[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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