[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 15 (Tuesday, February 2, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S401-S403]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SCHEDULE
Mr. REID. Mr. President, following remarks of the leaders, the Senate
will be in a period of morning business for an hour, with Senators
permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. The first half hour will
be controlled by the Democrats, the second by the Republicans.
Following morning business, the Senate will proceed to executive
session to resume postcloture debate on the nomination of Patricia
Smith to be Solicitor for the Department of Labor. I would note this is
another one of the endless delays we have had to go through. We are in
postcloture; 30 hours of doing nothing. We have had so many 30 hours of
doing nothing it is hard to comprehend the wasted time--all the staff,
Senators' time that could be better put to use. People could be
drafting legislation, on and on, contemplating what could be done but
for this endless stalling we have seen.
The Senate will recess from 12:30 to 2:15 for the weekly caucus
meetings. Following disposition of the Smith nomination, whenever that
might be, the Senate will proceed to vote on the nomination of Martha
Johnson to be Administrator of the largest real estate organization in
the world, the General Services Administration. It is difficult to
comprehend, but that has been without a leader because of what has been
going on and the stalls that have taken place, so we had to file
cloture.
We will notify Senators when the votes are scheduled. I would like to
finish Patricia Smith at a reasonable hour today. That is immediately
following a simple majority vote for her. Then there is a 60-vote
margin on cloture on the future Administrator of the General Services
Administration and then there is 30 hours after that.
We will do tomorrow as we did for the Republicans when they had their
retreat last Wednesday; we were not in session. We don't wish to be in
session tomorrow. We have the President coming to our retreat and a
number of other special guests, but if we have to come in tomorrow,
either before or after the retreat, we are going to have to do that to
meet the burdens of this endless stalling that is taking place in the
Senate.
When a young Nigerian terrorist boarded an airplane bound for America
on Christmas Day, there was no permanent boss at the TSA, the agency
responsible for the safety of our airports. This agency was created
after 9/11 specifically to keep air travel safe. When he tried to blow
up that plane, the top positions at both the intelligence agencies
within the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security
were empty. Why? Because Republican Senators refused to let this body
hold a vote on these highly capable people the President has asked to
serve in these roles.
We all know Republicans have dedicated themselves to grinding the
Government to a halt. They do so openly and proudly and boast about
their aversion to compromise. That is why, time and time again, they
exploit the rules of the Senate and abuse this body's procedural
traditions. That is why they have wasted countless hours and shattered
remarkable records for stubbornness. That is why, when we
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have faced questions of national security, they have answered with
politics.
Republicans have repeatedly asked fearful families to put their
concerns on hold while they score political points, they think, by
playing partisan games. This is not a game.
An embarrassingly high number of critical national security officials
remain unable to go to work. For political reasons, a handful of
Republican Senators are standing between these experts and their
offices. That means they are also standing between the American people
and the American people's security.
Too many of the President's nominees for critical national security
jobs await Senate confirmation. Today, I wish to talk about four of
those positions Republicans refuse to fill; one, the Under Secretary of
Defense for Personnel and Readiness, which is the No. 3 job at the
Pentagon. We have Secretary Gates, we have one other individual, and
then we have this Under Secretary of Defense--whose position is not
filled.
No. 2, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research,
the head of the State Department's Intelligence Department. Think about
that. When Secretary Clinton is called to go to Pakistan, Afghanistan
or anyplace in the world, her arm, the intelligence arm, the security
department, must be able to give her information as to what is going
on, what has gone on, what is going to go on in the future. Not with
this State Department. The Republicans will not let this person be
chosen.
Third, Under Secretary of Homeland Security, again, for Intelligence.
This person is head of the Department of Homeland Security's
intelligence arm. Just like there is no one today at the State
Department, there is no one at the Department of Homeland Security
dealing with intelligence. It is hard to comprehend, but that is true.
Finally, the U.S. Representative for the Conference on Disarmament,
whose job is to work with other nations to keep our own people safe
from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The President has
chosen exceptionally qualified men and women for these jobs, but
without a Senate vote confirming them as our Constitution requires,
they cannot do those jobs.
Let's talk about the Pentagon. For the first job I mentioned, the No.
3 job at the Pentagon, the President has nominated GEN Clifford
Stanley. For 33 years, Dr. Stanley, General Stanley has served our
country in the Marine Corps and in communities where he and his family
have lived. After serving bravely as a marine infantry officer, he went
on to become quite an academic, served as a White House fellow. He was
head of the Nation's largest nonprofit sector scholarship organization.
He was asked to come back.
He is not a controversial nominee. The Senate Armed Services
Committee approved him unanimously but on the Senate floor, no, not
General Stanley. He would not only be a pivotal part of the Pentagon's
senior leadership, he would also be in charge of making sure
servicemembers are prepared for war at a time we are waging two of them
and as we plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a surge I
know my Republican colleagues support.
Our military leaders have told me his absence is having a negative
impact on the Pentagon's operations. I have received phone calls:
Senator Reid, what are you going to do to get this person approved?
I tell them I am doing my best. Now we wasted all week--that is what
it will wind up being--on two nominees, one to be the Solicitor for the
Labor Department and the other to be the head of the General Services
Administration. If people are serious about giving our troops the tools
they need to succeed in battle and at home--and I am confident the
Republicans must think that--we should be and they should be as
committed to giving our military the leader who will be going to work
every day and making sure that happens.
Let's talk about intelligence, these agencies that try to find out
what the enemy is doing. The second and third positions I mentioned
earlier are the two intelligence roles at the Department of State and
Homeland Security, as I mentioned. For the State Department position,
President Obama has nominated Ambassador Phil Goldberg. Similar to
General Stanley, Ambassador Goldberg is not a controversial or partisan
nominee. In fact, it was President Bush who gave him the title of
Ambassador when he made Goldberg our top diplomat in Bolivia.
I traveled to Bolivia, the first Senate congressional delegation I
can ever remember going to Bolivia. Ambassador Goldberg was there--so
impressive. Ambassador Goldberg has also led law enforcement
intelligence and nonproliferation efforts in countries such as Kosovo
and North Korea. He is head of the State Department's intelligence
branch. He would work with our ambassadors around the world and be the
Secretary of State's top intelligence adviser. But, no, he is going to
have to wait; this intelligence aspect of the Department of State can
wait.
The assistant leader, my friend, Senator Durbin, was at the State
Department today learning from the Secretary of State about some of the
issues facing our country, meeting with Secretary Clinton. It is a
shame Ambassador Goldberg cannot go to work, but he can't.
For the Homeland Security position, the President has nominated Caryn
Wagner. She, too, is highly qualified for this role, having held a
number of senior positions in the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence and Officer of the Director of National Intelligence and
the National Intelligence Program. As Homeland Security's top
intelligence official, Wagner would be responsible for ensuring the
Department's partners at State, local and tribal levels--and private
sector--have the information they need to keep us safe from the bad
folks around the world.
As far as disarmament, the fourth nominee I mentioned is Ambassador
Laura Kennedy. President Obama asked her to serve as our Nation's
representative to the conference on disarmament. This group is
responsible for negotiating multilateral arms control and disarmament
agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Biological
Weapons Convention, and the Chemical Weapons Convention--some big
issues. Ambassador Kennedy is a member of the Senior Foreign Service
and has worked with the State Department and Bureau of European and
Eurasian Affairs, the United Nations, the National War College, and as
President Bush's Ambassador to Turkmenistan.
Of all the countries with nuclear weapons, the United States, our
great country, is the only one that does not have a representative at
the negotiating table of the Conference on Disarmament. Why? Because
the Republicans are stalling everything. That is unacceptable. We need
to confirm her. We need to have confirmed her a long time ago.
But it is not just those cases, it is many others. It is clear these
positions are critical to our national security, as I talked about, and
equally evident that these nominees are well-qualified, nonpartisan
public servants. What is not clear is why our Republican colleagues
refuse to bring them up for a vote. Senate Republicans are simply so
opposed to everything, absolutely everything, they even opposed putting
people in some of the most important positions of our Government,
people who were originally appointed by President Bush to positions of
high standing.
These are not isolated cases, they are part of an endless and
reckless pattern. As with candidates for the President's Cabinet and
other top administration posts and numerous Federal judges, Republicans
have decided the President does not deserve to have his nominees
reviewed by the Senate, as the Constitution clearly States. Ignore him,
is what they say.
This obstruction could not have come at a more dangerous time. I was
coming to work and was in an elevator. I looked and there was an
extremely impressive woman, she had on a coat, and I could see she had
a uniform on. She said, ``I am Dr. Benjamin, the Surgeon General of the
United States.'' I heard so much about this Alabama physician who
dedicated her life to taking care of poor people. I was so happy to
meet her. Then I remembered how long we had to wait to get her
confirmed.
The obstruction could not come at a more dangerous time, given what
is going on in the country. The Republicans blocked a vote on our
Surgeon
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General, Dr. Benjamin, as I just mentioned, even when the President
declared H1N1 as a national emergency. They blocked a vote on the top
Homeland Security official in science and technology, and that was even
as the Nation braced for both a flu pandemic and bioterror threats.
The list seems endless. While our sons and daughters are fighting in
Iraq and rebuilding that nation, last year Republicans delayed the
confirmations of America's Ambassador to Iraq. And while our troops
serve bravely in Afghanistan, Republicans delayed the confirmation of
LTG Stanley McChrystal, our new commander in that difficult war.
This clearly is not the way the Senate is supposed to work. It is not
even the way it typically works. As I have pointed out before, it took
only 4 months for President Obama to face as many filibusters of his
nominees as President Bush faced in his entire first 4 years. This
Republican caucus over here proudly says: We blocked as many of
President Obama's nominees in 4 months as you--over here on this side
of the aisle--took 4 years to block. Democrats have no interest in
playing these games. That is why we did not do what they are doing. No
other minority has ever done anything like this before. This is one of
a kind.
It would be one thing if Republicans, bound together in unified
opposition to everything, as they have made their custom, voted against
these vital nominees. It would be one thing if they reviewed their
resumes, brought the nominees before the appropriate committees, and
decided they were not fit to serve. But that is not what is happening.
Instead, simply to waste time, Republicans are refusing to let the
Senate vote at all. When these nominees do finally come before this
body, you would be surprised--many of them pass unanimously after they
have stalled for days and days. You shouldn't be surprised, but it is
enough to make you feel uneasy in the stomach that these people who are
concerned with the security of our Nation are being stopped from being
able to go to work by virtue of the Republican party of no.
These Senators are ignoring their responsibilities to confirm or
reject the men and women our Commander in Chief has chosen to help lead
this Nation to safety. They are abdicating their responsibility to the
American people to keep us safe. They are certainly not putting country
first as advertised.
Here is the bottom line: My Republican colleagues are basing their
judgment on the political party doing the nominating rather than the
person being nominated. This irresponsible partisanship does not merely
poison our political system, it endangers our national security.
I have no doubt our friends on the other side realize that when we
keep a critical office empty in the Pentagon, the State Department, the
Department of Homeland Security, we are not keeping the American people
safe. They know what they are doing, and they know what they are doing
is dangerous. If they do not, they certainly should. That makes these
partisan games all the more disgraceful.
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