[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15558-15559]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




FOREIGN POLICY, BENGHAZI SELECT COMMITTEE, AND THE NEED FOR BIPARTISAN 
                              NEGOTIATIONS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it is hard for me, when I come here every 
day, to be patient and listen to my friend the Republican leader talk 
because he is talking about something that is not real. He is not 
talking about reality. He wants to get back to the bipartisan way we 
used to do things. I certainly agree with him, but having looked at 
some 600 filibusters during the last few years conducted by my 
Republican friends, I think that speaks volumes.
  To have the Republican leader come to the floor and criticize Obama 
about what is going on in the Middle East--that takes a lot of gall. We 
all know what happened in the Middle East a number of years ago that 
created all these problems. It was the worst foreign policy mistake in 
the history of our country--invading Iraq. For what? Look what we have 
now in Iraq. Look what we have in the entire Middle East. So it takes a 
lot of rearranging facts for the Republican leader to come to the floor 
every day--most days I just sit here, listen, and go on about my 
business, but I can't do that. It is just unfair. Everyone knows we 
need to look no further than President Bush's invasion of Iraq to find 
out what the real problem is in the Middle East.
  He talks about the Defense authorization bill. If it is such a great 
piece of legislative action, why does all of our military think it is a 
bad deal? This would be as if you decided one day you are going to make 
your house payment and your car payment with money that doesn't exist. 
That is what they have done. That is what the Republicans have done. 
They have $39 billion in the Defense authorization bill that doesn't 
exist. It is just on paper. It is a gimmick for short-term funding. And 
to have the audacity to come here and talk about--look at all the 
threats we are having with cyber security, cyber threats. We have a 
cyber bill we have tried to get on this floor. The Republicans blocked 
it when they were in the minority. Now when they are in the majority, 
they won't do a bill, period.
  We have an order that is before this body now that allows us to go 
forward on cyber security. We already have a list of amendments to 
agree on. But the Republican leader won't bring it to the floor. To 
have him come to this floor and complain of Obama not doing anything 
about cyber--I would suggest my friend, every morning when he gets up, 
walk into the bathroom, put a little water on his face, wake up, and 
look in the mirror.
  I will talk about this a little more in a minute, but I want to start 
what I have to say right now by reading a direct quote from the current 
House majority leader, and we are told he is going to be the next 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. Listen to this one, speaking 
about the Benghazi committee. This is what Congressman McCarthy told 
FOX News:

       Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? 
     But we put together a Benghazi select committee, a select 
     committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are 
     dropping.

  I might add, the person doing the interviewing--good job.
  But there you have it. According to the odds-on favorite future 
Speaker of the House, the Benghazi select committee was put together to 
hurt Hillary Clinton politically, to make her poll numbers drop. We 
have been saying this all along, but we have now had a gaffe. But it 
wasn't a slipup; he just told the truth. This is evidence of what we 
have been saying. The Benghazi committee is a political stunt meant to 
influence Presidential elections that will be coming up in about a 
year. It is no surprise that Congressman McCarthy's own colleagues are 
now backpedaling on his comments as fast as they possibly can. Their 
elections will be in 1 week. They better take a look at whom they are 
going to put in as Speaker. The Republicans have taken a national 
tragedy--four Americans were killed--and turned it into the cheapest 
political farce imaginable. This is a shame. The very notion that an 
official House committee was used as a political tool is appalling. 
Even more disgraceful is the fact that they spent almost $5 million on 
this select committee--dollars spent on this rightwing political 
hatchet job.
  That is not all. In addition to this select committee, they have had 
six other committees investigating this. There are untold millions of 
dollars spent on this. Whose money are they spending? They are spending 
taxpayer dollars.
  We hear my friend make references to how bad it is that we are 
concerned about nondefense stuff. Yes, we are. We are concerned about 
nondefense stuff. We think the nondefense part of this budget should 
also get some recognition. We are concerned about the FBI and the 
Federal court system. We are concerned about the Drug Enforcement 
Administration and all the immigration officials who need help. We are 
concerned about our forests that are burning down. We are concerned 
about the situation we have where we don't have enough money to build 
our highways or to repair our highways. Yes, we are concerned about 
that and rightfully so. To have a secure nation is more than having a 
lot of bombs and bullets and airplanes and tanks and ships. It is also 
having a population that is educated.
  We sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking that the Benghazi Select 
Committee be disbanded. Get rid of it. It is a disgrace. Do the right 
thing; get rid of this.
  Senate Republicans are stuck in a deep rut. They have dug this hole. 
They are in it, and they don't know how to get out of it. The 
Republican leader continues bringing bills to the Senate floor that 
have no chance of passing. We have things out there we could be doing.
  Four months ago we said to the Republican leader: Why don't we sit 
down and try to work something out on this budget for the long term. We 
have been ignored. They have ignored the need for a consensus budget 
framework and instead are trying to move a flawed appropriations bill 
based on the Republicans' partisan budget. The Senate spoke and, of 
course, the bill didn't advance.
  The Republican leader tried to move the same measure again last week, 
even though the Senate already rejected it. And to no one's surprise, 
it failed.
  How about this one? This year--this year--we have already had eight 
votes on the health of American women--eight votes. Everyone knows how 
those votes are going to turn out, but you can't satisfy this voracious 
appetite the Republicans have to bash women. Yet the Republican leader 
continues to schedule votes on legislation that can't pass the Senate.
  I think C-SPAN will have to have a disclaimer each time that flips up 
there that says: This is not a rerun. This is the Republican Senate 
doing it again. We have already done it seven times. Once more won't 
matter that much.
  Today the Republican leader wants to rerun the same show again, this 
time with another bill--military construction. This appropriations bill 
is still based on the Republican's faulty budget. The senior Senator 
from Montana, the ranking member of that subcommittee, said yesterday 
this bill ``is shackled to an unwise and unrealistic budget that locks 
in destructive sequestration cuts and vastly underfunds programs vital 
to this nation's security and prosperity.''
  That is what Senator Tester said yesterday.
  It has no chance of getting 60 votes--none. I know that, and my 
friend the Republican leader knows that. So why

[[Page 15559]]

are we wasting time on another vote that is destined to fail? Because 
they do not want to bring real legislation to the floor. Why aren't we 
spending our time coming to a real bipartisan solution that helps our 
veterans and helps the nondefense part of our country, which is so 
important?
  The time to sit down and to begin real budget negotiations was a long 
time ago, but we will take it now. I am happy to learn the Republican 
leader said he wants negotiations--he said this a couple days ago--he 
wants negotiations to begin very soon. Well, isn't that nice. Democrats 
have been waiting for 4 months. So let's get to it.
  Just imagine what we could have accomplished if the Republican leader 
had taken us up on our offer 4 months ago. The U.S. Government wouldn't 
have come within hours of a shutdown, hundreds of government agencies 
would not have had to spend time and effort preparing for a shutdown, 
diverting them from their main jobs.
  If you want to see how close we were to a government shutdown take a 
look at what took place in the House of Representatives yesterday. We 
passed over here in the Senate a short-term continuing resolution to 
fund the government until December 11. It went to the House, and they 
voted on it yesterday. Three-fifths of House Republicans--151--voted 
for a shutdown. They voted against the continuing resolution. That says 
it all.
  I have reminded people before, and I will do it again. The government 
was shut down here a couple of years ago for 17 days. We finally got it 
open. We passed something over here, and it went to the House. Two-
thirds of the House of Representatives--Republicans in the House--voted 
to keep the government closed.
  There are so many programs that are just not being taken care of. I 
will talk about a couple of them right now. There is something I have 
worked on since I came here--the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The 
Presiding Officer is from Nevada. He has represented the northern part 
of the State for many years in different elective jobs. He understands 
and knows Lake Tahoe very well. It is a beautiful lake that we share 
with California. Well, the Land and Water Conservation Fund helps us 
greatly because we were able to take some money out of that program and 
purchase land that was going to be used for subdivision that would have 
allowed more filth to go into Lake Tahoe. We were able to stop that 
with money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The money hasn't 
been coming in as we have wanted in the past, so we beefed it up and 
were able to do a lot of things.
  Now, for the first time in 50 years, this program has been allowed to 
expire. It is gone. This program has been supported by Democrats and 
Republicans and by rural and urban communities. But on the Republicans' 
watch, one of the most important programs and one of the best programs 
for our Nation's parks--and one of the most broadly supported programs 
in the country--has been allowed to lapse. It is gone.
  The program is funded by a portion of fees collected by offshore oil 
and gas drilling. Every day that it is not authorized, we lose out on 
collecting $2.4 million of offshore oil and gas so it can be used for 
our beautiful natural resources that are in a state of disrepair. This 
Land and Water Conservation Fund has supported projects in every State, 
from protecting the rim of the Grand Canyon to securing access to the 
Appalachian Trail, and from Lake Tahoe to building neighborhood 
playgrounds in urban areas across the country.
  In a last-ditch effort to sway their own leadership, several 
Republicans came to the floor yesterday and tried to pass a stand-alone 
extension of the program that would be dead on arrival in the House. 
The Republican leaders refused to extend the program in the continuing 
resolution, despite many Democrats and Republicans asking for it to be 
included.
  One other program. The good Senator from Illinois--the senior Senator 
from Illinois, the assistant Democratic leader, served in the House of 
Representatives, as I did, with a man named Claude Perkins. He was a 
wonderful House Member. When we came to the House in 1982, he was a 
very senior person. He was responsible for something called the Federal 
Perkins Loan Program. It wasn't reauthorized in the continuing 
resolution. What does that mean? As a result of that, the Nation's 
oldest student aid program has expired, leaving up to 150,000 students 
who are coming into college in the lurch.
  The Perkins Loan Program offers low-interest, federally subsidized 
student loans for students with exceptional financial needs and also 
offers a variety of forgiveness options for those who choose to pursue 
public service professions. Last year, more than $1.2 billion in new 
Perkins loans were made to about 540,000 new and returning college 
students around the country, including 500 low-income students from 
Nevada.
  It is hard to believe the tea party-dominated House--and obviously 
the Republican Caucus here is heavily influenced by the tea party--has 
turned a blind eye to this. It is hard to believe the tea party-
dominated House of Representatives passed an extension of Perkins 
unanimously, but Senate Republicans would not agree to do the same. 
Yesterday, Senate Republicans even blocked a bid to extend the program.
  These are just two of the programs that expired at midnight last 
night. There are many more. It is a shame because they wouldn't have 
expired at all if we had sat down and negotiated a few months ago. So I 
say to my friend the Republican leader: Let's not waste another minute 
on politically motivated votes that are doomed to fail. Instead, let's 
focus the Senate's energy and attention on bipartisan negotiations to 
get our country on the right track.
  Mr. President, would the Chair announce the business of the day.

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