[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 175 (Wednesday, December 11, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8634-S8641]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Children's Advocacy Centers

  If I might, I would like to take a few minutes to talk about why I 
initially came to the floor today; that is, to talk about the power of 
children's advocacy centers. Children's advocacy centers exist across 
the country today in large part because this Congress, on a bipartisan 
basis, passed back in 1990 the Victims of Child Abuse Act--a bill that 
for the first time authorized funding for an important nationwide 
network of what are called children's advocacy centers. These centers 
help deliver justice, they help heal victims of violence and abuse, and 
we must act to continue empowering their service to our Nation.
  Today is a time when we could work together to reauthorize that 
initial landmark bill from 1990 and rededicate ourselves on a 
bipartisan basis to something that is one of our most sacred 
obligations: protecting our children, protecting the victims of child 
abuse and delivering justice for them. That is what this bipartisan 
bill does that was introduced earlier today along with my colleagues, 
Senators Blunt and Sessions and Hirono--a great example of being able 
to work together across the aisle.
  As parents, as neighbors, as leaders of our Nation, we have no more 
sacred obligation than protecting our children. In most of our cases, 
we dedicate everything we have as parents to ensuring our children's 
safety, to providing for their future, and that is what this bill is 
all about--that responsibility.
  Tragically, too often, despite our best efforts, too many of our 
children fall victim to abuse. We cannot guarantee their safety, but 
what we can do is ensure that when children in this country are harmed, 
we can deliver justice without further harming them. Thankfully, 
children's advocacy centers, for which this bill reauthorizes funding, 
are critical and effective resources in our communities that help us 
perform this awesome and terrible responsibility. Through this bill, we 
can continue to prevent future tragedies and deliver justice in ways 
that are effective and less costly than communities can deliver alone.
  This bill helps prevent child abuse proactively. Just last year its 
programs trained more than 500,000 Americans, mostly in school 
settings, in how to spot and prevent child sexual abuse.
  Secondly, and in my view most importantly, this bill delivers 
justice. Children's advocacy centers increase prosecution of the 
monsters who perpetrate child abuse. One study showed a 94-percent 
conviction rate for center cases that carried forward to trial.
  Third, and in many ways equally as important, this bill helps to 
heal. Child victims of abuse who receive services at a child advocacy 
center are four times more likely to receive the medical exams and 
mental health treatment they desperately need compared to children who 
are served by non-center supported communities. No parent ever wants to 
go to one of these places or have to bring their child to one of these 
places, but those parents who have under these tragic circumstances, 
nearly 100 percent of them say they would recommend seeking this help 
to other parents.
  How do these advocacy centers achieve all these different results of 
prevention, of justice, and of healing? Well, they are unique because 
they bring together under one roof everybody who needs to be present to 
help deal with the tragedy of child abuse: law enforcement, 
prosecutors, mental health and child service professionals--all focused 
on what is in the best interest of the child.
  Through a trained forensic interviewer, they interview the child to 
find out exactly what happened. They ask difficult, detailed questions, 
and they structure the conversation in a trained and nonleading way so 
the testimony can be used later in court, preventing what otherwise is 
retraumatization, making it possible for child victims to testify in a 
way that will lead to justice but without forcing those children

[[Page S8635]]

to take the stand and to repeat over and over what they testified to 
once at a center.
  Prosecutors take the information obtained in the interview all the 
way through the court system, while doctors and other child service 
professionals ensure the child is getting the help he or she badly 
needs to begin the process of healing.
  One place, one interview, with all the resources a victim would need 
to move forward to secure justice and to heal.
  In my home State of Delaware, we have three children's advocacy 
centers, one in each of our counties. In the last year, I visited the 
centers in Wilmington and in Dover and saw firsthand the extraordinary 
work the professionals there do. These are places haunted by the 
tragedies that are described and recorded there, but the staff are 
welcoming, nurturing professionals, and the law enforcement and mental 
health and child service professionals who are there are deeply 
dedicated to making sure that they achieve justice and that they 
promote healing.
  It was striking on my tours, my visits, to see how strategically and 
thoughtfully each of these centers has been put together, how they have 
worked through every possible detail to enable obtaining the testimony 
needed to secure justice while enabling healing of child victims. This 
is critical in order to avoid retraumatization--a threat that is real 
for victims and for their long-term healing process. The centers in 
Wilmington and Dover and Georgetown in my home State show over and over 
how these centers create the sort of nurturing but effective space to 
ensure that we both meet the needs of victims and secure justice.
  As I am sure the Chair knows, in my home State of Delaware just a few 
years ago we saw exactly the kind of evil we most dread in this world 
when a pediatrician, a man named Earl Bradley whom many Delawareans 
trusted with their children's health and safety, was found to have 
sexually assaulted more than 100 of our children. Delaware is a State 
of neighbors, and his horrific crimes against our children, our 
families, and our communities affected all of us. Attorney general Beau 
Biden and his team effectively led the investigation and prosecution of 
this monster. Thankfully, children's advocacy centers were able to play 
a key role in ensuring that the interviews and the assistance provided 
to the victims and their families were effective and that ultimately 
justice was rendered.
  Randy Williams, the executive director of Delaware's Children's 
Advocacy Center in Dover, wrote to me:

       Our multidisciplinary team worked tirelessly and seamlessly 
     in providing forensic interviews, assessments, medical 
     evaluations and mental health services for every child 
     referred to our centers.

  Randy went on to say:

       I feel confident that our team's outstanding collaborative 
     response was a direct result of the financial and technical 
     assistance and training resources made possible over many 
     years through the Federal Victims of Child Abuse Act.

  In the end, Dr. Bradley was convicted on multiple counts. Over 100 
victims were involved. He is now serving 14 life sentences plus 164 
years in prison.
  As a nation, we have no greater responsibility than to keep our 
children safe. As a father, there is nothing that keeps me up at night 
more than concerns about the safety and security and health of my own 
children. We must do everything we can to prevent sexual abuse of those 
most vulnerable and those most precious members of our society--our 
children. When that tragedy strikes, we need to be prepared with the 
best services we have to foster healing and deliver justice.
  This specific bill is about upholding our responsibility to our 
children, to our families, and to this Nation's future. It is at the 
very core of why we serve and of what we believe. I am grateful that 
this is a bipartisan bill, that this is a bill which can demonstrate 
the best of what this Senate, this Congress, and this country is 
capable of. It represents the best of our Federal commitment to 
targeted, effective, and essential assistance to State and local law 
enforcement, to our communities, and to our children.
  I urge my colleagues to join with us because in the end, no child 
should fall prey to physical or sexual abuse. No mother or father 
should have a haunting experience of finding that an adult they trusted 
took advantage of that trust and horribly hurt their child. No country 
should tolerate these crimes when there are things we can do now, 
today, on a bipartisan basis, to protect and to heal our children and 
to ensure that justice is secured.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I came to the floor to talk about several 
other things, but after hearing the majority leader and my colleague 
from Delaware, I think the revisionist history needs to stop.
  This place ran from 1917 under a process where any one Senator could 
stop anything. That was changed by a two-thirds majority of those 
present voting to a number less than that. The point I am getting to is 
that we are in this process because the rules weren't good enough to 
accomplish what the majority wanted to accomplish and the majority 
leader wanted to accomplish. Majority Leader Byrd didn't have any 
trouble when he had the same vote number. Majority Leader Daschle 
didn't have any trouble. Neither did Frist or Dole. None of them had 
any trouble. As a matter of fact, what we have seen and what has 
happened is a lack of effective leadership in building bipartisanship.
  The Senate wasn't designed to be the House, as my colleagues have 
recently made it. The Senate was designed to absolutely protect 
minority rights. And what happened the week before we went on 
Thanksgiving break actually hurt the majority more than it hurt the 
minority because now the majority has lost the ability to hold their 
own administration accountable.
  The majority leader used the words ``reasonableness'' and 
``clarity.'' Reasonableness is compromise. Reasonableness is allowing 
amendments on major bills. Clarity is the ability of Senators to offer 
their viewpoint on $600 billion bills. Reasonableness would be to say 
that every Member of this body ought to be able to contribute important 
ideas to the Defense authorization bill or to the farm bill or to any 
other major piece of legislation.
  So we have gone down this road. It can be stopped. All this can be 
stopped, but it cannot be stopped without the recognition of the damage 
done to this body by a very frivolous act.
  The revisionist history I am talking about is with the DC court. 
There is no difference in what the President is doing on the DC court 
than what Roosevelt decided to do or attempted to do. Everybody knows 
the workload there is enormously small compared to all the rest of the 
courts. Everybody knows there are also judicial vacancies that are much 
more important than those.
  So what is the reason for this? It is so we can continue to have 
executive orders and bureaucratic rules and regs come through that are 
going to get challenged because they are not within the consent and the 
vision of the laws that are passed, and, in fact, they can be enforced 
by a stacked court. My colleagues can't claim anything other than that. 
We know that is what is going on, and they know that is what is going 
on. That is going to be there forever. That is a legacy of the Obama 
administration, and it is a planned legacy.
  So it is not about what is claimed to be Republican obstructionism. 
It is about changing the very nature of our country. It is about 
changing the rule of law. It is about whether the President will be an 
emperor or be the President. And my worry is that we are moving fast 
and quickly toward an executive branch that has decided and has stated 
very proudly: If the Congress won't do it, we are going to do it 
anyway. Where does that fit in with the rule of law? And we have heard 
that three times from this President. In fact, they are doing it--
ignoring law.
  So now the very court where those laws will get challenged is going 
to be stacked with his nominees, and we refuse to admit this very same 
point was made by senior members of the Judiciary Committee when the 
Republicans were in charge. No one can deny that history. It is out 
there. Senator Schumer did it, as well as others, knowing that court 
should not be filled.

[[Page S8636]]

  Now, we know it is going to get filled. We understand what is 
happening. What is at risk is the future of our country and whether we 
will really have balance between the powers of the judiciary, the 
executive, and the legislative branches in this country. What we are 
seeing is a reshaping of that. It is a dangerous trend. It was 
something our Founders worried about, and we have seen executive orders 
and executive privilege taken to new heights that have never been seen 
in this country before by this administration.

  So let's be clear what we are talking about. This isn't about 
obstructionism. This is about you limited our rights. You also very 
well limited your own rights in the ability to extract information.
  We just heard Senator Grassley spend 1 hour on the floor talking 
about the lack of response from this administration. There is no tool 
for you to get answers anymore, there is no tool for any of us to get 
answers anymore, because we can no longer hold any nominations because 
they will go through. So there is no power. We have given up the one 
significant power to hold the executive branch accountable.
  Not only that, but we have diminished the minority rights that are 
part of what the Founders created to force compromise--to force us to 
compromise, to bring us together. There is not ill will. There are 
damaged hearts in this institution today.
  We understand the strong beliefs on the other side, but we don't 
understand the lack of moral fiber that is associated with avoiding and 
violating what has always been the tradition of the Senate--which is, 
you change rules with two-thirds votes of those duly elected and 
present. Rule XXII still stands. It just has a precedent in front of 
it.
  So for the first time in our history in this body, one group--because 
they couldn't achieve compromise and wouldn't compromise--has forced a 
changing of the rules, not through two-thirds of duly elected and sworn 
members but by fiat and by simple majority. What is next? We are going 
to make it the House. That is what is next. That is coming. I know that 
is coming.
  So consequently what is going to happen in our country is we are not 
going to have significant deliberation. We are going to have laws 
changed at public whim, rather than the long-term thinking and an 
embracing of what the Constitution says.
  The whole purpose for this body is to be a counter to the House in 
terms of response to political and public demand; to give reasoned 
thought and forced compromise, so that what comes out of here is a 
blend of what both the public wants, but also what the public might 
have lost sight of in terms of a short-term view versus a long-term 
view. You are putting that at risk. It is coming at risk. The very the 
soul of the country can unwind right here in the Senate.
  So what remaining powers do we have as minority Members--and you may 
get to find that out someday--is to use the rules that are there to our 
benefit.
  In the past, nominations were agreed upon between the majority leader 
and the minority leader, and they were ferreted out and moved. We have 
had 21 nominations come through the homeland security committee. I 
voted positively for 19 of them, against one, and voted present on one 
today. I would say that is about 90 percent that I am in agreement of 
moving the nominations.
  We actually force compromise on our committee. We actually work to 
compromise on our committee. But that is because of the leadership of 
Senator Carper to create an atmosphere where you can have compromise 
and you can have back and forth. We don't have that leadership in the 
Senate as a whole. The Senate has never seen these problems. But it is 
not about the rules. It is about the leadership and who is running the 
place.
  Most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle haven't been 
here for a long time. They have never seen it in the majority work. 
Seventy-seven times the majority leader over the last 7 years has 
filled the tree and barred amendments. That is more than all the rest 
combined in the entire history of the Senate. Is that about us or is 
that about him not wanting to allow the place to work? He is a good 
man. But the problem is that leadership matters, and this place is not 
functioning.
  I will make one other statement I think needs to be made. I believe 
that climate does change. I believe that climate is changing all the 
time. Global warming has been disputed now. It is undeniable; it is not 
global warming. We are now into a global cooling period, and that is 
OK. You can have cooling. But the fact is the science is still nebulous 
on all the claims being made. I have said before on this floor, I am 
not a climate change denier. But I am a global warming denier, because 
the facts don't back it up.
  We heard what the majority leader had to say about the importance of 
getting things through on climate change. There may be important things 
we need to do, but we ought to be doing them together rather than in 
opposition. If that were the attitude, that we would work together, if 
we would have an open amendment process--a truly open amendment process 
where the majority leader isn't picking our amendments and deciding 
what we can offer--pretty soon you are going tell us what we can say on 
the floor. You are going to determine what I can say on the floor. This 
is the first step in this process. That is the ultimate conclusion to 
this process that you have started.
  So it is about leadership, and it is either there or it isn't. Right 
now, it is not there.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator 
from Oklahoma, and I would like to use his comments maybe as a 
springboard for some thoughts I have, not only on this nomination but 
on the terrible mess we find ourselves in today here in the Senate.
  I am a fairly new Member of the Senate. I came here just 5 years ago. 
I thought a lot about reelection, and I announced some months ago that 
I would not seek a second term in the Senate. So you might say I don't 
really have a fighter in this ring. I am here for a limited period of 
time. I have already decided that. My interest is seeing the Senate 
operate in a way which will be in the best interests of our country, 
that will fulfill the vision that our Founders had of a country where 
there would be freedom and where the minority would be able to voice 
their view as well as the majority.
  The process by which the House of Representatives and the Senate were 
put together was a very thoughtful process. Our Founders looked at our 
country and its future, and they decided there needed to be a body 
where the population would be represented based upon numbers, based 
upon the population, and that became the House of Representatives.
  For a State like Nebraska, 200-some years later that doesn't work 
very well. It is pretty obvious that our three House Members can be 
consistently, routinely outvoted by a whole bunch of other States: 
California, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas. I could go on and 
on. We have three Members in the House. It is obvious that we are going 
to be on the losing end.
  The other piece of that is it is a majority-based body. So if you are 
in the majority, with the Rules Committee, you pretty well set the 
rules. It just works that as long as the majority can keep their 
members together, they are going to win. That is just the way it works. 
About the only way you can change that is to change the majority.
  When our Founders looked at that, they said: We have to have a 
different approach in the Senate. That led to the great compromise.
  What we ended up with is just a remarkable system. If you think about 
it, Nebraska in the Senate is as powerful as California. Nebraska is as 
powerful as Pennsylvania because we each get two Members. We are 
equally represented.
  They also recognize that the pendulum would swing. Sometimes one 
party would be in control, and sometimes another party would be in 
control. Originally, when the Senate was set up, any one Member of the 
body could come to the Senate floor and object or just debate something 
to death. That pretty well was how it operated, and it operated for 
decades and decades that way.
  Then came World War I and Senators began to recognize that funding 
the

[[Page S8637]]

war was going to be a very serious problem. There was a tremendous 
amount of affinity between Senators and people back in the country 
where their ancestors came from--Germany--and they had to find a way to 
end debate. So they finally, after discussing this and debating it, 
decided the best way of doing that was to put something in place where 
you could literally take a vote. I think back then, if my memory serves 
me correctly, if two-thirds of the Senators voted, they could end 
debate.
  That was quite a change for the Senate. The whole idea that a single 
Senator wasn't going to be able to literally force issues in the Senate 
was a very difficult issue. But that change was made, and it operated 
that way for many decades following. Then in the 1970s, the decision 
was made that it would take 60 votes to end debate. It would pull the 
number down to 60. But it was always recognized that the rules could 
only be changed by a two-thirds majority; that is, until just a few 
weeks ago. Then, something happened here in the Senate that literally 
shakes the foundation of this country and it shakes the foundation of 
this body.
  I guess if you are in the majority at the moment, you are probably 
saying: Geez, Mike. It seems to work out pretty well. Well, it won't 
work out very well for the history of this body, for this institution, 
for its Members, and, most importantly, for the citizens of the United 
States, because it was the method chosen to change the rules that is 
the frightening piece.
  Think about this. We came down here a few weeks ago. A ruling was 
made by the Chair, and the majority leader said: I will appeal that 
ruling.
  Now, we all know, if we have read the Senate rules--and I hope to 
goodness we have all read the Senate rules--that by appealing the 
ruling of the Chair, you can overrule the Chair by a majority vote.
  Let me repeat that. We bypassed the rule that says it takes two-
thirds to change the rules of the Senate, and the majority said: We 
will appeal the ruling; and if we get a majority, we will overturn the 
ruling. That is what happened, and that is where we find ourselves 
tonight.
  This isn't inconsequential, and we are not trying to be arbitrary and 
capricious, but we are trying to make the point that this is a huge 
issue for the future of our country. Let me point out what this now 
means for the Senate. What this means is that if the majority leader, 
whoever that is, Republican or Democrat, does not like the way things 
are going, they can appeal the ruling of the Chair and overturn that 
ruling by a majority vote because now the precedent is set. It is in 
our history. It is in our rules.

  Some look at this and say: You need not panic; this only applies to 
circuit court nominees, district court nominees, and executive 
appointments.
  Let's think about that for a second. Let's say we have a Supreme 
Court of the United States where there are four members who are pretty 
consistent in ruling one way--some might call it the liberal way--and 
we have four members who are pretty consistent in ruling another way--
some might call it the conservative way--and there is one member of the 
Supreme Court who kind of moves back and forth between the four over 
here and the four over here, between the four liberal members and the 
four conservative members, whatever you want to call it. That is a 
pretty unpredictable vote.
  Let's say something happens. Maybe there is a health issue. Maybe 
there is a decision by that member there in the middle to retire. I 
don't know. It could be a whole host of things. That is the human 
condition. Things happen to us. Let's say we are in the last 18 months 
of an administration. The President is due to go out. The campaign has 
already started. People are showing up in Iowa, New Hampshire, South 
Carolina, and everywhere else. They are raising money. They have 
Presidential races they are organizing, and they are doing all the 
things they need to do. You have Republicans thinking: By golly, it is 
our time. We either keep the White House or win the White House. You 
have Democrats thinking the same. And you have a President who all of a 
sudden has a Supreme Court appointment smack dab in the middle of four 
members on one side and four members on the other side.
  Let's say the majority has the ability to put somebody of their own 
ilk into that position--whether it is Republican or Democrat or liberal 
or conservative. They look at this and they say: You know, we could 
lose the White House or we might not get the White House. These are 
appointments for life. It is not as if we are appointing somebody for 4 
years; these are appointments for life. We have kind of come to the 
conclusion, as we talked about it on our side of the aisle, that, by 
golly, it is in the best interests of this country if we can make this 
appointment. You know what. We do not have 60 votes to get it done. We 
have counted the votes. It looks as though this is going to come out of 
the Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote. What are we 
going to do now?
  I know what will happen. You know what will happen. Every Member of 
the Senate knows what will happen. I don't care if you are a Republican 
or a Democrat or a conservative or a liberal or a Socialist or whatever 
you want to call yourself, we know what will happen. There will be a 
ruling by the Chair. There will be an appeal by the majority leader. 
And all of a sudden we will have a rule where you can confirm a Supreme 
Court nomination--a nomination to a job for life--based upon a majority 
vote. Does anybody think for a minute that is not going to happen? Does 
anybody think for a minute that the circumstances surrounding that will 
not occur?
  I guess if you are on the Republican side of the aisle and it is a 
very strong conservative who is going to the Supreme Court, maybe you 
look at that and say: Thank goodness. We saved the country.
  Maybe if you are a Democrat and it is a good strong liberal who is 
going onto the Supreme Court, you say: Thank goodness. We saved the 
country, and it was worth it.
  But you see, here is the dilemma in which we find ourselves. The 
dilemma in which we find ourselves is that the majority of this body 
has now set the precedent and you cannot pull it back. There is not any 
way now that you can unwind the clock and turn back the clock.
  Let me offer another thought. Let's say we are a few years down the 
road and you have a piece of legislation and your side of the aisle has 
decided that piece of legislation is absolutely critical for the future 
of this country. Maybe it is cap-and-trade, maybe it is another health 
care bill--whatever. All of a sudden somebody says: We have to get this 
done. We are in the last 12 months of this administration. We are 
looking at the numbers. We are not going to win the White House again, 
the way it is looking. The precedent is there: Appeal the ruling of the 
chair.
  The point I am making is this. It is not that the rules were changed. 
The rules have been changed in the Senate a number of times by the way 
the Senate rules contemplate--with a supermajority voting to change 
those rules. Now we have torn that up because now we have established a 
precedent.
  I am in the process of reading Senator Byrd's history of the Senate--
a remarkable man. I got to know him a little bit. He was still here 
when I came to the Senate, before he passed. He happened to be on the 
other side of the aisle, but I came to respect him so much. He would 
never have stood for this. He never would have tolerated that this 
institution would be so mistreated by anybody, Republican or Democrat. 
Boy, in his heyday he would have been at his seat screaming at the top 
of his lungs about what we were doing to the Senate with this vote, 
what the majority was going to do to the future of this great body.

  In his history of the Senate, he talks about how important it is that 
there is this body where a minority view of the world can be 
represented.
  If I were the majority leader, I guess I would like this to run 
efficiently and well-oiled and smoothly. I was a Governor. I was a 
mayor. The days when I got my way were much better than days when I did 
not get my way. I did not like being frustrated by the legislature. I 
didn't like the city council telling me I couldn't get my way. I could 
not understand, some days, why they could not figure out that I was 
right.
  One day I was sitting down with a State senator. He had been there a 
lot of years. I was complaining about the way the legislature was 
treating me. I couldn't understand why the legislature couldn't follow 
everything the

[[Page S8638]]

Governor wanted done. He listened very patiently and he looked at me 
and he said: You know, Mike, nobody elected you king.
  I think that is what Bob Byrd would have said--nobody elected any of 
us king. You see, our Founders set up this system with the whole idea 
that we would not have kings anymore, that there would be checks and 
balances, and that we would be forced to deal with each other, 
sometimes more artfully than at other times but that we would be forced 
to deal with each other.
  The majority leader came down here and he said: I don't understand 
this, and he talks about this process. This process got started because 
he filed cloture on 10 nominations. Why are we not working on this? If 
you look at the history of the Senate over the last years--I have been 
here; I watched it; I turn on my TV in the office to see what is going 
on on the Senate floor. Do you know what I see? Exactly what you see, 
what all of us see. We sit hour after hour, in cloture or in quorum 
call hour after hour when amendments are pending.
  I thought--I had this mistaken impression--that every Senator could 
file an amendment; that if I had a better idea on something, I could 
file an amendment and I would get a hearing on the amendment. I would 
be able to come down here and try to argue to my colleagues: Pass my 
amendment. We have not seen that kind of process for years under this 
majority.
  I didn't think it was possible to mishandle the Senate when I came 
here. I looked at the books of rules and interpretations and volumes, 
chapter after chapter written about the rules of the Senate, and I said 
to myself: There is no way you could mismanage this body because these 
rules are as intricate as they could be. Boy, was I proven wrong. You 
can mismanage this body. We have seen it. And that is where we find 
ourselves today.
  At the end of the day, why did it happen? Why did it happen? Why are 
we putting ourselves in this position? A former U.S. Senator from 
Nebraska who had been here--I think he was here three terms. He had a 
wonderful saying. When his party was not in power, he would say at 
speeches: Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you, the worm will turn. 
It was his way of saying: You know what. I have been in the majority 
and I have been in the minority, and it will change because the people 
will send a message into this Chamber, just as they did on the health 
care bill. They will send a message that this is not the kind of 
country they want.
  We somehow have to figure out how to put this back in the box. This 
nuclear option needs to be sealed up, hidden away, and never used 
again--I don't care if the Republicans are in the majority or the 
Democrats are in the majority. This basically means, today, that all of 
those rules, all of those chapters written about those rules have no 
meaning whatsoever because there are no rules. If I do not like what is 
going on here and I am in the majority, all I have to do is appeal the 
ruling of the Chair and get my team to stand together and we have 
changed the way the Senate operates. It is as simple as that.
  I think at times in our history we would like to think that we are 
the smartest people in the world, that we thought of something no other 
person has thought of in the history of this country. Not true. If you 
read what Senator Byrd wrote about the history of the Senate, many 
times U.S. Senators, dissatisfied, losing personally because of a 
ruling of the Chair, had an opportunity to appeal that ruling and win 
and realized that was the wrong course of action because they would set 
a precedent that you could change the rules by breaking the rules. That 
is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. It is not the fact that 
the rule has changed, although I disagree with where we ended up, it is 
the method by which the majority--Democrats--changed those 
rules, because that method is now precedent and it is now available to 
Republicans and Democrats and it is wide open. I guarantee that in our 
lifetime we will see a Supreme Court nominee put on the Supreme Court 
by this method. I guarantee that we will see--whether it is in our 
lifetime or at some point after--that there will be a situation where 
legislation is now done by a majority.

  What does that mean for the country? I will give a good example. The 
great compromise protected States such as Nevada, Nebraska, and Iowa. 
We all get two Senators. We all get to come to the floor and fight for 
what we believe in.
  I imagine that every Senator would say something to the effect of: I 
come from a beautiful State, the State of Nebraska. We are conservative 
people by nature. I don't think you live in Nebraska unless you have a 
pioneer spirit and you are conservative by nature. That is who we are. 
We essentially believe that less government is a good idea.
  When I was Governor, people didn't want me running their schools. 
They had a school board. They felt they could make thoughtful and 
intelligent decisions about running their schools. I thought they could 
too. That is the nature of who we are.
  Do you realize that on executive appointments--district court and 
circuit court judges--we basically get dealt out of this. Let's say I 
have a problem with a nominee, and I want to put a hold on that nominee 
until they come to my office and deal with me. Everybody on both sides 
of the aisle gets the opportunity to use that. Well, guess what. That 
was voted away a few weeks ago.
  Why would a Republican administration deal with anyone in today's 
majority? Why would they care? It doesn't make any difference.
  I went through that process. I was a member of the President's 
Cabinet. I hope I would have the decency that if anybody asked me a 
question, I would answer the question or try to solve their problem or 
try to work with them. Quite honestly, why do they need to? How can 
that issue be forced now? They don't need your vote. They can get 
through the process if their party is the majority of the Senate. This 
body was never intended to operate that way.
  I want to spend a few minutes of my time talking about what I really 
think this is about, and this makes it an even more tragic story. The 
majority leader was here a few minutes ago and said: Well, if you are 
going to be like this, then we will work on Christmas. We will work the 
weekend before; we will work the day before.
  I was sitting there thinking: What is new about that? What's even 
threatening about that? I mean, that is the way business is done.
  We sit through hours and hours of quorum calls and then all of a 
sudden they file cloture on 10 nominees 2 weeks before the break? It is 
kind of obvious to me what is going on here. Is it obvious to anyone 
else what is going on here? They are trying to force the issue.
  Why didn't we start working on this weeks ago? Why don't you run the 
Senate 24/7 so we can move amendments and give us the opportunity to 
vote on amendments? Why sit hour after hour in a quorum call?
  I think what this is really all about is this: We had reached an 
agreement. Remember that evening when we all walked down the hall--
Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--and went into the Old Senate 
Chamber and shut the doors. There was no media or staff. It was just us 
talking about the Senate.
  I am not going to share a lot about what was talked about in there, 
but I thought it was a pretty good meeting. We have done that a couple 
of times. We did that on the START treaty, and we did it that evening a 
few months ago.
  It wasn't very pleasant, but over the next day or so we shook hands 
and said to each other: OK, we get it. We don't want to get in the 
business of breaking the rules to change the rules. We understand the 
precedent that is setting. Once you put that on the books, like I said, 
you can't unwind the clock.
  So, OK, this is what we are going to do--and I must admit I didn't 
like it very much. I thought we were giving up too much. Having said 
that, the alternative was not very attractive. We shook hands, like 
gentlemen do, and we called a truce and those were the rules we would 
operate under.
  Everybody said: We dodged a bullet on that one, and the Senate will 
continue to function like it has functioned the last 225 years. It will 
function as a place where the minority, whoever that might be at any 
given time, has a

[[Page S8639]]

voice. It is the only body in the world that operates like that.
  As I said, I must admit I had qualms about it. I talked to some of my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle about my qualms, and at the end 
of the day I reached the conclusion that it was better than the nuclear 
option.
  So why did this come up again? If we had reached a deal--if we shook 
hands like gentlemen and women do, why did this come up again? I 
thought this was behind us. I thought we would make our way through 
nominations and work long hours. Most of these are very 
noncontroversial, and I thought we had reached an agreement.
  We had reached an agreement. We all knew we had reached an agreement. 
So why did Democrats feel that all of a sudden we needed to revisit 
this?
  The argument I want to make tonight is this--and I am going to draw 
on a little bit of history. When I first came here, I sat in a chair 
over there. I will never forget it. It was Christmas Eve day when we 
were brought in here to vote on a piece of legislation. Christmas Eve 
votes are pretty unusual around here. We all sat at our desks. We don't 
usually enforce that rule, but we all sat at our desks.
  For people like me, I left this Chamber very, very sad and 
discouraged. On a pure party-line vote, a monumental piece of 
legislation that practically no one had read and was poorly 
understood--in fact, the Speaker said: We have to pass this to 
understand what is in it. No truer words were ever spoken. It passed. 
Not a single Republican in the House or the Senate voted yes on that 
legislation.
  When I came here, I kind of had the idea that there would be give and 
take, that I would get my idea, you would get your idea, and at the end 
of the day the Senate was a body that would force compromise or the 
bill wouldn't pass.
  Something unusual happened. The President was a Democrat, the Senate 
had 60 Democrats, so debate could end, and the majority of the House 
was overwhelmingly Democrat. It became very clear to me that my view of 
the world didn't matter, and it wasn't going to matter because as long 
as they could sweeten this thing up and do deals, and whatever else, my 
State was impacted by it. We all remember the Cornhusker Kickback. But 
at the end of the day it passed.
  I could never figure out how that bill would work. It just didn't 
make any sense to me. I had been a Governor. I had seen how failed 
Medicaid was--40 percent of the doctors would not take Medicaid. I 
could not imagine how adding millions to that system was going to help 
poor people. To me it looked like it was going to hurt them. It was 
kind of like giving them the bus ticket and then saying: We are only 
running one bus in Washington, DC, these days. It is probably not going 
to be very successful.
  I looked at what was happening in the rest of the bill, and it just 
didn't make any sense to me. I think I know why we revisited this rule. 
When the rollout occurred right about that time, all heck broke loose. 
The American people finally realized how bad this bill was. In fact, 
there is one State out there, the State of Oregon, that didn't sign 
anybody up because their system melted down.
  The exchange was a mess. People found out that all of these 
promises--remember this one: If you like your plan, you can keep it, 
period. If you like your plan, you can keep it, period.
  Not only was that used on the campaign trail--you know, we all get 
out on the campaign trail and hyperventilate here and there. That 
phrase was used by somebody in real authority: The President of the 
United States of America. He went to the American people and said: If 
you like your plan, you can keep it.
  I said how could that possibly work. The whole idea is you have to 
force people off their plan and onto a different plan. If you like your 
plan, you get to keep it?
  In 2010, the administration's own rule on this subject showed that as 
many as 80 percent of small business plans and 69 percent of all 
business plans would lose their grandfathered status.
  A very thoughtful Senator, a guy by the name of Mike Enzi, put in a 
resolution of disapproval which would have canceled that regulation. 
Back then he was able to get it to a vote. You would think that if you 
want to support the President of your party and his pledge to the 
American people--if you like your plan, you get to keep it, period--you 
would vote with your President. You would think that would be 100 to 0.
  I don't know how Republicans could be against that. I don't know how 
Democrats could be against that. After all, that is what this person in 
authority promised the American people: If you like your plan, you get 
to keep it, period. He said it over and over. It was like a broken 
record.
  You know how that vote went here? Let me remind everybody. It failed 
on party-line votes. Democrats voted no on the resolution: If you like 
your plan, you get to keep it. My goodness. Is that an embarrassment or 
what?
  What was the message that day? Were they trying to say: No, if you 
like your plan, you don't get to keep it? The President isn't being 
truthful with you. Was that the message that day? What was going on? I 
mean, I was stunned by that vote.
  How could you be against the President's own promise? That was back 
in 2010. That information was available to the President and his people 
back in 2010. Yet they kept saying it: If you like your plan, you get 
to keep your plan.
  One other estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, which I think 
generally we all respect--they do good work for us. They do our 
scoring. They said that up to 20 million employees could lose their 
employer-sponsored insurance. Wait a second. That information was 
available too. So how has this promise worked out?

  This fall, more than 4.7 million cancellation letters went out in 32 
different States. I have read the articles. I imagine everybody in the 
Chamber has read the articles. They say 4.7 million people got 
cancellation letters in 32 different States. The cancellation letter 
basically said: Well, sorry. This big law got passed on a party-line 
vote, and you don't get to keep your plan, just as was predicted by the 
CBO and the administration's own people. This should not be stunning to 
anybody in this body, but it was stunning to the American people.
  The President said: Oh my goodness. I think this is a problem. So he 
said to insurance companies: You have to fix this. You have to get 
people their plan. If they like their plan, they get to keep their 
plan. And it didn't matter whether it was Democrats or Republicans in 
given States, they said: Mr. President, you can't unwind that clock.
  What I would say to that is, wait a second here. I don't like this 
law, but it passed. I was sitting there the day it passed. It passed on 
a completely party-line vote. And people literally were caught in a 
situation--millions of them--where they realized they wouldn't get to 
keep their plan. So could the President solve that problem? No. It 
wasn't a policy fix; it was a political fix. That is what he was doing. 
He was literally trying to solve a political problem for the majority 
that passed the darn bill. I mean, it is unbelievable.
  Many weighed in. The American Academy of Actuaries said this:

       Changing the ACA provisions could alter the dynamics of the 
     insurance market, creating two parallel markets operating 
     under different rules, thereby threatening the viability of 
     insurance markets operating under the new rules.

  Now, I am as competitive as anybody. I have run a lot of elections. I 
understand the importance of being in the majority in this body. I 
especially understand that after what the majority did over the last 
few weeks. We went 225 years as a country, and it was only in the last 
couple of weeks that the majority said: Look, we are tired of dealing 
with you, minority. We are going to get our own way.
  It reminded me of the day ObamaCare was passed. It was identical. It 
was like: Johanns, get lost. We don't care what you think about this. 
We have 60 votes. Sit down and shut up.
  Is that the way the Senate is supposed to operate? I don't think so. 
I don't think that is what was envisioned when this body was put 
together, and it has been forever changed. It happened because 
ObamaCare is out of control. It is not the Web site. The Web site was a 
mess. It just proved to us that the White House couldn't manage this. 
That is what it proved to us. But we can fix a Web site. They can get 
smart people who go in and figure it out.

[[Page S8640]]

That wouldn't be me, but there are many people in the United States who 
could be brought to bear to solve this problem of dealing with the Web 
site. It is not the Web site, although it is a huge embarrassment. It 
was a huge embarrassment for the White House. It was a huge 
embarrassment for the President of the United States. It was a huge 
embarrassment for Kathleen Sebelius. It was a huge embarrassment for 
the Democrats who voted for this. But at the end of the day it can be 
fixed, and I would guess they would fix it. I kept saying to people 
back home that I think they will get it fixed. How tough is that? How 
tough would it be to do it the right way the first time? But they 
didn't. It just proves they are not very competitive.
  What is happening here is the wheels are coming off this policy 
because the policy never made any sense. When the President made this 
announcement: Insurance companies, you fix it, America's health 
insurance plans said that premiums have already been set for the next 
year based on the assumption of when consumers will transition into the 
new marketplace. Who decided when they would transition into the new 
marketplace? The insurance companies didn't. The majority did. The 
White House did. Health and Human Services did.
  They go on in their statement:

       If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to 
     purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and 
     there will be fewer choices for consumers.

  Well, let me say something that is obvious to everybody in this 
Chamber. Your premiums are going up. Why? Young people are so turned 
off. Young people are so turned off by what is happening. I had a young 
person show up at a town hall. This was a year and a half ago. They 
said: Here is kind of the deal. It is just my wife and I. We don't have 
children. We are both working. We are trying to get ahead. We don't 
make a lot of money, and we decided the best plan for us was kind of a 
catastrophic plan. We will deal with our day-to-day health care needs, 
which, incidentally, aren't much because we are young and fortunately 
we are healthy. We have a high deductible.
  I was listening to that, and I said: God bless you. This is America. 
They can make that choice. That was the best choice for them. They 
thought about it and decided the money they were making might be better 
allocated someplace else. What a great country that people can decide 
that.
  Well, what happened with this health care bill? That decision was 
taken away from that young couple. They were ordered by the Federal 
Government, under penalty, to buy a given plan. Now, I have not caught 
up with that young couple, but I bet they are mad as wet hens. I will 
bet they have looked at what has happened to them and they are saying: 
Why?
  We all know the little secret here: Young people are paying more for 
coverage that they don't need to finance me in my sixties. Does that 
make any sense?
  I could go on and on about what is happening here with this health 
care bill, but it is not sheer coincidence that Senators in the Senate 
reached an agreement months ago on the rules. We shook hands on it. We 
put that behind us. Right about the time ObamaCare rolled out, all of a 
sudden that agreement wasn't valid anymore, and we got set up on a 
manufactured crisis to force a vote, and the method chosen to change 
the rules forever changes how the Senate operates.
  In our history, many Senators had the opportunity to change these 
rules and thought better of it because they so respected and admired 
this institution, that they believed there was a place for a minority 
whether that Senator was in the minority or the majority at the time. 
That is what happened.
  I will take another step. All of us know what this is really about. 
This is about control of this body. All of a sudden, because of 
ObamaCare and the truth coming out about what a terrible piece of 
policy this is, it became evident that Members over here were in deep 
trouble and were going to lose their elections if their elections were 
held now, and the majority had to change the conversation. So the 
agreement we reached after that night we spent in the Old Senate 
Chamber hashing through this, debating and discussing it, basically got 
torn up and tossed out the window, and the majority forever changed how 
this body will operate and what this body is going to be about in the 
future.
  So what I say to my colleagues tonight is this: I am not planning on 
being here much longer. I have made that decision. One could say I 
don't have a boxer in the ring. A year from now, I will be doing 
something else. Some will be here, some won't be here. But at the end 
of the day, what I will remember about this time in the Senate is that 
a precedent was set that is vastly different from the way this Senate 
operated for 225 years. A precedent was set that allows the majority to 
take control of executive branch appointments, district court 
appointments, circuit court appointments. It is a precedent that would 
allow a majority to take control of a Supreme Court appointment. It is 
a precedent that will allow a majority, when it chooses to--not if; I 
believe it is a question of when--to take control of the policymaking.
  So it is true when we say that if they were attempting to change the 
conversation, I say to the majority Members of the U.S. Senate, away 
from ObamaCare to this, all they have done is reminded the American 
people that what they are really doing is abusing this institution in a 
way that, quite honestly, is going to be very hard to turn around.
  My thought is this: I feel very strongly that we can reverse what has 
occurred here, but we can't do it as a minority. We need the majority 
to back off. We need the majority to recognize that this body has 
existed through difficult times, it has existed through wars, it has 
existed through attacks on our country, and we have found a way to 
operate. We need the majority to recognize that we reached an agreement 
many months ago after an evening spent together in the Old Senate 
Chamber where we debated these things and, like gentlemen and 
gentlewomen, we shook hands and put this behind us for this session.
  We can do the work of the Senate. We can do the work for the American 
people. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

  I am very concerned, though, that we have put the Senate in a 
position where it is a very vulnerable body now. Any majority can now 
use this precedent to turn this into something that is entirely 
different than what anybody who founded this country believed it should 
be. When the majority decided that it would bypass the requirement that 
rules would be changed by a two-thirds vote and do it by appealing the 
ruling of the Chair, they put the Senate in a position where there are 
no rules. There are no rules. All you need is 51 Members--50 if you 
have the Vice President in the Chair--who decide to stick together and 
make that Supreme Court appointment. They can get it done. All you need 
is 50 Members, if you have the Vice President in the Chair, who decide 
they stick together, and they would do a legislative process by a 
majority vote.
  Many, many times the nuclear option was discussed, it was debated, 
and Senators much wiser than I looked at the history of this great 
country and its future and decided it was a step that should never be 
taken--that was until a couple of weeks ago, all driven by the fact 
that this piece of legislation called ObamaCare has turned out to be 
such a train wreck and that there was a need to change the discussion 
and change the topic and try to draw the people's attention away from 
that legislation, and that is how this rule got adopted. It is a sad 
time in our Nation's history. It is a sad time in terms of what is 
going on.
  What I would offer is my hope is that wise people will realize the 
problems they have created for this country in the future, realize that 
the precedent they have set forever changes the way we operate and back 
away from what occurred.
  Let's start doing the work of the Senate. If that means we work 
through Christmas, good. I am here. If that means we work on weekends, 
if that means we work around the clock, fine with me. I am good. I will 
do it. I will be happy to do it. But to try to streamline this process 
in a way that silences the minority is not right, and it is not what 
this country should be about.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page S8641]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). The Senator from 
Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after I 
finish speaking, Senator Blumenthal be allowed to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.