Floor Statements

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Executive Calendar No. 513.

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Finally, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, December 2, be waived and that the cloture motions ripen at 5:30 p.m., Monday, December 6.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 543 and 544; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that any statements related to the nominations be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3 p.m., Monday, December 6; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Rosenworcel nomination.

For the information of Senators, there will be a rollcall vote at 5:30 p.m. on cloture on the Rosenworcel nomination.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, there is a lot of work to get done in this Chamber today and for the rest of the week, and Democrats are committed to working with the other side in good faith to get them done.

First, we need to fund the government before the December 3 deadline. On that front, negotiations continue on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, and we are making good progress toward passing a funding measure.

When a CR reaches the Senate, Democrats are going to support it and work to pass it as quickly as possible.

Our Republican colleagues, meanwhile, can either work with us to move the process quickly through the Chamber or they can engage in obstructive tactics that will make a government shutdown almost a certainty.

Sadly, this second option seems to be the path that a few on the other side are choosing, and I hope they see the light quickly and not cause a needless Republican government shutdown.

If every Member of this Chamber used the threat of a shutdown to secure concessions on their own interests, that would lead to chaos for the millions and millions of Americans who rely on a functioning government.

So I urge those Republicans who are thinking of poisoning this entire process for their own items to take a step back. There are other arenas and opportunities to have a debate. In the meantime, we have a responsibility--a responsibility--to fund the government

so it can fulfill its basic duties to serve the American people.

And we have a responsibility to support our troops, support their families, and keep Americans safe by passing our annual Defense bill. On that front, we also need bipartisan cooperation.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, so let me inform the Members and the public as to what has happened here, which is just a sad, tragic, and almost absurd point.

Now, last week, we in the majority offered to have an open process, and we agreed to 18 amendments--more amendments than has been done on the Defense Act under 4 years of Leader McConnell's leadership. They objected--seven Members objected.

So when we came back this week, we worked all week to try and come to an agreement. Now we were up to 25 amendments. And the leader, Mr. Inhofe, and Senator Reed, who has done a great job, came to an agreement to go forward, which we thought we might do. But one Senator, the Senator from Florida, stood in the way of us moving forward.

The Senate rules--some may call them absurd by now--allow any one Senator to block us from moving forward. And the Senator from Florida insisted on his amendment.

The irony, the sort of absurdity, and the sadness of this is, if his amendment were on the bill, it would automatically kill the bill because it would be what is called blue slipped in the House, which means any bill that produces revenue must start in the House, and the House will kill a bill that has an amendment that contains it.

So Senator Rubio prevented these 30 amendments from being voted on, the Senate from moving forward on the Armed Services bill, because he insisted that we add his amendment, which was a killer amendment, which would kill the bill altogether.

Can you get more absurd than this?

It makes no sense--no sense whatsoever.

I would ask Marco Rubio to sleep on this overnight, Senator Rubio.

His bill, which already passed the Senate separately, will not accomplish what he wants because it will just blow up the entire bill-- the entire Defense Authorization Act.

But, instead, he came to the floor and objected when both Democratic and Republican leaders said we want to move forward, and so we can't move forward. This will be the first time that an NDAA bill has not moved forward, and it all falls on the shoulders of one Senator, Marco Rubio.

Now, I would hope my Republican colleagues who are listening to this, who have things in the bill they want, would go to Senator Rubio and ask him to back off so tomorrow morning we might get started. But the odds of that are slim. The odds of that are slim.

I must say, Leader McConnell, Senator Inhofe, the ranking member, as well as Jack Reed, and myself have worked hard together to accommodate Senators whenever we can, and that is why we had a list of 25 amendments. That is why we were prepared to sit here in 15-minute intervals and churn through those amendments.

But the Rubio amendment is a poison pill in the sense that it blows up the whole bill. Any one Member of the House can say, ``I object to the bill,'' and, of course, one would, and that would be it.

So how does it help move forward on the NDAA bill? How does it even help Senator Rubio's goals with the Uighurs by insisting on preventing anything from moving forward unless his proposal gets in the bill, which would destroy the bill?

That is the absurd place we are in tonight. It is regrettable. It is sad. It undoes the work of so many Senators on both sides of the aisle, and it speaks to the need to restore the Senate and change these rules.

Madam President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Madam President, I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Thursday, December 2; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 4350, the National Defense Authorization Act.

For the information of all Senators, we expect a rollcall vote at approximately 12 noon tomorrow on the confirmation of the Nelson nomination.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, after spending--this is on NDAA. After spending months insisting that the Senate should take swift action on our annual Defense bill, last night, Republicans mounted a partisan filibuster, blocking this Chamber from moving forward on the NDAA.

For the information of all, before the vote closed last night, I changed my vote to ``no'' and then entered a motion to reconsider the cloture vote so we could find a path forward on this important bill.

Now, we have heard over and over and over again from Republicans, in some form or another, that the Senate must act on NDAA and must act quickly. One Republican colleague called it a core duty, a bare minimum. Yet another colleague said it was ``the best way to thank our soldiers and sailors for their service.''

But, last evening, Republicans blocked legislation to support our troops, support their families, keep Americans safe, and support jobs across the entire country. Republican dysfunction has again derailed even bipartisan progress on our annual defense bill--an outrageous outcome that shows how the Senate and Republican leadership have changed in recent years.

Previous leaders, knowing that Democrats had offered Republicans a whole lot of amendments, would have said: ``Let's vote cloture''--but not this leader, not yet.

And there should be no mistake: The process that Democrats, and particularly my colleague Chairman Reed, have offered Republicans on NDAA has been more than fair and reasonable. For months, my colleagues in the Armed Services Committee have been working to produce a bipartisan product that could come to the floor for a vote.

The bipartisan Reed-Inhofe agreement--a Reed-Inhofe agreement--was what we brought to the floor yesterday to vote on.

During the markup, Members considered 321 amendments and adopted 143

bipartisan ones before reporting the bill out of committee by a vote of 23 to 3--23 to 3, bipartisan.

In preparation for the Senate floor, the managers worked on a substitute amendment, which had at least 50 amendments--27 of them, the majority, from Republicans. Senator Inhofe, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, worked with Democrats and had agreed to this.

And on top of all that, Senators Reed and Inhofe also reached a bipartisan agreement to hold votes on 19 amendments here on the floor before Republicans blocked that proposal 2 weeks ago.

Nineteen amendment votes--19--that is more than the total number of amendments to NDAA that received votes under the Republican majority and under Leader McConnell when we debated this bill in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020--not more than in each year, more than all of them put together.

We just had 2 amendments on NDAA in 2017, when McConnell was majority leader. We had 5 in 2018, when Mitch McConnell was majority leader; 3 in 2019; and 7 in 2020. Adding that up, that is a total of 17. That is over 4 years.

This year, we offered 19 amendment votes, including bipartisan measures to combat ransomware, repeal the 2020 Iraq AUMF, and support improved cyber defense of our critical infrastructure. But when we tried to get consent to move on this package of amendments, our Republican colleagues came down to the floor and objected not once but seven times.

So we have had ample debate. This has been a fair and reasonable process that has showed respect to the other side. But this is a new Republican Party, unfortunately, and it was not good enough for them even on the Defense bill.

Passing the annual Defense bill should not be in question, and Republicans' blocking this legislation is harmful to our troops, to their families who sacrifice so much, and to our efforts to keep Americans around the world safe.

Now, we Democrats are not going to let Republican intransigence stop us. We are going to keep working forward on a path forward, and we hope our Republican colleagues, as they discuss this among themselves, will see the light and come up with a fair proposal to allow this bill to go forward.

Nineteen amendments--a total of 17 on all the other NDAA bills--to say that we are being unfair, to say that we are not giving enough amendments is poppycock, and they know it.

Let's move forward. Let's move forward.

Government Funding

Mr. President, now on government funding, there is another critical priority that the Senate must also address before the week's end: passing a continuing resolution that will keep the government funded beyond the December 3 deadline.

As soon as tomorrow, the House is expected to take action to pass a CR that will fund the government into next year. Senate Democrats are ready to pass this legislation and get it done as quickly as possible.

To avoid a needless shutdown, Republicans will have to cooperate and approve the government funding legislation without delay. If Republicans choose obstruction, there will be a shutdown entirely because of their own dysfunction.

We cannot afford to go down that road. As winter begins, the last thing Americans need right now is an avoidable, Republican-manufactured shutdown that will potentially harm millions of Federal workers, harm their families, and harm local communities that rely on an open and functioning Federal Government.

Democrats are going to work all week to make sure no government shutdown comes to pass, and we urge our Republican colleagues to work with us.

Debt Limit

Mr. President, on debt limit, also, soon the Senate must take action to assure that the United States does not--does not--default on its sovereign debt for the first time in history. I recently had a good conversation with the Republican leader about this issue, and I expect to continue those talks on achieving a bipartisan solution to addressing the debt limit.

By now we know the dangers of an unprecedented default. Secretary Yellen has warned that failure to extend the debt ceiling would ``eviscerate'' our economic recovery and says our country could yet again slip into ``a deep recession.''

Both parties know that this is simply unacceptable, and so I look forward to achieving a bipartisan solution to addressing the debt limit soon.

Build Back Better

Mr. President, finally, on Build Back Better, before we hit Christmas Day, it is my goal to have the Senate take action to debate and pass President Biden's Build Back Better legislation.

This week, Senate Democrats will focus on continuing to meet with the Parliamentarian so we can finish making the technical and procedural fixes necessary for reconciliation. Once that is complete, it will be time to bring Build Back Better here to the floor of the Senate.

I have said many times before that nobody should expect legislation of this magnitude to be easy. We have been at the task for several months, but we need to take a step back and recognize that we are, hopefully, less than a month away from acting on the largest investment the American people have seen in generations.

Here is what we are going to do in this bill: lower the cost of childcare, make pre-K universally accessible, cut taxes for parents and working and middle-class families, and take the next bold step in our fight against the climate crisis.

All this we want to tackle before the Christmas break. So we will keep working this week and until we get it done.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.