[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 25, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3950-S3952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
KEYSTONE PIPELINE
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in a moment some of my colleagues will come
to the floor and ask to enter into a colloquy and discuss an issue that
is important to many of us, especially to those of us who represent
States in the West and Midwest.
The issue I wish to speak about has to do with something that over
the past 5 years the Obama administration has been particularly active
in pursuing.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, will my friend allow me to ask a question
through the Chair?
Mr. THUNE. Yes.
Mr. REID. I was in my office when I heard the statement by the
Republican leader about Keystone. I direct this question to the Senator
from South Dakota, who is a fine Senator and understands energy issues.
We agreed to have a vote on Keystone. My friend, the Republican
leader, keeps misdirecting the matter. We can have a vote on Keystone.
That was part of the deal we made. We had a bipartisan bill, Portman-
Shaheen. They worked on that bill for months, since last fall. They put
in amendments that people wanted.
Jeanne Shaheen came here yesterday and said: Let's have a vote on
Keystone, but just as long as we can have a vote on energy efficiency.
She even suggested we could have a vote using the McConnell rule--a 60-
vote threshold--on both of them.
This is so transparent that my friend the Republican leader is doing
the bidding again of the Koch brothers, who own the first or second
largest tar
[[Page S3951]]
sands holding which exists in the world.
I say to my friend from South Dakota: Why can't we just have a vote
on both of those--energy efficiency and on Keystone?
Mr. THUNE. I say through the Chair to the majority leader, the offer,
as I understand it, that was put forward by the majority leader with
respect to the energy efficiency bill was that this bill would be
passed with no amendments. There would be no debate, no amendments, and
then somewhere down the road we might get the vote on the Keystone
Pipeline. Well, it strikes me at least, as many of my colleagues on
this side have been pointing out now for some time, that the way in
which the majority leader is running the floor and calling up
legislation, preventing amendments to be offered, to be debated and
voted on, denies the rights not only of us as Senators but ignores the
voices of the people we represent.
So for the majority leader to say we will pass this bill without any
amendment--energy is an important issue in many of our States. It is
important in my State of South Dakota. It is important to a lot of
Members on our side and I would suggest to a lot of Members on the
leader's side who would like to have an opportunity to debate some
amendments on energy if we are going to have an energy bill on the
floor. The leaders came down and said no amendments, no debate, you
pass this. We will jam this bill down without amendment, and then
sometime we will get to the vote on Keystone.
We would love to get a vote on Keystone. The leader can call that up
at any time. We have been saying for some time we ought to have a vote
on Keystone. There is broad bipartisan support for it in the Senate.
There are a lot of Democrats who support the Keystone Pipeline. But
what the leader is suggesting again is he is going to put a bill up,
fill the amendment tree, and prevent Republicans from offering
amendments. We don't think that is the way the Senate ought to operate.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend from South Dakota, it is
so transparent what is going on here. They are hung up on procedure. If
this Keystone vote is so important to them, let's have a vote on it.
That is what I was told when we brought up, for the second time, the
energy efficiency bill. In fact, I was told by our Republican leader
who was pushing that bill to go ahead and fill the tree; we have
already worked out all the amendments. The bill is different when we
first brought it; we put all the amendments in it.
So, again, we get right where we need to be to pass substantive
legislation and here they come. The Republicans walk in here dealing
with procedure. If this Keystone is such a big deal, let's vote on it.
Let's vote on energy efficiency which is a bipartisan bill. But, no,
they can't do that. They can't do that because we wouldn't be able to
offer more amendments.
Now, remember, the Republicans, who were part of that arrangement on
the energy efficiency bill, Shaheen-Portman, thought it was a good
bill. But again, I repeat, if this is such a big deal to the
Republicans, why do they get hung up on procedure? Let's vote on both
of them. Let the cards fall where they may.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would say to the distinguished majority
leader that we on this side believe that when we bring an energy bill
to the floor to talk about energy, we ought to talk about energy. Now,
he may suggest there were certain things incorporated in the bill that
some of his Members wanted, maybe even perhaps some of our Members
wanted, but we have a lot of Members on this side who have been shut
out, who haven't had an opportunity to offer amendments now for the
past year. We can come to the floor every day and talk about the fact
that since July of last year there have only been votes on 9 Republican
amendments and 7 Democratic amendments, out of 1,500 that have been
filed. This is insanity.
We would love to get a vote on the Keystone Pipeline, but we also
think there are a lot of other energy issues that are important to this
country, and if we bring an energy bill to the floor of the Senate, the
historical practice in this institution has been that it is open to
amendments. All Members get an opportunity to offer amendments. There
are issues in addition to the Keystone Pipeline that are critically
important to jobs and to the economy and to the energy security in this
country. So the way the leader has suggested that this ought to work
isn't simply about an argument on procedure. This is about whether the
Senate is going to function in a way where the views of the millions of
people we represent--those of us here would love to offer amendments on
these bills and are being prevented from doing it.
So I would simply say to the leader that this is not simply about the
Keystone Pipeline. This is about the broader debate on energy--what it
means for jobs, what it means for our economy. We are in a place now
where we are not even getting votes in committee. Appropriations bills
are being pulled back at the committee level because Democratic Members
don't want to vote on amendments that Republican Members might offer.
That is not the way this place is supposed to work.
So I appreciate the majority leader's understandable frustration, but
it is a frustration that is grounded in the way he is running this
institution, not in anything our side is doing.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, no one needs to take my word for it. Take
the word of one of the most senior Republicans in this body, the senior
Senator from Tennessee. He came to the floor a few days ago and said--
on the appropriations bills we hear this plaintive plea: Let's have
some votes. So the Senator from Tennessee said: Why don't we have the
votes? What has been established around here is that we have 60 votes
on anything that is controversial and 50 votes on everything else, and
that is what the Senator from Tennessee said. Let's just go ahead and
work through the bills.
There is no better example of that than Dodd-Frank, a bill that the
Republicans hate. It passed. On the 24th amendment that we voted on, on
that bill, Senator Durbin offered an amendment on swipe fees, and he
was told it was going to be 60 votes. Everything else had been 50. So
he had to do his with 60 votes. That is how things work here.
The Republicans don't want to have votes. They want to have issues on
procedure. We could finish every one of those appropriations bills--
every one of them--if we followed what Lamar Alexander suggested and
what we Democrats have suggested.
So it is interesting. It is interesting. Energy issues--it is just a
buzzword for ``let's take care of the oil companies some more.'' That
is what this is all about. They want to protect big oil. Now, if they
want to have all the appropriations bills pass, let's pass them. All we
have to do is follow what I have suggested and what Senator Lamar
Alexander has suggested. That is what we should do.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would simply offer a consent
agreement that the majority leader objected to when he pulled the
Shaheen bill a while back. It was pretty simple and pretty easily
understood. This is the consent that was offered when the majority
leader, as I said, pulled the Shaheen-Portman bill a while back. This
is what I said:
I propose a different unanimous consent agreement. I ask
unanimous consent that the only amendments in order be five
amendments from the Republican side related to energy policy
with a 60-vote threshold on adoption of each amendment. I
further ask that following the disposition of those
amendments, the bill be read a third time, and the Senate
proceed to vote on the passage of the bill, as amended, if
amended.
Now, that gives the majority leader what he was asking for on the
last bill: 60-vote thresholds. It gives him amendments from our side
related to energy policy, and it would have led to a vote on Keystone.
So I would propound that unanimous consent requestagain. It sounds to
me as though we may be getting somewhere if the majority leader really
wants to give us a chance to have a Keystone vote here on the Senate
floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object to my friend's
suggestion, I would ask that it be modified to have a vote on Keystone
and have a vote on Shaheen-Portman--60-vote threshold, of course.
[[Page S3952]]
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Will the Republican leader modify
his request?
Mr. McCONNELL. Reserving the right to object, we didn't get
amendments on Shaheen-Portman. So what the majority leader is now
saying is he wants to pass a kind of comprehensive energy bill dealing
with a variety of different subjects without any amendments at all as a
condition for having a vote on Keystone with five amendments related to
the subject.
I can remember when we used to vote around here. In fact, his Members
have only had seven rollcall votes in a year. He has one Member from
Alaska who has never had a rollcall vote on the floor his entire Senate
career.
So I think rather than these UCs going back and forth, maybe we ought
to talk about how to work this out and see if maybe the Senate could
actually start voting on things again. I object.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection to the original
request?
Mr. REID. Yes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, let's not have revisionist history. Let's
have real, valid history.
Shaheen-Portman was worked on for weeks last fall. Shaheen and
Portman worked on this new version of the bill for months, and they
worked out many amendments in the committee. They came to me and said
they have all this worked out--Shaheen and Portman and a number of
other Senators. I said: Great.
So before one of our recesses, the day we were getting ready to
leave, they came to me and said: What we need to know and what would be
even better is if we had a sense-of-the-Senate resolution on Keystone.
I said: We already agreed to what we are going to do. The bill is
different with all of this input, such as the Workforce Investment Act,
which we will take up this afternoon. So I came back and said: OK, we
will have a sense-of-the-Senate; that is fine. And we are going to do
this as soon as we get back.
We came back and then I was told: Well, we don't want a sense-of-the-
Senate resolution; we want an up-or-down vote here.
I said: OK, let's do it. And that is when that still wasn't good
enough. That still wasn't good enough because they want the issue.
The energy efficiency bill is a good bipartisan bill. It is like the
one we are going to work on this afternoon. It is a complex bill, but
the differences have been worked out, and we should go ahead and vote
on it.
So if they really care about Keystone--if this is such a big deal--
the Republican leader said we have been working on this for 5 years.
The time has come. Let's belly up to the bar where we vote, and let's
vote on it. But in the process, let's also do the bipartisan energy
efficiency legislation that Jeanne Shaheen has put her heart into.
So that is where we are: another obstruction, diversion to keep us
from really voting on things. They want the issue. They are focused on
procedure. And what the American people want is for us to do things.
They want the minimum wage raised. They want unemployment benefits
extended for the long-term unemployed. They would like it so that a man
working doesn't make more money than a woman who does the same work.
The American people believe they should not be burdened with college
debt which is larger than any other debt. It is $1.3 trillion now. They
have stopped us from doing that based on procedure. Why don't we work
on things that will help the American people?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the exchange between the
majority leader and myself come out of our leader time in order not to
take further time of the Members.
Mr. REID. I agree to that. That is fine.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. McCONNELL. I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Dakota.
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