[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Page 13949]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GRIDLOCK IN CONGRESS

  Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, before we close the Senate before the 
August recess, I just want to speak for 1 minute.
  We all heard the exchange earlier between the chairman of the Foreign 
Relations Committee, Senator Menendez, and Senator Enzi, and Senator 
Carper also participated, about appointing ambassadors. I think it is a 
sad day for America when our gridlock, the gridlock that the Congress 
has created, makes it to where we cannot appoint our ambassadors to go 
overseas to represent our great Nation and to be our representatives 
there in these countries, many of which are struggling, and many of 
which have a lot of tensions either with us, the United States, or 
their neighbors or other countries in the world.
  I think our country is suffering because of the gridlock and I must 
say that the fault rests with all of us. We are elected to be leaders, 
and we are not showing leadership by not working through these 
difficult issues and allowing the basics of government, including our 
ambassadors to be appointed.
  I must say there is a simple solution to all of this, and it is not 
something that is found in a new political science textbook, it is not 
something that some talking head on a TV show has proposed. There is 
some ancient wisdom that we all should follow, and that is the Golden 
Rule. We should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. If 
we would follow that, if all of us would take that to heart and apply 
that to our business here in the U.S. Senate and the business of the 
Nation, it would be revolutionary in how we conduct our business.
  That is the only way to fix it. You have to approach this job as a 
public servant and to do what is right for the country, not for your 
party or not for some individual agenda. I hope when we are all home 
during the August recess we will hear some of that from our 
constituents and we will bring that back in September and we will 
rededicate ourselves to getting the business of the Nation done.

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