[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 177 (Wednesday, November 1, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6938-S6940]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Antiterrorism Funding

  Now, I have seen the tweets from President Trump. After September 11, 
the first thing President Bush did was to invite Senator Clinton and me 
to the White House, where he pledged to do whatever was in his power to 
help our city. President Bush, in a moment of national tragedy, 
understood the meaning of his high office and sought to bring our 
country together.
  President Trump, where is your leadership?
  The contrast between President Bush's actions after 9/11 and 
President Trump's actions this morning could not be starker.
  Again, President Trump, where is your leadership?
  I would say in closing that I have always believed that immigration 
is good for America. I believe it today.
  President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which 
he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be bringing 
us together and focusing on the real solution--antiterrorism funding, 
which he proposed to cut in his most recent budget. So I am calling on 
President Trump to rescind his proposed cuts to this vital 
antiterrorism funding immediately. Our city relies on this funding to 
track potential terrorists and to snuff out attacks. The NYPD, which 
bravely and quickly responded to the scene yesterday and brought the 
mayhem to an end, depends on this antiterrorism funding to keep our 
city safe day in and day out. So, again, I am calling on the President 
to rescind his proposed cuts to this vital antiterrorism funding 
immediately.
  Instead of dividing, instead of politicizing, do something real, Mr. 
President. Restore these funds now.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, this week the Senate is moving through a 
series of votes to fill vacancies in the Federal appeals court. 
President Trump has nominated highly qualified, mainstream judges and 
legal scholars to do these jobs. Now, Democrats have responded once 
again with delay and with obstruction. It is clear to me that we need 
to change the rules in the Senate that govern how we debate nominations 
in this body. All year Democrats have been putting up roadblocks to 
nominations. They have forced the majority leader to file cloture so 
that

[[Page S6939]]

then we can confirm nominees like these four judges.
  As of last Friday, Democrats have forced the Senate to file cloture 
47 different times when we have had to have cloture votes on President 
Trump's nominees. There were only six cloture votes at this point for 
the previous four Presidents--five for Obama, none for George W. Bush, 
one for Bill Clinton, and none under the Presidency of George Herbert 
Walker Bush. These are the kind of hoops that the Democrats have been 
making the Senate jump through in an effort to confirm President 
Trump's nominees.
  The procedure has been set in place to allow for debate. Well, debate 
is a good thing in the Senate, as long as debate is actually occurring. 
It is a chance for Senators to stand up, to say what they like or what 
they don't like about a nominee. Now, if no one wants to debate, we 
should just move things along and have the vote. There is one Senate 
rule that allows for as much as 30 hours of debate time on Presidential 
nominations after we have actually had the cloture vote. Now, in 
reality, very little of that time that is spent on the Senate floor is 
actually being used for the debate. In the past, both sides would agree 
to waive the time requirements and to move on to other Senate business, 
which is what we need to do to get the country continuing to move 
forward. But what is happening now is that Democrats are insisting on 
cloture votes, and then they are insisting that we use hour after hour 
after hour, even when there is no one here to debate what is the issue 
or the person in front of us.
  It is time to end this pointless spectacle. The Senate used to be 
called the world's greatest deliberative body. Democrats have turned it 
into the world's most paralyzed deliberative body.
  We have more than 125 nominees for various jobs who have had hearings 
in committee, who have testified in committee, who have been voted on 
in committee, who have cleared through the entire committee-vetting 
process and are now waiting for a vote on the Senate floor--125 of 
them. Most of these people have bipartisan support. They will be 
confirmed easily and eventually. They should be confirmed immediately. 
There should be no reason for Democrats' stalling tactics except, once 
again, to slow down the pace of other progress in the Senate on 
legislative issues.
  Mr. President, look at what happened with one judge last week. It is 
a case you are very familiar with. Scott Palk was nominated by 
President Trump to serve on the U.S. district court. He had bipartisan 
support in the Judiciary Committee. He went to the committee, had a 
hearing in the committee, and with bipartisan support was voted out of 
the committee. That was in June--more than 4 months ago.
  Now, apparently that is not good enough for the Democrats--not at 
all. They are only interested in slowing down the work of the Senate. 
So we had a cloture vote on the nominee. It was 1 of the 47 cloture 
votes that we talked about. We had to have a cloture vote. Every 
Republican and 27 Democrats voted for him. So he had bipartisan 
support. We still had to allow all of this wasted time for the debate. 
We couldn't conduct any of the other business of the Senate during the 
time because the Democrats insisted that we use all of the debate time. 
Now, they could have very easily agreed to waive the rules, as we do, 
and go straight to a vote. We wanted to do that. The Democrats refused.
  So how much of that time--those 30 hours--did the Democrats actually 
spend on the floor debating this person's qualifications to be a 
Federal judge? How many of those 30 hours did the Democrats use? None. 
How many minutes did they use? None. Not one Democrat came to the floor 
of the Senate to talk about that judge. Not a single Democrat even 
bothered to say a word against his nomination. There were fewer than 20 
minutes of total talk on the floor of the Senate. Through hour after 
hour after hour of ongoing time, there were fewer than 20 minutes spent 
actually talking about the judge, and it was all spent in praise by the 
Republicans. We still had to run out the clock because that is the 
delay game the Democrats are playing in the Senate. The Senate had to 
waste hours and hours when we could have finished debating in less than 
20 minutes. The Democrats have done this same thing time after time 
after time, day after day, wasting day after day.
  Things take time in the Senate. We understand that. That is what the 
Founding Fathers had in mind when they formed the two bodies of 
Congress, the House and the Senate. There is no excuse, though, for 
Democrats abusing the process to make things take even longer. 
Democrats aren't using the rules for debate. They are not using the 
rules for deliberation. It is only for delay. It hasn't always been 
this way, and there is no reason it should continue to be this way.
  The Senate had a different standard for nominations a few years ago, 
and that was in the 113th Congress. In years 2013 and 2014, the Senate 
allowed just 2 hours of debate after cloture was invoked on nominations 
for district court judges. That is 2 hours more than the Democrats 
actually spent debating this judge's nomination last week. The rules 
said that we would have up to 8 hours to debate executive branch 
nominations below the Cabinet level. Then, for Cabinet Secretaries, for 
Justices on the Supreme Court, and for circuit courts, it was the full 
30 hours of debate. Thirty hours now is what we allow every nomination 
today, and Democrats have shown that in most cases it is far too much 
time because even though we have to spend all the time, they use very 
little of it talking about the nominees.
  We need a fair debate on every nomination. The procedure from 2013 
and 2014, with fair debate on nominations, is one that was fair. The 
way the Democrats are wasting time today to keep us from doing our work 
is not fair. I believe it is time to return to the rules for debating 
nominees that the Senate used 3 years ago. There will still be plenty 
of time for Senators to debate the nominees, to raise objections if 
there are any. Every Senator could be on the record. There are just a 
lot of hours that we could avoid that are being wasted today that could 
be used to do the people's business of this country. A President's 
nominations of qualified people to important jobs was never meant to be 
a tool for delay in the Senate or to be an obstruction the way the 
Democrats have been using it.
  Now, these rules that we used in 2013 and 2014 were the result of a 
compromise. Democrats controlled the Senate at the time. A Democrat, 
Barack Obama, was in the White House making the nominations, and 
Republicans agreed to make these changes to the rules. It was part of a 
bipartisan group, and I was part of that group. There were eight 
Senators. They worked on this compromise--four Republicans and four 
Democrats. Senator McCain and Senator Alexander were part of this 
group. Senator Schumer, who is now the Democrat leader, was part of 
this group. There was overwhelming support for these changes on both 
sides of the aisle.
  It is time to do it again. Let's change the Senate rules and go back 
to the process that Senator Schumer supported in 2013 and 2014. Today, 
the schedule allows us to do one or two nominations in a typical week. 
If we go back to the 2014 standard, we could clear multiple nominations 
in a day. The Republican Senate has been busy this year, and we have 
made progress on behalf of the American people. We have passed 15 
resolutions rolling back destructive, Obama-era regulations using the 
Congressional Review Act and signed into law by the President. We 
passed a budget that will help give Americans at home a raise by 
cutting their taxes and giving us an opportunity to do the kind of tax 
relief, tax reform, tax reductions, tax cuts that the American people 
are looking for. We need to do more. It is time for Democrats to stop 
abusing the rules just to delay the process. It is time to go back to 
the previous standard of debating nominations. It is time to pick up 
the pace and do the job the American people expect us to do.

  Now, if Democrats have a different approach and don't want to accept 
the standard of debate that was set in the previous Congress, then I 
believe it is time for us to force that change. If Democrats maintain 
their lockstep opposition to real progress on judicial vacancies and 
other nominees, we should give them a chance to vote on their continued 
obstruction. We can vote on these nominees in a straightforward

[[Page S6940]]

and efficient way or we can vote to return to the precedent of the 
113th Congress. That is the choice. Either way, it is time to vote.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.