Harry Reid

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, has the Republicans' time expired?

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Senate is now considering the motion to proceed to H.J. Res. 117, which is the continuing resolution, postcloture. The next 2 hours will be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees with the Republicans controlling the first half and the Democrats the second half. At 2 p.m., all postcloture time will be yielded back and there will be a rollcall vote on the motion to proceed to the continuing resolution. I am hoping we can reach an agreement on our unfinished business and avoid a weekend session and a session in the early part of next week.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I haven't been able to watch all the speeches by my friends on the other side of the aisle, but I have watched enough to understand what is going on. This has been a remarkable show of hubris or arrogance from the Republican side of the aisle. One after another, the Republicans have stood to complain about how the Senate hasn't gotten a lot done. The Presiding Officer has been one of the leaders in having a more effective Senate, because my friend, the Presiding Officer, has watched what the Republicans have done. We are going to do something about it. The Presiding Officer knows that, I know that. What they have done is the very definition of chutzpah. The nerve. What nerve. They are complaining about a result that they themselves created. They have created the fact that we haven't gotten anything done. They are good at it. A bill that would allow veterans to get jobs, they stopped it on a technicality. They have conducted filibuster after filibuster, blocking one bill after another, and then they complain the Senate can't pass anything when they are the ones holding things up. The record is pretty detailed and deep, and I am not going to cover it all today because, really, it is significant. I said here yesterday, I have been the leader for 6 years. I may be off 1 or 2, but I have had to file motions to overcome 382 filibusters in 6 years. I know the Senate has changed a little bit since Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader, but during the 6 years he was the majority leader, he had to file cloture once. To think that they are here complaining we are not getting anything done when they are the ones who caused it? And we start from this point. I have to say, I appreciate the Republican leader being so candid and honest with the American people when he stood at the beginning of this Congress and said his No. 1 goal was to stop President Obama from being reelected. That is what he said. And they have legislated accordingly, stopping us from doing the most important things for this country. Measures to create jobs, they have stopped. Measures to stop jobs from being lost, they have stopped. They have done it so many times. How about this: We have lost approximately 1 million teachers, firefighters, and police officers because of Republicans stopping us from get things done, really hurting State and local government. So we over here thought it would be a good idea that we stop these significant layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police officers. We want to make sure it is paid for and we agree it should be paid for. So we said, Okay, no more layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police officers, and we are going to pay for it. How are we going to pay for it? Anyone making more than $1 million a year would have to pay a surtax of three-tenths of 1 percent. Every Republican voted against that. The Veterans Jobs bill I just talked about. The cyber security bill. The Pentagon has said the most important issue facing this country is cyber security. The National Security Agency: The most issue facing this country? Cyber security. We know, they know, the Republicans know, because they were down at the same demonstration I had of our intelligence agency showing what would happen if a cyber security attack took place in the Northeast just dealing with the power grid. We know it can happen. I have heard Senator Feinstein, the chairman of our Intelligence Committee, say several times it is not a question of if, it is a question of when. The Republicans blocked a cyber security bill, stopped it. They have conducted filibuster after filibuster, blocking one bill after another. They blocked a bill to stop outsourcing jobs--more than once. On all these TV ads that you see, we thought it would be kind of a good idea that the American people knew who was paying for these ads. But, no, twice they said let's keep them secret--Crossroads USA or whatever name they have there, all these names that sound so good. But I think we would be better served if people knew the ads were being paid by the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson from Las Vegas or Simmons from Texas who is boasting about giving $34 million to defeat President Obama. And that is what the Republican leader wants. On the passage of several small business jobs bills, one July 12, just a month or two ago; the motion to proceed to paycheck fairness, violence against women--they stopped us from going to conference on that. On April 16 they blocked a motion to proceed to a bill to reduce the deficit by imposing a minimum tax rate on high-income taxpayers, the Buffett rule, Warren Buffett. He wants to make sure he pays a tax rate comparable to his secretary's. That is what we wanted. They defeated that. They blocked many bills dealing with unnecessary tax subsidies for these large oil companies. They have held up hundreds of measures out of the Energy Committee--hundreds. It used to be we would pass those just matter-of-factly. Senator Stabenow had an amendment to decrease taxes on American businesses. She wanted to do that by extending expiring energy tax credits for energy that has created hundreds of jobs in America. They blocked the nomination for weeks and weeks of Richard Cordray to be the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. They blocked judge after judge. They blocked a motion to proceed to a bill to put workers back on the job while rebuilding and modernizing American infrastructure. It creates jobs. They blocked motions to proceed to a bill to keep teachers and first responders--in addition to the one I just talked about--and other ones. They blocked a bill to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration. This has been something we have done for 25, 30 years. They blocked it. We wanted to reduce the deficit by doing something about these outlandish subsidies we give Big Oil--blocked it. We were trying to do a bill to create jobs. We spent weeks because they wanted to dictate what women could do dealing with contraception. Then they have this little--this little deal with the House Republicans. If we work and are able once in a while to get something done over here, such as a postal bill to save our postal system, then the Republicans block it in the House. The farm bill--reduces the debt by $23 billion--they have this deal with the House and now they blocked that. China currency? The same thing; they blocked it over in the House. The record is very clear. The party of trying to defeat President Obama has done everything they can to make the economy look as bad as it can because they think if the economy is really bad, it is going to help them defeat President Obama. The middle class--we know how they feel about the middle class. That was exemplified by statements that came out in the last few days by the Presidential nominee. This morning, as I said, I wasn't able to listen to everything, but I listened to enough. One party stands for obstruction and the rich. The big lie--listen to this: How many times did we have the Republicans come to this floor and say: They have not passed a budget? I have served in this Congress for 30 years, and I have admired two people very much for their knowledge of certain things. One person I have admired dealing with the finances of this country more than anyone else is someone with whom I came to the Senate 26 years ago, Kent Conrad. Kent Conrad has come here and time and time again said: Yes, we did not pass a budget resolution because we did not need to. We passed a law. That is why the CR is going forward. We passed a law that set numbers for us. It is a big lie for them to come here and say we have not passed a budget. It is a lie. It is untruthful. My friend with whom we have served in Congress, we came the same day, the senior Senator from Arizona, I have said before, and I will say it again: I admire him. I admire his service to our country. But for him to come and say that the Senate is not working well because of the Democrats, that is one of the big lies. We have tried to legislate. They are holding up virtually everything we try to do, including the Defense authorization bill. I have been waiting for months for them to come to me with an agreement. This is part of the big game they are playing to try to make us look bad when they are the cause of it. They are the reason we have not done this legislation. We can't. We have spent weeks on matters that we would have done before in a matter of an hour or 20 minutes. Republicans are complaining about a result that they themselves caused. The Defense authorization bill--we are going to come back after the election, and we will get that done with their help. Here is the issue with Republicans, here is why suddenly they are all upset. They have been upset for some time, but really this week has been something that would upset nearly everyone because--we thought the Olympics were over, but yesterday we saw it in full go. We had Republicans running to break marathon records, sprint records to get away from their Presidential nominee because it makes it a little hard for them to have somebody running for President representing their party who says: I only have to worry about half the people in this country. We are going to continue to work to the best we can to move forward with the legislation we believe is important. We are going to come back after the election, during the lameduck. Hopefully, they will decide at that time maybe they have something better to do than try to make the President of the United States look bad. We are a very fortunate country. We have a two-party system that is the envy of the rest of the world. These parliamentary governments, they work for months and weeks and sometimes longer than that to try to form a government. We don't have to do that. We are a government of laws, and we have a system that works pretty well. But we know, based on some academic work that has been done--it is not just me talking. We have two of the foremost experts who have watched this country for more than 40 years--Thomas Mann from the Brookings Institute and Norm Ornstein from the conservative Enterprise Institute--who have said the problem with the government today is the Republicans. They said they have been here for 40 years and have never seen anything like it. I haven't seen anything like it, and I have been here 30 years. We used to work together. When I came to the Senate we had Republican Senators and Democratic Senators. We joined hands and we got things done. But now, because they are being led by someone who believes the most important thing to do is to defeat Obama, we are getting nothing done and they are following him like lemmings off the cliff.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I appreciate very much my friend from Rhode Island yielding, and I appreciate his focusing attention on something we do not focus on nearly enough--and that is a gross understatement--and that is our oceans. I admire the work he has done in so many different areas. We thought we had a path forward to do some good for oceans. It did not work out the way Senator Whitehouse and I wanted. We will come back again because we have to do something about oceans. We study everything else but not our oceans, and most everything else depends on what happens in the ocean.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, we currently have 17 district judges on the calendar, 14 reported by voice vote. For the people within the sound of my voice, what that means is they are not controversial. Twelve will fill judicial emergencies. These are places around the country where we have judges who are tremendously overworked on these important cases. We have heard this kind of joke: What are you trying to do, make a Federal case out of it? What that means is the Federal system is so good that people look at it as being the best there is as far as judicial activity. I am disappointed to say my Republican friends on the other side have informed me they will not agree on votes on any of these nominees. Republicans can offer no reason for blocking these bipartisan consensus district court nominees. I understand why they didn't want us to do circuit courts--I understand that. I may disagree, but I understand that because Democrats have set boundaries in the past, as when we would no longer accept circuit court judges. But this is district court judges. Historically, the Senate has considered district court nominees as late as October in Presidential election years. In the past five Presidential election years, Democrats have never blocked a district court nominee from receiving a vote on the Senate floor, never. But our Republican colleagues are setting new standards for obstruction, not only in all the legislation but in judges. For the 28 district court nominees we have considered this year, I filed cloture 19 times. In other words, we have had to break a Republican filibuster on 67 percent of the district judges we have considered and confirmed. President Obama's district court nominees have been forced to wait 300 percent more than President Bush's nominees; three times more. Only two people whom the President nominated this year have been confirmed. The kind of qualified consensus nominees who in years past would have been confirmed in a matter of minutes are now taking weeks and months, languishing with no action. These votes should be routine. There should not be a fight that delays action on important job measures. In September 2008, right before the last Presidential election, Democrats confirmed 10 of President Bush's district court nominees in 1 day. More than half of the Nation's population, 160 million Americans, live in the part of the country where there has been a judicial emergency declared. That means more than half the people in this country seek justice from courts and judges that are strained to the breaking point under a backlog so intense an emergency has been declared. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of course, knows I am here. He wants to be on the Senate floor, but the time did not work. He has done a remarkably good job getting the judges out. With 1 out of every 10 Federal judgeships standing vacant, Americans can no longer wait on fair and speedy trials, and that is what they have to do. They cannot rely on them. Republicans should work with Democrats to confirm consensus district court nominees now. Refusing to do so is irresponsible. The Senate could act today and put highly qualified judges on the Federal bench, judges supported by both Democrats and Republicans. I hope we can get something done before we leave. I don't want to file cloture on these nominees before the end of the year. It is not the way we should be working around here. We should be working together. I have a consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 674, 675, 676, 760, 761, 762, 818, 828, 829, 830, 832, 833, 834, 835, 875, 876, and 877; that the nominations be confirmed; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate and that no further motions be in order to any further nominations; that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record. Further, Madam President, before you rule, we have the gamut. We have California, Utah, Connecticut, Maryland, Florida, Oklahoma, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania. That is a classic, these two Pennsylvania judges. During the August recess the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania said that I am the reason the two judges from Pennsylvania have not been confirmed. Try that one on for logic. He actually said publicly that I was the reason that Matthew Brann and Edward Mannion are not being confirmed, that it is my fault. Madam President, I will finish this consent request: that the nominations be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. REID. Madam President, I am not going to prolong this much, but I would say this: No matter how we try to juggle the numbers, we still have 12 emergencies. I hope my friends on the other side would at least look at some of those emergencies and see if we could get some help for those beleaguered judges out there and the court personnel. It wasn't until May 7 of this year that we were able to vote on our first nominee for this year. They were all from last year that we did before that. I hope everyone understands we have 12 judicial emergencies. If some of these nominations were confirmed, it would take that away and make life for the court system much more fair.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a cloture motion which I ask the clerk to report with the permission of the Chair.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk as it relates to H.J. Res. 117.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a motion to commit the joint resolution with instructions, which is at the desk.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have an amendment to the instructions.

Mr. REID. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, for the last several days I have been telling everyone that we needed to do a couple of things before we leave. We have to do the CR, and we have to do the sportsmen's package. Mr. President, just a second on the sportsmen's package. If we flip through the dictionary and find the word ``bipartisan,'' part of that definition would be Tester's sportsmen's package because it is a Republican and Democratic bill. It involves hunters, fishermen, and other sportsmen, including offroad vehicles. It is a very good piece of legislation for a group of people who are totally unrecognized most of the time. We are going to do those two things before we leave. In order to bring us to that result, I will fill the tree and file cloture on the CR. Unless we get consent, the cloture vote on the CR will occur sometime after midnight on Saturday, at 1 a.m. or thereabouts. Once we invoke cloture on the CR, the 30 hours postcloture will run until 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, give or take an hour. We would vote at that time to pass the CR. Immediately thereafter we will vote to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the sportsmen's package. So here is where that leaves us: We file cloture on the CR and the motion to proceed to the sportsmen's package. That sets up two votes for very early Sunday morning in addition to tomorrow night, Saturday morning at 1 a.m. or thereabouts. We can do those votes now and finish everything today or we can wait. The choice is clear. We end up in the same place Sunday morning or we can get there today. I have had some Senators come to me and say, well, we are not going to vote on the sportsmen's package. Well, yes, they are. We have that set up. There is a clear path. The problem with the rest of the stuff is not our problem; it is the Republicans' problem. I worked something out in good faith with Rand Paul. He in good faith worked something out with me. I am not here to be a cheerleader for Rand Paul; I am here to tell everyone what happened. Now, if the Republicans don't want to vote on that, I think it would be too bad because Rand Paul, after all of this time--whether anyone agrees with what he wants to do or not--he and I in good faith worked something out. We had a number of Senators come here, including the senior Senator from Arizona to name one, who said we need more time on that. I have no problem with that. Yesterday when he said he wanted more time, I said just take the hour because Senator Paul has been here talking about this for weeks and weeks. We have heard a lot from him, and he said: I have talked a lot on this--and I am paraphrasing--and 15 minutes would be enough for me. I thought I was being generous by setting up an hour rather than 15 minutes. If the senior Senator from Arizona wants more time, I don't care. I really don't care. Also, I had some conversations with Lindsey Graham. He and Senator Lieberman have been pushing very hard on a containment resolution that deals with Iran. It is another bipartisan piece of legislation. Eighty Senators are cosponsors of it. The other 20, I bet, like it also. If not, the majority of the 20 do. It is something we overwhelmingly need to do. I think it would be good in that we are trying to work things out in Iraq, which is not stable at this time--at least not the way we want it to be. It would be nice if America had an ambassador to go to Iraq. That has been held up. With all the problems we see with Pakistan, I think it would be a good idea if we had an American ambassador to Pakistan. That has been held up for a long time. Again, to his credit, Senator Paul said have a vote on the containment resolution and have a vote on the two ambassadors. He is not standing in the way of that. Momentarily, I am going to file cloture and procedurally block any other amendments on the continuing resolution. We will vote on that whenever the Republicans want, but no later than Saturday morning at a time we will decide. When I say ``we decide,'' it is a statutory clock, and that is when it runs out. Following that, we will have a vote on final passage of the CR and a motion to proceed to Tester's sportsmen's package. That is what we have to complete. For people to try to get out their stuff is just unfair. I have seen newspaper accounts of Republican Senators who love the Tester legislation. I didn't ask them; I read it in the paper. They think it is good because it is good. It is bipartisan. It does something we have been trying to do for a long time; that is, a lot of these little bills have been held up--hundreds of them. Tester and the people who support this legislation have joined together 20 of these little bills into this one piece of legislation. It really is the right thing to do. I hope we can get this done. Remember the choice--I repeat for the third time--is very clear. We can quickly complete everything tonight or we can come back here Saturday morning in the middle of the night sometime and early Sunday morning. We will be at the same place. Those votes are going to take place. It is up to the Republicans and what they want to do with Senator Paul and the unanimous consent request they objected to yesterday.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I have a cloture motion at the desk.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum required under rule XXII be waived with respect to both cloture motions.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, the President pro tempore of the Senate is on the floor and seeks recognition.

Mr. REID. Madam President, we are going to have no more votes today-- no more votes today. It is obvious to me what is going on. I have been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious a big stall is taking place, so one of the Senators who doesn't want to be in the debate tonight will not be in the debate. He can't use the Senate as an excuse. There will be no more votes today.

Mr. REID. Madam President, we have a very important matter at 4 today. The Secretary of State is coming to address all of us as to what is going on in the Middle East and around the world. There will be intelligence officers here and a lot of other people. So I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess from 4 to 5 today to accommodate this very important Senators-only briefing.

Mr. REID. Madam President, reserving the right to object, we have had the stall for several days now. I wanted to make sure that one of the Senators who wanted to go to a debate would be able to do that tonight. So he can go now, because as I announced half an hour ago there is plenty of time to do the debate. As I have indicated before, we are anxious to finish the business we have to do this work period. I am happy to vote on the Paul amendment. I have said that. I am the one who arranged it so it is possible to vote on it. I have no regret as to having done that. I am happy to vote on the continuing resolution, something that has 80 or more sponsors. I am happy to have all these votes. In fact, we can do the debate tonight on the containment resolution and the Paul amendment. But understand this: We are not separating the vote on the CR and a piece of legislation that groups around this country have been trying to get done for years. It has been held up here. As I have said before, everything shouldn't be a fight here. The Senator from Montana, Mr. Tester, has assembled a broad package of bipartisan legislation that has wide-ranging support from Republicans. They are noted publicly in publications here saying they support it. They will vote for it. It has the support of sportsmen throughout this country. Getting to vote on this bill should not have to be a big fight. This is the sort of thing we ought to be able to simply vote on, and we are going to do that. But we are not going to separate the two. We are going to have a vote on the CR; immediately thereafter, we will have a vote on the motion to proceed to the sportsmen's bill. We can get the debate out of the way tonight. We can vote tomorrow. If not, we are going to vote tomorrow after midnight. That will take care of one vote, and the next will be sometime Sunday morning. We are not having these votes today, so everyone should understand. We are not going to do that for the reasons I have already indicated. So if we want to do this, we can do it early in the morning--that is fine with me--or we can wait until tomorrow night after midnight and then come in Sunday morning. So I object.

Mr. REID. While we are educating Senators, I would like to add a little to that. We are willing to vote on all these things, but we will do it tomorrow, not today. We want the debate to go forward. We are in very important Senate races across the country. So we will vote early in the morning, get all the debate out of the way or we will do it tomorrow night after midnight because we are not going to separate the sportsmen's bill from the rest of the stuff for obvious reasons.

Mr. REID. Madam President, there has been no new development. Everyone--Republican staff, Democratic staff, all my caucus--has known for a long time that we are going to have a vote on this sportsmen's package. This is no new development. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. REID. I have no problem with the Senator from Texas speaking. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Cornyn be recognized for up to 15 minutes; and when he completes that, the Senate go into recess for 1 hour.