[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 185 (Wednesday, December 5, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14749-S14751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             OBSTRUCTIONISM

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, those who watch C-SPAN and people who are 
watching us in other ways are many times well versed in Senate 
procedure. People would note today that we didn't come into session 
until 12 noon. With all the many things we have to do, why are we 
taking the morning off, so to speak? We have so much work to do. But 
yet most people's work day is half completed and we are just starting.
  The reason is we have another example of obstructionism. The reason 
we had to come in late today is because we have an extremely important 
piece of legislation that is being marked up in a committee. The 
Environment and Public Works Committee has been scheduled to begin to 
mark up a crucial piece of legislation today, a bill that will take a 
major step forward in the fight against global warming. If there were 
ever an occasion when we had to unite as a country and as a world 
community to fight, it would be against the scourge of global warming 
which is taking place everywhere. You can't listen to the news without 
hearing about something global warming has affected. Yesterday on 
public radio there was a wonderful piece about Finland, how the 
glaciers are melting in Finland.
  Under Senate rules, any Member has the power to object to a committee 
meeting after the first 2 hours after the Senate is in session. That is 
why we had to start the Senate late today, so that committee could go 
forward with its markup so they can hopefully report a bill to the 
floor by 2 o'clock this afternoon. Had we started at 9, they would have 
had to stop at 11 because we were told that Republicans would object to 
the hearing going forward.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Would the majority leader yield?
  Mr. REID. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. McCONNELL. There were no objections on this side. I think maybe 
the leader was anticipating an objection that did in fact not exist.
  Mr. REID. That could be the case, Mr. President. We started at noon 
today because under the rules anyone can stop us from holding a hearing 
beyond that time and we were told that was what was going to happen and 
that is why we did this. It is very easy for people to say we didn't do 
it. Of course they didn't do it, but had the meeting started at 10 
o'clock, they would have done it. We were told that is what they were 
going to do. It is easy now to come here after the fact and say we 
wouldn't have done that.
  We can see from what is taking place in the committee, about the 
amendments being offered to try to stop this

[[Page S14750]]

bill from coming forward. The committee that is meeting has one 
Republican who is joining with us, John Warner from Virginia. Every 
other member of that committee, unless there is some sudden light one 
of them sees, is going to vote against that bill and they indicated 
they would do everything they could to stop the markup from being 
completed today.
  I am very happy that now the Republicans are saying we would not have 
done that. The only way we can protect ourselves, after having been 
given a direct warning that was what was going to take place, was start 
the Senate late.
  If this were the only case of the Republicans doing everything they 
could to slow us down, then maybe it would be something that would need 
to be looked at very closely. But this doesn't have to be looked at 
very closely. It is everything that we have tried to do since we took 
the majority, and a slim majority it is. As we all know, about a year 
ago Senator Johnson was stricken with a bleed in the brain. He almost 
died. So our majority on that day went from 51 to 50--50 to 49 was our 
majority, and we have struggled with that until Senator Johnson was 
able to return a couple of months ago.
  During this period of time this year, the Republicans have done 
everything they could to slow down and many times stop what we were 
doing. Look at the numbers. We are now at 57 cloture motions we have 
had to file. As I said yesterday, this is filibusters on steroids. 
Within a few days, it will break the record for a Congress of having 
clotures filed, necessary clotures filed.
  We were forced to begin this session late, as I have indicated, to 
give the committee a chance to begin its work. It is unfortunate we 
have reached this point of overt obstructionism. If this Republican 
blocking tactic is a sign of what is going to come--we have already 
seen it; it can't get worse than what it already is, I don't believe--
the remaining weeks are going to be interesting. We know we have been 
stopped from going forward on the farm bill. We tried everything we 
could to move forward on the farm bill. I even said you can have 10 
amendments, we will have 5. They said no. I talked with Senator Harkin 
today. He said--I don't know the exact numbers--I think we can do it 
with 17 and 14, or something such as that. I said, if you can get a 
deal like that, take it. We want to move forward on legislation and we 
are having a difficult time doing that.
  Global warming is something we should be joining together to work on, 
to solve the problem. The work done by Senators Lieberman and Warner is 
bipartisan in the true sense of the word. It is a way to address global 
warming in an important way. Nations throughout the world are 
demonstrating their commitment to reducing greenhouse emissions. As we 
speak, there is a conference taking place in Bali. We have 10,000 
people there, worried about global warming. Australia, with the change 
of leadership they had there in recent elections within the past couple 
of weeks, has now signed the Kyoto protocols. Which is the only 
industrialized nation not to have signed those? This administration; 
this country.
  President Bush would not acknowledge the words ``global warming'' 
until the past 6 months. He has now at least been able to say the words 
and is doing some futile things to help, and even those small gestures 
are welcome to this country and to the world.
  I want to talk a little bit more about the farm bill. I have spoken 
to Senator Chambliss on a number of occasions. I have not sought him 
out. We have been on the floor and talked. I don't want to go around my 
friend, Senator McConnell, unless I tell him I am going to do that, but 
I have had conversations in front of everybody. He indicates he would 
like to do the farm bill. We want to do the farm bill. At this time 
there are 287 amendments pending on the farm bill, amendments dealing 
with driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, all kinds of other 
amendments that have nothing to do with the farm bill. As a result of 
some of my conversations with my friends on the other side of the 
aisle, it does not appear we can work anything out on the farm bill.
  How much more reasonable can we be? I have said if 10 and 5 is not 
good, how about taking, as I have just said, Harkin and Chambliss, who 
supposedly, according to my conversation with Senator Harkin this 
morning, have now worked it out to less than 40 amendments. That will 
be fine, too. Let's move forward. I have even said, to show we are 
reasonable, have a couple of nongermane amendments. That is fine. We 
will be happy to take a shot at those. I don't know what they would be. 
I have been told--I think one of them may be dealing with driver's 
licenses. But we will be happy to do whatever needs to be done to help 
the American farmers and ranchers get some relief that they need.
  We have also pending something that I think is pretty important. In 
addition to the farm bill, we have AMT. AMT is a buzzword for a tax 
proposal that was passed during a Republican administration, which had 
good intent when it started. Congress wanted to make sure and the 
President wanted to make sure that even people making a lot of money 
paid a little bit in taxes. But with inflation having risen its ugly 
head, as it does, it is affecting people no one anticipated would be 
affected. Right now, unless we change the AMT, people making between 
$75,000 and $500,000 would be hit with a tax they ordinarily would not 
get. The average tax, I understand, is less than $2,000. Somebody 
making $75,000 would get a very small tax; somebody making half a 
million dollars a year would be paying a larger tax.
  That was not the intent of the tax. The vast majority of American 
people don't make 75,000 a year and they certainly don't make a half-
million dollars a year.
  But we want to try to change that. We want to put in a patch so it 
doesn't affect those people this year. We have tried everything that I 
know legislatively possible, that is reasonable, to take care of this. 
Right now, a cloture motion is ripening, our 57th, and that would be on 
whether we can proceed to legislate on the House-passed bill. The 
House-passed bill patches it, but it is all paid for. We Democrats 
believe that tax cuts and any new programs should be paid for. The 
House has passed a bill and sent it to us which does that. I have been 
told by my Republican colleagues that it is extremely doubtful we will 
get cloture on that. I hope we can get a few brave Republicans to say 
we want to legislate on this.
  The President said we should do something to fix AMT. That being the 
case, why doesn't he place a call or have one of his staff call the 
Senate and say, Why don't you let them proceed on this? We can offer 
some amendments once it is there. We will try to be reasonable in what 
amendments we offer and they offer on this AMT fix. But I think we 
should at least have the opportunity to move forward. They are creating 
the worst of all worlds. They are going around saying we have to fix 
AMT, but they are not allowing us to legislate on it.
  Under our Constitution, all revenue matters have to originate in the 
House. We have what the House wants to do. On this, I have said let's 
see what we can do. We will vote on the House version and we will go 
with the 60-vote margin. I am happy to do that. We will vote on what 
Senators Grassley and Baucus have reported out of the Finance Committee 
here in the Senate, and that is the AMT is not paid for. I don't agree 
with that, but that is what the committee has done so I accept that. 
Also as part of that package it has certain tax extenders that are paid 
for. I said, Let's vote on that. No.
  Senator Lott, the Republican whip, said he wanted to eliminate AMT 
forever.
  That is more than $1 trillion. But we are willing to vote on that. We 
have gotten no takers on that. I do not know how we can be more 
reasonable.
  I do not want to get into the inner workings of the proposal made 
between Senator McConnell and myself because I do not think that would 
be appropriate to talk about, some of the things. I would be happy to 
do that if he wants to, but some of the other suggestions made--I do 
not want to do my negotiating out here on the Senate floor. But I think 
the suggestions they have made have been very unreasonable. I don't 
know how we can be more reasonable than what we have done.
  Now, I would hope we can work something out on AMT. As I said to my 
distinguished friend, the Republican leader, today, if the President 
wants an AMT fix and the Republicans say they

[[Page S14751]]

want one, why can't we move forward on doing something? I do not 
understand why we could not do that.
  One of the other alternatives I have not suggested, but maybe what we 
can do is have a vote on not even paying for it, which I disagree with, 
but if that would be the will of the Senate, fine, we could set 
something up in that regard. We could have those votes out of the way 
this afternoon. We would not have to do the cloture vote in the 
morning. And we would see what the will of the Senate is. The way it is 
going to be, I have been told that the Republicans have been given 
their marching orders, as happens all of the time around here, that 
they are not free agents, that they cannot vote to invoke cloture on 
this alternative minimum tax, which I think would be a shame.
  As I told my friend, the senior Senator from Kentucky, we would like 
to finish the business of this body by 2 weeks from Friday. That is our 
goal. I hope we can do that. I hope we do not have to work--we are not 
going to work on Christmas, but I hope we do not have to work Christmas 
week. It is possible we may have to do that. We have a number of 
important issues around here. We have an energy bill that is going to 
be sent either today or tomorrow from the House. I spoke to the Speaker 
this morning. We have to complete the alternative minimum tax. I think 
it would be the right thing to do to see what we are going to do on the 
Presidents's wiretapping proposal, as to how we can make that a better 
piece of legislation. We have gotten something that is bipartisan that 
has come out of the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee has 
met on a bipartisan basis. They have some things they want to change on 
that. But if we have to jump through all of the hoops and file cloture 
on that, that bill--the legislation that is now in force expires I 
believe on February 5. I think it would be good if we can complete that 
before we leave. There are certain other things we need to do before we 
leave. But it is a lot of work to do.
  There is one minor little problem I did not talk about. We have to 
figure out some way to fund the Government for the rest of the year, 
either with some type of spending program to involve the Appropriations 
Committee or a last resort--something that both the Republican leader 
and I don't want--would be a continuing resolution which, in effect, 
eliminates the legislative branch of Government from being involved in 
what money is spent in the country for the next year.
  Having said that, I would hope we can hold hands here a little bit in 
the next couple of weeks and see what we can get done: alternative 
minimum tax, farm bill, spending bills for our country, and if we 
really get fortunate, see if we can finish the FISA legislation, the 
wiretap legislation.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.

                          ____________________