[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 165 (Wednesday, September 23, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5795-S5796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, 2 days ago, the Democratic leader 
threatened that if the Senate majority dares to play by the rules and 
behave like a majority, it would mean ``the end of this supposedly 
great deliberative body''--``the end of this supposedly great 
deliberative body.''
  Yesterday, we learned what he meant. We saw important Senate business 
hurt by what amounted to a temper tantrum. For some reason, the 
Democratic leader decided to vent his frustration by blocking the 
Intelligence Committee--listen to this--from holding a bipartisan 
counterintelligence hearing--by blocking the Intelligence Committee 
from holding a bipartisan counterintelligence hearing.
  The committee was set to hear from Bill Evanina, the Director of the 
National Counterintelligence and Security Center. This is the Nation's 
top counterintelligence official. Among other things, he works directly 
on protecting our elections and our politics from foreign interference. 
That is his job. They were going to hear from him.
  This is the same Democratic leader who declared a few weeks ago that 
if the Intelligence Committee did not stay close to Congress on 
election security, it would be ``an abdication of [their] duty . . . to 
protect our democracy.'' Just last week, he wrote me a letter saying 
election security had to be ``above partisan politics.'' But now the 
Democratic leader's temper is more important. He denied Chairman Rubio 
routine permission for the bipartisan committee to meet. He said: 
``[W]e won't have business as usual here in the Senate.''
  Today, both the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services 
Committee are scheduled to meet. They are set to speak with top 
intelligence and military officials about election security. I guess we 
will find out whether the Democratic leader's embarrassing theatrics 
were just a 1-day matinee or whether he means to make this a series.
  Our bipartisan committees have a great deal of work to do to 
safeguard

[[Page S5796]]

our Nation and, in particular, to protect our elections, so I hope our 
colleague from New York gets out of the way.
  But the Democratic leader didn't stop there. A few minutes later, he 
decided to cheapen a solemn and unifying moment and turned a draft 
unanimous resolution honoring Justice Ginsburg into one more depressing 
stunt for the TV cameras.
  Over the weekend, I wrote a resolution honoring the late Justice's 
amazing life. Normally, such measures are adopted with unanimous, 
bipartisan support. That is exactly what we did after Justice Scalia 
passed. Every Senator recognized that our collective eulogy was no 
place to debate political questions--oh, but not this time. This time, 
the Democratic leader copy-pasted the tribute I had written, put his 
name on top, and added two divisive references to our debate over what 
to do next. He didn't devote any time or attention to the language 
praising Justice Ginsburg's life and career. He did not suggest a 
single change to any of that. His sole focus was on turning a solemn 
routine and unanimous moment for Justice Ginsburg into a platform for 
himself.
  Justice Ginsburg could not be more deserving of the honor of a formal 
Senate tribute. I hope our colleague from New York will let us pass one 
sometime soon.

                          ____________________