[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]]



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