Mr. President, the American people sent us here to get things done, and they are obviously very frustrated with the fact that this has been a do-nothing Congress, a do-nothing Senate. We have not…
Mr. President, the American people sent us here to get things done, and they are obviously very frustrated with the fact that this has been a do-nothing Congress, a do-nothing Senate. We have not gotten much done. In fact, the problem has been identified by both of the Presidential candidates, Senators McCain and Obama, who have railed about the fact that we need reform in this body because nothing is getting done on behalf of the American people.
The Democrats have been in charge of the Senate and House for the last 2 years. So one wonders why haven't we been able to get things done? For example, to fund the Government for next year, we are supposed to by now have passed 13 appropriations bills to fund all of the departments of the U.S. Government. Not one appropriation bill has been passed and sent to the President. We are going to have to bundle everything up in a giant ball at the end of September and, instead of carefully considering each individual department, we are going to have to adopt a continuing resolution so the Government can continue to operate. That is not the way to do business.
With rare exception, the majority leader in the Senate has been less interested in enabling the Senate to work its will and finding consensus than simply pushing an agenda of the majority in a sort of my-way-or-the-highway kind of approach. This has led to gridlock and, as I said, not much getting done.
Let me illustrate this by a simple statistic that says it all. In 2008 alone, so far, 28.4 percent of all rollcall votes have been cloture votes. That is a record historic high. Over 28 percent of our votes--over a fourth of them--have been cloture votes. Last year set the all-time record at 14 percent, and the average is 4.3 percent.
Why is this important? Because cloture stops debate, and it stops Republicans, in this case, from offering our solutions, alternatives, or amendments to what the Democratic leader puts on the floor. He says it is either this way
or nothing. You either vote on this or we are not going to let you have amendments and we are going to have a cloture vote. Again, 28.4 percent of the votes have been cloture votes.
I remember several years ago when my colleague John McCain stood on the Senate floor fighting for the right of a Democratic Senator to get a vote on an amendment. He said something we all agreed with, which is that a Senator has a right to get a vote on his or her amendment. That was then and this is now: Sorry, Republicans, no votes on amendments. We are going to fill the legislative tree--a parliamentary tactic--or file cloture and stop anything from being debated or voted on. We don't want to take tough votes or give Republicans a chance to win one of the votes.
What have been some of the results? Well, in 2007, some very important tax provisions expired. The research and development tax credit, for example, and the ability to fix the alternative minimum tax so it doesn't apply to most taxpayers. We have to pass what is called a tax extender bill to extend these expiring provisions and make sure the AMT doesn't get 23 million to 26 million American families this year. We have not gotten it done so far. Why? There is an obvious way to do this. The ranking member on the Finance Committee pretty well figured out how this could occur. No, we cannot get that done.
On energy production, both of my colleagues have talked about that issue. The majority leader called up the so-called antispeculation bill. We all agree we could add resources to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and make sure it has the ability to regulate this futures trading in a way that would prevent manipulation and speculation in the market. But we also appreciate the fact that supply and demand is a much larger factor with regard to the price of gasoline, for example. So Republicans wanted to offer amendments that created some alternatives to the Democratic bill that would assist in nuclear energy production, coal to liquids, and allow offshore drilling as one of the key elements of it. We need relief from high gasoline prices. The Democratic leader said no.
The only thing the President could do was to at least remove an Executive moratorium, which he did. That moratorium no longer exists. What happened to gas prices? Oil prices have dropped, I should say, by $40 a barrel, and gas prices have dropped somewhat off of the high above $4 because of the market's belief now that when the President withdrew the Executive moratorium, it was the first step. The second step would be Congress doing something, and that would increase production, and therefore reduce the cost of the oil, and therefore enable the American consumer to pay less at the pump. But Congress still has not done anything.
Now we hear that next week the majority leader is going to allow a bill to come to the floor, but it is not going to provide the kind of offshore drilling that Republicans have been advocating. The ability to debate it is going to be very circumscribed. We are not going to be able to present the kind of amendments we would like to present and have this debated and amended so we can come up with real solutions.
Another example is free trade. The Colombia Free Trade Agreement is one that almost everybody acknowledges is a good thing. It is critical for our relationship with this important country in our hemisphere, which is standing against the likes of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Yet the Democrats, because of their concern about the reaction of labor unions, have said, no, we are not going to take up this Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
These are the kind of issues--and let me add one more: judges. These are the kinds of issues Americans expect us to get done. We have only confirmed four circuit court judges this year, four in the entire year, less than the average of all of the last Presidents, certainly less than Bill Clinton. Yet the majority says we don't have time to do that.
Clearly, this is a do-nothing Congress. Clearly, our Presidential candidates, both of them, recognize reform is necessary.
Let me mention the last issue. I mentioned appropriations bills. We are going to have to ball them up into one giant bill called a continuing resolution. Mark my words, one of the things somebody is going to try to do is attach a rider to the appropriations bill--maybe in the middle of the night, I don't know--but it is going to be to continue a moratorium on offshore drilling. Mark my words, somebody is going to try to do that. We cannot allow that to happen. Will Republicans be cut off from our ability to prevent that rider from going on the appropriations bill or to allow us to vote it off, to have an amendment to say, no, moratorium and offshore drilling is not going to be on that continuing resolution? This is critical to the American future. Are we going to have this right?
These are the kinds of questions I think are going to be necessary for us to resolve before Congress is going to be able to get anything done. But I will suggest this as well: Republican Senators can only do so much in the minority when Democrats are in charge. As my colleague, Senator McCain, said at the Republican Convention, if he is elected, change is on the way. And one of the big changes is going to go right back to what he said several years ago. As I said, whether it is a Democrat wanting a vote on an amendment or a Republican, they are going to get that vote, and we are not going to have so many cloture motions filed to cut off amendments, to cut off debate, and say it is my way or the highway.
The American people want something done. We still have time--even in the short time remaining in this year--to do something about the energy crisis in this country, and that means to get offshore drilling. That has to be at the top of our agenda. Secondly, we have to get the Government funded so it can continue operating next year without, as I said, a moratorium on more offshore drilling.
I am hopeful that in the next 3 weeks we will be able to do some things we have not been able to do in the last 6 months. But if we get cooperation from the majority, the minority stands ready to try to work out these issues, to conclude this session on a positive note in a way we can finally say we accomplished something this session for the American people. After all, that is what they sent us here to do.
