[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 144 (Thursday, September 7, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H7098-H7099]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REFORM CLOTURE RULE IN SENATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks after the 2016 election, I spoke 
on the House floor and warned that the greatest single obstacle to 
meeting the expectations of the American people was the cloture rule in 
the Senate. I said: ``Voters elected Republican majorities in both 
Houses of Congress and they expect action. They'll get it from the 
President and from the House. But in order for the Senate to rise to 
this occasion, it must reform its cloture rule.''
  Well, it didn't.
  Now, cloture is the Senate motion to conclude debate, and it is based 
on a sound parliamentary principle that as long as a significant 
minority--currently, 40 Members of the Senate--want to continue to 
debate, that debate should continue. This principle assumes it is an 
actual debate between real people regarding the merits of the subject 
directly at hand, but that is not what cloture has become.
  Today, any Senator can block virtually any bill simply by filing a 
protest, and until 60 of the 100 Senators agree to take up the bill, it 
cannot be heard. Thus, a motion designed to protect debate has now 
degenerated into a motion that very effectively prevents debate. It 
also hands practical control of the Senate to the Democratic minority, 
which can effectively veto any proposal by the majority, essentially 
reversing the result of the last election.
  This is not some act of God or constitutional constraint that has 
been forced upon the Senate. No, this is a deliberate choice by Senate 
Republicans not to reform their cloture rule. It has rendered the 
Senate dysfunctional and, with it, the Congress.
  Earlier this year, the Senate briefly recognized this and chose to 
reform cloture for Supreme Court nominations, but not for the 
legislation absolutely vital to the interests of our country.
  The news yesterday that the President has now had to capitulate to 
Democratic demands on the debt limit should come as no surprise. By 
failing to reform cloture, Senate Republicans have effectively given 
Chuck Schumer operational control of the Senate.
  That is how we got wrapped around the axle on repealing and replacing 
ObamaCare. The House could have passed a comprehensive bill that 
completely and cleanly abolished ObamaCare and fully replaced it with 
all of the market and tax reforms that Republicans agreed with and 
campaigned on, popular reforms that put consumers back in charge of 
their healthcare decisions and placed those decisions within their 
financial reach.
  Instead, the House leadership chose to attempt this through a budget 
process called reconciliation, a process completely unsuited for 
complex policy reform. They did so for one reason: to bypass the Senate 
cloture rule. By adhering to the very limited and restricted 
requirements of budget reconciliation, the House produced a mangled, 
tangled mess that fell well short of the reforms we had promised and, 
ultimately, failed to receive even a simple majority of the Senate.
  Those who supported this process argued that a clean, complete, 
comprehensive bill would have been dead on arrival in the Senate for 
lack of Democratic votes for cloture. Well, I doubt that. Quite the 
contrary. Had the House done its job through regular

[[Page H7099]]

order rather than trying to cover for the Senate Republicans' bad 
choice, one of two things would have happened:
  Senate Democrats would have been seen as the single obstacle to a 
popular, comprehensive reform while ObamaCare continued to implode and, 
quite possibly, eight of the most vulnerable Democrats would ultimately 
have crossed party lines and supported this rescue of our healthcare 
system; or, far more likely, Senate Republicans would have been forced 
to come to the same conclusion that they came to with respect to the 
Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch and reform this rule. 
Certainly, we couldn't have been any worse off than we are today.
  I would ask that, henceforth, the House leadership stop covering for 
the Senate Republicans and move all of the legislation that we promised 
the American people to the Senate through regular order. It is time we 
left the management of the Senate to the Senate, stopped enabling their 
atrocious judgment on not reforming cloture, and made it very clear to 
the American public why the reforms they entrusted us to enact aren't 
being sent to the President.
  Senator Dirksen once noted, when they feel the heat, they see the 
light. It is time the House and the American people adopted this maxim.

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