[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 101 (Thursday, June 10, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4038-S4040]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Filibuster

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last year, our friends across the aisle 
painted a picture of doom and gloom of what governing with a Republican 
Senate minority might look like. They forecasted unprecedented 
obstruction, endless stonewalling, and the inability to get anything 
done.
  Now, there is nothing more popular than the myth that Congress is 
unable to get anything done. It is pretty popular. The press, 
uncritically, reports it, even when it is demonstrably false. But it is 
safe to say the vision painted by our Democratic colleagues of doom and 
gloom with a Republican Senate minority of unprecedented obstruction, 
endless stonewalling, and inability to get things done--well, that 
hadn't come to pass.
  Actually, I feel like I am doing a Washington Post fact check. But 
over the past few months, Republicans and Democrats have actually 
worked together to make progress on a number of issues.
  One, I am sure the Biden administration would confirm that we have 
been able to confirm a number of nominees for high-ranking positions in 
the Federal Government with broad bipartisan support.
  We extended the popular Paycheck Protection Program that was part of 
the CARES Act, which was the major COVID-19 relief bill that passed 
overwhelmingly last year on a bipartisan basis. We did that because we 
all recognized the importance of small businesses continuing to take 
advantage of this lifeline until they could safely reopen.
  We took action, on a bipartisan basis, to combat the increase in hate 
crimes against Asian Americans. We provided States with additional 
resources to upgrade their drinking and wastewater infrastructure.
  And this week we passed historic legislation to improve the way we 
counter the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, the so-called 
Endless Frontier Act. It included a $52 billion emergency appropriation 
to make sure that we weren't dependent on imports of semiconductors, 
which are so essential to our economy and to our national security.
  That is not all. The Environment and Public Works Committee advanced 
a bipartisan surface transportation bill. That is actually the second 
time--first under Republican leadership, now under Democratic 
leadership--that the Environment and Public Works Committee has 
advanced a bipartisan, unanimously supported surface transportation 
bill.
  The Judiciary Committee that I serve on unanimously has approved 
three bills to support our men and women in blue. And two committees, 
the Rules Committee and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee, just released a bipartisan report--127 pages long, if I am 
not mistaken--on the events surrounding January 6.
  You would be hard pressed to count the number of bipartisan bills 
that have actually been introduced in the

[[Page S4039]]

last few months, just in 6 months of the Biden administration: 
legislation to bring down prescription drug prices, enhance cyber 
security, which is an increasingly scary and frightening issue, 
especially with the Colonial Pipeline, the JBS hack, and the SolarWinds 
hack by the Russians.
  We also know we need to improve our electric grid infrastructure, 
which we have bills doing that. And then we also have even a bipartisan 
bill to address the humanitarian crisis on the southern border--
bipartisan, bicameral.
  These are some of the bills that I have introduced, and when you add 
to it the work being done by other Members of the Senate, you have a 
long list of opportunities for us to work together on behalf of the 
American people. I believe this is the type of results and consensus 
that the American people had hoped for after the last election because, 
the truth is, neither party got a mandate after the last election.
  I know President Biden won the election, but we have a 50-50 Senate, 
and Speaker Pelosi has a very slim majority in the House. And we have a 
President who, I think, inspired all of us when he started talking 
about healing the separations in our Nation and appealing to a promise 
of unity.
  I can tell you one thing, that 2020 wasn't a mandate to pass a 
radical agenda. It was a call for us to work together. I don't know any 
other way you can interpret a 50-50 Senate. And I believe there is no 
better time for us to get work done on behalf of our constituents in 
the Senate.
  There is, perhaps, the apocryphal story of George Washington, who 
told Thomas Jefferson that the Senate was meant to be the saucer to 
cool House legislation, like how a saucer apparently was used at the 
time to cool hot tea. There certainly is a lot of hot tea in the House 
these days, and the filibuster, I believe, and the 60-vote requirement 
to cut off debate is core to the Senate's ability to perform its 
constitutional function--to cool off the debate and to talk about the 
greater good and to force us to do something that maybe we don't do 
naturally, which is to force us to work together.
  The Founders understood that if you passed legislation on a purely 
partisan basis, well, the next 2 years after the election, the next 4 
years after a new President, the new majority, the new President, could 
simply undo it. And we have seen a lot of that, unfortunately--
admittedly, on both sides of the aisle.
  But when you have to get 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation 
that impacts the lives of 330 million Americans, it strikes me that is 
a pretty commonsense way to force us to do, again, maybe what might 
seem unnatural to us but we have to do for the benefit of the American 
people. It forces us to pass bipartisan bills and makes passing 
partisan bills impossible.
  Now, I know both parties. There is a reason why people are Democrats 
and a reason why people are Republicans. We have different ideas, 
different priorities, different ways of going about doing things, 
perhaps to achieve a result that we would all agree on, a different 
means to an end. But the fact of the matter is, notwithstanding our 
preference, perhaps, to have our policies succeed over those of our 
Democratic colleagues, that is not always necessarily in the best 
interest of the American people. What is in the best interest of the 
American people is to have us work together.
  Just 4 years ago--it is amazing how time flies and how much people's 
positions change depending on where they sit. Well, 4 years ago, now-
Majority Leader Senator Schumer, the Senator from New York, said we 
should ``build a firewall around the legislative filibuster.''
  Believe me, that 60-vote requirement looks a lot better when you are 
in the minority than it does when you are in the majority. As a matter 
of fact, when President Trump was in the White House and we had a 
Republican majority in the Senate, I can't tell you how many times he 
pressed on Leader McConnell to eliminate the filibuster because it was 
an impediment to him getting what he wanted done. But he wasn't looking 
at the long game or the long-term consequences of doing that. Senator 
McConnell, on the other hand, having been in the Senate a long time, 
understood that short-term gain was not worth the long-term pain.
  But Senator Schumer called it the most important distinction between 
the House and the Senate, this consensus-building mechanism known as 
the filibuster. But, today, Senator Schumer perhaps has succumbed to 
the temptation, once you are in the majority, to say: Anything that 
gets in my way, any impediment to getting what I want, like the 60-vote 
requirement, we need to do away with it. So he has done a complete 180. 
Clearing the way for a radical agenda is priority No. 1.

  I understand the political pressures that come within our political 
parties, and it is pretty clear to me that the pressure on our friends 
in the Democratic Party is from the progressive left, who want to push 
the party farther and farther to the left. But that is not a reason for 
us to give up our previous convictions or principles.
  Apparently, our Democratic colleagues--not all, but some of our 
Democratic colleagues--apparently have abandoned the long-held belief 
that the filibuster is a vital stabilizing force, and they are on the 
warpath to eliminate it. You can tell by the language that is being 
used. Some have called the filibuster a ``weapon of mass destruction,'' 
``a death grip of democracy.''
  And here is perhaps the most despicable description when, I think it 
was, President Obama himself, who spoke at John Lewis's funeral, called 
the filibuster a ``Jim Crow relic,'' essentially suggesting that 
anybody who supported this vital stabilizing mechanism was a racist. 
And he gave tacit permission to other people to play the race card when 
it comes to the filibuster.
  Well, it hasn't even been a year since our Democratic colleagues used 
this ``Jim Crow relic'' to block an anti-lynching bill. This was part 
of the police reform bill that Senator Tim Scott led that was 
filibustered by our Democratic friends.
  I still remember being on the floor when then-Senator Kamala Harris 
and Cory Booker, who were the chief advocates for this anti-lynching 
provision in the police reform bill, were part of the core of Democrats 
who filibustered that bill. They filibustered their own anti-lynching 
bill. So when somebody wants to play the race card and say that this is 
used for improper purposes, their own actions demonstrate the hypocrisy 
of that argument.
  The inconvenient truth for our Democratic colleagues is that they 
have filibustered bill after bill when they were the minority party 
over the last 6 years. But I know memories are short around here. The 
impulse to get something done today may cause people to do things that 
they later would regret. We certainly have seen that in the George W. 
Bush administration when then-Leader Reid decided to raise the bar for 
judicial confirmations to 60 votes for cloture and blocked a number of 
George W. Bush's judges.
  Of course, we know how that story ended. Ultimately, we got back to 
the status quo ante after we went through years of fights, gangs 
meeting and coming up with tentative compromises. And then, ultimately, 
with the use of the same precedent setting or the appeal of the ruling 
of the Chair, that then was used to bring the number back down to 51, 
where it had, in essence, been forever, when Neil Gorsuch was 
confirmed. So it is important for us to remember that what goes around 
comes around here, and what might seem expedient today may prove to be 
pretty painful tomorrow.
  Well, we know our Democratic colleagues have used this so-called Jim 
Crow relic--and, again, I think that is completely inaccurate to use it 
that way. This is how the Senate functions. Our Democrats are within 
their rights when they employ the filibuster to kill countless pieces 
of legislation, whether it is pandemic relief, government funding, pro-
life legislation, or police reform. The list goes on and on.
  Again, I don't particularly like it when the minority filibusters 
legislation I would like to see passed, but what that means is it is an 
invitation and, really, a command to us to roll up our sleeves and work 
harder to try to find common ground. Really, if you think about it, 
eliminating the filibuster is a lazy way of legislating because it 
means you don't have to do the hard work. You don't have to build 
bipartisan consensus. You don't have to worry about stabilizing our 
laws so

[[Page S4040]]

that they don't change dramatically every 2 years or every 4 years 
depending on who is in charge.
  So we don't have to wonder how our Democratic colleagues felt about 
the filibuster when it was of benefit to them because they made 
countless statements and even put their feelings in writing. When 
Republicans held control of the House and the Senate and the White 
House, our Democratic colleagues were afraid the filibuster would be 
eliminated. They were afraid we would do what we did not do but that 
which Leader Schumer and others are advocating now, which is to 
eliminate the filibuster so we could get--they were worried that we 
would eliminate the filibuster to get what we wanted rather than have 
to work together on a bipartisan basis.
  So the shoe is truly on the other foot now that Democrats have a 
nominal majority in a 50-50 Senate but with the tie-breaking vote of 
the Vice President. That is why Senator Schumer gets to be the floor 
leader even though he doesn't command a majority of Senators.
  Back then, when Democrats were in the minority and they were worried 
about eliminating the filibuster, 33 of them--33--signed a letter 
insisting that the filibuster be preserved. Among them was the now Vice 
President, then Senator Kamala Harris.
  Senator McConnell, being an institutionalist at heart, agreed, and he 
never wavered to pressure from anyone, even President Trump, to 
eliminate the filibuster. But now the tables have turned, and so have 
many of our colleagues' views on the filibuster.
  Instead of resisting pressure to blow up the rules of the Senate and 
perhaps change it forever, Leader Schumer has gladly accepted his 
marching orders from the radical left, and he is trying to dismantle 
the longstanding rules of the Senate, what makes it exceptional, as he 
said, different from the House--way back when.
  Senator Schumer banked on Republican obstruction to justify going 
nuclear. He is trying to set up a series of votes in order to justify 
going nuclear to change the Senate into the House, to eliminate the 
bipartisan command of that 60-vote requirement.
  So he engaged in a lot of doom-and-gloom forecasting to predict that 
Republicans would willy-nilly filibuster Democrat legislation, but it 
hasn't come to pass. So now he is trying to orchestrate a series of 
votes that are designed to fail. And they are just that--designed to 
fail--because they don't represent the kind of hard work that goes into 
building bipartisan consensus in the Senate.
  We kicked things off earlier this week with a vote on a bill that 
would exploit the cause of pay fairness to line the pockets of trial 
lawyers.
  We will soon vote on the Democratic Party's attempt to seize 
authority from the States to run elections. This is a bill so extreme 
that a number of Democrats have said they will not vote for it.
  Who knows what might be next, whether it is packing the Supreme 
Court, making Puerto Rico or Washington, DC, a State with two 
Democratic Senators each, or whether they will try to use this to erode 
the constitutional rights of American citizens, for example, under the 
Second Amendment. But blocking these bills isn't an example of 
Republican obstruction; it is a destructive act of political theater.
  Well, thank goodness there are enough Democrats who are opposed to 
eliminating the filibuster, apparently. So it appears that Democrats 
don't have the votes to make this horribly miscalculated rules change. 
Two of our colleagues have made clear in their statement that they have 
the courage to stand up for what they believe is right, despite the 
pressure they are receiving from the far left.
  Senators Manchin and Sinema have repeatedly said they will oppose 
efforts to eliminate the filibuster. They won't accept the short-term 
gain for long-term pain. Unlike the rest of their conference, their 
caucus, they recognize the inherent dangers of making this strictly a 
51-vote majority institution. They seem to be following the advice of 
what then-Senator Barack Obama gave back in 2005 when then-Senator 
Obama said:

       If the majority chooses to end the filibuster . . . then 
     the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only 
     get worse.

  The American people deserve better than that. Chipping away at the 
right of the minority may seem expedient now, but Democrats would be 
sure to regret those changes one day, just as they now regret the day 
that Harry Reid cleared an easy path for hundreds of conservative 
Federal judges.
  In two years, Republicans could win the majority in either or both of 
the Chambers. In 4, a Republican could win the White House, as well. 
How would our Democratic colleagues feel then when their rights as 
Members of the minority are disparaged and ignored? Would our 
Democratic colleagues support their rule changes then? Would they then 
believe the Senate minority should be silenced and made irrelevant, as 
apparently some believe now?
  Well, I find it hard to believe that that would be the case. The 
thing about power in Washington is it is never permanent. Majorities 
and Presidents change. And there is a reason why the rules should stay 
the same. If Democrats had the votes to eliminate the filibuster, our 
country would face a tidal wave of changes: defunding the police, 
election law hijacking by the Federal Government over the States and 
local jurisdictions, tax hikes as high as the mind can conceive, 
restricted rights under the Constitution. You get the picture.
  But when the tide inevitably turns, which it will at some point, then 
the temptation would be on the part of the Republicans to reverse all 
of those changes. The economy, the government, the average American 
family would be in a constant whiplash.
  The requirement to get 60 votes to close off debate in the Senate is 
designed to protect our country from the relatively rapid changes of 
majorities and Presidents, and eliminating it would do serious, 
irreparable harm, as many of the quoted comments by distinguished 
Democrats have stated in the past, if not today, at least in the past. 
So I agree with what Senator Schumer said 4 years ago: We should build 
a firewall around it.
  But in the meantime, there is still a lot of bipartisan work being 
done here in the Senate, even under the current rules, without the 
thermonuclear device of blowing up the 60-vote cloture requirement 
known as the filibuster. But every day that the Democratic leader 
wastes on political theater, which he knows is not going to succeed, is 
a day we have wasted in passing bipartisan legislation that will 
benefit all of the American people, not just a partisan majority.
  This is the world's greatest deliberative body. It may be one of the 
last ones in existence. I don't know any other place in our country or 
around the world where Senators can come down to the Senate floor and 
express their views no matter how unpopular, no matter how politically 
incorrect, but engage in actual debate and exchange of views, which 
ultimately give the American people the best opportunity to make up 
their own minds about what policies they agree with and who they trust 
to protect their welfare.
  This is the world's greatest deliberative body. There are far more 
important ways to spend our time than on political theater.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). The Senator from Nevada is 
recognized.

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