[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9938-9939]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLOTURE MOTION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I understand the Democratic leader 
would like to make some remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
  Mr. REID. To respond to the majority leader, I have nothing to say 
until I hear what he has to say.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, America asks a lot of the men and women 
of its voluntary military force: to undertake dangerous missions in 
far-off lands, to spend months and years away from their families, and 
always to sacrifice so that we might live in freedom.
  These brave men and women do it all without reservation. They ask 
precious little in return, save for the resources they need to do the 
job and the support they need to look after their families. It is the 
least we can do, to provide for them. We just voted 71 to 25 for a bill 
that promises a lot of things for our men and women.
  It would be very cruel indeed for any Senator who just made that 
promise to turn around now and block the rest of us from fulfilling the 
pledge to our troops. Passing the legislation before us is a way to 
fulfill the promise we just made, 71 to 25. That is why nearly every 
Democrat voted to pass it in committee, 27 to 3. That is why Democrats 
have hailed this bill as a win-win-win and a victory for each of their 
States.
  They know it gives President Obama the same level of funding he asked 
for. They know it adheres to a bipartisan spending level that both 
parties agreed to, that President Obama signed into law, and that 
President Obama campaigned on in the last Presidential election.
  Now our friends face a choice.
  Option 1: Allow the promise just made to our troops to be fulfilled 
by voting for a bill they can't stop praising.
  Option 2: Break the promise they just made by killing a bill they 
claim to love, all in the service of some unrelated and completely 
incomprehensible partisan plan.
  It is the road of bipartisanship and support for our troops that 
brought us this far. We shouldn't let partisan politics trip us up now. 
We don't have to--not if commonsense Democrats continue to prioritize 
pay raises and medical care for our troops over some unrelated gambit 
to funnel more cash to bureaucracies such as the IRS and the EPA.
  I will just leave my colleagues with something one of our Democratic 
friends said of men and women in the military. Here is what he had to 
say: ``Just as we called on them to protect us, they are calling on us 
to provide them with the resources they need. . . .''
  They are. Senators just promised they would, 71 to 25. They just made 
the promise. So now they shouldn't block us from fulfilling that 
promise by preventing us from getting on the Defense appropriations 
measure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the bill that just passed the Senate, the 
Defense authorization bill, has 52 Republicans voting to fix 
sequestration. Only 2 voted against it. We are all in favor of fixing 
the sequester.
  My friend, the Republican leader, is talking in a dreamland.
  Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense, is a very good man. We are so 
fortunate that he has dedicated his life to public service. He is a 
scientist and has worked for the defense establishment for a while in 
public service. He, the Secretary of Defense, says this bill my friend 
talks about is a bad bill. It doesn't help the military. This funny 
funding that is in this bill is not good. The chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee was on the floor this morning talking about that.
  It is important that we solve the sequester problem. It is not good, 
but we cannot, and we should not, fix one part of our government and 
not the other part.
  We support the Pentagon. We support the troops. Of course we do. But 
as the Secretary of Defense has so implored us, don't do this to the 
military. To have a secure nation involves more than the people in the 
armed services. The people in the armed services, while their families 
are at home, want them to be protected as they travel to an airport. 
The TSA needs to be funded, the FBI needs to be funded, the Drug 
Enforcement Administration needs to be funded, Homeland Security needs 
to be funded, and in the process, we need to fund education properly. 
We need to fund research for health. We need to make sure the National 
Institutes of Health are not whacked again with sequestration the way 
they were the first time. They lost $1.6 billion. They have never 
recovered from that. They have never gotten their money back. Do we 
want to give them another sequestration? Of course we don't.
  We have until this fiscal year ends in the fall to work this out, and 
that is what we should do. We are legislators. I agree with the 52 
Republicans who said we should fix sequestration, but this bill only 
fixes sequestration for the Department of Defense.
  Let's sit down and do what we, as legislators, are supposed to do. 
Legislation is the art of compromise. We are not going to get 
everything we want, but the Republicans shouldn't get everything they 
want, and we should not fund this government by using funny money for 
defense and using the really unfunny money on the rest of the 
government. It is unfair, and above all the Republican Party, which 
used to stand for fiscal responsibility, should get fiscally 
responsible and help us work this out.
  We are ready and willing at any time to sit down and work through 
this, and we need to start that now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as the Democratic leader reminded me, 
on a virtually daily basis for 8 years, the majority leader always gets 
the last word.
  Here is the issue, I say to my friends on the other side: You just 
voted for the troops. And now you are going to vote against them? Are 
you going to vote against the troops right after you voted for the 
troops? That is the fundamental question before us in deciding whether 
to go to the Defense appropriations measure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I know my friend gets the last word, and I 
am looking forward to his last word. However, the logic of my friend is 
illogical. We stand on our record, and we will continue in that 
fashion.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

[[Page 9939]]



                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to H.R. 2685, an act making appropriations for the 
     Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 
     30, 2016, and for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, James Lankford, Roger F. 
           Wicker, John Barrasso, Thom Tillis, Steve Daines, Tom 
           Cotton, Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, John 
           Thune, Jerry Moran, Richard C. Shelby, Daniel Coats, 
           Jeff Flake, Rob Portman.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to H.R. 2685, an act making appropriations for the 
Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2016, 
and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. 
Graham), the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee), and the Senator from South 
Carolina (Mr. Scott).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. 
McCaskill) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 50, nays 45, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 216 Leg.]

                                YEAS--50

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     McCain
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--45

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Coats
     Graham
     Lee
     McCaskill
     Scott
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote on the motion to invoke cloture 
on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2685, the yeas are 50, the nays are 
45.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the 
vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is entered.

                          ____________________