[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10844-10846]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           KEYSTONE PIPELINE

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in a moment some of my colleagues will come 
to the floor and ask to enter into a colloquy and discuss an issue that 
is important to many of us, especially to those of us who represent 
States in the West and Midwest.
  The issue I wish to speak about has to do with something that over 
the past 5 years the Obama administration has been particularly active 
in pursuing.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will my friend allow me to ask a question 
through the Chair?
  Mr. THUNE. Yes.
  Mr. REID. I was in my office when I heard the statement by the 
Republican leader about Keystone. I direct this question to the Senator 
from South Dakota, who is a fine Senator and understands energy issues.
  We agreed to have a vote on Keystone. My friend, the Republican 
leader, keeps misdirecting the matter. We can have a vote on Keystone. 
That was part of the deal we made. We had a bipartisan bill, Portman-
Shaheen. They worked on that bill for months, since last fall. They put 
in amendments that people wanted.
  Jeanne Shaheen came here yesterday and said: Let's have a vote on 
Keystone, but just as long as we can have a vote on energy efficiency. 
She even suggested we could have a vote using the McConnell rule--a 60-
vote threshold--on both of them.
  This is so transparent that my friend the Republican leader is doing 
the bidding again of the Koch brothers, who own the first or second 
largest tar sands holding which exists in the world.
  I say to my friend from South Dakota: Why can't we just have a vote 
on both of those--energy efficiency and on Keystone?
  Mr. THUNE. I say through the Chair to the majority leader, the offer, 
as I understand it, that was put forward by the majority leader with 
respect to the energy efficiency bill was that this bill would be 
passed with no amendments. There would be no debate, no amendments, and 
then somewhere down the road we might get the vote on the Keystone 
Pipeline. Well, it strikes me at least, as many of my colleagues on 
this side have been pointing out now for some time, that the way in 
which the majority leader is running the floor and calling up 
legislation, preventing amendments to be offered, to be debated and 
voted on, denies the rights not only of us as Senators but ignores the 
voices of the people we represent.
  So for the majority leader to say we will pass this bill without any 
amendment--energy is an important issue in many of our States. It is 
important in my State of South Dakota. It is important to a lot of 
Members on our side and I would suggest to a lot of Members on the 
leader's side who would like to have an opportunity to debate some 
amendments on energy if we are going to have an energy bill on the 
floor. The leaders came down and said no amendments, no debate, you 
pass this. We will jam this bill down without amendment, and then 
sometime we will get to the vote on Keystone.
  We would love to get a vote on Keystone. The leader can call that up 
at any time. We have been saying for some time we ought to have a vote 
on

[[Page 10845]]

Keystone. There is broad bipartisan support for it in the Senate. There 
are a lot of Democrats who support the Keystone Pipeline. But what the 
leader is suggesting again is he is going to put a bill up, fill the 
amendment tree, and prevent Republicans from offering amendments. We 
don't think that is the way the Senate ought to operate.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend from South Dakota, it is 
so transparent what is going on here. They are hung up on procedure. If 
this Keystone vote is so important to them, let's have a vote on it. 
That is what I was told when we brought up, for the second time, the 
energy efficiency bill. In fact, I was told by our Republican leader 
who was pushing that bill to go ahead and fill the tree; we have 
already worked out all the amendments. The bill is different when we 
first brought it; we put all the amendments in it.
  So, again, we get right where we need to be to pass substantive 
legislation and here they come. The Republicans walk in here dealing 
with procedure. If this Keystone is such a big deal, let's vote on it. 
Let's vote on energy efficiency which is a bipartisan bill. But, no, 
they can't do that. They can't do that because we wouldn't be able to 
offer more amendments.
  Now, remember, the Republicans, who were part of that arrangement on 
the energy efficiency bill, Shaheen-Portman, thought it was a good 
bill. But again, I repeat, if this is such a big deal to the 
Republicans, why do they get hung up on procedure? Let's vote on both 
of them. Let the cards fall where they may.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would say to the distinguished majority 
leader that we on this side believe that when we bring an energy bill 
to the floor to talk about energy, we ought to talk about energy. Now, 
he may suggest there were certain things incorporated in the bill that 
some of his Members wanted, maybe even perhaps some of our Members 
wanted, but we have a lot of Members on this side who have been shut 
out, who haven't had an opportunity to offer amendments now for the 
past year. We can come to the floor every day and talk about the fact 
that since July of last year there have only been votes on 9 Republican 
amendments and 7 Democratic amendments, out of 1,500 that have been 
filed. This is insanity.
  We would love to get a vote on the Keystone Pipeline, but we also 
think there are a lot of other energy issues that are important to this 
country, and if we bring an energy bill to the floor of the Senate, the 
historical practice in this institution has been that it is open to 
amendments. All Members get an opportunity to offer amendments. There 
are issues in addition to the Keystone Pipeline that are critically 
important to jobs and to the economy and to the energy security in this 
country. So the way the leader has suggested that this ought to work 
isn't simply about an argument on procedure. This is about whether the 
Senate is going to function in a way where the views of the millions of 
people we represent--those of us here would love to offer amendments on 
these bills and are being prevented from doing it.
  So I would simply say to the leader that this is not simply about the 
Keystone Pipeline. This is about the broader debate on energy--what it 
means for jobs, what it means for our economy. We are in a place now 
where we are not even getting votes in committee. Appropriations bills 
are being pulled back at the committee level because Democratic Members 
don't want to vote on amendments that Republican Members might offer. 
That is not the way this place is supposed to work.
  So I appreciate the majority leader's understandable frustration, but 
it is a frustration that is grounded in the way he is running this 
institution, not in anything our side is doing.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, no one needs to take my word for it. Take 
the word of one of the most senior Republicans in this body, the senior 
Senator from Tennessee. He came to the floor a few days ago and said--
on the appropriations bills we hear this plaintive plea: Let's have 
some votes. So the Senator from Tennessee said: Why don't we have the 
votes? What has been established around here is that we have 60 votes 
on anything that is controversial and 50 votes on everything else, and 
that is what the Senator from Tennessee said. Let's just go ahead and 
work through the bills.
  There is no better example of that than Dodd-Frank, a bill that the 
Republicans hate. It passed. On the 24th amendment that we voted on, on 
that bill, Senator Durbin offered an amendment on swipe fees, and he 
was told it was going to be 60 votes. Everything else had been 50. So 
he had to do his with 60 votes. That is how things work here.
  The Republicans don't want to have votes. They want to have issues on 
procedure. We could finish every one of those appropriations bills--
every one of them--if we followed what Lamar Alexander suggested and 
what we Democrats have suggested.
  So it is interesting. It is interesting. Energy issues--it is just a 
buzzword for ``let's take care of the oil companies some more.'' That 
is what this is all about. They want to protect big oil. Now, if they 
want to have all the appropriations bills pass, let's pass them. All we 
have to do is follow what I have suggested and what Senator Lamar 
Alexander has suggested. That is what we should do.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would simply offer a consent 
agreement that the majority leader objected to when he pulled the 
Shaheen bill a while back. It was pretty simple and pretty easily 
understood. This is the consent that was offered when the majority 
leader, as I said, pulled the Shaheen-Portman bill a while back. This 
is what I said:

       I propose a different unanimous consent agreement. I ask 
     unanimous consent that the only amendments in order be five 
     amendments from the Republican side related to energy policy 
     with a 60-vote threshold on adoption of each amendment. I 
     further ask that following the disposition of those 
     amendments, the bill be read a third time, and the Senate 
     proceed to vote on the passage of the bill, as amended, if 
     amended.

  Now, that gives the majority leader what he was asking for on the 
last bill: 60-vote thresholds. It gives him amendments from our side 
related to energy policy, and it would have led to a vote on Keystone.
  So I would propound that unanimous consent request again. It sounds 
to me as though we may be getting somewhere if the majority leader 
really wants to give us a chance to have a Keystone vote here on the 
Senate floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object to my friend's 
suggestion, I would ask that it be modified to have a vote on Keystone 
and have a vote on Shaheen-Portman--60-vote threshold, of course.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Will the Republican leader modify 
his request?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Reserving the right to object, we didn't get 
amendments on Shaheen-Portman. So what the majority leader is now 
saying is he wants to pass a kind of comprehensive energy bill dealing 
with a variety of different subjects without any amendments at all as a 
condition for having a vote on Keystone with five amendments related to 
the subject.
  I can remember when we used to vote around here. In fact, his Members 
have only had seven rollcall votes in a year. He has one Member from 
Alaska who has never had a rollcall vote on the floor his entire Senate 
career.
  So I think rather than these UCs going back and forth, maybe we ought 
to talk about how to work this out and see if maybe the Senate could 
actually start voting on things again. I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection to the original 
request?
  Mr. REID. Yes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, let's not have revisionist history. Let's 
have real, valid history.
  Shaheen-Portman was worked on for weeks last fall. Shaheen and 
Portman

[[Page 10846]]

worked on this new version of the bill for months, and they worked out 
many amendments in the committee. They came to me and said they have 
all this worked out--Shaheen and Portman and a number of other 
Senators. I said: Great.
  So before one of our recesses, the day we were getting ready to 
leave, they came to me and said: What we need to know and what would be 
even better is if we had a sense-of-the-Senate resolution on Keystone.
  I said: We already agreed to what we are going to do. The bill is 
different with all of this input, such as the Workforce Investment Act, 
which we will take up this afternoon. So I came back and said: OK, we 
will have a sense-of-the-Senate; that is fine. And we are going to do 
this as soon as we get back.
  We came back and then I was told: Well, we don't want a sense-of-the-
Senate resolution; we want an up-or-down vote here.
  I said: OK, let's do it. And that is when that still wasn't good 
enough. That still wasn't good enough because they want the issue.
  The energy efficiency bill is a good bipartisan bill. It is like the 
one we are going to work on this afternoon. It is a complex bill, but 
the differences have been worked out, and we should go ahead and vote 
on it.
  So if they really care about Keystone--if this is such a big deal--
the Republican leader said we have been working on this for 5 years. 
The time has come. Let's belly up to the bar where we vote, and let's 
vote on it. But in the process, let's also do the bipartisan energy 
efficiency legislation that Jeanne Shaheen has put her heart into.
  So that is where we are: another obstruction, diversion to keep us 
from really voting on things. They want the issue. They are focused on 
procedure. And what the American people want is for us to do things. 
They want the minimum wage raised. They want unemployment benefits 
extended for the long-term unemployed. They would like it so that a man 
working doesn't make more money than a woman who does the same work. 
The American people believe they should not be burdened with college 
debt which is larger than any other debt. It is $1.3 trillion now. They 
have stopped us from doing that based on procedure. Why don't we work 
on things that will help the American people?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the exchange between the 
majority leader and myself come out of our leader time in order not to 
take further time of the Members.
  Mr. REID. I agree to that. That is fine.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Dakota.

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