[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 196 (Wednesday, November 18, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7050-S7052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Cloture Motion

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair 
lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will 
state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination 
     of Stephen A. Vaden, of Tennessee, to be a Judge of the 
     United States Court of International Trade.
         Mitch McConnell, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Thom Tillis, John 
           Thune, Mike Crapo, Mike Rounds, Steve Daines, Kevin 
           Cramer, Richard Burr, John Cornyn, Shelley Moore 
           Capito, Todd Young, John Boozman, David Perdue, James 
           E. Risch, Lindsey Graham, Roger F. Wicker.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. By unanimous consent, the mandatory 
quorum call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
nomination of Stephen A. Vaden, of Tennessee, to be a Judge of the 
United States Court of International Trade, shall be brought to a 
close?

[[Page S7051]]

  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. 
Gardner), the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Grassley), and the Senator from 
Florida (Mr. Scott).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. 
Alexander) would have voted ``yea,'' the Senator from Iowa (Mr. 
Grassley) would have voted ``yea,'' and the Senator from Florida (Mr. 
Scott) would have voted ''yea.''
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. 
Feinstein), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), and the Senator 
from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote or change their vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 49, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 236 Ex.]

                                YEAS--49

     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Graham
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Loeffler
     McConnell
     McSally
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--44

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Jones
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--7

     Alexander
     Feinstein
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Harris
     Sanders
     Scott (FL
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 49, the nays are 
44.
  The motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from Wyoming.


                             2020 Elections

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about what 
the voters of America told the elected representatives in Washington 
about the election earlier this month. There has been a lot of analysis 
about what happened this year in the elections--who got what right, who 
got what wrong. The pollsters, the prognosticators, and the pundits--
well, they are already taking a beating for their many wrong 
predictions.
  The American people in States all across this country and, certainly, 
in Wyoming, rejected this far-left agenda. They saw what the Democrats 
were offering, and they said: No, thank you. Voters looked at the 
violent leftwing protests that have wrecked large cities and small 
cities across the country. People saw the death, injuries, and 
destruction of property, and Americans went to the polls and said: No, 
thank you. They rejected the Democrats' calls to defund the police; 
rebuffed the Democrats' threats to pack the Supreme Court; and said no 
to one-size-fits-all, government-run healthcare. They snubbed the 
Democrats' embrace of the Green New Deal and rejected this far-left 
plan to end American energy production. Basically, Americans said no.
  Many Democrats ran on this far-left agenda. They lost despite 
spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convince Americans 
otherwise. The Democrats must be asking themselves: What did we get 
wrong?
  No matter how much the Democrat Party pushes and their candidates 
push, America is not a far-left country. Americans don't want to blow 
up the Senate or the Supreme Court. They don't want to add more States 
to the Union or more Justices to the Court. They don't want to kill our 
energy economy and the good jobs it provides. People do not want to pay 
$10 a gallon for gasoline when they fill up under the Green New Deal. 
They don't want more government meddling in their personal healthcare 
decisions.
  I know what the people of Wyoming want, and Members ought to know 
this. Americans want jobs and security. They want to get back to work 
in a free enterprise economy, not a socialist one. They want their kids 
back in school safely to make sure they don't fall further behind. 
People are smart enough to know that the free stuff for everyone means 
the American taxpayer will be left footing the bill.
  Between now and the end of the year, we have very important things to 
do for the Nation in this body, the U.S. Senate. We need to fund the 
government. We need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. We 
need to confirm well-qualified nominees to the Federal judiciary. 
Senate Republicans are ready to get that work done. There is also work 
to be done in our fight against the coronavirus.
  The Democrat House has played politics with American lives and 
livelihoods for months now. With the election behind us, I hope it will 
take a more sensible approach to this Nation's most pressing problem 
right now. For months, Senate Republicans put forward targeted 
proposals--first in September, again in October--that provided 
comprehensive coronavirus relief, that focused on the coronavirus. 
There were 52 Republicans who came to the floor of this Senate and 
voted in favor of the proposal. Not a single Democrat voted for it. It 
is our plan to get people back to work, to get kids back to school 
safely, and to put the disease behind us.
  Just last week, Pfizer announced a vaccine that could be 90 percent 
effective in the fight against the coronavirus. This morning, it found 
out, with more testing and more time, that it will be, actually, 94\1/
2\ percent effective. Now Moderna and the National Institutes of Health 
have developed a vaccine that is almost 95 percent effective. There are 
four other vaccines in the trials, and one of the Members of this body, 
the Senator from Ohio, is part of the trial of one of those. I believe 
additional vaccines will be coming down the pipeline as well.
  It was a front-page story yesterday in every major paper in America--
the good news about vaccines and that the light at the end of the 
tunnel of the coronavirus is upon us.
  Today there was an announcement of an at-home test for coronavirus--
very, very promising.
  But when we think about the vaccine and why this all happened, 
Congress wisely invested $18 billion for vaccine treatment and for 
research, and it is paying off.
  The Governor of New York, astonishingly, called this bad news. He 
said this is bad news. It had to do with the fact that this is coming 
out now, and he wanted it to wait for a couple of months, after a 
Presidential inauguration.
  Why is it bad news that, through innovation and the work of the Cures 
Act, which came out of this body under the Republican majority and was 
then accepted by unanimous consent in the House--why is it bad news 
that we may be able to save millions, if not tens of millions, of lives 
all around the world? Why is it bad news, as the Governor of New York 
calls it? Why is it bad news that American invention and innovation and 
an investment by this body has brought about such a tremendous--what I 
would call as a doctor--modern medical miracle?
  Now, we still need to provide additional funding for vaccine 
distribution, and there is going to be a briefing tomorrow for all the 
Senators on both sides of the aisle with Operation Warp Speed to talk 
with the heads of research and distribution about how to make sure we 
can continue on this path to success--a path that the New York Times 
yesterday described as one that could lead to 20 million people being 
vaccinated before the end of this year. Bad news, says the Governor of 
New York, because it came this year rather than after January 20.
  It is distressing that an elected official would behave that way, in 
such a callous manner toward the lives, as well as the livelihood, of 
so many Americans.
  We still have work to do. At every turn, Democrats have blocked our

[[Page S7052]]

path. They are keeping us stuck and America stuck in this coronavirus 
crisis by demanding funding for things unrelated to coronavirus, per 
the Speaker of the House. You say: Oh, no, she wanted this $3 trillion 
for all sorts of things unrelated to coronavirus. She has more money in 
that bill to send direct paychecks to illegal immigrants--people in 
this country illegally--than she does for coronavirus vaccines.
  That is the kind of opposition and leftist thinking that we have been 
running into here in this body and that the American people rejected on 
election day and said: No, we want a path forward. We want to continue 
the great American comeback. We want our jobs. We want our kids. We 
want that path forward.
  There is still more work to be done, and we are ready to do it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from Oregon.