[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 119 (Wednesday, July 12, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2333-S2334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, summer has arrived, which means Congress 
is turning its attention to appropriations bills for the coming year, 
and my hope is that this year Congress will consider all 12 
appropriations bills under regular order.
  Now, what do I mean by regular order? Regular order refers to 
allowing bills to go through the committee process--including hearings 
and a markup, where members of the committee have a chance to amend and 
improve the bill--and then a referral by the committee to the Senate as 
a whole.
  Bills are then considered on the Senate floor. Some bills pass the 
Senate by unanimous consent, while others undergo a full debate, 
including amendment votes, before being voted on by the Senate as a 
whole.
  Then, if necessary, the bill goes to a conference committee or is 
passed back and forth between the House and the Senate to reconcile any 
differences between the House and Senate bills before the amended 
versions are then put to the full House and Senate.
  That is what is considered the ``regular order'' process, and it is 
generally the best way to make laws. Regular order allows for a truly 
deliberative process. It provides the time to fully consider all 
aspects of legislation and to hear input from a broad array of Members. 
It promotes collaboration, compromise, and a sense of ownership of the 
final legislation, which makes bills more likely to pass. And, it is a 
transparent process, one that ensures that both Senators and the 
American people can see how the legislation in question is made and 
have ample time to digest it--not to mention the key fact that, by 
ensuring the input of more Senators, regular order helps ensure that a 
broader swath of the American people is represented in any final 
legislation.
  Regular order is something that I think most Members generally aspire 
to. But the actual use of regular order has all too frequently been in 
short supply around here in recent years.
  Too often, major legislation has been written behind closed doors and 
dropped on Members at the last minute--bypassing the chairmen, ranking 
members, and Senators who sit on the committees of jurisdiction and 
would otherwise have the opportunity to consider and amend the 
legislation in committee, before being brought up for a floor vote with 
little or no opportunity to offer amendments.
  Fifty years ago, most bills were going through regular order. In 
fact, 83 percent of the legislation considered on the Senate floor 
during the 1970s was a product of the committee process. But by the 
2010s, those numbers had dropped sharply, along with the number of 
Senate floor votes on amendments.

[[Page S2334]]

  But, of course, even while the use of regular order has decreased, 
some legislation does still go through the regular order process. And I 
can personally attest to the fact that the use of regular order can 
bring major bipartisan successes.
  During my time as chairman of the Commerce Committee, I focused on 
promoting collaboration and ensuring that bills in our committee's 
jurisdiction went through the regular order process, and we 
accomplished a lot: the first reauthorization of the Federal 
Communications Commission in more than a quarter century, the first 
reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Board in its 20-year 
history, multiple bills to advance the development and adoption of 5G, 
the longest surface transportation reauthorization since 1998, the 
longest reauthorization of the FAA since 1982, the first law to hold 
websites accountable for facilitating sex trafficking, and lots more. 
The vast majority of the bills that I just named ended up passing the 
Senate by strong bipartisan margins. And, of course, those are just 
examples of what was then our committee's jurisdiction.
  There are plenty of others. For example, Democrats are more often 
associated with imposing burdensome government regulations than with 
lifting them. But Senator Crapo's 2018 bill easing the regulatory 
burden for community banks and credit unions went through the regular 
order process, and, ultimately, 17 Senate Democrats joined Republicans 
to support the bill.
  In 2015, the HELP Committee passed one of the largest rewrites of our 
Nation's K-12 laws, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which returned more 
power to States when it comes to how kids are educated, by holding 
numerous hearings and multiple days of markups and considering dozens 
of amendments. In the end, that law passed with 85 votes in the U.S. 
Senate.
  The 2018 farm bill, which reauthorized important safety net programs 
for farmers and ranchers, passed the Senate with 87 votes, following 
robust consideration by the Agriculture Committee, amendment votes on 
the Senate floor, and a conference committee.
  And the list goes on. Regular order promotes collaborative, 
bipartisan, and successful results. As I indicated, regular order has 
been in somewhat short supply in the Senate in recent years. But I am 
encouraged by the fact that there seems to be a growing desire to 
return to regular order and that the Democrat chair and Republican vice 
chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee have expressed a shared 
commitment to considering all 12 appropriations bills this year through 
the regular order process.
  But there are concerning signs too. The Senate Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions Committee recently held its first partisan markup 
since the Affordable Care Act in 2009. That defeats the whole idea of a 
committee process that can yield a bipartisan result on the Senate 
floor, and it suggests the Democrats are still too entrenched in the 
partisan far-left mindset that saw them force legislation like the so-
called American Rescue Plan Act through Congress. That was the bill 
that helped plunge our Nation into its current inflation crisis.
  And perhaps even more concerning, recently, the majority leader, when 
referring to his plans on artificial intelligence, actually claimed 
that Congress will need ``to invent a new process to develop the right 
policies to implement our framework'' because the committee process 
``won't suffice.''
  I wonder how his committee chairs feel about that, and I would 
venture to suggest that the committee process has worked pretty well to 
develop all sorts of important legislation and to get buy-in from 
Senators.
  As we continue with the appropriations process, I hope that the 
determination expressed by the Democrat chair of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee to pass all 12 appropriations bills through 
regular order will prevail, and I hope that this same attitude will be 
applied to other legislation that the Senate must consider this year--
like the National Defense Authorization Act, the Federal Aviation 
Administration reauthorization, the farm bill, and more.
  If we want to get anything done in divided government, we are going 
to have to compromise, and the regular order process promotes the kind 
of bipartisan, collaborative action that will allow us to accomplish 
real things for the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hickenlooper). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The Senator from Texas.

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