[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8710-8711]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        THE NEED TO GET SERIOUS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I welcome back my colleagues for what I hope 
will be a productive month. This month is not unlike last month though 
or the month before or the month before that. Once again, our 
constituents are concerned with one thing above all; that is, jobs, 
work. They are concerned because of what the economy means for their 
families and their lives. They are worried about paying the bills next 
month and sending the kids to school next year. Too many want to go to 
the bank and once again know the dignity of depositing a paycheck 
instead of an unemployment check.
  Our constituents are also concerned because of what our economic 
future will mean for our Nation. They are afraid that ill-informed 
politicians might lead the country into a default crisis, and they fear 
all the terrible consequences that would have--consequences that would 
hurt us as a country, our families, and the world.
  I heard these concerns last week in Nevada. We all heard them in our 
States when we went home last week. We hear them loudly and clearly. So 
we are going to focus our attention this week and month on jobs just as 
we have all year.
  I am disappointed that our Republican colleagues seem determined to 
distract that focus. They want to spend the Senate's time debating an 
extreme social agenda that would hurt families, seniors, and our 
economy. They want to end Medicare in order to pay for more 
millionaires' tax breaks and oil company subsidies. That is not good 
policy or even good politics. The American people strongly oppose that 
policy, and so do the Democrats in Congress.
  Every day Republicans prove they are not just tone deaf to Americans' 
opinions; they are also tone deaf to cold, hard economic facts.
  Last week we got a discouraging jobs report. The economy added jobs, 
but not as many as we had hoped. Moody's sent a clear letter warning 
that a default crisis would send our economy into a tailspin. There is 
no time to waste. The longer Republicans insist on dismantling Medicare 
as a price for moving forward, the longer the unemployed will wait for 
good news, and the closer the Nation will come to a default crisis.
  Republicans' ideology of obstruction isn't limited to economics or 
seniors' health. We also see it in their approach to performing the 
Senate's constitutional duty of confirming the President's nominees for 
important positions.
  A few weeks ago, Republicans blocked a well-qualified, fair-minded, 
and widely respected legal scholar for a seat on the U.S. Court of 
Appeals. Now they are continuing these partisan antics by threatening 
to block two more noncontroversial nominees. The first is Peter 
Diamond. He is one of the Nation's top economists. He has won the Nobel 
Prize in economics. Not long ago, he had bipartisan support for his 
nomination to the Fed's Board of Governors. All of a sudden, for no 
good reason, Republicans have decided to stand in the way of his 
nomination.
  The second, Don Verrilli, is the President's nominee for Solicitor 
General of the United States. The Judiciary Committee approved him by a 
17-to-1 margin. So in addition to being supremely qualified, he is 
clearly not controversial. But now Republicans are threatening to block 
this nominee over requests for documents totally unrelated to him or 
his position. I hope they don't hold him up for reasons that have 
nothing to do with his nomination.

[[Page 8711]]

  Blocking every nominee no matter the merits is no way to govern or 
lead. It is no way to move forward.
  Mr. President, if we are going to keep our economy upright--for 
families and for our Nation as a whole--we have to recognize real 
problems and propose realistic solutions. We cannot hold one policy 
hostage to another or be bound by some strange ideology.
  Every month we play these games guarantees that the following month 
will bring more of the same avoidable fights. For families worried 
about affording the basics, and for our Nation's fundamental economic 
strength, we need to get serious before it is too late.

                          ____________________