[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15515-15517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      MARKETPLACE AND INTERNET TAX FAIRNESS ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 467, S. 
2609, the Marketplace Fairness Act.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 467, S. 2609, a bill to 
     restore States' sovereign rights to enforce State and local 
     sales and use tax laws, and for other purposes.


                                Schedule

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks and those of the 
Republican leader, the Senate will be in a period of morning business 
until 5:30 this evening. During that time, Senators will be permitted 
to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and 
controlled between the two leaders or their designees.
  At 5:30 p.m. the Senate will proceed to cloture votes on the 
nominations of Randolph Moss and Leigh Martin May; one is from the 
District of Columbia and the other is from the State of Georgia.


                            Working Together

  Mr. President, I have always believed it wise to follow Will Rogers' 
admonition: ``Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.''
  We have a lot of work to do and no time to dwell on the past. With 
just a few weeks left in this Congress--the 113th--there are a number 
of important legislative matters before this body that must be 
finished.
  I congratulate the Republican leader who will soon become the new 
majority leader. The senior Senator from Kentucky and I have known one 
another for a very long period of time. We have been whips together. He 
was minority leader. I was minority leader and majority leader. We have 
been back and forth, so we understand these jobs. I appreciate his 
devotion to the State of Kentucky, to our country, and to the Senate. 
He knows I hold him in the highest regard. I am ready to work with him 
in good faith to make this institution function again for the American 
people.
  I saw firsthand how a strategy of obstruction was debilitating to our 
system. I have no desire to engage in that manner. I have been, as I 
mentioned before, and I mention again, the minority leader. I have been 
able to strike compromises with my Republican colleagues, and I am 
ready to do it again.
  Regardless of how one may interpret last week's election results, it 
is clear the American people want us to join together to get things 
done for the middle class and all Americans, and we should be able to 
do that. After all, helping working families is not a partisan issue. 
Just last week we saw four very red States--Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, 
and South Dakota--vote to increase their minimum wages. Clearly, 
Republicans outside this building don't object to giving American 
workers a livable wage.
  The minimum wage is just one example. There are other issues such as 
student debt relief for borrowers, pay equity for women, and a number 
of other issues that need to be addressed as well. There is absolutely 
no reason we can't work together on these issues and all issues so 
Democrats and Republicans can lend Americans the helping hand they so 
desperately need.
  Although the desks in this great Chamber may move around and change, 
our duty to help working American families never will. Senate Democrats 
are ready to work in good faith with their Republican counterparts--
whether it is today, tomorrow, January, no matter when it is--to help 
the middle class, and when we do that, we help all of our citizenry.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is recognized.


                     Listen To The American People

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, last week the American people sent a 
strong message to Washington. They voted for a new direction. They 
called for a change in the way we do things in the Senate, and they 
sent a new team to Washington to carry their wishes forward, and we 
plan to do just that.
  But several items remain for the outgoing Congress to consider and 
that is our immediate focus.
  In the weeks that remain in this Congress, we should work to 
accomplish the essential task of funding the Congress and preventing 
retroactive tax increases. We must address the expiring authority 
passed earlier this session for the Department of Defense to train and 
equip a moderate, vetted Syrian opposition, and we must continue to 
support the efforts to address the Ebola crisis.
  All of this will require cooperation from both sides of the aisle, 
from both sides of the rotunda, and from both ends of Pennsylvania 
Avenue. The actions of the next few weeks can help set a positive tone 
for the work of the next Congress. It is a tone that will depend 
largely on the administration's willingness to respect the message sent 
last Tuesday.
  That is one of the things we discussed at the White House on Friday. 
It was a productive meeting. There is a lot both parties can accomplish 
together over the next couple of years. I hope that happens. In fact, I 
am optimistic. But working together requires trust.
  I think President Obama has the duty to help build the trust we all 
need to move forward together--not to double down in the old ways of 
doing business. That is why I think moving forward with the unilateral 
action on immigration he has planned would be a big mistake, as was 
last night's announcement to essentially give China a free pass on 
emissions while hurting middle-class families and struggling miners 
here in our country.
  Last Friday, the President said the American people would like to see

[[Page 15516]]

more cooperation in Washington. He said he thinks all of us have a 
responsibility--himself in particular--to try and make that happen. 
That is the kind of tone the American people are looking for. Now it is 
on folks in Washington to calibrate their actions accordingly. So let's 
not do things to hurt the possibility of a cooperative partnership. 
Let's step back and focus on what can be accomplished together. Let's 
listen to the American people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The assistant minority leader.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, what happened on November 4 was the 
beginning of an opportunity--an opportunity we have to work together to 
restore faith in our Democratic institutions, to restore strong growth 
to our economy, and to restore a sense of purpose and principle to U.S. 
foreign policy.
  Starting with the incoming majority leader, my good friend, the 
senior Senator from Kentucky, Republicans have been entrusted by our 
fellow citizens to lead this Chamber next year. We understand the 
American people sent a strong message on November 4 that they were 
enormously frustrated by what they saw as dysfunction and the state of 
affairs in Washington, DC. We understand why they are eager for new 
leadership and a new direction. My party, the Republican Party, 
approaches this opportunity with humility and, above all, a clear-eyed 
commitment to address the top priorities of the American people. Of 
course, those priorities start with jobs and the economy.
  I know the unemployment rate has continued to tick down little by 
little, but it is fairly misleading when we consider the fact that we 
are stuck with a 36-year low in the labor participation rate--the 
percentage of people who are actually looking for work. Indeed, there 
are still more than 7 million people looking for full-time work and 
working currently in part-time jobs. We know many people have become so 
discouraged that they have simply given up and they have quit looking, 
and that is a tragedy.
  Then there is this problem: America's median household income is no 
higher in 2013 than it was nearly a quarter of a century ago, in 1989. 
That has been a silent tragedy--one that has been sustained by the 
middle class in America, who have seen no growth in their median 
household income for about a quarter of a century.
  The median income was lower last year than it was the year President 
Reagan left the White House. That is simply astonishing. It has crushed 
the middle class. Addressing that should be one of our highest 
priorities in the new Congress starting in January.
  Since 2011, our colleagues in the House of Representatives have been 
passing legislation they feel would boost job creation and increase 
wages. In the 113th Congress alone, they passed dozens of jobs bills. 
Unfortunately, as we know, those have not been taken up by the majority 
leader in the Senate, and they have been effectively declared dead on 
arrival.
  Then we also know this strategy of blocking amendments on pending 
legislation to prevent vulnerable incumbents from being forced to cast 
tough votes has backfired, because many of our colleagues in the 
majority have not been able to point to a legislative record of 
effectiveness for their own constituents because of this flawed 
strategy of blocking the Senate from considering amendments and voting 
on them. It is one thing to be in the minority and have the amendments 
or suggestions I am offering added, but it is harder to explain to your 
own constituents if you are in the majority and you are being blocked 
out too. So I hope we are done with that.
  I know the incoming majority leader, Senator McConnell, believes 
strongly in returning the Senate to its traditions as the world's 
greatest deliberative body, where anyone, regardless of who they are or 
which political party they are affiliated with, can come to the Senate 
floor and offer constructive suggestions and get a vote. That is what 
we do--at least that is what we used to do, and that is what we can do 
again, and that doesn't mean just the majority party gets votes on 
their amendments; that means the minority party will get votes on their 
amendments. Hopefully, slowly but surely, we can begin to rebuild not 
only trust and confidence within ourselves and this institution, but 
regain the lost trust of the American people by showing that we can 
effectively solve problems on a bipartisan basis to the challenges they 
face as members of the hard-working middle class.
  Then there is the basic job of governing. We will pass a budget next 
year--something our friends across the aisle have failed to do since 
2009. Now, here is something I do not think anybody will excuse or 
defend: How in the world can it be that when every small and large 
business in America has to have a budget, when families have to have a 
budget so they can determine their priorities and how they can most 
effectively utilize their income, that they have to pass a budget but 
the U.S. Congress does not? That is, frankly, malpractice, in my view, 
and it has to end, and it will end next year.
  I know Republicans and Democrats will continue to have policy 
disagreements. Nobody is suggesting that is not going to happen. But 
this is the place where those get debated, where they get voted on, and 
where majorities will actually pass legislation and send it to 
President Obama. And those will be largely, if not almost entirely 
bipartisan majorities, of course, by definition.
  We know Democrats by and large continue to support the Affordable 
Care Act and Republicans continue to believe it was a mistake and 
should be replaced with patient-centered alternatives. But we do not 
have to choose between complete paralysis and actually functioning. 
Dysfunction is not the only choice we have, and now that that has been 
rejected by the voters resoundingly, we know a change is in order. The 
American people have demanded it, they deserve it, and they will get 
it.
  So last week's election will not change some of the fundamental 
policy differences we have between political parties on ObamaCare, on 
what we need to do to preserve and protect Social Security and Medicare 
and the like, and it will not change people's points of view on other 
hot-button issues, but it will give us a chance to make some steady 
incremental progress on issues where we do agree.
  When I came to the Senate, Teddy Kennedy, the liberal lion from 
Massachusetts, had been here about 40 years, and he was working on the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee with Mike Enzi, a 
conservative Republican from Wyoming.
  One day I went up to Mike Enzi and I said: Well, how is it that you 
and Senator Kennedy, with such diametrically opposing views on what the 
Congress ought to do and how to solve these problems, can actually work 
productively together?
  Senator Enzi said: That is easy. It is the 80-20 rule. The 80 percent 
we can agree on, we do. The 20 percent we cannot, we don't; we put off 
for another day.
  That strikes me as eminently practical and a way for us to begin to 
get back to work again.
  When I talk about the easy stuff we can do, I am referring to the 
bipartisan majority that supports things such as the Keystone XL 
Pipeline authorization, increasing our natural gas exports not only for 
the job creation and economic boost it gives us here in America but 
also because it changes the geopolitics of the world, where people such 
as Vladimir Putin cannot put a bootheel on the gas supply to Europe or 
Ukraine and use that for their own purposes.
  I am confident we can find commonsense safeguards from an 
overreaching Federal bureaucracy. We can agree on things such as 
improving workforce training programs and do things that make it much 
easier to launch new infrastructure and construction projects. We can 
do things we should have done last year or this year, such as reforming 
our broken patent system to discourage abusive and costly litigation. 
We actually had a bipartisan bill in the Judiciary Committee, but it 
did not come to the floor because the majority leader would not bring 
it up because

[[Page 15517]]

one of his constituencies simply objected to it. Well, no one should 
have a trump card when it comes to good, bipartisan legislation, and 
they will not next year. We will vote on patent reform.
  Then there are things such as mitigating some of the burdens of 
ObamaCare, restoring the 40-hour workweek, and repealing the medical 
device tax, and there is strong bipartisan support for repealing that 
tax which has driven medical device manufacturers and their jobs 
overseas. I have constituents, for example, in Dallas in that business, 
and they say they are building their business in Costa Rica because of 
the impact of this medical device tax and its negative impact on 
medical innovation and job creation here.
  I do know there is bipartisan support for abolishing the Independent 
Payment Advisory Board under Medicare. This is 15 bureaucrats who 
basically get to decide who gets medical care and who does not, with no 
real appeal or recourse. In the Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, 
we have had very impressive bipartisan support for things such as 
prison reform and even sentencing reform.
  Those are important issues of substance the Senate ought to be 
discussing, debating, voting on, and trying to find ways we can work 
together to achieve solutions. Each of the things I have mentioned has 
bipartisan support. If we can pass these measures with strong support 
on both sides of the aisle and send them to the President for his 
signature, it will be much easier to establish the trust and 
cooperation necessary to do the harder stuff. So starting with the easy 
stuff we have already identified that has bipartisan support--
demonstrating we can actually do that--then I think we will have 
confidence in ourselves, and the American people will have confidence 
in us and their government to begin to tackle some of the more 
challenging issues.
  Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, mentioned this, but it 
bears repeating: that the President is still threatening to go around 
Congress and use an Executive order to implement a new, radical change 
in our Federal Government's immigration policy, and I think it is a 
terrible mistake.
  At this same luncheon that the Senator from Kentucky mentioned, a 
number of us went down the line and said: Mr. President, please don't 
do this because if you do, it will make it even harder for us to take a 
step-by-step approach to immigration reform that enjoys bipartisan 
support. It will poison the well--not to mention the fact that what the 
President is proposing to do is unlawful and it will also make it 
harder for us to do the other things I have mentioned already that have 
bipartisan support. It will poison the well.
  Why in the world would the President want to do that at the start of 
a new Congress in the last 2 years of his term in office? Don't you 
think he would want to have some legacy that he could point to in those 
last 2 years, saying: Well, I might have been dealt a tough political 
hand with Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, but we 
were actually able to be productive.
  I think that is why most Senators have come here--to be productive.
  So I would urge the President, as others have done, in the very 
strongest of terms to abandon his plan for this Executive amnesty and 
to heed the message--the very clear message--voters sent last Tuesday. 
After a 6-year experiment in unfettered liberalism and big-government 
policies, the American people are asking for a new direction. I am not 
under any illusion that all of a sudden they have fallen in love with 
my side of the aisle. That is not true. But what they are willing to do 
is put us on probation and give us all a chance to demonstrate that we 
can change our course, we can listen to the American people, and we can 
do things together that they want to see us do.
  My constituents--6.5 million Texans--are sick and tired of watching 
the Federal Government waste their money, selectively enforce the law, 
and try to micromanage their lives as if the Federal Government knows 
better than they do what is good for them and their families. It is not 
true, and they know it, but that has not stopped the efforts over the 
last 6 years.
  What my constituents want, I believe--and I believe it because they 
have told me this--they want leaders who will respond to their 
practical day-to-day concerns, leaders who appreciate and will address 
the biggest threats to the American dream, leaders who will uphold the 
timeless principles of our Constitution.
  I believe there is a nascent, bipartisan, emerging consensus here 
that we can actually do this. This is not too hard for us to do. Yes, I 
have read what some of the pundits have said. They said it is going to 
be even worse with Republicans in charge. Well, it better not be worse 
or there will be a heavy price to pay, and most of that will be paid by 
the American people, who will not be well-served if we simply refuse to 
change and if we refuse to listen. And that goes for the President, 
that goes for Republicans, and that goes for Democrats.
  So for my part and I believe for our part on this side of the aisle, 
we are eager to work together to solve our country's problems, to help 
unleash this great American job-creating engine known as our economy, 
and to restore the rule of law and constitutional government. As for 
President Obama, we can only hope he decides to work with us rather 
than against us and against the best intentions and desires of the 
American people.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.


                       Reservation Of Leader Time

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the leadership time 
is reserved.

                          ____________________