Thom Tillis

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that any Members or staff in the Chamber at this time be allowed to applaud for a period of up to 30 seconds.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about the vote that we are about to move to here shortly. It sounds like motherhood and apple pie--the Social Security Fairness Act. Who could be against Social Security fairness? The fact of the matter is, the policy does address a challenge with Social Security for a single-digit percentage of people who have a pension--a government pension program--and they are not necessarily getting exactly what they should back. So it is something we need to fix, but this is not the way to fix it. Ladies and gentlemen, we are 10 years away from most economists' consensus believing that the Social Security trust fund is going to reach insolvency--10 years--10 years away. This bill will take $200 billion over that 10-year period out of the Social Security trust fund without any offsetting payment to it. So that is, to right a wrong for a small percentage of people that should get fairly treated, they are going to rake $200 billion--with a ``b''-- over 10 years to pay for this. That pulls insolvency forward by 6 months. Now 6 months doesn't sound like a lot, if you are talking years and years and years into the future, but we are estimated to be reaching insolvency within the next 9 to 10 years. Suddenly, 6 months becomes a pretty significant amount of time. So we are bowing--we have people here who have voted against bills before because they say: I don't like the idea of something not going through regular order, getting dumped on us at the last minute, and voting on it. Ladies and gentlemen, this bill has not even had a hearing in any committee in the House or the Senate. It got sent to us through a procedure called a discharge petition, which means that they have discharged their duty of doing regular order, sent it to us, and now we are about to take a vote today without having voted on it. Now, I know there are a lot of people that say: Thom Tillis must be committing political suicide because how could you be against Social Security fairness? People asked me the same question when I was against the PACT Act that my office helped author. The PACT Act was a veterans bill, a trillion-dollar bill that we had a commitment to take through regular order to get it right before we passed it. I talked to veterans groups who were concerned with my lack of support for a bill that I helped author, and I said: It is because I think you are going to regret it by us not thinking through the implications. I said: It wouldn't surprise me if, 2 years from now, you are going to see and realize the very challenges that I told you about. They said: You know what, we think it will work itself out. Well, do you know what happened almost 2 years to the month? We are $3 billion in the hole for the current year veterans budget and $15 billion in the hole going forward because we didn't do our homework. We caved to the pressure of the moment instead of doing this on a sustainable basis. Now, I don't know how many people are going to oppose the bill today. It is likely to move through. But to those of you who are looking past the regular order and fixing the things that I know are not fixed in this bill, own it when we have to come back and fix it. I will come back and fix it. I will help with Social Security reform. But know that you are making the job harder to fix a trust fund that is within 10 years of going insolvent. It would be easy for me to talk to my friends at the Fraternal Order of Police and say: Yes, we are going to get this done. And by God, I hope somebody over the next 8 to 10 years fixes Social Security in the future because in 10 years, there will be a mandatory 17--minimum 17 percent cut in the Social Security benefit across the board if we continue to fail to act here and if we continue to dig a deeper hole by the vote we are having today. So to those of you who need this fixed, who need to be treated fairly, count me in. But understand that the folks who are rushing this vote today are hastening the day where they are probably going to break the promise for 97 percent more people on Social Security who do not benefit from this bill. Look, I am in an election cycle. A lot of people may think that I am committing political suicide by doing this, but this Chamber needs courage and needs to say what needs to be said. We are about to pass an unfunded $200 billion spending package for a trust fund that is likely to go insolvent over the next 9 to 10 years, and we are going to pretend like somebody else has to fix it. Well, when you are a U.S. Senator and you have the election certificate, that falls on us. I want to finish with this: There is nobody in this Chamber I hate to be in disagreement with more than the senior Senator from Maine. Senator Collins understands that we do need to fix this, and her sense of fairness and her expertise are unmatched in this Chamber. We do not disagree with what we ultimately need to do. This is a disagreement in how to get there and how to have something that addresses the downstream risk. So it is with some trepidation that I come to the floor and criticize the good work of Senator Collins, but I do it because there is so much riding on us getting this right and having the courage to fix Social Security over the next few years, folks, or--record this speech--we will rue the day that we failed to do it. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. TILLIS

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

Mr. TILLIS

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

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Marzano nomination be waived.

Mr. TILLIS. And that the vote occur immediately. Cloture Motion

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes, followed by Senator Thune for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I am going to be brief because you don't want to stand in the way of the majority leader-elect. I come to the floor today because at 3 o'clock this afternoon in the house chamber in Raleigh, there is a veto-override. There was a veto by Governor Cooper for a disaster relief bill that the people of Western North Carolina need. Now, I understand there are provisions in there that have to do with a legitimate disagreement about the scope and the role of the executive branch, but this is not the time for us to rethink whether or not we should be sending every signal we can to the people of North Carolina that help is on the way. I am doing my part here in this Chamber to make sure that our Members stay focused on providing $100 billion in relief before we get out of this Congress. I need my colleagues in Raleigh to vote to override that veto today so that we can be sure that North Carolina knows that every Republican and every Democrat--we are not Republicans or Democrats; we are North Carolinians trying to provide desperate help to a land mass the size of Massachusetts that has experienced more than 100 deaths, thousands of businesses impacted, thousands of people out of their homes. So I just come to the floor today to encourage any member who may have one reason or another to not sustain this veto-override in the house chamber in Raleigh to set that aside today and go do right by the people of Western North Carolina.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President.

Mr. TILLIS. We look so much alike.

Mr. TILLIS. Yes.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, my folks were wondering why I am sitting so close to Mitt Romney. He and I are seat mates. These are our assigned seats. I told Mitt that I had not prepared a single comment, but I did want to come down and say a few things about him. I hope that we use this opportunity and remember it over the next 2 years. Here is a question we can all ask or we can all talk about and thank him for the incredible work that he has done. And to his staff, the problems he has caused for you by being so honest, so forthright, and so direct. Right? How many times, Mitt--you can't answer it because I think it is against the rules--but how many times have your staff gone: Boss, we wish sometimes you just weren't so forthright and honest? But that is who this guy is. We have been battle buddies in a lot of the bipartisan efforts that have gone along. He is the reason why some of them passed, quite honestly. Without his support and the support of a handful of others, stuff that has enduring generational value would have never happened. I would ask everybody here who is thanking Mitt Romney for his role model behavior in the times he has been in the Senate and the times that I have known him--the first time I met him was the December before his election, when I was a fairly newly minted legislator--and there is no reason why he would have known me or remembered that meeting. But I have been impressed with him since that moment in Charlotte, NC, when he was running for President--let us go forward and hopefully ask ourselves, as we come together as a nation, as we solve problems that can only be solved by people on both sides of the aisle coming together and taking the heat that comes along with that, let's ask ourselves over the next 2 or 4 years what would Mitt Romney do and let that be a guiding post for those of us who are going to be here who may be put into those situations to do right by this country. We are going to have one less person in Mitt here, but I believe it is in all of us to emulate what Mitt has done. I hope that that is a part of the legacy that we will honor as he is gone. Finally, if you don't know about Mitt--I am going to miss him for those reasons. Those are all legitimate reasons to miss Mitt, but I am going to miss his fast wit and his ability to just call things quickly. Having a seat mate like that when you are in the middle of vote-arama is gold, folks. Nobody is going to know that except for the conversations we have had back here in the middle of the night. He is a good man, a good father, a great grandfather. I know I am not supposed to do this either, but by show of hands, who shares DNA with Mitt Romney up there in the Gallery? Yes. Well, congratulations to all of you and the dozens of other family members who have to be hugely proud of Mitt Romney. I am.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to make this very clear to the members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Tribe: This is not about you. As a matter of fact, I know you have been seeking this for--it has been 100 years since the event they have memorialized, and you have been seeking this for quite some time. But you need to know that your leadership is playing a game that will ultimately force me to take a position on the modification. I believe that the Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial is at a sacred site, and the act really does need to come into law--just not yet. The reason is, I have an issue with their Tribal leadership. I have an issue with the Sioux's leadership going after the Lumbee Tribe in Eastern North Carolina. The Lumbee have been trying to seek recognition for years, and there is a long and sordid trail of racism, the Jim Crow era, and things that I will not talk about today, but I will in the coming weeks. As many of my colleagues know, I have been working on the Lumbee Fairness Act--getting it passed into law--for quite some time. I acknowledge--I am going to go quicker on this. I am going to submit something for the Record, if I may. Mr. President, the bottom line is, I am not going to get into the history of the Lumbee Tribe. What I am going to do is get into the history of the casino cartel that is trying to prevent the Lumbee Tribe from being recognized. First among them is the largest Indian Tribe east of the Mississippi River. It is the Eastern Band of the Cherokee in North Carolina. These are my constituents. They are the same constituents where then- Speaker Thom Tillis made sure they were treated fairly, renegotiated their compact, and it was transformational to them, as a Republican leader, over the objections of a majority of my Republican members. That is the only bill that I allowed to do--in my 4 years as speaker--to do the right thing for the Cherokee. My reward was to have them use some of the treasure that was gained from my support in the statehouse to pay lobbyists huge sums of money to discredit the application for recognition of the Lumbee Indians. Now I am going to get into some specifics. For years, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and their adviser Wilson Pipestem had led the efforts, the punitive efforts, directly against the Lumbee Tribe. Most recently, at the 81st NCAI Convention, a few weeks ago, UINO--sorry for these abbreviations--spread inflammatory information about the Lumbee Tribe. That was on November 1. The Eastern Band publicly thanked the UINO for the distribution of these materials. They were false. Since this stunt, the NCAI president has publicly condemned the distribution of those materials and issued an apology to the Lumbee Tribe. Now I have been made aware that Eastern Band, Wilson Pipestem, and UINO have been hosting events on Capitol Hill, spending large sums of money to continue spreading those lies. In the coming weeks and months, I am going to continue to highlight the individuals, the lobbyists, the Tribal leaders, and the groups that are part of this web that are preventing the Lumbee from getting the recognition they have deserved for nearly 130 years. I want to reiterate to the Oglala Sioux and to the Cheyenne River Sioux: This is not about you. This is about your leaders, and this is about their underhanded, unfair treatment of a Tribal nation that deserves recognition and that this country needs to atone for over a century of racism and neglect. For that reason, Mr. President, I do object to the modification.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, Senator Rounds--I call him Mike--we are good friends. We came into the Senate together in 2014. We got to know each other before we even got here. He is a man of honor, and he is a man of his word. I have no doubt that he would not stand in the way should I allow this measure to go forward today. The problem is, the Tribes that he represents will. They will continue to work to spread the misinformation to smear a Tribe that deserves recognition, and they want the respect that they have been entitled to for over 130 years when they first got recognition, short of Federal recognition. So if I had a Senate and a Congress--if I had 535 Mike Rounds--I would not have objected to this today. If I had Tribal leaders who were not lying to constituents and misinforming them on the background of the Lumbee Tribe and knowing that they will continue to, I have no other option than what I did today. It gives me no pleasure to do it to one of my favorite people in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I rise--

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry--

Mr. TILLIS. Is it the ruling of this Chair that it is out of order to make the parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chair?

Mr. TILLIS. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I want to understand the effect of the gentleman from Kentucky relinquishing time. Does that mean that I would need to continue debate until the time is over; or at the time that I finish speaking, will we go to a vote?

Mr. TILLIS. There is about 4 minutes left?

Mr. TILLIS. There is 5\1/2\ minutes remaining?

Mr. TILLIS. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. TILLIS. Does the Senator from North Carolina have the floor?

Mr. TILLIS

Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I would like to start by thanking Senator Warnock for letting me jump ahead in the speaking order today. I appreciate it. I am only going to take a couple of minutes. Yesterday, in the press report, apparently, I had reported what I said at lunch for the news about me talking about a simple concept. I don't know. I think the American people are on board with me. We have to show up for work, right? I think we have to. The reason we had 18 votes on Monday night is because some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle--folks, this is not a partisan--it is partisan. It ended up focusing on some of my colleagues. You have to show up for work. We have got work to do here. And I understand there are all kinds of good reasons. But there is no excuse to let Chuck Schumer force these judicial nominations down our throat. We have got to show up for work. What happened on Monday night only occurred because Republicans were not here. They are my colleagues. They are my friends. But they are business associates first who have a job of making sure that we prevent Chuck Schumer from driving a lot of these judicial nominations that, if we are here, won't be successful. The only reason we were here until midnight on Monday night is because some of my colleagues didn't show up. I am just saying, folks, this is pretty simple. I have spent most of my career in business. If my senior staff didn't show up or my former partners at Pricewaterhouse didn't show up, we would find them another job. We get this job, whether we want it or not, unless we resign. You can't fire us in the midterm or in the middle of our terms. But I can express my concern with giving Chuck Schumer an easy way to beat Republicans who want to vote against and potentially defeat some of these very liberal judges. So all I am saying--so that the press gets it right--people put words in my mouth at a private lunch. That is OK. People do that around here. I don't. But let me say what I said at lunch: 90 percent of success is showing up. If we were here on Monday night, we wouldn't have been here until midnight because we would have defeated Chuck Schumer's opportunity to do it then. If we are not here every single day--I had somebody ask me: Well, when do I need to be there for that Fourth Circuit nominee? When is that vote going to occur? I said: When you are not here. We have got to show up, folks. The American people expect us to show up for a job. These are my friends. These are my colleagues. These are people I work together with. But they let me down on Monday. They better not let me down for the rest of the session or every time we fail because we failed to show up. I will be back down here to remind my colleagues that the American people and the people who elected us in our great States want us to do our jobs. You can't do your job if you are not here.