[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 194 (Thursday, December 5, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6863-S6864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BUSINESS BEFORE THE SENATE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, for weeks now, the Republicans have 
been asking the Democrats to take off their impeachment blinders and 
let Congress legislate for the American people. We have argued that 
American families deserve better than this partisan paralysis, where 
the Democrats literally obsess over impeachment and obstruct everything 
else.
  This very morning, for example, the Speaker gave a speech on national 
television to push forward her rushed and partisan impeachment, with 
not one word on the outstanding legislation the American people 
actually need--nothing on the USMCA or the NDAA or funding for our 
Armed Forces. It is all impeachment, all the time. Only in this town, 
only in Washington, does anybody think it is OK for our Armed Forces to 
go unfunded and for a major trade deal to go unpassed, because the 
Democrats are too busy hosting a panel of law professors to criticize 
President Trump on television instead of being busy on the things the 
American people actually need us to address.
  The Kentuckians I represent cannot believe our military commanders 
are being denied certainty, our men and women in uniform are being 
denied stable funding, and 176,000 new American jobs are being held up 
all because the Democratic leadership thinks there is more political 
advantage in obstruction than in doing their jobs. Well, the 
servicemembers and personnel in the Kentucky National Guard and at Fort 
Campbell, Fort Knox, and the Blue Grass Army Depot aren't going to 
simply stop doing their jobs. No, they are counting on us to pass 
critical defense legislation that reforms housing and spousal 
employment programs, that invests in construction, readiness, and

[[Page S6864]]

modernization, and that locks in--listen to this--the largest pay raise 
in a decade.
  These bills touch every single State. Of course, there are major 
national and international issues at stake, as well, but the Democrats 
are still holding the NDAA hostage for a partisan wish list that is 
meant to appease trial lawyers, public sector unions, and their own 
far-left base. They are holding up the NDAA over unrelated, nongermane, 
leftwing wish-list items.
  Meanwhile, the Speaker and the Democratic leader are withholding 
their assent from important bipartisan provisions like the Caesar Syria 
Civilian Protection Act, which has previously passed both Houses and 
has been modified to resolve all concerns by the committees of 
jurisdiction. Unlike the Democratic leader's rhetoric on Syria in 
recent weeks, this bill would actually do something to stand up for the 
Syrian people and hold Assad accountable. So I hope the Democratic 
leader will allow this important demonstration of our support for the 
Syrian people to go forward.
  In the meantime, as if to underscore that the Democrats' top priority 
is performance art for coastal elites and not the people's business, I 
understand the Speaker of the House spent part of this week in Madrid, 
talking about climate change. She took an international flight to 
discuss carbon emissions. So the Speaker was in Spain, lamenting 
President Trump's decision to pull us out of the Paris Agreement. Maybe 
she pitched her conference's Green New Deal--its socialist plan to hurt 
our economy for American families--while bigger emitters like China go 
roaring right by.
  As an aside, over the past 15 years, the United States' carbon 
emissions have actually fallen significantly. We appear to be on track 
for another decline in 2019. Meanwhile, Paris Agreement signatories, 
like China and India, continue to emit more and more every year. China 
already emits, roughly, twice as much as the United States, and it is 
increasing every year.
  Kentucky and many other States know exactly what happens when 
Washington Democrats ignore these facts and decide America needs to 
take on unilateral economic pain for no meaningful change in global 
emissions. We are still trying to recover from the Democrats' last 
``War on Coal.'' We certainly don't need the Speaker of the House to 
promise the Europeans that she is going to start a new one. So working 
Americans and their families are not well served by the Democrats' 
political performance art. What they really need are results.
  The only path to results is bipartisan legislation, and, fortunately, 
it is a well-trodden one. There are 58 consecutive annual defense 
authorizations to prove it. Always in the past we have been able to 
overcome these partisan differences and go forward. There is a 
bipartisan-bicameral agreement that the Speaker and the Democratic 
leader signed just a few months ago to help them find their way back to 
the table, but the agreement needs to be honored. I hope they do so 
sometime soon.

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