[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SENATE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the path 
forward on legislation and commonsense solutions that my constituents 
and all of our constituents would like to see this year. The Senators 
in this Chamber came back to town this week, along with Members of the 
House, at one of the most partisan times in our Nation's history.
  We just learned that the House is now going to send us Articles of 
Impeachment. This will be the third Presidential impeachment trial in 
our entire history and only the second one in the last 151 years.
  It will be the most partisan one ever. I agree with the Nancy Pelosi 
of a year ago, who said: ``Impeachment is so divisive to the country 
that unless there is something so compelling and overwhelming and 
bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path because it 
divides the country.'' I think she was right about that. Yet, 
unfortunately, without meeting those criteria, here we are going down 
that path.
  While we face a lot of contentious issues ahead of us, I still 
believe we can legislate for the benefit of the people we represent, 
and we must. That is our job. We can't let partisanship cause us to 
lose sight of all the opportunities we have here every day to come 
together, to find common ground, and to pass commonsense solutions to 
address the issues our constituents care most about.
  In fact, I would say that under the radar and without fanfare, we 
have recently done that. At end of last year, we enacted a number of 
bills and provisions on a bipartisan basis that helped people. I talked 
about the SECURE Act a moment ago. Despite the headlines about gridlock 
and dysfunction and impeachment, we have been working on both sides of 
the aisle to find solutions to some of these real problems--like 
growing our economy, protecting national security, promoting 
conservation, or helping the most vulnerable.

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