[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 1 (Thursday, January 4, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S28-S29]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            WORKING TOGETHER

  Mr. KYL. Madam President, this has been a good day. It is a day on 
which many of us were sworn in and a day that the Senate began again to 
function in this new 110th Congress. It began with a rather historic 
meeting called by the new majority leader, Harry Reid, in the Old 
Senate Chamber, a place which I explained to my family is so imbued 
with the history of the United States and the history of the Senate 
that one cannot but help feel a sense of responsibility, a special 
sense of duty when functioning as a Senator in that Old Senate Chamber. 
Frequently there are people there who remind us of some of the history 
to call on us to try to rise to the same level to which many of the 
great Senators in the history of this country rose in the most 
difficult and challenging times of our country.
  I believe it was Senator Kennedy who reminded us that exactly on this 
day, at the very beginning of the Civil War, the Senators from the 
South left the Senate Chamber for the last time. They did not meet with 
the Senate thereafter because of the beginning of the Civil War, and 
that is when the Senate moved from the Old Senate Chamber to the 
Chamber we are now in--here.
  There is a great deal of a sense of mission and of history and of 
responsibility when we meet in a place such as that. The purpose for 
the meeting was to begin this new Congress thinking about something 
that we have tended to forget in recent months and even, I would say, 
years, and that is the degree to which Senators had in the past worked 
together to get the people's business done.
  Unlike under the rules of the House of Representatives in which the 
majority pretty much rules and the minority has very little power, in 
the Senate the minority and the majority must work together to get 
anything done because of the rules. With a 51-49 division right now, it 
is obvious that this body is almost equally divided and that under our 
rules we are going to have to work very well together to get anything 
done.
  In the past there has been--and I would say leading up to the last 
election--a special amount of politicking and of negativity, the sort 
of ``gotcha'' kind of politics that is designed to score political 
points; a cynicism, a lack of comity. I think we always see that a 
little bit before an election but I felt it much more oppressively in 
the runup to this last election.
  Someone has pointed out that perhaps with a divided Government now, 
in the sense that Democrats control the Congress and the Republican 
Party controls the executive branch, actually there may be much less 
incentive for either side to engage in that kind of politics and, to 
the contrary, much more incentive for both sides to try to work with 
each other to get things done. The reputation of Democratic Senators 
and Representatives will depend to some extent on how much they can 
accomplish. They will have to have Republican help to accomplish 
things. The last 2 years of the Bush Presidency will depend a great 
deal on how much he, working with the Congress, can get done in these 2 
years. He can't do anything on his own. He has to sign bills that we 
pass. So he has to work with us, meaning that Republicans working with 
him also have to reach across the aisle and work with our colleagues in 
the Democratic Party.
  I thought some things the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said 
today were especially appropriate in this regard. I want to close our 
day today, reiterating some of the thoughts he expressed with which I 
am in total agreement. He said this:

       The Senate can accomplish great things over the next 2 
     years, but this opportunity will surely slip from our grasp 
     if we do not commit ourselves to a restoration of civility 
     and common purpose.

  New Democratic colleague Bernie Sanders from Vermont, with whom I 
served in the House--we got reacquainted today--said, Are you enjoying 
it over here? I hesitated. And he laughed. We had a discussion about 
the fact that it can be very enjoyable when you work together to try to 
get something done. You have to work with

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each other across the aisle if you are going to get something done. It 
is not enjoyable when there is a lack of comity, where harsh language 
is used, when you see things done purely for political purposes. Then 
it is not fun. I think we would all rather look forward coming to work 
in the morning. And it certainly is better when we go home and report 
to our constituents that we were able to get something done.
  I am sure the distinguished majority leader would agree with this 
comment that Mitch McConnell made this morning. He said:

       . . . as we open this session, I stake my party to a 
     pledge: when faced with an urgent issue, we will act; when 
     faced with a problem, we will seek solution, not mere 
     political advantage.

  I think that is the credo all of us pretty well agreed to at the end 
of that very special meeting we had this morning: that we need positive 
solutions to real problems. We need to act in a spirit of comity. All 
of us need to stop the finger pointing, the negativity, the taking 
advantage for political purposes, and the setting up of each other in a 
way we would fail rather than finding a way that we can both succeed.
  In fact, one of our colleagues made a comment almost exactly to that 
effect: We need to both succeed in what we do. Since we now have 
divided Government, there is an incentive for us to work with each 
other to do that.
  There were, of course, some of our colleagues who reminded us that 
realistically this would not be easy, that there would be a great 
tendency to slip back into old habits and to fight politically, and we 
know that to be true. But there are some things--at least one of our 
colleagues made this point very strongly--on which we have to act in a 
united way and that starts with our national security, meeting this 
threat of terrorism. The distinguished Republican leader made that 
point. Among the things he suggested we would have to work on, he said:

       America has not seen a domestic terrorist attack since we 
     committed ourselves to the global war on terror. That's not 
     an accident, some quirk of fate. Rather, it is due to the 
     hard work of spotting and disrupting threats before they 
     strike.

  Much of that capability was granted by the Senate and the House and 
the President in reorganizing our intelligence agencies, reorganizing 
some of the laws under which our intelligence agencies and law 
enforcement work. So we have helped to keep the American people more 
secure. We should continue that hard work.
  He concluded on this point:

       Al-qaida is not a threat to Republicans, it is not a threat 
     to Democrats, it is a threat to America. And the Senate must 
     work together as we prepare for the long struggle ahead.

  There were many other issues that have been discussed, things we can 
work together on, things we are going to have to work together on. I 
close with one example that, to us in this body, we know this for a 
fact. That is the confirmation of judges. When you have a President of 
one party nominating judges and the majority in the Senate is of the 
other party, obviously something has to give. You have to work 
together. It was the hope of the Republican leader, I am sure, speaking 
on behalf of the President of the United States as well, that we would 
find ways to work together, Democrats and Republicans in this body, to 
give a fair chance to the President's nominees. He is, after all, 
elected President. He has the authority under the Constitution to 
nominate judges. Our responsibility is to check them out, to hold the 
hearings, and to question their qualifications but if in fact they are 
qualified, to give them a chance to be put on the bench with an up-or-
down vote. I hope we could do that for the vast majority of the judges 
the President has nominated and for the other executive branch 
nominations of the President as well.
  These are good examples of areas in which, without cooperation, the 
Government for the people does not function well. So, as we end this 
day I ask us to reflect on some of the words of our leaders, Harry Reid 
and Mitch McConnell, today and our colleagues in that historic meeting 
this morning when we talked a good game about recommitting ourselves to 
bipartisan solutions to problems, to work on behalf of the American 
people with more comity in this body, in a way which will make us feel 
much better amongst ourselves and make our constituents much happier 
than they are when they see us fighting and bickering all the time. It 
is fitting to end this day on that note.

  I commend the majority leader, Harry Reid. I commend the Republican 
leader, Mitch McConnell, for serving as examples for all Members in the 
leadership they exhibited in starting the Senate off this way.
  I see the distinguished majority leader now. We can conclude this day 
on that high note, giving some hope to the American people that we are 
committed to working on their behalf for a better future, a better 
America.

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