[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 18 (Thursday, January 30, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S611-S613]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPROVING THE PROVISION OF MEDICAL SERVICES AND BENEFITS TO VETERANS--
MOTION TO PROCEED
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 297,
S. 1950.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 297, S. 1950, a bill to
improve the provision of medical services and benefits to
veterans, and for other purposes.
Schedule
Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks the time until 11:15
a.m. will be equally divided and controlled dealing with flood
insurance. At 11:15 a.m. there will be up to four rollcall votes in
relation to amendments to that bill.
Order of Procedure
Mr. REID. Mr. President, following those votes the recess which was
originally scheduled until 2 p.m.--and that will still be the case,
except I ask unanimous consent that on the passage of S. 1926, as
amended, the votes start at 1:50 p.m., with all other provisions of the
previous order remaining in effect.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. REID. Additionally, we expect to receive momentarily the
conference report to accompany the farm bill today, and we will work on
getting an agreement to move forward on this today.
Retirement of Joel Breitner
Mr. REID. Mr. President, here in the Senate we work closely with so
many people, but no one do we work more closely with than the court
reporters. They are right here in our face every time we talk, taking
down a verbatim transcript of what we say, and they work extremely
hard.
We went through a period of time when we were working through all
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these nominations, and they went for days without going home. They had
a cot in their office, and they never missed a beat.
I always watch very closely the court reporters because my brother--
who is 22 months younger than I am--was a court reporter. He retired
from doing that, but I watched him work so hard.
Court reporting is extremely difficult. It is very intense. In court
we rarely have court reporters who take what we call a daily. They will
have a couple of court reporters during a trial and they will
transcribe their notes sometime later. But here in the Senate they
transcribe their notes now--immediately.
The reason I mention that today is one of our reporters is going to
retire. Joel Breitner has been here for three decades in the Senate.
Prior to coming here, he was a court reporter. He has this designation
now--as this young woman in front of me is reporting what I say--as an
Official Reporter for the United States Senate.
Joel began working here in this body in 1987, after having been a
court reporter already for 23 years. During his time in the reporters
office, he has witnessed both innovation and a lot of history. He was
one of the first reporters to use computer-aided transcription, which
is a modern miracle--it really is--because the stenographic notes at
the same time they type them, are already translating into English.
That isn't the way it used to be.
I can remember my brother--and, of course, Joel, who was one of the
first here in this body to use the computer-aided transcription and did
what my brother did--you took down what people said with your machine,
and then you would go back to your office, look over your notes, and
transcribe them, and then either you would type them up or have someone
do so. So it was a lot of work. It is still a lot of work, but it is a
lot different than it used to be.
He is one of the first, if not the first, in this body to use this
computer-aided transcription, and it really helped modernize the Office
of Official Reporters.
He has reported historic events, countless numbers of them--President
Clinton's first inaugural address, his impeachment. Over the years he
has been a friend and resource to the Senate pages. Joel is a very
nice, quiet person whom I will miss.
When we cross--I always see them--I say: ``Saddling up again''--
putting on the heavy equipment they wear during the time they are here.
They work very, very hard, and they transcribe every word we say. There
are times I wish they hadn't, but they did.
Mr. President, it is no surprise, with the affection that Joel has
shown for the pages, that Jamie, one of his children, has been a Senate
page.
So I thank him on behalf of the entire Senate for his years of
service not only to Senators but everybody, for his years of service in
the reporters office, and I congratulate him on a very distinguished
career. I wish him the best in retirement. I know he will enjoy
spending more time with his children and with Carol, his wife of almost
three decades.
working together
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I need to comment on part of what my
Republican counterpart said. The President gave a good State of the
Union Address to the country on Tuesday night. It was a dramatic
speech, and he called upon us to work together. You would never know
that from what the Republican leader said today.
He also said, as President of the United States, he has the power to
do things when the Senate finds itself bogged down, as we have been
with countless filibusters. During the years I have been leader of the
Senate, there have been more than 470 filibusters conducted by the
Republicans. Is it any wonder the President is going to do some things
administratively because of the logjam we have here? Hopefully we can
do better than we have done. I hope that is the case.
This country has been hurt by the constant obstruction we have had. I
am surprised--but not too much--that my Republican colleague would say
the President has to do something to help create jobs. One need only
reflect on when President Obama took office. We were losing 700,000
jobs a month at that time. But because of his patience and wisdom and
the fact that he had a Democratic Senate and Congress for the first 2
years of his Presidency, we were able to do some terrific things for
the country.
Since then, as we know, the Republican leader has said his No. 1 goal
was to defeat Obama for the reelection, and that is how the Republicans
have legislated. Over the last 3 years, they have done everything they
could to stop the country from moving forward. They actually did it
during the first 2 years he was President, but they didn't have the
power to do much then except obstruct, and we had enough votes to
overcome their obstruction.
I don't know if my friend the Republican leader understands that in
spite of his No. 1 goal to defeat the President that he was reelected
overwhelmingly because the American people agreed with his view of the
country.
I am not going to go into more detail about how I believe my
Republican colleague is wrong on what has happened with bogging down
the Senate, but I will comment on one aspect of his presentation:
Because of the U.S. Supreme Court case called Citizens United, there
has been some really untoward stuff going on in the political world. We
have two brothers who are actually trying to buy the country. Last year
the Koch brothers made billions of dollars. They are spending their
billions of dollars by going into State legislatures, Governors races,
and secretary of state races on a State level, and, of course, spending
huge amounts of money around the country in an attempt to defeat
Democrats both in the House and the Senate.
The Republican leader has long been an opponent of campaign finance
reform. This has been part of his career. So it is no surprise that he
opposes the administration's effort for greater disclosure. The abuse
here is not the administration enforcing the law, but folks like the
Koch brothers pretending to be social welfare organizations.
The Presiding Officer has dedicated much of his life to improving the
social welfare of people from his State. These social welfare
organizations are extremely helpful for people who have problems. The
Koch brothers are not a social welfare organization. They are plainly
acting as a political organization. They are spending tens and hundreds
of millions of dollars on political activities. They have not
contributed to anything that deals with social welfare. Folks who act
as political organizations should have to disclose where the money
comes from.
As the Presiding Officer knows, the Koch brothers hide all of their
campaign efforts. They disguise themselves, with rare exception, as
social welfare organizations. They have all these fancy names and go
after people who are trying to improve the country.
We have an important piece of legislation we are going to pass today
to improve the ability of our country to prosper. The bipartisan
measure called the flood insurance bill will protect the Nation's
recovering housing market and save consumers money.
I thank Senator Menendez, the chairman of the banking committee, and
Chairman Landrieu, who is chairman of the small business committee.
They have done a wonderful job--these two working together with Senator
Isakson--with their leadership on this issue.
I look forward to a strong bipartisan vote on this measure this
afternoon. I would note that the bipartisan agreement to vote on a
reasonable number of relevant amendments and on final passage of the
flood insurance measure is exactly the kind of agreement that
Republicans have rejected on other legislative priorities.
For example, when Democrats offered to vote on 20 relevant amendments
to a full offset extension of unemployment insurance a couple of weeks
ago, the Republicans refused. Since then, 150,000 more Americans have
lost emergency benefits that were helping them to stay above water
while they look for work. In all, more than 1.6 million out-of-work
Americans have lost benefits to help them put food on the table and gas
in the tank so they can focus on their job search.
I hope in the coming week Democrats and Republicans will be able
reach a bipartisan agreement to have an up-or-down vote on the
extension of unemployment insurance as well. I hope it is not again
bogged down with obstruction. I am confident that we have the
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opportunity to do that, and we should do it. Millions of fellow
Americans are counting on us to do this on an affirmative basis.
While we work toward an agreement to restore unemployment benefits,
the Senate will also, as I mentioned earlier, consider the farm bill
conference report. America's farms and ranches are the most productive
in the world. They support 16 million private sector jobs. Smart farm
policies will help American farmers thrive. That is an important part
of our work to keep the economic recovery rolling. The farm bill will
create jobs and cut taxpayer subsidies and save $23 billion which will
be used to reduce the deficit.
I would also note that we have done an admirable job of reducing the
debt. Do we need to do more? Of course we do. We have already reduced
the debt during the Obama years by almost $3 trillion, and if we could
get the Republicans in the House to agree on the bill we passed dealing
with immigration reform, it would be another $1 trillion toward
reducing the debt.
I would also note, as I indicated earlier, that when President Obama
first took office, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month. We have now
created more than 8 million jobs. We need to do more and the farm bill
will help that. The farm bill will create jobs and cut taxpayer
subsidies and save $20 billion which will be used to reduce the debt
and deficit. The bill includes important reforms to farm programs, and
while this measure doesn't include as much funding for programs to
reduce hunger as a number of us would like, it is a good compromise and
it will protect needy families.
Senator Stabenow from Michigan has been the chairman of this
committee. She has worked so hard for years to get this done. We have
passed it twice here in the Senate. We have struggled to get something
done in the House, and we were finally able to get this done under her
leadership.
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