[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 24 (Thursday, February 14, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S747-S751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Vote Explanation
Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I could not participate in this Hagel
nomination cloture vote because I had to return to Louisiana to attend
a funeral. Had I been present, I would have voted no for two reasons.
First, I would like to state for the Record that I believe this
process has been rushed and that very reasonable Member requests for
information have been denied.
Secondly, I oppose the nomination on its substance in light of
Senator Hagel's long history of troublesome votes and comments
regarding the defense of Israel and related Middle East issues.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, this will be the last vote of the day. We
will have a vote Monday night and we will vote again on this matter
Tuesday morning--a week from Monday and Tuesday.
I regret that Republican Senators, except the valiant four, chose to
filibuster the nomination of President Obama's nominee to be Secretary
of
[[Page S748]]
Defense. The Republicans have made an unfortunate choice to ratchet up
the level of obstruction in Washington. Just when you thought things
could not get worse, it gets worse.
We need to have this vote today. Why? You know, in times like this,
it is nice to have a Secretary of Defense, not a lameduck. We have a
war going on in Afghanistan. The war has been going on for 10 years.
The President announced on Tuesday that half the troops are going to be
coming home.
North Korea earlier this week tested a nuclear weapon. Just a couple
months ago, they tested a missile to deliver a warhead. They have said
publicly and very openly they want to make sure they can reach the
United States.
We have a conflict going on in Syria. It is a serious conflict. The
Middle East is still in turmoil. Iran is threatening everyone,
including us. We have a few things going on. There is a NATO defense
meeting next week, where NATO Defense Ministers, including someone from
the United States, whom we hoped would have been the Secretary of
Defense, would attend that meeting.
A couple of my Republican colleagues said: That does not matter. Just
have somebody else attend.
What does that do to our standing in the world community?
We need a Secretary of Defense on the job. No one, no one knows,
especially any Senator, what foreign challenge we will face in this
country, perhaps within the next 10 days. It would be nice if we had a
Secretary of Defense.
There is nothing that is going to change in the next 10 days about
the qualifications of Chuck Hagel.
I served with Chuck Hagel. He is a conservative Republican
representing the ultraliberal State of Nebraska. He served with
distinction in the Senate as a Senator. He served on the Foreign
Relations Committee, Armed Services Committee, and Intelligence
Committee. He is a man of quality and of courage, not just being able
to come and give a speech on the Senate floor.
During the Vietnam war, he volunteered to go into combat. That is
what he chose to do because he thought it was the patriotic thing to do
for his country, our country. His family felt that way. He and his
brother went together. They didn't go to push pencils, they carried
rifles; strapped to their sides, grenades.
He was wounded twice. He was an enlisted man. He didn't walk around
ordering people to do things. People were ordering him what to do--
except when it came to his brother. He saved his brother's life in
combat in Vietnam.
They are filibustering him. That is what they are doing. I am going
to call Chuck Hagel when I finish and say I am sorry, sorry this is
happening. I am sorry for the President and I am sorry for the country
and I am sorry for you. We are not going to give up on you.
We are going to vote, as I said, Tuesday, when we get back, in the
morning.
I hope, I truly do hope nothing happens during the next 10 days we
will not have a Secretary of Defense. We are not going to have one, and
I hope nothing goes wrong and we will rue the day--more than just
embarrassing the President, the Senate, and the country--in not
confirming the President's nomination of this good man from Nebraska.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, to my knowledge we do have a Secretary of
Defense, and his name is Leon Panetta. It is my understanding that Mr.
Panetta is going to stay on the job, a job he has done very well as
Secretary of Defense and as CIA director for the last several years.
The majority leader knows full well the reason why cloture was denied--
or closing off debate was denied, because there are reasonable requests
being made on this side for additional information. I hope and trust
information will be provided in the next few days. When we come back
from the recess, we will have another vote and another opportunity for
Senators to express themselves.
This is not any attempt to kill this nomination. This is not a
filibuster. I realize it is the headline the majority leader would like
the newspapers to write.
We actually had some very reasonable discussions going on earlier
today among Senators on the Democratic side and the Republican side to
try to work this out, given the fact that this nomination has just been
so recently reported from the Armed Services Committee, and to
accommodate the reasonable request for Senators to receive answers to
their legitimate questions. We didn't need to have this vote today. We
could have delayed it until after the recess. I am confident the vote
would have turned out differently.
The White House and the majority leader were determined to have this
vote in order to try to get a story in the newspaper, one that
misrepresents the nature of the objection on this side which, as I
said, was a vote not to cut off debate because it was premature.
Reasonable requests for information have not been accommodated by the
nominee.
There are solid public policy differences between Members of this
other side of the aisle and the nominee.
This is not about politics. This is not about personalities. It is
about questions such as whether Iran should be allowed to get a nuclear
weapon. Should we have direct negotiations with terrorist organizations
such as Hezbollah and Hamas?
What is the official posture of the U.S. Department of Defense and
this administration relative to our best ally in the Middle East,
Israel? What would be the plan for the nominee should he be confirmed
when it comes to dealing with steep cuts to the military that are going
to come out of the sequester, which was the President's idea and which
is now going to go into effect on March 1. This is something which the
President himself said was not going to happen. All of these are
legitimate areas of difference and areas of inquiry that could be
accommodated, could have been accommodated without necessity of this
vote today.
This was the majority leader's choice, which was his prerogative, and
the White House's choice. We could have done this differently. We could
have worked this out, but that did not happen, unfortunately.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, this is not a filibuster. This is not a
filibuster. I would like to see what a filibuster is. This is the first
time in the history of our country that a Secretary of Defense has been
filibustered, filibustered successfully and probably ever filibustered,
and for all this, the statement from my friend from Texas on a rant to
make sure he is OK on Israel. He wants to make sure he is OK on Iran on
this.
We had hearings, not singularly but plural. The Secretary of State
came, the Secretary of Defense.
This has gone to the absurd. We were told by a number of Senators
they would like a letter from the President's White House talking about
what he did following Benghazi. Remember, Benghazi was debated at
length in the Presidential election. That is over, we thought. No, it
is not over.
The President said, OK, and he adhered to what he wanted and wrote in
detail about calls he made right after the terrible occurrence in
Benghazi and sent it to the chairman of the committee. We received
reports back some of the Senators were offended because the letter was
sent to the chairman and not to them. This is all foolishness.
People may say whatever they want to say, but we still have a
Secretary of Defense. Leon Panetta gave his final closing, ending; it
was all over with his speech yesterday. I am friendly with Leon
Panetta. I have known him for 31 years. No one in the country has
served with more distinction than a Member of Congress, chairman of the
Budget Committee, head of the Office of Management and Budget, the
President's Chief of Staff, head of the CIA, Secretary of Defense. He
wants to go tomorrow, and yesterday he told everybody he was going
home.
Yes, we have a Secretary of Defense. It is about as lame as a duck
can be. How do you think the people in NATO feel when, I don't know who
will go, I guess Ash Carter or somebody will go, but we don't have a
Secretary of Defense.
I can't imagine--as I said this morning, I will just repeat, I guess
to be able to run for the Senate as a Republican in most places in the
country, you need to have a resume that says: I helped filibuster one
of the President's nominees. Maybe that helps. Maybe that keeps a tea
party guy from running against you. But this should not be politics.
This should be substance, and
[[Page S749]]
there is nothing wrong with Chuck Hagel.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, with all due respect to the majority
leader, this was an unnecessary vote today. The majority leader said:
What is a filibuster? I can remember one that wasn't called a
filibuster. I can remember when President Bush the first nominated a
very noncontroversial University of Tennessee president who had been
Governor to be the Secretary of Education of the United States about 20
years ago.
There was a Democratic Senate at the time, and the Senator from Ohio
decided he wanted more time to study the qualifications of the nominee
from Tennessee. I was that nominee.
I thought that was an extraordinary period of time. It was 87 days
between the time President Bush announced my nomination and the time
the Senate unanimously confirmed me. That was a Cabinet position. I
went around to see Senator Warren Rudman to see what I should do. He
said: You don't have any cards. You don't do anything. The Senate has
the right to consider, with its constitutional prerogative of advice
and consent, the nominees of the President. That is what the Senate is
there for.
I said: Warren, how did you get to be a Senator? He said: Well, I
will tell you a story. President Ford nominated me in 1976 to be on--I
believe it was the Federal Communications Commission. The Senator from
New Hampshire, a Democratic Senator and a Democratic Senate, put a hold
on Warren Rudman until Warren Rudman withdrew his nomination.
The end of the story was that Warren Rudman then ran against that
Senator, beat him, and that is how Warren Rudman became a Senator.
We know what a filibuster is. A filibuster is when one side or the
other--which it has a perfect right to do under our system of
government--decides to try to kill a nomination by denying 60 votes or
to stop legislation by 60 votes. The Democrats have done it on a
regular basis when they were in the minority and the distinguished
majority leader was one of the most effective persons in the Senate to
do so. I presided many times over the Senate when he objected.
I remember when we were trying to get 60 votes to have a permanent
change in the estate law, and we would get up to 57, 58 or 59 and the
distinguished majority leader would object.
What are we doing today? We are doing today exactly what was said
when the vote was called. The question was do 60 of us believe it is
time to end debate on the nomination of the President to be Secretary
of Defense, the leader of the largest military organization in the
world, the largest employer in the United States. The Senate Armed
Services Committee has reported that recommendation to the Senate 2
days ago--not 10 days ago, not 15 days ago, not 30 days ago, 2 days
ago.
Most of us aren't on the Armed Services Committee. Are we not
entitled, are we not entitled to have more than 2 days to consider one
of the most important nominations the President has to make without
having the distinguished majority leader accuse us of a filibuster?
What we do in this body is debate. We debate issues.
In addition to that, there are a number of people on the Republican
side who have asked for information for which they haven't received
answers yet.
In every one of those cases, those are not requests I am interested
in. They will not produce answers I need to know. They may be outside
the range of questions I think ought to be answered.
After only 2 days of a nomination being on the floor, if Republican
Senators have questions to ask and information to seek, they ought to
be allowed to do that. That is what this is about.
What we have said--and the Democratic leadership knows this--we have
talked in good faith through the morning. We have suggested to have
this debate when we come back. Instead of 2 days after the bill was
reported to the committee or to the Senate floor, it would be 2 days
plus 10--a couple weeks. It would give us a chance to read the
hearings, consider the evidence, ask our questions.
There were three Senators who came down to the floor today, including
the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from South Carolina, who said
then we will be ready to vote for cloture. In other words, we will be
ready to vote to end debate to do what the Senate should do.
Eventually, after a full consideration, we would have an up-or-down
vote on a President's nominee for the Cabinet. At least that is my
belief, that eventually you should have a an up-or-down vote on the
President's nominee for the Cabinet.
It is an unfortunate vote, and it is unfortunate to characterize this
as a filibuster. This is a vote by Republicans to say we want more than
2 days after this nomination comes to the floor to carefully consider
it because we have questions. Many have questions, and then most of us
believe that after a sufficient time--and, for me, a sufficient time
will probably be those 10 days--after those 10 days, it will be time to
end debate. It will be time to have a vote and then it will be time to
move on to something else.
I wish to make sure this is properly characterized. This was a motion
to close off debate after 2 days of bringing to the full Senate the
President's nomination to lead the largest military organization in the
world at a time when Senators had reasonable questions for which they
want answers. A vote to extend that until 10 days from now or some
other appropriate time after that not only is reasonable, it is in the
traditions of the Senate. Such reasonableness has been exercised by
Democrats, as well as Republicans throughout the history of the Senate.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cowan). The assistant majority leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Senator Alexander is my friend. Sometimes
that word is thrown around the floor of the Senate not very sincerely,
but I mean it and he knows it. And I respect him very much. But I would
say to the Senator, there is no other way to describe what we are going
through than a filibuster.
A filibuster is, of course, an effort by at least one Member of the
Senate to continue the debate and stop the vote on a matter, whether it
is an amendment or a nomination. A cloture motion--in other words, to
close off the debate--is an effort to produce 60 votes to overcome that
Senator and to move to a vote, a final vote, on an amendment or a
nomination. So by every Senate standard, by every definition, what we
are facing with Senator Chuck Hagel as a nominee for the Secretary of
Defense is a filibuster. It is. And that is why the majority leader
filed a motion for cloture.
It is interesting to note that 59 Senators--a substantial majority of
the Senate--were prepared to vote for Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of
Defense, including four from the Republican side of the aisle. But we
fell short of the needed 60 votes, the 60 votes under cloture, needed
to end a filibuster. So I have to say to my friend from Tennessee, by
every definition in the Senate, by every standard, your side has
successfully filibustered the nomination of Chuck Hagel in the U.S.
Senate.
It has happened before on Cabinet nominees--twice, I am told, in our
history, and once while I was here involving Dirk Kempthorne, whose
nomination was controversial and another cloture vote was called. I
asked myself, how did I vote? After a while, you sometimes forget. And
I was told, well, it turned out the cloture vote for Dirk Kempthorne
was 85 to 7. So clearly, he had 60 votes, and I voted for the cloture
vote in this circumstance. He was then affirmed by a voice vote
thereafter. So it has happened before, but it happens rarely--twice in
our history--when we have a Cabinet nominee who is filibustered.
I will concede to the Senator there are many times we have questions
that need to be answered before we can make a sound or final decision,
but what is peculiar about this vote is that the questions are being
asked about a fellow colleague, someone the Republicans served with for
years. This is not a name that was just dropped out of the blue. I
would assume my Republican colleagues knew Chuck Hagel. You served with
him, you were on committees with him, you sat hour after hour, day
after day, and maybe month after month in meetings together. So
[[Page S750]]
he is a known quantity more so on the Republican side of the aisle than
on our side. I served with him on the Intelligence Committee, and I
thought he was a person of sound judgment. There were times when I
thought he showed real courage. I never doubted for a minute his
commitment to some of the basic issues.
The Senator from Texas, who is also a friend, said: Well, we are not
sure where he stands on issues such as Iran. I think he has said
unequivocally over the last several weeks his position is the same as
the President's, that we need to stop Iran from developing a nuclear
weapon. The same has been said relative to our relationship with
Israel. If people still have questions about that today, they are
ignoring his answers or they do not believe him. And in that case, they
can vote yes or no. I don't know how many more times he needs to say
that to satisfy his critics. Perhaps, for some of them, he will never
satisfy them.
But it is troubling to me, and I would agree with Senator Reid--and
Leon Panetta is a close personal friend. We go back to our House days.
I recall he had a unanimous vote when he was nominated for Secretary of
Defense--an indication of the respect we have for him. But his days are
coming to a close and he said so. What the President has said is, I
need to move up somebody into this critical position for the national
security of the United States, and Chuck Hagel is the person I propose.
We have had ample time. I would be surprised if there are any--
perhaps many--Senators who didn't have a chance to personally sit down
with Senator Hagel. He came to my office, and I know he made himself
available to virtually every Senator before this process started. So
Chuck Hagel has done what he was asked to do, answer the questions and
appear before the committee. And for a person who is a former
colleague, it is hard to understand or explain why there are so many
people on the Republican side of the aisle puzzled by this fellow from
Nebraska, someone whom they served with for so many years.
Let me also say I want to join with the majority leader in saying,
God forbid anything happens in the next 10 days. I hope it doesn't, for
our sake and for the sake of the Senate and the people of this country.
We do need a Secretary of Defense. I would like to think if the tables
were turned the other side would not be pillorying us for leaving the
Secretary of Defense office vacant in these dangerous times. I am
afraid many on your side would be asking, why didn't you get this done
when you could have? This was a Democratic Senator; why do you need to
keep asking questions over and over?
But we have reached this point and there is nothing we can do about
it. Senators have left and we are going to be off next week for the
Presidents holiday. I just hope, as soon as we return, as quickly as we
return, we can defeat this filibuster on Chuck Hagel--this rare
filibuster in Senate history--and we give him his chance to continue to
serve this Nation as ably as he did in the U.S. Senate and as a soldier
in combat in Vietnam.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
Mr. CORNYN. I want to assure the assistant majority leader that we
still have a Secretary of Defense. His name is Leon Panetta. And I am
referring to an e-mail his press secretary George Little sent out on
Thursday:
The Secretary plans to stay in office until Senator Hagel
is confirmed and sworn in.
So if anybody is under any misapprehension, I believe the Pentagon
press secretary has made that clear. We have a Secretary of Defense. He
has not resigned, and he will continue to serve until such time as his
successor is sworn in.
I would say again to my friend, the Senator from Illinois, the
assistant majority leader, we all know what a filibuster is. A
filibuster is designed to kill a nomination or to defeat legislation,
as the Senator from Tennessee said. I would also say this is equivalent
to what happened back in 2005.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
following my remarks a letter signed by Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. CORNYN. And I will quote from that letter. This is a letter
signed by Chris Dodd, our former colleague who served on the Foreign
Relations Committee, and Joe Biden, when he was a ranking member of the
Foreign Relations Committee back in 2005.
Dear Democratic Colleague: We write to urge you to oppose
the cloture on the Bolton nomination tonight. We want to make
clear that this is not a filibuster. It is a vote to protect
the Senate's constitutional power to advise and consent to
nominations.
I will skip down, because the letter will be in the Record, to the
last paragraph, which says:
The refusal of the Executive Branch to provide information
relevant to the nomination is a threat to the Senate's
constitutional power to advise and consent. The only way to
protect that power is to continue to demand that the
information be provided to the Senate. The only means of
forcing the Administration to cooperate is to prevent a final
vote on the nomination today.
And the letter, as I said, was signed by Chris Dodd and Joe Biden.
My point is, this is exactly what the Senator from Tennessee said it
was--a vote not to end debate but to allow these inquiries to be
answered. And the shoe will likely be on another foot some other time
with some other nominee, so we ought to, I think at a minimum, respect
and protect the right of the Senate and of an individual Senator to
make reasonable inquiries of a nominee as part of the power of advise
and consent.
This is not a filibuster. If it is, then this was in 2005, contrary
to the assertions of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. But I agree with them in
this instance, this is merely an effort not to close off debate but to
allow reasonable inquiries to get information that will advise the
Senators in their vote when it comes time to vote on this matter after
the next break.
Exhibit 1
United States Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC, May 26, 2005.
Dear Democratic Colleague: We write to urge you to oppose
cloture on the Bolton nomination tonight. We want to make
clear that this is not a filibuster. It is a vote to protect
the Senate's constitutional power to advise and consent to
nominations.
For more than a month, we have been requesting two types of
information from the Executive Branch. First, materials
related to the preparation of congressional testimony on
Syria and weapons of mass destruction that Mr. Bolton planned
to give in July 2003 and ultimately gave that September. We
think this will show Mr. Bolton's continued effort to
exaggerate intelligence information. It may also show that he
misled the Foreign Relations Committee when he told us that
he was not personally involved in the preparation of the
testimony. Second, information related to National Security
Agency intercepts and the identity of U.S. persons on those
intercepts. During the past four years, Mr. Bolton requested
the identity of U.S. persons on ten occasions. There may be
nothing improper in this; or there may be something highly
improper. But we won't know unless we see the very same
information shown to Mr. Bolton. So far that has not
occurred. The Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Select
Committee on Intelligence were shown the intercepts, but not
the identities of the U.S. persons.
In refusing to provide the information about the Syria
testimony, the State Department has asserted that it does not
believe that the request is ``specifically tied to the issues
being deliberated by the Committee.'' In other words, the
Executive Branch is deciding what it thinks is relevant to
the Senate's review. That's unacceptable. In the case of the
NSA intercepts, no one in the Executive Branch has even tried
to explain why the chairman and ranking member of the
Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees are not allowed
to see information that was made available to Mr. Bolton and
even to his staff. That, too, is unacceptable.
The refusal of the Executive Branch to provide information
relevant to the nomination is a threat to the Senate's
constitutional power to advise and consent. The only way to
protect that power is to continue to demand that the
information be provided to the Senate. The only means of
forcing the Administration to cooperate is to prevent a final
vote on the nomination today. We urge to you vote no on
cloture.
Sincerely,
Christopher J. Dodd.
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[[Page S751]]
____________________