[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 140 (Monday, November 17, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6003-S6004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            WORKING TOGETHER

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, in that great play ``Fiddler on the Roof,'' 
Tevye says, among other things, and I quote: Good news will stay, and 
bad news will refuse to leave.
  In Washington we all too often focus on the bad news that lingers 
instead of highlighting the many good things that are being 
accomplished. ObamaCare is a perfect example. The Affordable Care Act 
is working. Americans who have enrolled in health plans through the 
Affordable Care Act are happy with their coverage.
  There was a very good article in newspapers all over the country 
today, including in the Washington Post, which I saw. In this article 
there is a citation of a recent Gallup survey of Americans who have 
coverage through ObamaCare, and the findings are very positive--and 
that is a gross understatement. Seventy-four percent of ObamaCare 
enrollees rate their coverage as good or excellent. Seventy-five 
percent say they are satisfied with the cost of their plans. I will 
repeat that. Seventy-four percent of ObamaCare enrollees rate their 
coverage as good or excellent, and 75 percent say they are satisfied 
with the cost of their plans. That is good news to me.
  The Affordable Care Act is working for the American people. It is 
providing quality, affordable health care to families all across our 
country.
  The Senate has a lot of work to do before the 113th Congress comes to 
a close. There are a few important priorities in this work period. We 
have to pass an extension of tax credits for American families and 
businesses. We have to pass the Defense authorization bill, and the 
President pro tempore of the Senate is concerned about extending the 
FISA legislation, the American freedom act. It is so important that we 
do these things, but also we have to fund our government. That has to 
be done very soon because early next month the funding expires. We have 
many nominations that have not been completed. Almost 200 have been 
held up by my Republican colleagues. John Kerry, the Secretary of 
State, called me and said he himself had almost 100--well, that is 
exaggerating a little. He had 60-some; I don't remember the exact 
number.
  We must keep our government funded. I have been having productive 
bipartisan conversations with Speaker Boehner, the Republican leader, 
and Appropriations chair Senator Mikulski. It is clear to me that 
Republican leaders want to work together to keep the government funded. 
We have heard there are going to be no government shutdowns from the 
leaders, but Members of their caucuses are really saying some very 
scary things.
  So the question is whether the Republican leaders will be able to 
stand up to the radical forces within their own party. It is more than 
just one or two people; it is a large number of Members of the 
Republican caucus in the Senate and, of course, the Republican caucus 
in the House. Can these Republican leaders stand up to these people who 
are intent on holding our government hostage? There has been a lot of 
talk the past 3 or 4 days: So we have a government shutdown; so what?
  It has become increasingly clear these last few days that a number of 
Republicans are looking for an example to use to get their ideas--that 
are somewhat bizarre in the minds of most people--they are using a 
number of different things as an excuse: Executive action; the 
President is not doing enough on making sure the Iranians are held down 
tightly; and on and on with everything they have as an excuse to derail 
bipartisan legislation to fund the government.

[[Page S6004]]

  Sadly, though, we have seen this before. The government has been shut 
down. The government's debt has been defaulted upon. So how is it 
possible that there is even talk of not funding our government again by 
anybody? But that is what they are doing.
  Just 2 weeks ago the American people sent us a very strong message: 
Work together. In the press conferences that followed this month's 
midterm elections, Republicans were saying all the right things about 
compromise and bipartisanship. Yet, instead of looking for common 
ground and working to compromise, some of these Republicans are more 
interested in threats and ultimatums. Why? Because these radical 
Republicans object to President Obama using his constitutionally 
established authority to do what President Ronald Reagan and both 
George Bushes have done--fix as much of the system as he can to protect 
families suffering under the broken immigration system. Going back to 
Dwight D. Eisenhower, every President since then has used Executive 
authority to fix America's immigration system--every President, 
Republicans and Democrats. For the Republicans to take issue with 
President Obama for doing the same thing is hypocritical. Why didn't 
they complain when the two Bush Presidents did things administratively? 
Why?
  I hope Republicans in Congress will object to this brinkmanship. A 
scorched-earth policy is no way to go. Instead, responsible leaders in 
the Republican Party need to work with us to complete the business of 
funding our government regardless of when the President acts to keep 
families together.
  Mr. LEAHY. Will the distinguished majority leader yield for an 
observation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaine). Will the majority leader yield to 
the Senator from Vermont for a question?
  Mr. REID. I yield to the Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as long as I have served in the Senate--and 
I have served the longest in this body--I have never seen a time when 
noncontroversial nominations were being held up, whether we have had a 
Republican or Democratic President. I would note for the majority 
leader that we have on the calendar 18 nominees for Federal judgeships 
that passed unanimously. Every Republican and every Democrat in the 
Judiciary Committee voted for them. Many of them were recommended by 
Republican Senators and four of them for judicial emergencies. The 
oldest one has been pending since June, having gone through the 
committee unanimously. This is not being responsible to the American 
people.
  The distinguished majority leader talked about the use of Executive 
orders. Concerns have been expressed by the other side about Executive 
orders on immigration. I would remind everybody that this body by a 2-
to-1 margin--Republicans and Democrats joined together last year to 
pass a comprehensive immigration bill which covered everything from the 
people on the borders to those who were already in this country. The 
Republican leadership in the House has refused to take it up. They 
complain about the President 1\1/2\ years later--during all this time 
that has passed between the Republican and Democratic votes here, they 
have refused to take it up. Yet they complain that the President is 
going to do something.
  I say bring it up and vote yes or vote no. Stop this ``we will vote 
maybe.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. To the President pro tempore of the Senate, if the Speaker 
of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, brought up the bill that 
passed here in the Senate, it would pass overwhelmingly in the House. 
Virtually every Democrat would vote for it, and I suggest that probably 
half of the Republicans would vote for it. He won't allow a vote. What 
is this about? It is beyond my ability to comprehend how they are 
willing to do everything they can to stop this President from doing 
what Presidents have done since Dwight Eisenhower.
  I would also say this: We have gotten some judges done. That is 
because we changed the rules to do the outlandish thing of having a 
majority of the Senate determine whether someone should be confirmed.
  If we look at the Constitution of the United States, the people who 
drafted that Constitution were very smart. We know a number of them 
were geniuses. And they were very precise in what they wanted to have 
supermajority votes on. On judges they didn't want supermajority votes 
but a simple majority of this body, and that is what we did in changing 
the rules.
  But I say to my friend, in spite of that, we have been able to get a 
lot of judges done, we are going to wind up--by the time the Judiciary 
Committee continues to do the good work they do, we will probably have 
over 20 judges who need to be approved this Congress. Postcloture, 
under the rules we have, there is only 1 hour of time that can be used, 
so we can get through the judges very quickly. For sub-Cabinet officers 
it takes 8 hours, and we are normally willing to yield back our time, 
so 4 hours on every one of those.
  We have scores--we are approaching, counting judges and all of the 
nominations, well over 150 who have been held up, people who have been 
waiting and waiting. These are jobs that are needed in our country; 
these are not new positions we have created.
  So I would hope we can get past the bitterness that has been created 
in this body and get the nominations done. There is no reason a judge-
to-be should have to wait for all this time, as the Senator from 
Vermont has indicated, just to get a vote. Whatever he is doing now has 
been put on hold, and this is throughout the whole government.
  So I would hope we can get a lot of these done. If not, we are going 
to have to spend a lot of time here because we cannot leave this 
Congress with all these things undone. I hope we can work together, as 
I have indicated.

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