Harry Reid

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:30. Senators during that period of time will be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. At 5:30 we have two rollcall votes, the first on the confirmation of the Krause circuit court judge and the next will be on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2363, the Hagan sportsmen's bill. Measure Placed on the Calendar--S. 2562 I am told S. 2562 is due for its second reading.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I object to any further proceedings with respect to this bill.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, a lot of people within the sound of my voice will not understand what I speak about, which is having an emergency brake or a parking brake on a car. It used to be standard procedure. People would pull out the emergency brake, and 99 percent of the time people would remember to release it before they took off, but sometimes people would forget and that car would still go forward, but it didn't go forward very well. In fact, it would start smoking--``Oh, I forgot to turn that off.'' So emergency brakes, what do they have to do with us in the Senate? What it has to do with us is that it appears the Republicans in the Senate have intentionally left on the emergency brake. For everything we try to do, it is similar to when we used to drive a car and have the emergency brake on. It doesn't move right. It moves very slowly. Throughout President Obama's time in office, the Republican leadership in the Senate has done its best to keep the brakes engaged, slowing any effort to legislate on even the most bipartisan bills. We should be passing legislation that strengthens our economy and protects working families instead of wasting hundreds of hours--hundreds of hours--as we struggle to perform one of our most basic duties, confirming Presidential nominees. Last year, in response to unprecedented--I repeat, unprecedented-- Republican obstruction, the Senate was forced to change its rules to ensure that some of the President's nominees received the up-or-down vote they deserve. I am so happy that change was made. It has allowed the Senate to make substantial progress on one of its primary functions. Positions that were once vacant for months--even years--are now staffed with qualified and competent public servants. In spite of our having changed the rules, the Republicans are still continuing to try to slow everything down. Again, the brakes are on, and they only have one reason I can come up with for doing this. It is not that they dislike the President's nominees; it is that they want to do everything they can to slow down his administration, to make him look bad and to make Senate Democrats look bad, because they believe that even though they are the cause of the obstruction everybody will say: The Democrats control the Senate, why aren't they doing more? We can't do more because they have put on the brakes, even though we changed the rules and are moving through judges especially very quickly. For the viewing audience, on a judge they can only stall for 1 hour, and they usually do. On circuit court judges they get 30 hours, and they take up all of those 30 hours, even though they wind up voting for the judge. On Cabinet nominations they get 30 hours. On subcabinet officers they get 8 hours. That is in the rules. We changed some of the rules, but we didn't change that. In hindsight--we will have to wait and see. If they are going to continue this, we will have to take another look at that. It is outrageous what they have done. We have made substantial progress, as I have said, on one of our primary functions. The Senate is continuing its progress confirming these nominees in spite of the Republicans putting up roadblock after roadblock. Instead of seeing how their needless obstruction has hurt our country and working with us to confirm these vital nominations, the Republican leadership has responded with what can only be described as a temper tantrum, I guess. I don't know what else to call it. We have already established that they are trying to do it to make us look bad and the President look bad, but think what it is doing and what it has done to our country. They are mad about a lot of things, I guess. The No. 1 thing they are mad about is Obama was reelected. Remember, Frank Luntz called a meeting here 3 days after Obama was first elected. He said: We have two things we are going to do--and all the Republican big shots were here-- No. 1, we are going to make sure Obama isn't reelected. That was a flop. No. 2, we are going to oppose everything the President wants, and that is what they have done and continue to do. I have said this before and I will say it again. The first Congress we had a lot of Democrats--58, 59, and for a short period of time we had 60--and we had some moderate Republicans with whom we could work, but they are gone except Susan Collins. They are gone. So even though that first Congress was extremely productive, the next two have been thwarted by the obstructionism we have encountered for everything we have tried to do. The Republican leader is obviously now resorting to a tactic that I guess they decided to do in the Frank Luntz meeting; that is, just trying to run out the clock. As in a football game, if there is only 1 minute left to go, they say let's just run out the clock or a basketball game or, as we saw over the last few weeks, a soccer game. Stall it. We are ahead. It is tied. That is where we need to stay. They are just trying to run out the clock. Instead of killing time on the scoreboard, the Republican leader is using the cloture clock to kill the remaining 6 months of this Congress. They want just to go away, preventing nominees from getting confirmed and thwarting Democrats from passing legislation that is good for the middle class. Would it be good for the middle class to raise the minimum wage? Of course. It would be great. Would it be good for the American public to have it so my daughter, for instance, if she does the same job your son does, that they get paid the same amount of money? They filibustered that. They stopped that. How about student loans? Student loans are the highest debt in America today--almost $1.3 trillion--and we tried to remedy that, make it better for students and of course their families who are paying and have paid over the years for these large loans. Filibuster; extended unemployment benefits, filibuster. So they are doing this to make the President look bad, make us look bad, but they are still running out the clock. That is what they are trying to do. Again, so people understand, we get cloture with a simple majority. They can stall for many hours. As I said, circuit court judges get 30 hours, nominees for Cabinet posts get 30 hours, 8 hours for subcabinet, and only an hour on other judges. If we take a close look at how they have utilized the time we have wasted--let's say the last 2 months the Senate has been in session--Senate Republicans have forced us to waste almost 10 days, more than half the time we have been in session. They have wasted 236 hours in order to slow the confirmation of President Obama's nominations--236 hours. Of those 236 hours, Senate Republicans have used 5 hours to actually come to the Senate floor and debate the qualifications of these nominees. The rest of the time we sit, as the viewing public sees, in these quorum calls, where we do nothing. For every hour they have debated these nominations, the Senate Republicans have wasted 46 hours just killing time. Mr. President, 5 hours out of 236 hours is the time they have actually used. To further highlight the absurdity of their obstruction, the Republicans have voted overwhelmingly to confirm most all of these same nominees they have obstructed and filibustered. So far this year Republicans have blocked immediate confirmation of 22 nominations they later voted unanimously to confirm. Why are they blocking these nominations they all support? They just want to slow things down. They want everybody to look bad. They know they are not in control--that is what the American public feels--even though they have all of these rules they force procedural gimmicks we have to work our way through. There is no other way to look at what Republicans are doing. This is obstruction for obstruction's sake. The Republican leader is desperate to keep this emergency brake on, hoping that by slowing down every Senate process imaginable, he can run out the remaining 6 months and damage Obama. The harm it does to our country, I guess, is not in their calculation. He is playing a very dangerous political game at the expense of this great country and of course the American taxpayer. The Senate currently has a backlog of 131 nominees who have been languishing on the Senate calendar for an average of 281 days--281 days. It is particularly outrageous that they are stopping us from confirming noncontroversial career Foreign Service officers and ambassadors. What does this mean, a career Foreign Service officer? The Presiding Officer has been in government a number of years. He has been Governor of one of the larger populated States in the country. He has been in the U.S. Senate. The Presiding Officer has seen--I am convinced of this--young men and women who decide they want to go into the Foreign Service. They are the brightest of the brightest. They do extremely well in school. They have these tests they have to pass, written and oral. They speak and learn many different languages. They have been waiting their whole career to be named an ambassador. It is a huge thing. It is like being selected to go to the Super Bowl or to be on the Pro Bowl team. But when it comes time to get this position they have worked for for their whole career, they are being held up. These are ambassadors to places that need American diplomats. You need a boss. Twenty, 25 percent of the ambassadorial spots in Africa they have blocked. These are not political nominees. Most of them are career nominees. They are Republicans and Democrats. When these ambassadors are chosen, they are not chosen based on their political party. They are chosen on merit. We have places such as Honduras, Qatar, Vietnam where we do not have ambassadors. They are even blocking the Department of Defense, the Navy, the Air Force. They are at the mercy of the Republican leader's clock-killing obstruction. American interests abroad and the defense of our Nation are forced to take a back seat while Republican leadership hopes to make political gains by running out this clock. So after having returned from the Fourth of July--this country's birthday--I urge Republicans to stop this needless obstruction. What is to be gained by needlessly grinding the Senate to a halt? The only thing I can see is they think they are going to hurt President Obama, who they are so upset because he got reelected and reelected very easily. I say to them, if you oppose a nominee, let's have a debate on the nomination and then vote. Do not delay a vote on a career Foreign Service officer who has worked his or her entire life to become an ambassador. Do not delay national security personnel who are needed to protect our Nation. Do not delay key staff people at the Cabinet level from doing their work for the American people. I do not expect Republicans to give their unanimous consent to every nominee on the calendar. Rather, Senate Democrats are asking that Republicans legislate in good faith. Let's look at these. If there is something wrong with them, let's debate them. If nominees are deserving of their unanimous support--and most of them come out of the committees unanimously--why waste the Senate's time by blocking confirmation of these individuals? There is no reason for doing that. We have so much to address over the coming weeks. We are going to vote on the sportsmen's bill tonight. We have the highway bill, the emergency supplemental, manufacturing legislation. We are going to do something about the Hobby Lobby legislation we need to correct. There is so much we have to do. We have terrorism insurance. We have to do that. The Export-Import Bank, we have to do that. But we are being stopped from doing all of that. We have more than enough to keep us busy. That is an understatement. So what we are doing, instead of doing the things necessary for the American people, is we are being forced, because of the obstruction of the Republicans, to sit here and struggle through a few nominations that we can work out by spending 8 hours on this one, 4 hours on that one, 30 hours on this one. It is really unfair to the American people. Reservation of Leader Time Mr. President, would the Chair announce the business of the day.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. REID

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

Mr. REID

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

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 495, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 496.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 8, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business for 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the Republicans controlling the final 30 minutes; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2363, the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act, postcloture; further, that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; and finally, that all time during adjournment, recess, and morning business count postcloture.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it adjourn under the provisions of S. Res. 496 as a further mark of respect to the memory of the late Alan John Dixon, former U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a fellow in the office of Senator Al Franken, Karen Saxe, be granted floor privileges from July 7, 2014, to July 31, 2014.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 384, S. 2363, the Hagan Sportsmen's legislation.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks and those of the Republican leader, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until noon, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. Order of Procedure Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the previous order with respect to the Krause nomination be modified so that the Senate will proceed to executive session at 11:45 a.m. and vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Krause nomination, with all previous provisions remaining in effect.

Mr. REID. At 11:45 a.m., the Senate will vote on the nomination of Cheryl Ann Krause to be U.S. circuit judge, and that will be a cloture vote. She has been nominated by the President for the Third Circuit. At 1:45 p.m., we will confirm several additional nominations, but we expect to have only one rollcall vote at that time. Measure Placed on the Calendar

Mr. REID. Mr. President, H.R. 3301, I am told, is due for a second reading; is that true?

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I object to any other proceedings at this time.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, the late comedian Leslie Nielsen said: ``Doing nothing is very hard to do . . . you never know when you're finished.'' Perhaps that is the case with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. They just don't know when to finish doing nothing on immigration reform. Today marks the 365th day that the tea party-driven House of Representatives has sat on their hands refusing to fix our broken immigration system. The Senate was able to pass immigration reform 52 weeks ago because both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate understood the urgent need to amend our Nation's immigration laws. Yet for 12 months--52 weeks--radical Republicans in the House have refused to address the real issues affecting the American immigration system. Instead of obsessing over the President's deportation policies, they should pass this legislation. They have made it clear they will not act on immigration reform until they can trust the President--whatever that means--to enforce the law. The bill that passed the Senate 52 weeks ago has the most stringent border security measures in the history of the world. What we have agreed to do with the border is unbelievable. So any complaint about border security is just not well taken. It appears to me the Republicans want more deportations and more families torn apart. Do they also want more debt? Immigration reform will reduce the debt by $1 trillion. Is the immigration platform by the extremists in the Republican Party to deport first and find solutions later or never? I guess that is what it is. Recently, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa circulated a letter demanding that President Obama end a program that prevents young people with longstanding ties to America from being deported. He offers no plan to solve our Nation's immigration quandary or to keep families together--just more deportations. There is not anyone who believes this country can fiscally or physically deport 11 million people. The bill Congress passed many years ago in 1985--I guess is when it was--didn't work. It allowed people to come here without proper documentation. We tried a program, and it simply hasn't worked--employer sanctions. It doesn't matter how we got to where we are; we have to change things. We must have comprehensive immigration reform. Again, Congressman Issa offers no plan to solve our Nation's immigration quandary or keep families together--just more deportations. They are running out of excuses. Congressman Issa and Republicans have gone so far as to turn a humanitarian crisis at our Nation's southern border into a political game. The people coming from Central America to America are trying to escape a war-torn and poverty-ridden country. Yesterday, the Republicans reached a new low by accusing these kids--some of them 3 years old--of lying about the reason they have come to the United States. They are fleeing violence, extreme poverty, and they are coming because they are scared. They are afraid. These children are vulnerable and need to be reunited with their parents, and that is what we are trying to do. Our Nation cannot deport our way out of this problem. Immigration reform is about families, and we are not the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. We, as a nation, value families and see the family structure as a cornerstone of our communities. Undocumented immigrants, regardless of how they got here and why they lack the proper documentation, are our neighbors and our classmates. As I have just explained, there are 11 million people, and they play a crucial part in our economy and the communities where they live. I don't know why the House Republicans don't realize that. If they did, they would be working to fix our immigration system. Waiting 52 weeks? They have done nothing for 365 days. They claim to be working on jobs bills and legislation to reduce the debt. If that is the case, why don't they do something about raising the minimum wage? Why don't they do something about extended unemployment benefits? Why don't they do something about making it so my daughter, my wife, and daughters and wives and mothers all over America get paid for doing the same work men do? That would be good for the economy. How about student debt. Why don't they do something about the debt students have--$1.3 trillion. Yesterday or the day before Senator Durbin spoke about a company that went bankrupt. They have one school in Nevada. It is a for-profit school that has been ripping off young men and women--some not so young--for years. Senator Durbin said more than 90 percent of all the income that institution got came from Federal loans, and the default rate is extremely high. Why don't we do something about student debt? The fact is the Senate-passed immigration bill reduces the deficit and spurs the economy more than all the House bills currently awaiting Senate action combined. I urge my Republican friends and the Republican leadership in the House to stop doing nothing and bring immigration reform to a vote. As the comedian said: ``Doing nothing is very hard to do . . . you never know when you're finished.'' Maybe that is the problem with them. Perhaps now is the time for newly appointed House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, who comes from Bakersfield, in the State of California, where comprehensive immigration reform is certainly necessary, to take a position on immigration reform. Will he bring the Senate-passed bill to a vote? If not, what does he propose? Republicans in the House have a choice of allowing a vote on commonsense immigration reform in July or certainly be the ones to blame for not doing it. There is certainly a lot of blame to go around, and it is all focused in one direction. The Republicans in the House have wasted enough time already. Bring this legislation before the House for a vote. It would pass overwhelmingly. I would bet we could get a majority of the Republican votes, and of course it would get 90 percent of the Democratic votes over there. It has enough bipartisan support to pass. So let it come up for consideration. This is a democracy. Let them have a vote. Americans want us to fix this Nation's broken immigration system. So let's do it and do it now. Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, as the distinguished Republican leader has said, this body--the U.S. Senate--has lost a member of its family, Tennessean Howard Baker. We know of his long and distinguished career. He served three terms in the Senate. He served as minority leader and ended his career as majority leader. He was an earnest man and worked with any and all Members of this body in passing legislation for the good of America. As the Republican leader has mentioned, he worked under the direction of President George W. Bush as Ambassador to Japan. He was President Reagan's Chief of Staff. He was someone who could do everything. He was well liked by Democrats and Republicans. He was a fine man. I did not know him as well as my colleague the Republican leader or of course the two sitting Tennessee Senators. He enjoyed an illustrious career in public service and it was accomplished, everyone said, by his hard work. He loved foreign affairs and did a great job. He was motivated by his heartfelt desire to do good in the world. Our thoughts go to his family and his wife, whom I had the good fortune to serve with. I do say this: The two fine men who now serve in the Senate from Tennessee, I am confident, learned a lot from Howard Baker because the senior Senator from Tennessee is also a person who wants to try to work things out. The junior Senator from Tennessee and I have had many conversations. I believe he also wants to be someone who works things out. So my sympathy goes to Senator Baker's family and friends, especially the two Senators from Tennessee, who I am sure are heartbroken as a result of the loss of their mentor, friend, one of the great people to come out of Tennessee, and there have been plenty. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I yield back the time.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the time be yielded back.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the time be yielded back.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the time be yielded back.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the time be yielded back.