[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 159 (Tuesday, September 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5580-S5584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Filibuster

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, last week, Leader McConnell called up a 
bill to the floor of the U.S. Senate. It was a coronavirus relief bill, 
which included a number of components that both sides had agreed needed 
to be in any coronavirus relief bill. It was a targeted bill. It was a 
fiscally responsible bill, and it was a bill that was rooted in 
reality. In other words, there was a belief that it could be signed 
into law if, in fact, it was passed by the Congress.
  So, when it was called up, obviously, we talked about the features in 
the bill, many of which are things, as I said, enjoyed bipartisan 
support. When I said it was fiscally responsible, it actually 
repurposed funds from the previous coronavirus relief bill, from the 
CARES Act, that had not yet been spent. So it took some of those 
dollars, repurposed them, used them in another way, which I think would 
be a fiscally responsible way in which to approach the whole issue of 
how we spend taxpayer dollars on any issue, including a crisis. So 
there was a repurposing that I think, again, represents a fiscally 
responsible approach to doing this.
  It also addressed the issue of people who were unemployed. It had a 
provision in there that allowed people to continue to receive 
unemployment insurance above and beyond what their States offered in 
terms of the benefits--$300 above that on a per-week basis, which, on 
average, represents about an 85-percent wage replacement. So it was 
about an 85-percent wage replacement in terms of an unemployment 
benefit. It also included bipartisan improvements and bipartisan 
amendments and modifications to the PPP program, things which both 
sides had agreed upon. That program has been very successful but needed 
to be expanded and reauthorized, so it included those changes--again, 
bipartisan changes.
  It included significant funding for both elementary and secondary 
education--about $70 billion there to help our schools open safely and 
another $30 billion to $35 billion for colleges and universities for 
the same purpose: to help them be able to open safely--again, a 
bipartisan priority.
  Those are just a few of the things that were included. It also 
included, of course, additional funding for vaccines, therapies, 
testing, all things that we think are vitally important if we are going 
to defeat the virus.
  Those were all components that were included in the bill last week 
that was brought up to the floor by the majority

[[Page S5581]]

leader, Senator McConnell, and it was blocked. It was filibustered by 
the Democrats. Now, when I say blocked, I am not talking about blocking 
the end bill. I am talking about blocking even getting on the bill. It 
was a motion to proceed under the Senate rules, something that is 
necessary to get on a bill.
  It is important, I think, to point out that there are several ways in 
which a bill can be stopped, and they require a supermajority--60 votes 
in the Senate. Once you are on a bill and it is subject to an amendment 
process, you can, at the end of that, if you don't like the bill, you 
can still block it with 41 votes. In other words, it takes 60 votes to 
get on a bill, to proceed to a bill, and 60 votes to get off the bill, 
to report it out. So there are several places where if you are opposed 
to something and you think that you haven't been treated fairly, you 
can block it.
  But blocking the motion to proceed means you are blocking a bill--
even just the idea of getting on the bill and opening it up to an 
amendment process and debating it on the floor of the Senate. That is 
not, obviously, the first time that has happened. It happened in the 
police reform bill. It happened earlier this year in the original CARES 
package.
  But on the police reform bill, you had, again, a bill that had many 
bipartisan provisions in it. In fact, about 75 to 80 percent of the 
bill were things that both sides agreed upon, and, there again, the 
motion to proceed just to get on the bill was blocked. It was by the 
use of the filibuster. It was by the use of the 60-vote threshold in 
the Senate to prevent the Senate from even proceeding to the bill--even 
after, I would add, the manager of that bill and the author of that 
bill, Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, had indicated through the 
leadership that they would be willing to accept up to 10 amendments or 
up to 20 amendments. They were offered unanimous consent to get 10 or 
20 amendments offered in the police reform bill, but it was still 
blocked even on the motion to proceed by the Democrats in the Senate.
  So, when they blocked the bill last week, it was pointed out, I 
think, accurately by the media reporting on the bill. These were a few 
of the headlines to give you a sense of the reaction.
  The Hill: ``Senate Democrats block GOP relief bill.'' The Washington 
Post said: ``Democrats block slimmed-down GOP coronavirus relief bill. 
. . .'' ABC News said: ``Democrats block Senate GOP COVID 19 relief 
proposal.'' National Public Radio said: ``Senate Democrats Block GOP's 
$300 Billion Pandemic Relief Bill.''
  So those were some of the headlines. Maybe this doesn't mean anything 
to anybody but Congress watchers, but I am sure the irony is not lost 
on anybody who follows this process. The Democrats used the legislative 
filibuster. When I say blocking a motion to proceed, it was the use of 
a legislative filibuster to block a bill last week--as I mentioned, 
several times earlier this year--at the same time that they are calling 
for an end to the legislative filibuster.
  Imagine that. Think about the irony of that. On Friday, NBC News 
reported: ``Democratic insiders are assembling a coalition behind the 
scenes to wage an all-out war on the Senate filibuster in bullish 
anticipation of sweeping the 2020 election. . . .''
  So the very mechanism that they used repeatedly here just in the last 
year--but, frankly, for the last 6 years that they have been in the 
minority--to block or, in some cases, even to improve a bill that comes 
to the floor of the U.S. Senate, they are now talking about getting rid 
of that very rule. I mean, think about that. The irony of that is 
pretty rich.
  It was a disturbing confirmation that the campaign by some Democrats 
to eliminate the Senate's nearly 200-year-old practice for considering 
legislation has become official. It used to be sort of whispered around 
here and talked about, but now they are talking openly about getting 
rid of the filibuster. It puts into stark contrast the choice the 
voters are going to face in November.
  So what is the legislative filibuster? Well, it is the product of the 
Senate's tradition of unlimited debate. The legislative filibuster is 
essentially the requirement that 60 Senators agree before the Senate 
can end debate and vote on a contentious bill. In other words, you need 
60 percent of the Senate to agree before you can pass a bill
  Now, what this means in practice is that unlike the House of 
Representatives, where legislation can easily pass with the support of 
just one party, in the Senate, you generally need the support of at 
least some Members of the other party before you can pass legislation. 
Nowadays, the Senate's filibuster rule could be said to be the primary 
thing that distinguishes the Senate from the House of Representatives.
  That matters because the Senate is supposed to be different from the 
House of Representatives. The Framers of the Constitution designed the 
Senate to be, as the minority leader once said--alluding to the 
legendary exchange between Washington and Jefferson--the cooling saucer 
of democracy.
  Wary of--to quote Federalist 62--``the propensity of all single and 
numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent 
passions,'' the Founders created the Senate as a check on the House of 
Representatives. They made the Senate smaller and Senators' terms of 
office longer with the intention of creating a more stable, more 
thoughtful, and more deliberative legislative body to check ill-
considered or intemperate legislation.
  As time has gone on, the legislative filibuster is the Senate rule 
that has had perhaps the greatest impact in preserving the Founders' 
vision of the Senate. Thanks to the filibuster, it is often harder to 
get legislation through the Senate than through the House. It requires 
more thought, more debate, and greater consensus.
  Those are good things. Historically, Senators of both parties have 
recognized this. They have seen beyond the narrow partisan advantage of 
the moment and fought for the preservation of the filibuster.
  In 2005, when there was talk of abolishing the judicial filibuster, 
Democratic Senators, some of whom still serve in this body today, 
fought fiercely to safeguard it. At a rally in March of that year, the 
current Democratic leader said:

       They believe if you get 51% of the vote, there should be 
     one party rule. We will stand in their way! Because an 
     America of checks and balances is the America we love. It's 
     the America the Founding Fathers created. It's been the 
     America that has kept us successful for 200 years and we're 
     not going to let them change it! . . . We will fight, and we 
     will preserve the Constitution.

  That is from the current Democratic leader back in 2005, speaking 
about proposals to eliminate the filibuster. Well, unfortunately, the 
Democrats changed their tune a few years later when they thought 
abolishing the judicial filibuster would serve their advantage. But 
even then, Democrats--and later Republicans--sought to distinguish 
between confirming nominees and the importance of preserving debate on 
legislation. Now they are talking about abolishing the fundamental 
practice of the Senate, the legislative filibuster, for the same 
prospect of temporary partisan gaming.
  ``Nothing's off the table,'' the minority leader said when asked 
about Democrats' intentions for the legislative filibuster if they win 
back the Senate. It is a far cry from what he said just a few years 
ago.
  Eliminating the legislative filibuster would permanently change the 
nature of the Senate. The cooling saucer that the Founders envisioned 
would essentially be gone, and the one-party rule the Democratic leader 
decried back in 2005 would become a reality.
  Some might ask why one-party rule is a problem. After all, sometimes 
one party wins the Senate, the House, and the Presidency. Shouldn't 
that party be able to pass whatever legislation it wants? Well, the 
answer is no. Our country is relatively evenly split down the middle, 
with the advantage sometimes moving to the Republicans and sometimes to 
the Democrats, but even if one party were a permanent minority in this 
country, one-party rule still wouldn't be acceptable.
  Let me go back to the Federalist papers for just a minute. Federalist 
10 and 51 discuss two issues that the Founders were concerned about: 
minority rights and the tyranny of the majority. While we tend to think 
of tyrants as single individuals, the Founders recognized that a 
majority could be tyrannical as well. So the Founders created a system 
of government designed to prevent tyrannical majority from running 
roughshod over the rights of the minority, and one of those checks was 
the Senate.

[[Page S5582]]

  Today, the legislative filibuster may be the single most important 
thing preserving the Senate's constitutional role as a check on 
majority tyranny. By requiring 60 votes, the filibuster ensures that 
any legislation has to take into account the views of a broad group of 
Senators. With a 60-vote threshold, you are unlikely to get your 
legislation passed unless you bring some Senators of the opposite party 
on board, and that means the minority party has a real role in shaping 
legislation in the Senate, something the minority party in the House 
lacks.
  Democrats have repeatedly, as I pointed out earlier, used the 
legislative filibuster to their advantage during this Congress. In 
March, Democrats filibustered our largest coronavirus relief bill, the 
CARES Act, until Republicans agreed to add some Democratic priorities, 
and Democrats quickly took credit for making the bill better. You would 
think that Democrats would want to preserve this influence, 
especially--especially--now that Democrats have experienced the 
consequences of their decision to abolish the judicial filibuster.

  Of course, when they say they want to abolish the legislative 
filibuster, Democrats mean that they want to abolish the legislative 
filibuster if they win a majority in November. They have a lot of 
legislation they want to pass, and they don't want to have to moderate 
that legislation to address Republicans' or Americans' concerns.
  But I would remind my colleagues that no one is in power forever. If 
Democrats do win in November and abolish the legislative filibuster, 
they may quickly come to regret that decision once they are in the 
minority again, because no matter how permanent a majority thinks it 
will be, sooner or later every majority party returns to minority 
status.
  In addition to doing away with the bipartisan nature of the Senate, 
ending the legislative filibuster would also erode the stability of 
government. Legislation would become more partisan because the majority 
would not have to take into account the opinions of the minority party. 
That would make legislation likely to be reversed as soon as the 
opposite party gains the majority in a future Congress.
  Without the legislative filibuster, it is not hard to see a future in 
which national policy on a host of issues could fluctuate wildly every 
few years. Taxes could go up and down on a regular basis. Government 
programs could be stopped and started every few years. The consequences 
for individuals, businesses, and our economy would not just be 
unpleasant but potentially devastating.
  I understand the frustration of my Democratic colleagues. I have been 
in the minority of the Senate. I was in the minority my first 8 years 
here.
  I also know what it is like when you get into the majority and can't 
pass everything you want because the minority party will filibuster 
your bills. I have certainly had moments when I wished we could just 
pass legislation with a simple majority, especially coming from the 
House of Representatives.
  Democrats have stood in the way of a lot of legislation I would like 
to have passed this year, from Senator Scott's police reform bill, 
which I mentioned earlier, to additional coronavirus relief, to pro-
life legislation.
  It is also important to note that not every filibuster has been 
undertaken for noble purposes. Like every tool, it can be misused. But 
I know that no matter how frustrating the filibuster may be in the 
moment, preserving it is essential to preserving the institution of the 
Senate and the purpose for which it was created. It is essential to 
protecting minority rights, and it is an essential check on tyrannical 
majorities that would seek to curtail our freedoms.
  Legend has it that when Benjamin Franklin was leaving the 
Constitutional Convention, someone asked him what form of government 
the convention had instituted. ``A republic,'' Franklin said, ``if you 
can keep it''--``if you can keep it.''
  Today, the legislative filibuster is the key rule preserving the 
Senate's constitutional role as a check on partisan passion. I pray 
that no future Senate will destroy the Senate's essential role in our 
system of government for temporary partisan gain.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, will the Senator from South Dakota 
yield for a question?
  Mr. THUNE. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Alaska
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to just start by saying amen to 
everything the Senator has said.
  I listened to his words carefully, and I hear a great deal of caution 
in his words about actions that the Senate may take as a body that 
would be in response to perhaps short-term gain or immediate political 
gain--but a gain that could be finite.
  Over the course of the years that I have been in the Senate, I, too, 
have shared the same frustration about legislation that I cared deeply 
about that I believe had been blocked. Our parliamentarian rules have 
actually worked to delay things unnecessarily or oftentimes delayed 
things to the point where they never came to fruition. I have seen the 
frustration. I also see the benefit of being more methodical, of being 
that cooling saucer in the process of governance and particularly good 
governance.
  But the words that you used are very, very cautionary. It is as if 
you are suggesting that if we change the filibuster rules, we will, in 
effect, have changed the institution of the Senate going forward and 
have changed the institution so that it is, perhaps, just a smaller 
body than the House but subject to the same rules, where those who have 
the most votes on one side win.
  My question to the Senator from South Dakota is, Do you believe that 
a change in the filibuster rules here in the U.S. Senate would be 
permanently detrimental to the institution of the Senate going forward?
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would say, through the Chair, to my 
colleague from Alaska that that is absolutely the case. I don't think 
there is any question but that, if the legislative filibuster is done 
away with in a future Senate--and, again, Members on the Democratic 
side are talking openly about doing that if they gain the majority 
after the election in November--it will transform the institution of 
the Senate and, by extension, transform our country.
  The institution that was designed to protect minority rights and to 
put a check on a majority will no longer be a functioning institution 
in the way the Founders intended. In fact, it will essentially become, 
as the Senator from Alaska pointed out, the House of Representatives 
with longer terms.
  I think that would be unfortunate for a country that was based upon a 
system of checks and balances and that recognized very early on how 
critical it was that minority rights be a part of our public debate and 
discussion and that those voices not be muffled or that those voices 
not be completely put out of the public debate.
  I would simply say to my colleague from Alaska that I think this is a 
monumental issue in terms of what this institution has meant to this 
country and what it will continue to mean in the future if these rules 
are changed and this constitutional protection, as we have pointed out, 
is done away with. It will transform the Senate, and it will transform 
the country in ways that would be very detrimental to what the Founders 
intended.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Senator from South Dakota.
  I would hope that on a matter as significant as what we are talking 
about, which is effectively the operational integrity of this 
institution, there would be good, thorough open discussion and debate 
on this floor and amongst floor Members.
  But the concerns we are hearing that there are efforts on the outside 
of this body that would push us to change our rules and do so in a way 
that could permanently erode and undercut the ability of the U.S. 
Senate to operate as intended would be, I believe, a travesty.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rounds). The assistant Democratic leader
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened to this debate very carefully 
because I have great respect for both of the Senators--the Senator from 
Alaska and the Senator from South Dakota.
  I have seen both of them operate as effective legislators on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate. I have seen both of them entertain 
amendments, both friendly and not so friendly, on the floor of the

[[Page S5583]]

Senate and deal with them in a fair fashion. I have seen both of them 
use the U.S. Senate to achieve legislative goals, some that I shared 
and some that I didn't share.
  But I have to ask them, in all candor, as I listened to the speech 
about preserving the Senate as we know it, if they are really taking a 
look around at the Senate as we know it. Do you know how many 
amendments were debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the year 
2019--in the entire year? America's greatest deliberative body 
considered 22 amendments in that year. Six of them were offered by one 
Senator--Senator Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky. You 
remember them, as I do. He basically said: Here is a gun to your head. 
If you want to go home, I get a vote. He got his vote. And as he 
reminded me, he lost every one of those amendments. So 6 of the 22 
amendments were, frankly, one Senator's effort to have a recorded vote, 
and that is all it was.
  Sixteen substantive amendments in a year, and you are arguing that we 
cannot change the Senate, we cannot transform the Senate, we cannot 
consider changes to the rules of the Senate. I know better.
  I know that you are a good legislator, and you are as well, Senator. 
I know that you can take a bill through a committee, bring it to the 
floor, defend it on the floor, and go through the amendment process. We 
all know that that is how the Senate was designed to work.
  What happened? What happened to the Senate? Well, if you take a look 
at the number of cloture motions to end a filibuster that were filed 
some 13 years ago, they averaged about 68 a year. Do you know how many 
we now have? Over 250 a year.
  This is out of control. It is so much out of control that when you 
take a look at the ordinary business of the U.S. Senate and you take a 
look at the memories you may have of passing a budget resolution, we 
don't do that anymore, do we? You take a look at passing appropriation 
bills. You remember sitting on the Appropriations Committee and proud 
to be there, as I am too. I loved that committee. It was a great 
committee to serve on. We actually took agencies and went through 
hearings and drew up budgets and took them to Appropriations 
subcommittees and actually considered amendments in the committee and 
then brought them to the floor and had amendments on the floor. Yes, 
that happened in your political lifetime and in mine. It no longer 
occurs. Do you understand the Senate which you are defending is a 
Senate which no longer engages in that kind of debate?
  What does it boil down to? There were meetings of the Big 4 or the 
Big 8, or whatever number there happens to be. They decide all 12 
appropriations bills, and we sit on the outside of the room holding our 
hands patiently, hoping that something we wanted is included. Is that 
the Senate that you ran for? Is that the Senate you do not want to 
change? Tell me seriously. It can't be.
  Those of us on this side of the aisle say to younger Members: You 
would have loved the Senate if you just could have seen it, but you 
have only been here 6 years. So you missed it.
  There was a time when we did debate on the floor. Do you remember 
when Dodd-Frank came to the floor? Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby were 
managing that bill. This was the most dramatic change in Wall Street 
policy in a generation or more. I remember it because I offered what I 
believe was the 25th amendment on the floor--25 amendments on this bill 
that had already come out of the Banking Committee. I offered the 25th 
amendment on debit cards, and they announced that it would be a 60-vote 
margin. All the others had been a simple majority to that point. I 
surprised everybody, including myself, and passed that amendment. And 
then more were offered.
  Do you remember the immigration reform bill? Do you recall what 
happened there? I can tell you because I was on the Gang of 8 that 
wrote the bill. We went through the Judiciary Committee, and Senator 
Jeff Sessions of Alabama was determined to derail the bill. He said: I 
have dozens of amendments, and I am going to offer them all. Well, he 
stopped at about 20 because he wasn't passing most of his amendments. 
Then it came to the floor, and we faced the same amendment process, 
amendment after amendment, and the bill was passed on the floor of the 
Senate.
  That was within my political lifetime and yours as well. It worked. 
Why is it not working now? Why is this such an empty Chamber? Why are 
there all of these empty desks when there are so many things that need 
to be done in America? Because we have stopped legislating. We have 
stopped debating. We have stopped amending.
  You say: Boy, we have to preserve this. We have to do everything we 
can to preserve this.
  We know better than that. This is not the Senate that we are 
witnessing. This is some aberration, some use of the filibuster.
  In the first 3 years, with Senator McConnell in charge, we had more 
filibusters and cloture votes than in the entire history of the U.S. 
Senate. It is out of control, my friends, my colleagues, fellow 
Senators.
  It is out of control, my friends, my colleagues, my fellow Senators. 
I don't know what the answer is in terms of rule changes, but I will 
tell you this.
  Mr. THUNE. Would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DURBIN. In just one moment.
  I will tell you this: To argue that we need to preserve this is to 
really discourage anyone from becoming a Member of this body if we are 
not going to legislate, if we are not going to tackle the real issues 
of our time.
  I look at the Presiding Officer. He stepped up on the last 
immigration debate that we had on a bipartisan measure. I thank him for 
doing it. It wasn't easy, politically. That was what the Senate once 
was not that long ago.
  I do yield for a question.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, would the Senator from Illinois agree, 
however--because I think it is important to point out that this is not 
something that happened in the last few years. The Senator from Alaska 
had a colleague elected in 2008 who, when he ran again for election in 
2014, the argument could be made against him that he had never gotten a 
vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate on a single amendment in a 6-year 
term in the Senate.
  I came here in 2005. In the first 8 years that I was here as a 
Senator, I witnessed time and again the very thing you are talking 
about, where amendments were shut down, the tree was filled, in the 
parliamentary language that we use here in the Senate.
  So I would ask the Senator: Is this not a--this is not an issue that 
has cropped up in the last few years. Is this not a problem that 
originated some time ago and, as the Senator is suggesting, that we 
need to do away with the supermajority requirement that requires us 
here as Senators to work together in a bipartisan way to find common 
ground to fix what ails the Senate?
  I would argue and a lot would argue that what ails the Senate right 
now requires nothing more than behavioral change. We have to agree that 
when somebody offers an amendment on one side, that it is not going to 
be blocked immediately and we get into this lockdown. That is what 
happened in recent years and in the last couple of examples we have 
had, as recently as last week, blocking the motion to proceed to the 
bill.
  I mean, if you want to have an amendment process, you have to get on 
the bill in the first place. That has been, now, the routine that has 
been executed by the minority, is to prevent even a motion to proceed, 
which would enable us to get to an amendment process.
  So this is not something that happened when Senator McConnell came; 
this was happening well before that. As I pointed out, the Senator from 
Alaska's colleague went through an entire 6-year term without getting a 
vote--a Democratic colleague--when he was in the majority here in the 
Senate.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from South Dakota, thank you. 
I said earlier, and I meant it--I think you are a good legislator, as 
are the Senator from Alaska and many others, and given a chance, you 
prove it. We just don't get the chance anymore. No budget resolution. 
No appropriations bills. One bill, really, of any substance comes to 
the floor of the Senate each year now. It is the Defense authorization 
bill, by tradition. Come hell or high water, we are going to bring up

[[Page S5584]]

that bill. And I am glad we do, but that is it. End of story. The rest 
of the time, what do we spend our days doing? Watching the clock go by 
for 30 hours so we can have a vote on the next nomination. Is that the 
Senate you ran for? Is that why you went through the sacrifice and 
asked your family to join you in that sacrifice to be in public life? 
No. Not for me, it isn't. I am here to do something. I think we can do 
something. We have proven it in the past.
  The Affordable Care Act. Books will be written--they have already 
been written about what it took to finally pass it, but eventually it 
was enacted into law and signed by the President and changed the lives 
of millions of Americans. I am glad I voted for it. It was not a 
bipartisan effort at any stage. I wish it were.
  The point I am getting to is this: I don't know what the answer is in 
terms of changing the rules, but I am not going to stand in defense of 
the status quo. I do not believe the notion that we cannot touch the 
Senate and its traditions really is defensible in light of what we have 
seen on the Senate floor for the last several years--years.
  I just have to tell you, I am surprised now that the Republican 
position articulated by your leader and by the whip is status quo: 
Leave it as is. It is fine. It is just great. Don't you change the 
Senate.
  Well, I think the Senate needs to change.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have one last question for the Senator 
from Illinois.
  I don't disagree that, again, we can do a better job--both sides--of 
making the Senate a more open place where we have an opportunity to 
debate, which I think is the history and tradition of the Senate, but I 
don't think blowing up the Senate rules accomplishes that.
  I just want to read for you from this morning--I was on the floor 
here, but in an interview on NPR, the junior Senator from Massachusetts 
was asked if there are parts of the Green New Deal that might attract 
bipartisan support. How did he reply? He replied that we need to enact 
the whole thing, and if Republicans disagree, Democrats should 
eliminate the filibuster.
  Now, wanting to preserve the filibuster doesn't mean we can't reform 
the Senate, but it does mean that we shouldn't allow a majority to 
steamroll a minority. That is what the filibuster and the rules of the 
Senate were designed to protect.
  What your Members are talking openly about doing--including your 
leader--is nuking the filibuster, blowing up the Senate, and changing 
and transforming it in a way that will transform not only the Senate 
and the way the government, I think, was designed to work by our 
Founders but also transform the country.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would love the junior Senator from 
Massachusetts to address that question himself when he gets his chance 
on the floor.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for one last 
question?
  Mr. DURBIN. Happy to yield
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, to follow the Senator from South 
Dakota's comments about using the tool that would effectively blow up 
the Senate, if you will--these are not words that we use freely, but I 
think it is fair to suggest that utilizing this tool that would 
eliminate the filibuster, that would eliminate, really, the strongest 
tool for a minority party, is akin to the nuclear option. We use that 
term around here in legislative prose.
  I would agree with much of what you have said. You and I have served 
on the Appropriations Committee now for years. We have had an 
opportunity to be engaged in good, substantive debates that have 
yielded good, substantive, enduring laws.
  As I think about our role around here, it is not just to engage in 
the partisan message of the day; it is actually to enact laws. But when 
we enact laws that are good for just one party, that are wholly 
partisan, you can kind of predict the direction that will be taken when 
that minority party that voted against that particular policy then 
regains power and takes the majority and then attempts to overturn 
whatever that policy may be.
  When we think about ways that we can help an economy that is 
struggling right now, one of the things that I am hearing from 
businesses is this: The one thing we would really like out of 
Washington, DC, the one thing we would really like is some level of 
certainty with policies, that it is not kind of this whiplash, back and 
forth from one administration to the next.
  Well, the way you do that is through a level of consensus. As we 
know, on this floor right now, where it is still pretty quiet, 
consensus has been harder and harder to achieve on a bipartisan basis. 
Maybe this is a place in time where we are, and it is just dark. As our 
friend John McCain would say: It is always darkest before it goes 
pitch-black. Well, maybe we are getting close to the pitch-black. One 
can only hope.
  But I do hear your words that the status quo is not acceptable. I 
agree with you, my friend. It is not acceptable. It is not acceptable 
that we are in that place where we can't get votes on amendments that 
are legitimate and pertinent to the legislation that we have.
  I am trying to advance an energy bill right now, to get to final 
passage, and we are going through the procedural hurdles. I will work 
through those. But we are at a point where, as an institution, I 
believe we are failing. We are failing the American public. We are 
failing our constituents. We are failing in our role in governing.
  I do think that when people look to the anxiety that is at play right 
now with our national elections, with a Presidential election that is 
as volatile as we have seen, if there is some level of comfort and 
security that they might have, they might think that just maybe the 
Congress, maybe the Senate, can get its act together and be working 
together.
  So I hear you. The status quo is not acceptable. I am not one who is 
going to say we can't change any of the rules, but we have to do 
better. Whether it is behavioral attitudes that need to change or 
whether we need to work together to change the rules, that is where we 
should be, not unilaterally bomb-throwing, not unilaterally making the 
decision that is going to benefit our party today, and then when we 
lose the majority, we will deal with it later. We owe it to the Senate 
and we owe it to the country to do better.
  I appreciate this back-and-forth today. I would welcome other 
colleagues to join us. I would hope that we look very, very closely at 
where we are right now because we are using our own rules to do damage 
to the institution of the Senate.
  So let's not take the last tool that holds us in check--this 
filibuster--and throw it away as well because we will regret it. In the 
meantime, let's figure out what we can be doing as Democrats and 
Republicans to do better for the institution of the Senate and do 
better for the American people.
  I apologize. That wasn't by way of a question; it was occupying the 
time of the Senator from Illinois. But I think we have a lot of work to 
do here, and I hope we are able to do it together.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, with her permission, I will add a question 
mark to the end of that statement to the Senator from Alaska, to thank 
her and warn her that we are coming dangerously close to debating on 
the floor of the Senate. It almost never happens, and we are coming 
close to it.
  We are actually asking one another: Do we have to change the rules to 
finally make the Senate work, or is there another way? I am open to 
other ways. I am open to demonstrations of that. But I will tell you, 
it is a frustration. It is the determination to make certain that, for 
the people of Illinois who returned me to the Senate, we actually do 
something, achieve something; that we go home, win or lose, with the 
feeling that we have been engaged in a process that respected our 
rights as individual Senators and ended in a vote up or down and a 
measure passed or failed. That, to me, is why I ran for this job, and I 
think probably for yourself as well. We are not there, and we are not 
close to being there