[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 8337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         UPHOLDING COMMITMENTS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, it has now been 138 days since the 
Senate reached an agreement on the issue of whether we would violate 
the rules to change the rules--138 days since we reached an agreement. 
In that agreement, the Senate adopted two rules changes and two 
standing orders, and the majority leader made an unequivocal 
commitment, not contingent on his judgment of what was good behavior, 
but the matter was settled for this Congress. In fact, 2 years before 
that, he said it was settled for the next two Congresses.
  So let's take a look at exactly what the majority leader's pledge 
was. This was back in 2011 when the majority leader said:

       I agree that the proper way to change Senate rules is 
     through the procedures established in those rules--

  In those rules--

     and I will oppose any effort in this Congress or the next--

  The Congress we are in now--

     to change the Senate's rules other than through the regular 
     order.

  So the commitment on January 27, 2011, was not just for that Congress 
but for the next one as well.
  Then 2 years later, on January 24 of this year, I said in a colloquy 
with the majority leader:

       I would confirm with the majority leader that the Senate 
     would not consider other resolutions--

  We had passed a couple of resolutions, a couple of rules changes, and 
a couple of standing orders--

     relating to any standing order or rules this Congress--

  That is the Congress we are in right now--

     unless they went through the regular order process?

  The majority leader said:

       That is correct. Any other resolutions related to Senate 
     procedure would be subject to a regular order process, 
     including consideration by the Rules Committee.

  Now, the regular order for changing rules is that the Parliamentarian 
would rule that it would take 67 votes to do that. But after these 
commitments were made both in January of 2011 and in January of this 
year, the majority leader has consistently repeated: In spite of what I 
said in January of each of the last 2 years, if Members are not on 
their best behavior, presumably, I will do this anyway.
  So I mentioned to the majority leader publicly--privately for a long 
time and then publicly over the last few weeks--that I intend to ask 
him the question every day: Does he intend to keep his word?
  That is critical around here. It is important for all Senators to 
keep their word, but it is particularly important for the majority 
leader, who has the opportunity to be, shall I say, more important than 
the rest of us because he gets to set the agenda and he gets to 
determine what the Senate will debate. He has the right of first 
recognition and, as he repeatedly reminds me in these colloquies, he 
will always have the last word. So I think the currency of the realm in 
the Senate is one's word.
  So those are my observations today and will be my observations 
tomorrow until we get this established because I think the atmosphere 
in which the Senate operates, with this threat of a nuclear option 
holding over it, is not conducive to the kind of collegial environment 
we need in processing nominations and in processing legislation. We 
expect the majority leader to keep his word.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.

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