[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 167 (Thursday, December 16, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10383-S10385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, Members on both sides anticipated my filing 
cloture tonight on the spending bill that would take us through next 
year. Everyone knows we are operating under a continuing resolution 
that expires Saturday night at midnight. Senator Inouye has worked so 
very hard for the entire year, working on a bipartisan agreement and in 
a bipartisan manner, to put together a bill that will responsibly fund 
the government for the next fiscal year. He has not done this as king. 
He has done it working with Democrats and Republicans. Senator Cochran 
has been in on all the efforts Senator Inouye has made. The product was 
filed a few days ago. The overall spending level was supported by 40 
Republicans earlier this year.
  In addition, the bill contains priorities for Members, Democrats and 
Republicans. Although some of my Republican colleagues in recent days 
have publicly distanced themselves from the idea that Members have a 
role to play in the appropriations process, all of them did nothing 
privately to withdraw their priorities from this bill.
  I will not take a long time tonight, but I will say a few things 
about this. It is no surprise because I have said it before. I, like 
everyone here, support the Constitution of the United States. I don't 
carry this with me every day but nearly every day. I don't read it 
every day, but I have a pretty good idea what is in it. One of the 
things I understand and support is that the Founding Fathers decided we 
should have a unique form of government, with three separate and equal 
branches. I believe, as one of the legislators here in the framework of 
the government set up by the Founding Fathers, that I have a number of 
responsibilities. One of those responsibilities set forth in that 
Constitution is to make sure that the executive branch of government 
does not take power away from us. Three separate, equal branches of 
government, not three branches of government with one stronger than the 
other. I think my Republican friends are giving up so much to the 
executive branch of government in doing away with congressionally 
directed spending.
  It wouldn't matter if George Bush the first, George Bush the second, 
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, President Clinton, or Barack Obama were 
President. I don't like this grab of power. That is what it is. I don't 
know why people in this branch of government are willing to give that 
power up.

[[Page S10384]]

This bill, put together by Senator Inouye and Senator Cochran, is a 
good bill. It is an important piece of legislation. It has priorities 
that are so vitally important to children.
  Mr. President, 300,000 children in America, as a result of our not 
moving forward, are going to be treated much differently. The Head 
Start Program has been proven to be something that is vital to the 
country, and 300,000 children will not be eligible for Head Start 
because of this. Programs in our schools will be much less than they 
should be. Senior citizens will be significantly harmed. We have in 
this legislation programs that will create jobs, jobs through 
developing infrastructure that is so desperately needed. This action 
taken by my friends on the other side of the aisle is going to cause 
people to lose their jobs.
  Military construction. I have important bases vital to the security 
of this Nation in Nevada. They are all going to be damaged as a result 
of what has happened here. One reason I feel so put upon, which is 
probably a word that people don't much care whether I am put upon, but 
I tried to make this something that was good for the Congress. I was 
elated that one of my Republican friends said: Here is who is going to 
support you. Here is who is going to support you, up to nine.
  I have talked to a number of those Senators. I will not identify 
them. I know who they are. I have it right here. I won't tonight or any 
time publicly ever say anything about who they are, but they know who 
they are. In the last 24 hours they have walked away from the ability 
for us to complete this legislation. I was told within the last 24 
hours that we had bipartisan support to pass this bill. ``Many'' is a 
word that is too large, but a number of Republican Senators told me 
they would like to see it passed, and they couldn't vote for it.
  Those nine Senators--I have called some of them tonight and visited 
with them--will not support this legislation. We now have a simple 
choice. Are we going to help the people in America--I have listed some 
of the people who desperately need this help, and it appears that the 
answer will be no--or will we wind up passing a short-term CR to keep 
government running. In reality, we only have one choice, and that is a 
short-term CR.
  I asked my friend Senator McConnell if I should file cloture on the 
CR we got from the House. He said no. And one thing about Senator 
McConnell, I have found that he levels with me on issues. There is no 
need to go through that procedure. It is not worth it to anybody. We 
will not get a vote on that.
  So in the next 24 hours or so, Senator McConnell and I will work to 
try to come up with a CR to fund the government for a certain period of 
time. That is where we are right now. I am sorry and disappointed.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, may I make a few observations about 
where we are?
  Mr. REID. Yes. I am going to file cloture tonight on the DREAM Act. 
We will have a cloture vote on that Saturday morning fairly early. I am 
going to file cloture on don't ask, don't tell tonight. So those will 
be sequenced for Saturday or whenever we get to them. But we have to 
move this along. Following that I was told by a number of Republican 
Senators that they needed 6 or 7 days to debate and offer amendments on 
the START treaty. That will certainly be available. We will finish, if 
the math works out the way I believe it will, early Monday morning.
  First of all, tomorrow we can debate START to everyone's heart's 
content. They can offer as many amendments as they want, and then 
Monday we can go to that again. This would be 3 days already completed 
on that, 3 or 4 days, whatever is appropriate next week to complete the 
START treaty. We would wind this up by taking care of the nominations 
that Senator McConnell and I have been working on. That is the range of 
things we have to do. I have told the two Senators from New York that I 
will move to reconsider their vote at some time, but that is going to 
happen fairly quickly.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, let me respond briefly to the majority 
leader. I too want to commend the members of the Appropriations 
Committee for all the work they have done, particularly Republican 
members of the Appropriations Committee who did spend an enormous 
amount of time crafting and developing the 12 different appropriations 
bills that we should have been acting on all year long. This is the 
first time in modern history that not a single appropriations bill went 
across the floor of the Senate--not a one. So the Appropriations 
Committee members on a bipartisan basis did indeed do their job. The 
problem was the full Senate didn't do its job. What we ended up with 
was this, this almost 2,000-page Omnibus appropriations bill which we 
only got yesterday.

  The point is, the work the Appropriations Committee did in many 
respects was squandered because the full Senate didn't do its job. This 
is precisely the kind of thing the American people have gotten tired 
of.
  The message we ought to take out of this is that next year, we are 
going to listen to the American people. We are going to do our work, do 
it in a timely fashion. There is no more basic work than the funding of 
the government. That is the first thing we ought to be doing.
  Here we are trying to do it right at the end, as an old Congress goes 
out of office and a new Congress comes in. The message is, let's don't 
do this anymore. Let's make a bipartisan decision at the beginning of 
the next session that the basic work of government is going to be done 
in a timely fashion for an opportunity out here on the floor of the 
Senate for Members of both parties to offer amendments, make 
suggestions, and improve the bill.
  I too respect the work the Appropriations Committee has done. I don't 
agree with the priorities we have had here in the Senate about what 
things are important. As a result of not doing the basic work of 
government, here we are at the end struggling with this issue. There is 
only one reason why cloture is not being filed and the majority leader, 
to his credit, has already said it. He doesn't have the votes. The 
reason he doesn't have the votes is because Members on this side of the 
aisle increasingly felt concerned about the way we do business. For 
many of our Members it was not so much the substance of the bill but 
the process. Let's learn from this. We will get together, as the 
majority leader said, and determine what appropriate time for a 
continuing resolution makes sense to offer to govern on an interim 
basis, and let's come back here after the holidays with a renewed 
desire to do our business in a timely fashion and avoid this kind of 
thing in the future.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it doesn't take a person with a PhD to 
understand that I differ with what my friend, the senior Senator from 
Kentucky, said, things that don't indicate what history is in the 
Senate. We have been facing 87 filibusters this Congress. For anyone to 
suggest that the reason the work of Senators Inouye and Cochran was not 
completed is because we didn't do the appropriations bills is 
farfetched. Senators Inouye and Cochran, in good faith, worked toward 
what they were told the Democrats and Republicans wanted to do; that 
is, have a bill that took in the priorities of Democrats and 
Republicans. The bill that we are talking about isn't a bill that is a 
Democratic bill. It is a Democratic and Republican bill.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will my good friend yield for a question?
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the majority leader yield for a question?
  Mr. REID. I yield to the Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. I wish to ask the majority leader, does he recall the 
time I returned from the Appropriations Committee and said Senator 
McConnell had come to the committee and said he was going to establish 
the maximum amount that he would vote for in all the appropriations 
bills, the 203(b) allocation of $1.108 trillion? And I said to the 
majority leader, I think ultimately that is what we are going to be 
voting for, Senator McConnell's number. Is the Senator from Nevada 
aware of the fact that the bill we were going to consider was at that 
number that was asked for by Senator McConnell in the Appropriations 
Committee?

[[Page S10385]]

  Mr. REID. Yes, and it satisfied what we had debated here on a number 
of occasions and voted on, the so-called Sessions-McCaskill number. So 
we did that. This is not a big balloon that we just threw up to see how 
it would work out. Senator McConnell, who has had a longstanding 
association with the Appropriations Committee, that was a number he 
told us we should work with.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a further question?
  Mr. REID. I am happy to.
  Mr. DURBIN. As a former member of the Appropriations Committee, is 
the Senator aware of the process in that committee, a bipartisan 
process where the ranking Republican member and the Democratic chairman 
of each subcommittee sit down to literally have a hearing, mark up a 
bill, and accept earmarks from both sides of the aisle? That is the 
common practice and has been followed with the bills that are currently 
sitting in front of the minority leader?

  Mr. REID. Yes. To Senator Cochran's credit, there were things he 
thought should not be in the bill that Senator Inouye was putting 
together. Senator Inouye, to his credit, said: OK, it does not go in. 
Everything people wanted in this bill--in addition to the work that 
went on on the subcommittee level, the full committee level--anything 
that was added at a later time had to be approved by both Senator 
Inouye and Senator Cochran.
  Mr. DURBIN. On a bipartisan basis.
  Mr. REID. That is right.
  Mr. DURBIN. In every subcommittee.
  Mr. REID. Yes. And things that Senator Cochran did not want in, 
Senator Inouye, being the gentleman he is, said: OK. That is what I 
will tell my caucus.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. REID. Yes, I will yield for a question, and, of course, I 
maintain the floor.
  Go ahead.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask the Senator to yield for a 
question.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I would ask the leader through the Chair, 
is he aware that the bill that is before us, that apparently we do not 
have enough votes for now, has gone through a very long committee 
process? The transportation and housing bill that I worked with my 
Republican colleague on, I did not agree with all of his requests, but 
I gave him a lot in this bill, as we worked our way through it and 
passed it out of subcommittee, passed it out of the full committee, a 
committee of which the minority leader is a member.
  All of the bills that are involved in this omnibus bill--every one of 
them--went through a long, long process of committee hearings, 
subcommittee markups and passage, and full committee markups and 
passage.
  The changes to this bill that have come to the floor have come as a 
result not of a change in policy, but because we all were told that in 
order to get an omnibus passed, we had to reduce the amount of that 
bill that passed out of committee--each of those bills a significant 
amount--to meet the McCaskill-Sessions level. So we went back and cut a 
significant amount out of each one of our bills. The result is the 
omnibus bill before us.
  So the 2,000 pages that we are referring to have worked their way 
through a process. I would ask the leader if he knows this. And the 
difference is, we had to cut money to meet the level of Sessions-
McCaskill. That is what we have before us. And that is what we are 
being told, after a year's worth of work, that somehow we do not have 
the capability of knowing what is in the bill. Is the leader aware of 
that?
  Mr. REID. I am aware of it. But my friend, the Republican leader, 
wants to ask a question or make some statement. But I would say this to 
my friend from Washington, remember, this bill, which is 1,900 pages 
long, consists of the work of 12 subcommittees.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Right.
  Mr. REID. It is work that has been done over the last year, or more 
in some instances, to come up with a product. So if you break it down 
per subcommittee, it is certainly a reasonable number of pages on each 
subcommittee. Remember, there are 12 subcommittees that are a part of 
it.
  I would be happy to yield, without losing the floor, to my friend, 
the Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I was just going to ask my friend--it is hard to ask a 
question without making something of a statement in connection with it, 
if that is OK.
  Mr. REID. That is fine.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I was not talking about the process by which the bill 
was developed in committee. And I started off, I would say to my friend 
from Nevada, commending the committee for its work. What I was 
commenting upon was the lack of taking the bill up on the floor of the 
Senate--over $1 trillion, the basic work of government.
  And so, Mr. President, I would ask my friend, why, if these bills 
enjoy bipartisan support--and they did--why were they not brought 
before the full Senate and passed? I think I would say to my friend, I 
expect it is because you had other priorities. And this is the basic 
work of government. Why did we not bring any of these bills before the 
Senate floor?
  Mr. REID. I hope the court reporter will take down the smile I have 
on my face because the answer to the question is kind of easy. We have 
had to file cloture 87 times in this Congress because, on everything we 
have tried to do, we have been obstructed. So that is the reason.
  Everyone knows we have had some very big issues. When President Obama 
was elected, we found ourselves in a deep, deep hole. It was so deep, 
so deep. During the prior administration, we lost 8 million jobs. The 
month that President Obama and President Bush shared the Presidency, in 
January--that month--we lost 800,000 jobs. So we had a lot to do.
  Now, I know people criticize our doing health care for various 
reasons. There is criticism we did the bank reform bill, Wall Street 
reform. We did housing reform. We had a very, very busy Congress to try 
to dig ourselves out of the hole.
  So I say to my friend, who, like me, has been on the Appropriations 
Committee--I am not on it now but he is--the Appropriations Committee 
is a wonderful committee. Everyone here knows why we did not have the 
individual appropriations bills. I say to my friend, I hope next year 
we can get them done. But I think there is more of a chance next year 
because we have gotten a lot done to help get ourselves out of the hole 
we found ourselves in because of the previous 8 years which created the 
big hole we had to kind of dig out of.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a 
message from the House with respect to H.R. 5281.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator withhold for a second?
  Mr. REID. Yes, I will.

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