[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16180-16182]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      MISALLOCATION OF SENATE TIME

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend, the distinguished majority 
leader, noted this morning that we have been in session for over 6 
months. That is certainly true. My colleague from Tennessee is correct, 
we have made progress over these last 6 months.
  But it is important to the American people that the other side of the 
story, as Paul Harvey says, is also told. What is that other side of 
the story? He cited progress we have made but made no mention of the 
wasted time in this Senate on the so-called judicial option, the 
nuclear option. The time we wasted there was multiple weeks. I don't 
know if anyone has kept an accounting of the exact time, but the rough 
calculation I have made is more than one-third of the time we have been 
in session--about 89 days--we have devoted all or most of 30 days to 
that issue. More than one-third of the time we have

[[Page 16181]]

spent in the Senate was spent on the so-called nuclear option.
  What did that involve? First of all, we approved, prior to starting, 
208 of the President's nominees and turned down 10. The President, as 
soon as he was reelected, renominated 7 of the 10 we turned down. Three 
of the individuals decided they did not want to be judges or they did 
not want to go through the process. One of the judges retired who the 
President recess appointed. We spent more than one-third of the 
Senate's time on seven judges.
  From the very beginning of the President's reelection, we said with 
two of them, there is no problem, the two Michigan judges. No problem 
whatever. Just bring them here, we will vote on them, and they can go 
through.
  The reason they were turned down earlier is because of all the 
problems in the past when the majority at that time--the Republicans 
sometimes were in the minority; it flipped back and forth; but they 
would not allow some judges who came from Michigan. It was a procedural 
problem. Upon the President's reelection, we said: You have those two 
Michigan judges. So we have spent one-third of the Senate's time on 
five people, five nominees.
  These people could be members of the President's family, but would 
you spend one-third of the Senate's time on that while leaving 
important issues dealing with this body alone, ignoring them and 
rejecting them? I don't think so. But these were not members of the 
President's family but people who wanted to be judges. What did it 
amount to when we finished? Out of the five, three have been chosen as 
judges, two were not. It boiled down to three people. That is what it 
amounts to. I don't think that is a good allocation of our time, and 
that is a gross understatement.
  Not a single day have we spent in this Senate dealing with health 
care--not a debate on health care, let alone legislation. I don't think 
we can find a person anyplace in America who would not say, Boy, this 
problem with health care is significant. Why do they feel that way? 
Because 45 million Americans have no health care, and millions more are 
underinsured, meaning they have insurance but it is not very good. This 
problem is affecting the very core of our society.
  Employers know their employees are happier and they are better 
employees when they have health insurance. Why did these employers not 
have health insurance for their employees? They are not mean. They are 
not miserly. They have no health insurance because they cannot figure 
out a way to get it. With the present state of our society, employers 
all over America cannot buy health insurance. Once they buy it, it is 
canceled if someone gets sick or is in an accident. It is a problem we 
should be spending time on. Ignoring it does not do the trick.
  Education. I have said in the Senate, and I will say it again, I met 
some time ago with all 17 superintendents of schools of the State of 
Nevada. We have a wide range of sizes of our school districts. The 
Clark County school district, Las Vegas, has about 300,000 students. It 
is one of the largest school districts in all of America. That was one 
of the 17 with whom I met. One of the 17 is from Esmeralda County, 
Goldfield. That whole school district has 88 students. So 300,000 
versus 88, and in between we have different size school districts.
  All 17 superintendents, without exception, when they walked into that 
meeting with me--I didn't ask if they were Democrats, Republicans, or 
Independents--all 17 told me, as we went around the room, spending 
about an hour and 45 minutes together, that the Leave No Child Behind 
Act is destroying public education in Nevada. I didn't make this up. 
That is what they told me. It must be a problem. The State of Utah, our 
neighbor, has dropped out of the program. But we have not spent time in 
the Senate talking about education--not a single day on education 
legislation.
  Not a single day have we talked about minimum wage. Minimum wage is a 
very important issue. We have people in Nevada working two and three 
jobs in the service industry, earning minimum wage, trying to make a go 
of it. It became so pronounced in Nevada that the State of Nevada, 
which is known as a pretty conservative State, raised the minimum wage. 
Now the legislature has to vote again. We are going to put that in our 
constitution because the Federal Government has not lived up to its 
expectation.
  There are many issues we need to deal with in the Senate. These are 
issues the majority leader failed to talk about when he was here today. 
He talked about some of the things we have done, and we have worked 
closely. Everyone knows I like to have the trains run on time. It is 
hard for me to get over that. It is difficult for me to want to slow 
things down. I have lived on this Senate floor for 6 years, and I want 
as much order as we can have in the Senate. We have worked hard to try 
to cooperate.
  Even though all Democrats did not support the bankruptcy bill, it 
passed, working through the process. Same with the class action 
legislation. But some of the things we have passed have not been good 
for the country.
  My distinguished friend, the majority leader, talked about the 
budget. In this Senate, right before the vote, I read a letter from the 
leaders of the Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, the Episcopal 
Church, the Church of Christ, and others. It was their letter, not 
mine. They said the budget that was about to be passed--and now is law 
before this country--was an immoral document. These are church leaders.
  I met recently with the leader of all the bishops of the Catholic 
faith in my office in Washington. They are very concerned about what is 
happening to the poor, the oppressed in this country with the budgetary 
folks. They have addressed that to the White House. This budget passed 
on trillions of dollars of debt to our children, and at the expense of 
them the wealthiest in this country did much better in this budget.
  We have staggering debt in this country. A press conference was held 
a couple of days ago by the President and others bragging about the 
deficit not being so big. The budget the President submitted--now we 
find the midterm report shows it is going to be the third largest debt 
in the history of this country, only surpassed by two other Bush 
budgets. And if he added in the disguise he has in this budget where he 
does not count the Social Security surplus, the debt would be about 
$600 billion, the deficit for this 1 year. We have not talked about 
this issue.
  I see in the Senate today my friend from the State of North Dakota. 
No one, bar none, has spoken more about another problem we do not 
address in this Senate and the majority leader failed to mention, which 
is the trade deficit. There was almost a celebration held yesterday 
regarding the trade deficit this past month which was ``only'' $55 
billion--only $55 billion. I am not misspeaking, I am not saying 
``billion'' when it should be ``million.''
  I don't think we need to brag about the fact we passed CAFTA, which 
will just make it even bigger. The Catholic Church in Honduras and 
other places in Central America where CAFTA is going to apply opposed 
it. Labor unions will oppose it because it is unfair to the working men 
and women of that part of the world. We should not brag about CAFTA. We 
should talk about trade policy.
  Yes, we passed an energy bill, and I appreciate the limited support 
we got from my friends on the other side of the aisle. It is better 
than the House bill, but still it is a very bad bill. It is better than 
the House bill, no question about it.
  We are going to march to conference, and I have agreed to let my 
folks go to conference on the Energy bill. I hope we can hang on to 
what we have. Even though it is not very good, it is so much better 
than the sellout, for lack of a better word, to my folks on the other 
side of the aisle for the major oil companies. We must still make it 
through conference where House Republicans remain determined to strip 
away the good the Senate did and insert giveaways, protections for big 
energy corporations and chemical companies.
  We just finished Homeland Security appropriations. I respect the work 
of my friend Judd Gregg and Senator Byrd, the chairman of the 
subcommittee. We cannot brag about this.

[[Page 16182]]

I am glad it is finished, but keep in mind, this bill we have in the 
Senate came with a recommendation from the President to cut spending 
for first-line responders by about $412 million.
  But when my friends in the majority got finished with it, the amount 
of money taken from first-line responders, in the bill, totaled $492 
million less than last year. We have thousands of police stations, 
thousands of fire stations filled with police officers and fire 
fighters, ambulances, medical responders, and this Homeland Security 
budget took money away from them. There were efforts made on the floor 
yesterday by members of the Republican Party, the majority, to take 
money from the budget, and it was literally to rob Peter to pay Paul. 
Thank goodness those amendments did not pass.
  So we cannot brag about what we are doing in homeland security. For 
transit, it was a little better, and I am happy to see that. But there 
are so many things we need to do that are not being done. We have 
chemical plants with no protection, nuclear power generating facilities 
with no protection. We are unable, in the State of Nevada, to respond 
to each other, one police agency with another police agency. But it is 
not only Nevada. It is all over the country.
  So as we look back on these 7 months we have been in session, more 
than a third of it was devoted to three people who are now judges. We 
have done nothing with retirement security, even though we had the 
scandal with United Airlines. Pensions and savings are going downhill.
  Stem cell research: I know we are tying to work something out, and I 
appreciate and admire what the majority leader, a physician, is trying 
to do on that. I appreciate his help. We still have not done it yet.
  The defense authorization, we have not done that. We have been in 
session, as I have indicated, for 19 weeks. It is a blemish on this 
Senate's record that we are 80 percent completed as to the work period 
this year and we have done about 10 percent of the work we need to do. 
With only 6 weeks left until the target adjournment, we have done 
virtually nothing for the American people. It is no wonder the American 
people have lost confidence in the Republican leadership in this 
Congress.
  We brag about the bankruptcy bill. Who is that for? It is not for the 
common working men and women in this country. It is for banks and big 
credit card companies.
  Class action legislation: That is not for the American consumers. It 
is for big business.
  So at this time now, we have to turn our attention to a Supreme Court 
nominee. As I have indicated, when it comes to that nominee, I hope the 
President will use this opportunity to bring the country together. We 
really need that, as President Reagan did when he nominated Sandra Day 
O'Connor. By choosing a consensus nominee, that can be done. It has 
been done, and we need it so badly today. We need to move away from the 
partisanship and back to the commonsense center, not just on judges but 
on all the work we do in the Senate.
  The American people sent us to work for them. They have not seen very 
many results in the first 7 months of this session. But in the weeks 
ahead, I hope we can change that. I am happy to work with my 
counterpart and move forward. I want the trains to run on time. But 
this was a subject brought up by the distinguished majority leader, and 
I felt it was appropriate to answer. I have done the best I can in 
responding.

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