[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16169-16170]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      LIMITING THE RIGHT TO DEBATE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, during the past couple days, we have 
discussed the plans of the Democratic majority to make the Senate more 
``efficient'' and to do it by breaking the rules of the Senate. It is 
what my Senate colleagues roundly criticized during the Bush 
administration as ``breaking the rules to change the rules.'' It is 
something Senate Republicans thought about but wisely chose not to do.
  The Senate has two great traditions, two great rights of Members and, 
by extension, the citizens they represent; the right to amend and the 
right to debate.
  Yesterday and last week I talked about the first of these great 
Senate rights and how the Democratic majority has sought systematically 
to marginalize the minority in its exercise of this right.
  I noted how the Democratic majority has bypassed committees to an 
unprecedented extent, how it has blocked members of the minority and 
members of the majority, too, from offering amendments on the Senate 
floor before cloture is invoked and how, when that didn't shut out the 
minority, the majority used a bare majoritarian means to change Senate 
procedure to bar the minority from offering motions to suspend the 
rules after cloture was invoked.
  This systemic effort to marginalize the minority stands in stark 
contrast to the trend in the House under the Republican majority. It 
has allowed the minority in the House more chances to amend legislation 
on the House floor than existed under previous majorities.
  In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, last year, the House 
held more votes on amendments on the floor than it did during the 2 
previous years combined, when congressional Democrats were in the 
majority.
  When one compares the amendments and the motions voted on in the 
House this year with those voted on in the Senate, as the nonpartisan 
Congressional Research Service has done, the difference is truly 
startling. The House minority has been able to offer 214 such motions 
and amendments, compared to only 67 for the Senate minority, which is 
more than three times as many motions and amendments, but the minority 
in the House has had three times as many votes as the minority in the 
Senate. In terms of protecting the right of the minority to represent 
their constituents through amendments on the floor, the House is 
becoming more like the Senate used to be, and the Senate is becoming 
more like the House used to be.
  But what about the second great right in the Senate, the right to 
debate? How has the exercise of this right fared under the Democratic 
majority? The short answer is not so great. The filing of cloture under 
the Senate rules is the beginning of the process to end debate, and the 
wielding of this powerful tool is in the hands of the majority leader. 
If one wants to simply equate the filing of cloture, if one wants to 
equate the filing of cloture with a filibuster, there is the potential 
for the majority to generate a lot of filibusters with a quick trigger 
on the cloture motion.
  My friends on the other side of the aisle have painted a picture 
where cloture filings are needed to overcome an obstinate minority. 
Cloture is needed, so we are told, because of Members of the minority 
who refuse to stop delaying.
  But does filing cloture on a matter, be it on a bill, an amendment or 
a conference report, on the very same day the Senate is considering 
that matter, indicate a minority that is prolonging debate or does it 
indicate a majority that is eager not to have a debate at all? To me, a 
habitual effort to file cloture on a matter as soon as the Senate 
begins to consider the matter indicates the latter.
  What do the numbers show about the use of cloture by this Democratic 
majority? According to CRS, the current Senate majority has filed 
cloture on a matter--exclusive of motions to proceed to a matter--on 
the very same day it considered the matter three and a half times more 
often than the Senate Republicans did when they were in the majority.
  According to CRS, Senate Republicans filed same-day cloture on a 
matter just 30 times in 4 years. The current Democratic majority has 
done so well over 100 times. Put another way, Senate Democrats are much 
more apt to try to shut off debate on a matter as soon as the Senate 
begins considering the matter than were prior majorities including, 
most recently, Senate Republicans.
  The desire of my Democratic colleagues to shut down debate before it 
begins in these instances has nothing to do with overcoming resistance 
to the Senate taking up a bill because, as I have just noted, this 
analysis specifically excludes--excludes--same-day cloture filings on a 
motion to proceed.
  It is not just the right to amend that has taken a hit under the 
Democratic majority but the right to debate as well. All Senators and 
all Americans are disserved when these rights are systematically 
marginalized.
  This is not the ``golden rule'' we were promised when the Senate 
Democrats assumed the majority in 2007--far from it.
  Rather than continuing to diminish the great tradition to the Senate, 
rather than breaking the rules to change the rules, we need to 
strengthen those rights and traditions. As Senator Byrd noted, 
majorities are fleeting. One can wake after the first Tuesday in 
November and find oneself in the minority.
  I say with respect, I hope our Democratic colleagues are mindful of 
that as we continue this discussion and are prepared not only to live 
under the rules they would change but to live with a precedent they 
would establish by making those changes.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it would be hard to travel to a university 
campus or to a chamber of commerce meeting or anyplace in the country, 
travel just to a supermarket and talk to people where they wouldn't all 
agree that the Senate is dysfunctional, has not worked well. To show 
how right they are is a statement made yesterday by John McCain.
  Now, Mr. President, John McCain and I have had our political 
differences, but no one--no one--can quibble with the fact that John 
McCain is an American patriot. He was a Navy

[[Page 16170]]

aviator shot down in Vietnam, spent years--I think it was 6\1/2\ or 7 
years--as a prisoner of war, 4\1/2\ of those in solitary confinement.
  He and I came to the House of Representatives together. I know how 
the House works. I served there. While I appreciate my friend the 
Republican leader giving me a minilecture on the House, I don't need 
one. I served in the House, and I know how the House works. And I know 
what John McCain said yesterday because I am reading a verbatim 
transcript from those proceedings, and here is what he said:

       . . . I apologize for what seems to have happened. Much to 
     my dismay, it lends credence to the argument that maybe we 
     ought not to do business the way we are doing here in the 
     Senate.

  That is a direct quote from John McCain.
  As I said in my opening statement, I served in the House, and the 
reason I mentioned today in my opening statement about the discharge 
petition is that when I served there, under the leadership of Speaker 
O'Neill, Majority Leader Michel, and then Jim Wright and Michel, a 
Republican, there was no way they would ever consider doing a vote with 
the majority of the majority. They wanted to get 218 votes. That is 
what they did on reforming Social Security; that is what they did on 
virtually everything--get Democrats and Republicans together and get 
218 votes.
  And that is the challenge I gave to the Speaker today, Speaker 
Boehner. Let the House vote. One Republican House Member suggested that 
more than half of the Republicans in the House would vote for giving 
tax security to people making less than $250,000 a year. So I say, 
let's have Speaker Boehner call upon the Republicans in the House to 
add 25 or so votes to what the Democrats would do, and they would have 
218 votes and we could go on to taking care of the fiscal cliff.
  Mr. President, my friend protesteth too much. The Senate is broken, 
it needs to be fixed, and we need to change the rules. We change them 
all the time. Last year we changed the rules. Why? Because of what they 
were doing--the Republicans--just to stop and slow down everything. 
After two cloture votes--and remember that takes a long time, to file 
two cloture motions, a couple of days and then 30 hours. So after 60 
hours, you would think the debate would be all over. Oh no. What they 
decided to do was to suspend the rules and have more votes. We put up 
with it for a while--a couple here, a couple there. I think the last 
time they had 15 or 16 motions to suspend the rules. That was enough. 
They overruled the Chair. They can't do that anymore.
  What the Republicans have done is they have brought the Senate to its 
knees, and that is unfortunate. We need to be able to have the Senate 
operate the way it should operate, and we need to make sure people 
understand how dysfunctional we are and how we need to move forward.
  They can say all they want about ``we need more amendments.'' Nobody 
criticizes having more amendments, but when we spend 9 or 10 days 
getting on a bill, we have wasted all that time. Nothing happens during 
that time. We do nothing here in the Senate. Everything comes to a 
standstill. Yet they complain because they do not have time to offer 
amendments.

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