release of all those detained and for those elected to serve in parliament to resume their duties without impediment.'' Let's pass that resolution, and let's do it this week, the 1-year anniversary of the coup. And let us work with our allies around the globe to restore freedom in Burma and hold the perpetrators of these atrocities accountable for the crimes that they have committed.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, for the information of Senators, there will be two votes at 11:30 a.m. and two votes at 2:15 p.m., with additional rollcall votes expected.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, February 1; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Brennan nomination, postcloture; further, that all postcloture time on the Brennan nomination expire at 11:30 a.m.; that the Senate recess following the cloture vote on the Fleming nomination until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; that if cloture is invoked on the Fleming nomination, all postcloture time expire at 2:15 p.m.; finally, if any nominations are confirmed during Tuesday's session, that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to Jeffrey Warner, my State Department fellow, for the duration of his time as a fellow.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 28.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be discharged from further consideration and that the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 482.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I believe we are all familiar with the question: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, here in the U.S. Senate, we can ask the question: If we accomplish something important but fail to communicate that to our constituents, did it actually happen? The majority of the American people have so much on their plates that they are not following the intricate, daily workings of this Chamber, so they expect their Senators to speak to them on a regular basis about the work they are doing on their behalf. As the author and former Presidential speechwriter James Humes has said: ``The art of communication is the language of leadership.'' That is why each and every one of us, in turn, relies on the dedicated men and women to help us communicate with folks back home. I am here on the floor today to say farewell to a member of my team who has been so instrumental in helping me communicate to the people of Oregon. For the past now 7\1/2\ years, Ray Zaccaro has served as my communications director. What a 7\1/2\ years it has been, especially when you consider how drastically the media and communications landscape has changed in that 7\1/2\ years. We have gone from local newspapers and cable news in serving as the dominant means of mass communication to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok and others that are far too numerous for me to keep track of, but that is why we have a communications team. One day, produced video content performed the best. The next, it was suddenly selfie-style videos. Videos used to do very well on Facebook. When the algorithms changed, they didn't do so well. Then Instagram reels took off, and on and on and on. It is incredible how fast the communication world keeps changing. Since March of 2020, it has only gotten more chaotic as the pandemic has turned everything upside down, including how we consume information and how we communicate. Ray Zaccaro expertly helped me and the entire team navigate this ever-shifting media landscape. As recording studios shut down, he mobilized the communications team to quickly transition to use a vast array of tools, including Skype and Zoom, so that we could continue to get our message and timely information to the people of Oregon. That foresight and quick action are just extensions of his entire approach to communication--always challenging the members of our team to think outside the box and never being afraid to suggest new ideas, no matter how crazy they might initially seem. It doesn't matter if they work in communications or on the legislative team or with constituent services. He believes everyone on the team has a role to play in helping to develop and tell the story of what we are working to do. And he has proven right, time and time again, over the last 7-plus years. When Jeff Sessions, as Attorney General under the previous administration, gave his ``zero tolerance'' speech, I said to my team: It sounds like he is planning for a policy of tearing children out of their parents' arms down at the border, and I am sure that is hyperbole because no American administration would ever do that to children. A member of my team said: There is one way to find out. Go down there yourself. Well, Ray, who is sitting behind me on the bench, took that idea and ran with it. We went down there the following Sunday, down to Texas, and he used his cell phone to livestream our attempts to try and ascertain exactly what was happening to young boys and girls. At a detention facility in McAllen, we were the first legislative team to witness that, indeed, Team Trump was ripping children out of their parents' arms. I will never forget, as Ray and I walked into that facility, there was a group of press outside who said: What are you going to find? I said: I have no idea, but I will talk with you all when we come out. Ray and I went in and saw those children in cages. And as we were being given a tour, I remember this group of young boys who were in one of the cages. They were being asked to line up--there were about 10 of them--from the shortest to the tallest, and the youngest was knee-high to a grasshopper. He was just maybe 4 years old. I asked: Where did these young boys come from? He said: Well, we brought them in that door over there, and we took them away from their parents. And in that warehouse room, the parents were in other cyclone fence cages. And if the boys peered really hard, they might possibly see a parent or a sister, a father or mother, an uncle somewhere in that warehouse, but they had no idea what fate awaited them. We went outside and talked to the press outside and told them what was happening. And in a flash, it was national news about what was going on by our government in their treatment of young children. We went up the road to Brownsville. We had heard that there were a few hundred boys possibly being held in a former Walmart. I thought that was an astounding story, not possibly true, but should we go and check it out? Ray and I decided we would. We went up to this former Walmart. It had barriers to keep you from parking in the former Walmart parking lot so we walked across the grounds to the door, where, by cell phone, I called up the number that was inside and said: We are here. I am a U.S. Senator, and we would like to have a tour, please, of your facility, if we could speak with your manager or your manager could come out and talk with us. Eventually, the manager did come out. His assistant had said he would be talking to us, but, actually, what he did was he called the police. And he didn't come out until the police cars were arriving. I think Ray, who was livestreaming the whole thing, secretly wanted me to be arrested and carried off in handcuffs to magnify the impact of the story. I am sorry, Ray, that it didn't come to that, but the story had a tremendous impact. They would not let me into that Walmart to see what was going on, but the national scandal that ensued in the days that followed meant the press of the United States of America got in the following weekend, and a national debate started about who are we as citizens of the United States of America and who is our government and what are we doing to these children? It turned out there were not a few hundred boys in that facility; there were a few boys short of 1,500 in that single former Walmart. The work that Ray did that day revealed the truth of Trump's actions and shocked this Nation and moved this Nation to action. Horrified, as we continued to learn about the realities of the situation, Ray kept up the drumbeat with his contacts in the media throughout months that followed to ensure that that story of traumatized children and how we can help them continued, and those children were never forgotten. Let me be clear. It wasn't just the power of the story or the opportunity to get his boss--me--on television; he kept up the drumbeat because he is a passionate person who cares deeply about others. Countless members of Team Merkley could recount stories about a time when Ray went out of his way to help them, to provide comfort and support when they were going through a difficult moment in their lives, or just a call to check in on how someone is doing or a full-blown Italian feast delivered to the home of a fellow team member grieving the loss of a loved one. And as his work with those migrant children separated from their parents at the border showed, he doesn't have to know you personally to care deeply. One time Ray was out with me in Oregon for a series of townhalls, and a constituent showed up who was having a personal crisis. Ray went out of his way to make sure that man got the help he needed, while still continuing to do the other aspects of his job: attending to members of the media, guiding and supporting staff in their respective tasks, and ensuring that the constituent had everything he needed. That is just who he is, the type of person who will drop everything if someone needs help, who will offer up his own apartment so his boss can come film an important, last-minute video when the planned location fell through. I couldn't begin to count how many late nights and early mornings we spent together sitting for media interviews. I am thinking right now, here on the floor of the Senate, of a night a few years ago, when I was here through the night, speaking for over 15 hours straight to protest the theft of a Supreme Court seat by our former President and then- Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Throughout the night, there was Ray, in between running back and forth to the office to take calls from reporters and producers, returning to flip floor charts as my speech proceeded. Thank you, Ray, for all that you have done for the team, for the people of Oregon, and for the people of this Nation. Thank you for your tireless efforts to utilize communication tools at our disposal to protect our democracy and enhance the important issues that face our Nation, from healthcare to housing, to education, to living-wage jobs, to equality of opportunity, to taking on climate chaos. Thank you for bringing the passionate and longstanding commitment to democratic politics and principals that were forged in your early experiences back home in Long Island, and you brought them to Capitol Hill. It is hard to picture what our Team Merkley experience will be after you leave because you have been such an integral part for so long. But know that while you will be deeply missed, we all wish you nothing but the best in this next chapter of your life as you continue fighting to build a better world. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Excuse me. Go ahead.

Mr. MERKLEY. To my colleague from West Virginia, the challenge that we have today is that, in the course of Senate debate, it is never possible to get to a debate on the final question. And the proposal that the majority leader is putting forward is saying it is time to get to that final debate, and on that final debate every Senator can speak twice. I can tell you, leadership on both sides probably is nervous about the idea of 100 Senators speaking twice, at length, but the single innovation of the talking filibuster is to say that there will be a period of debate in which we will consider final passage with all four of the mechanisms that currently exist, three that were created at the foundation--and that is the break in debate and that is the two-speech rule and that is unanimous consent and the 60 votes that was created in 1975.

Mr. MERKLEY. What we are voting on now is to go to final passage with continuous debate, and the majority leader's team has crafted this to ensure continuous debate.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I compliment my colleagues from Maine and Georgia for engaging in perhaps the most substantive exchange I have ever witnessed in 13 years here in the Senate. (Applause.) Earlier this evening, one of my colleagues from across the aisle said: Why are we going down this road? And there have been similar questions: Why is this so important? Why is this bill so important? I will answer simply this: that dark money corrupts elections. If you and I donate more than $200 to a campaign, we record it, but if extraordinarily wealthy individuals donate hundreds of millions of dollars, they can do it with no attribution, corrupting the elections across this country. Gerrymandering corrupts the system of equal representation. From the earliest debates in this Chamber, it was recognized that each of us has a stake in the integrity of the elections in other States so that the people of the United States experience equal representation. We do not have equal representation in the House today, and the gerrymandering going on now will increase that corruption. Third and most importantly, the power to vote is the most significant right, guaranteeing each citizen a voice in the direction of our democracy. It is the soul of what it means to be a democratic republic. That power to vote is also the most important check in our system of checks and balances. With rigged elections, leaders leaning toward autocracy can keep themselves in power, but with fair elections, undergirded by a free press, the people can vote out those autocratic leaders who ignore laws and undermine our institutions. It is the most important check in maintaining the integrity of our beloved Republic. Let's go back in time. The rules of the Senate were forged in the Confederation Congress experience. Our Founders were engaged, during the time they were writing our Constitution, in participating in the Confederation Congress that required a vote of 9 out of 13--two-thirds plus a bit--in order to pass any law. It prevented them from being able to pay the pensions of our veterans, and it prevented them from raising money for Shays' Rebellion. Our Founders who participated in that process said: This supermajority has paralyzed our ability to act. With that in mind, they wrote our Constitution so that legislation would be passed by a simple majority; that at the end of the debate, when all perspectives were duly considered, the perspective favored by the larger number would be accepted rather than the perspective favored by the smaller number. So our Founders, leaving nothing to chance, warned us in their writings: Never adopt a supermajority. They said--and I will quote James Madison--that when ``the general good might require new laws . . . the principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: [It would be] the power transferred to the minority.'' He went on to say the result would be ``particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences.'' Hamilton said many similar things. ``If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of the majority,'' the result will be ``tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible . . . compromises.'' He noted that the ``[supermajority's] real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government.'' Anyone who has seen the energy drained out of this Chamber by nothing happening day after day after day when we have important issues to face can understand just how right the Founders were. So in writing up the guidelines and the vision for the initial Senate, our leaders came up with a Senate code, and that Senate code was, hear all perspectives--in fact, guaranteeing in rule IV of the original rules that every Senator would have the right to speak twice to a question. In addition, they put into the rules a previous question just in case they couldn't get the debate to wrap up so they could get to that all- important vote to determine where the greater number stood. Thomas Jefferson put into the rule book, the manual for the rules in 1801: ``No one is to speak impertinently or beside the question, superfluously or tediously.'' Hear the debate, consider all perspectives, and take the option the greater number favored. That Senate code endured in a powerful fashion for a very long time. In 1806, Aaron Burr was rewriting the rules, and he said: You know, we have never needed to use the previous question rule in the book because we hear every one, we hear those perspectives, we take a vote, and we go forward. So we don't need the previous question. And it was dropped from the rule book. When I hear the folks say the Senate never had a simple majority to close debate--they had the Senate code, and they had a rule, and then they said: We don't need the rule because we have the Senate code. That code continued to endure, and the full understanding of the Members of this Chamber was they had no right to prevent the Senate from getting to a final vote. That code was so powerful that in the mid-1800s, when Senators started to speak at length in order to make it very difficult to get to a final vote, the press called it piracy. You may wonder, where did the term ``filibuster'' come from? That term is a corruption of the term ``freebooter,'' the term for ``piracy.'' The piracy was Senators breaking the Senate code. That was the piracy. But, still, it happened on rare occasion, and the code was stretched but not really broken through the 1800s, except on civil rights. What happened in our history on civil rights? Well, you had John C. Calhoun leading the nullification movement that said: Hey, States don't have to accept any given Federal law. They can choose and pick which ones they want. Initially, that nullification movement was in order to block laws that put tariffs on imported products that strengthened the North and cost more funds to the South, increased the prices of goods, but then it turned to the question of protecting slavery. Nullification continued and even went so far as to say States should have the right to secede if they don't like those Federal laws. Then we had a civil war over that question, and that was the end of nullification, but it was not the end of attacks on civil rights. So what did we see after the Civil War? We saw a group of States make it harder for individuals to register to vote. We saw a group of States make it hard for Black Americans to get public accommodations. We saw a group of States make it easier to reenslave Black Americans under the Black code, utilizing the slavery clause of the 13th Amendment. Congress responded, the House responded, this Senate responded and said: No. We are here to defend the Constitution, that every person is created equal, and every person's rights must be protected. That is what this Chamber, the Senate, did in 1875. The House passed the Civil Rights Act on public accommodations, guaranteeing access to all public accommodations for all Americans. The House voted 152 to 99. It came to the Senate, and the Senate voted 38 to 26, a simple majority. Although there were Senators here who desperately hated public accommodation bills because it would end discrimination in the South, they did not filibuster because the Senate code said that after all views are heard, you can hold a simple majority vote. The Senate code held, but it didn't hold in 1891. In 1890, Henry Cabot Lodge, down the hall in the House, introduced what became known as the Lodge bill. It said: In order to protect the foundation of our Nation, there can be Federal supervision upon request to make sure registration is fair, to make sure the voting process is fair, and to make sure the counting process is fair. The bill came here to the Senate, and a bipartisan group filibustered that bill, southern Democrats and western Senators known as the Silver Senators. They were anxious to get onto a bill about silver coinage to support the silver mining in the West. That bill was eventually tabled. In 1891, the Senate code was broken on civil rights and continued to be broken through 1965. In 1922, the Dyer Anti-Lynching Act was filibustered. In 1934, the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching act was filibustered. In 1942, the anti-poll tax bill that put a price on being able to access the ballot box--it was filibustered. And on and on. With the exception of a 1-week delay in a bill for arming commercial ships in 1917, virtually every filibuster denied Black Americans the right to vote because in lieu of nullification, there had to be a strategy for certain Senators to make sure that Black Americans didn't get their civil rights. That is the sorry chapter of that part of our American history. Three generations through it, 1965 paid the price of denying opportunities. The Senate code on every other issue essentially survived until 1971, within our lifetimes. In 1971, we started to see the filibuster go to not just 1 or 2 filibusters a year but to 12, a dozen--imagine that-- and in 1974 to 32. That was just so outrageous because each one takes up a week, and so this Senate said: That is unacceptable, so we must reform the rules. It led to the March 1975 rule reform where they went from two-thirds of those voting to 60 Members voting. Well, the result is, that law backfired. To quickly look at it, cloture on amendments--each one taking up a week--expanded from some 6 times in the entire decade of the 1960s to 143 times in the 2010s. For a motion to proceed, which is the ability to prevent debate from ever happening--the filibuster to promote debate was used to kill debate on the motion to proceed. It was used 10 times in the 1960s and 175 times in the 2010s. And, on nominations, it went from once in the 1960s to 545 times in the 2010s. How did it happen that it expanded in the 2010s? Well, it happened because a Republican minority decided that they were going to obstruct as many of President Obama's nominations as possible. And the Democrats did the same thing to President Trump. Each one of these takes up a week, an intervening day, 30 hours of debate, another hour of debate for every other Senator who wants to speak who didn't get to--every single one. So when you have over 100 of these a year, it is impossible to have a Senate that works. The Senate has been broken. And perhaps the top champion of breaking the Senate is the minority leader, who has engaged in the tactic of delay and obstruction, arguing he wanted to make sure--his top priority was making sure President Obama was never reelected, and stopping him from having an agenda and stopping him from putting people into office was the strategy. And Democrats took much the same approach to President Trump. So we have both done it, but the Senate is blown up now. In that original Congress, the Senate, the first term, it said there were about four Cabinet members to confirm, plus Ambassadors and some judges--four. We have over a thousand positions now. It is completely out of sync. The gears don't match. And every time there is a filibuster on a nomination, it is another week lost. So the Senate is now paralyzed because here is the interesting prospect and the unfortunate reality of 60 votes. The interesting prospect is that a majority of less than 60 has to reach out to the minority to get something done. And that sounds like it is going to increase cooperation and negotiation, but the unfortunate reality, in our tribal, partisan politics, is the minority looks at that and says: If we can hold 41 Senators from agreeing to close debate, we can paralyze the majority. The overwhelming impact is paralysis and accentuation of partisanship of our current filibuster. Today's debate, it is not about filibuster versus no filibuster; it is about fixing a broken Senate. It is about the difference, as my colleague from Virginia has said, from the secret, no-show filibuster to the public, talking filibuster. Before 1975, people who wanted to extend debate had to actually debate. What a notion. They had to show up. And that is painful and difficult to maintain continuous debate, and so there is an incentive to negotiate. But when there is a no-show, no-effort filibuster, where those who say they want to debate are off on vacation because 60 votes is required with or without them, there is no incentive to negotiate. So if you believe the Senate should be a place that encourages negotiation, we need a public filibuster, not a secret, silent filibuster. If you believe that the public should be able to participate in our process, we need not a secret, silent filibuster but a public, talking filibuster. We are here, day after day, week after week. We are debating the issue. We are raising amendments. We are considering amendments. And what is the result? The citizens weigh in. They say: Finally, they are considering it. Finally, they are debating it. Finally, they are going to take a vote. Now we can weigh in effectively in this moment. So this is about restoring, reinvigorating debate, restoring the public role, creating an incentive to negotiate, creating an incentive for both sides to work to reach an accommodation. Now, my Republican friends have made much today of Democrats signing a letter saying that they are determined to ``preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate''--interesting--``preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate.'' To preserve the ability to engage in extended debate means we need the talking, public filibuster, not the secret, silent filibuster which requires no debate at all. So, to my Republican colleagues who signed this letter, this is your opportunity to do what you said. Vote for the principle that the majority leader is going to be laying out forthwith. So, colleagues, if you believe in the Founders' vision of this Senate, of hearing everyone and hearing everyone well but eventually getting to a final bill; if you believe in the Senate code, which stood up for so long, not even needing a rule to enforce it, except for civil rights it held up through 1971; if you want more debate and you want people who want a debate to have to show up to debate, support the talking filibuster. If you believe there should be an incentive for both the majority and minority to negotiate, support the talking filibuster. If you believe the public should have the ability to see us debating issues, then support the talking filibuster. My colleagues have said: We must defend the minority leverage. Amen to that. That is why, in 2011, I put forward in this Chamber the talking filibuster and said we need to defend the minority's right to participate. Today, we have another opportunity to defend the minority's participation, to speak at length for at least twice on any given question, on through a complex bill. But that, colleagues, depends upon ending the era of the secret, silent source of partisanship and paralysis that we currently have and replacing it with the talking, public filibuster. I encourage you all to stand today for the Senate to work and for the Senate, most importantly, to defend the fundamental rights of every American to access the ballot box.

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you. I am struck by your comment that in all previous situations, the rules have been modified by a change in the rules that has been done through the rules process because--I would encourage you to read up on your Senate history--it is just not the case. In fact, under Senator Byrd's leadership, nine times this Chamber changed the interpretation of existing rules, and they didn't do it through a formal rules change process. They did it with an interpretation of the Chair being sustained or by reversing the interpretation of the Chair. And you have been here when a nuclear option modified the rules. Your party led the effort to change the requirement for closing debate on the Supreme Court. And you have been here--or I think you were here; your colleagues were here--when they changed the rule, not by changing the rule formally but by reinterpreting it through a nuclear option, in regard to decreasing the number of hours for debate on district judges. It also goes back to the fact that your team changed the rules, without going through the formal rule process, on how reconciliation is done in order to be able to do tax cuts for the rich. And then Kent Conrad, on our side, advocated the change back, and your side, in preparation for the Trump tax cuts in 2017, changed the rule again. So at least let us understand that both sides--Democrats and Republicans--have resorted to reinterpreting the rules on various occasions. Just a point of clarification that your statement was wrong.

Mr. MERKLEY. A felony.

Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator yield?

Mr. MERKLEY. That would be--had we gotten to the bill and been able to engage in----

Mr. MERKLEY. To my colleague from West Virginia, your question is, What are the characteristics that define continuous debate on final passage? And it is defined as without interruptions that take us in other directions than the question of final passage of the bill.

Mr. MERKLEY. The vision, the vision of this----

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator from Iowa yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. I do appreciate your response, and it is so rare that we actually have any dialogue on the floor of the Senate. It is one of the things we lost. I do recall in that moment that, for over a year, we had working groups trying to resolve the extraordinary level--the new level--of cloture motions on President Obama's nominations. It concluded in a meeting in the Old Senate Chamber where the agreement was reached to stop doing that. And then, as you point out, Mitch McConnell came to the floor and said: It doesn't matter the quality of the individual who is nominated. I will not let any judge be considered for these three vacancies. That is a completely unprecedented new element that is brought in to bear on that particular conversation. That is just to, kind of, illuminate some of the details that were left out. I was struck by another thing you said, which is that the filibuster is not a relic of Jim Crow. I was struck about that because from 1891 through 1965--so we are talking over 80 years--the only thing that was blocked in the U.S. Senate by filibuster was civil rights for Black Americans. Given that, wouldn't you say it is fair for us to say that the filibuster in that history was, indeed, a relic of Jim Crow?

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you for answering and responding to my questions. I appreciate that.

Mr. MERKLEY

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