[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 158 (Monday, September 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S5564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Now, Mr. President, on a totally different message, I 
had hoped, Republicans had hoped, and the American people had hoped 
that the Senate would be spending this week finishing up another 
bipartisan agreement on coronavirus relief. We want to get hundreds of 
billions more dollars into the pipeline for kids, for jobs, for 
healthcare.
  Unfortunately, Senate Democrats chose to block it all. Our Democratic 
colleagues voted against hundreds of billions of dollars to help 
Americans fight the virus. This wasn't even a vote on final passage, 
just a procedural vote to break the Democratic leader's filibuster and 
move forward with something. Senate Democrats, nevertheless, 
filibustered the aid.
  Then, just a few short days later, they went right back to signaling 
that a Democratic Senate majority paired with a President Joe Biden 
would abolish the filibuster and permanently vandalize this institution 
to more easily force radical change on the country. This threat to 
permanently disfigure the Senate has been the latest growing drumbeat 
in the modern Democratic Party's war against our governing 
institutions.
  There was former Senator Reid starting the ``nuclear'' exchange back 
in 2013. There have been years of unprecedented tactics to try and deny 
President Trump the government the people elected. There has been the 
least fair, least thorough, and most rushed impeachment inquiry in 
modern history.
  Now, the most shameless--the most shameless--hypocrisy: Senate 
Democrats happily use the filibuster to block coronavirus relief and 
Senator Tim Scott's police reform bill at the very same time they are 
conspiring to destroy that very tool so they can ram through their 
radical agenda if they ever win power. Grade A hypocrisy and nothing 
more.
  We have had former President Obama call for ``eliminating the 
filibuster, another Jim Crow relic,'' about 1 month after his own party 
used it to kill Senator Tim Scott's police reform bill. We have some of 
former Vice President Biden's allies in the Senate daydreaming about 
ending the filibuster even as they themselves use the filibuster to 
kill pandemic relief for working families.
  Democrats want completely different sets of rules depending on 
whether they hold power--different sets of rules depending upon whether 
they hold power. They want to assert minority rights when they have the 
minority and steamroll them if they get a majority.
  Here is NBC News:

       Democratic insiders are assembling a coalition behind the 
     scenes to wage an all-out war on the Senate filibuster. . . . 
     Veteran party operatives, activist groups and supportive 
     Senators are coordinating message and strategy.

  This takes measuring the drapes to a new level. The Democratic leader 
and his colleagues aren't just measuring the drapes; they are 
calculating how much kerosene it would take to burn the drapes down.
  They aren't just threatening to pass radical policies like Medicare 
for none or the Green New Deal--no, no, no. The far left wants to hot-
wire democracy itself--things like packing the Supreme Court with new 
seats or packing the Senate by handing out new statehood to one 
individual city.
  I said it a few months ago. Today's Democrats have lost patience with 
playing by the rules and want to wage war on the rule book itself. They 
are saying as much out loud.
  Perhaps our colleagues think promising a shameless power grab is the 
only way to energize their radical, far-left base, but the real 
effect--the real effect--is to make the stakes in these issues 
completely and totally clear to the American people.
  The Framers designed the Senate to be the country's firewall against 
ill-considered and radical change. That is what the Senate was all 
about in the beginning. If our Democratic friends have concluded their 
worst ideas could never clear the high bar--if they think their ideas 
could never clear the high bar, it is their bad ideas that need to be 
scrapped, not the core checks and balances of our government.

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