Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 271, S. Res. 312.

I further ask that the resolution be agreed to; the Nelson amendment to the preamble be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; the amendment to the title be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum required under rule XXII be waived with respect to the two cloture motions filed earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate

completes its business today, it adjourn until Monday, January 13, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time of the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1845, the unemployment insurance extension; that the filing deadline for all first-degree amendments to S. 1845 be 3 p.m. Monday and the filing deadline for all second-degree amendments to the Reed amendment No. 2631 be 4:30 p.m. on Monday; further, that at 5 p.m. the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Robert Wilkins to be U.S. circuit judge for the DC Circuit, with the time until 5:30 p.m. equally divided and controlled in the usual form prior to a vote on confirmation of the nomination; finally, that following disposition of the Wilkins nomination, the Senate resume legislative session and proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Reed amendment No. 2631.

Mr. President, the next vote will be at 5:30 p.m. Monday, January 13, 2014, on the confirmation of the Wilkins nomination.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following staff of the Finance Committee be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of this session: Harrison Covall, Caroline Frauman, and Maureen Downes.

Mr. President, there will be no rollcall votes tonight.

I think as most people know, though it bears reiterating, I oppose paying for a short-term extension of unemployment insurance benefits. The current level of long-term unemployment is an economic emergency, without any question, and this would be very unfair to the people who are desperately in need of help, to say we are happy to give you this money, but we are going to take something else out of the economy to do that. We are not going to do that. I think that would be wrong.

Having said that, there are a number of Senators who are having productive conversations about possible offsets, one of whom is on the floor today, my friend, the Senator from Ohio. He is someone who understands finances, as he was head of the Office of Management and Budget. So whenever we have him working on the numbers, we are always dealing with someone who knows what they are talking about. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but certainly he is a person whom we all look to for guidance in this area.

As I said here a few hours ago, the Republicans feel this should be paid for. Let's find out how they feel it should be paid for. Again, we on this side don't want to pay for a short-term extension. If it is going to be paid for, we should figure out in years how to pay for it. That would be much better than this nickel-and-diming. We have tried to do it for 3 months, paid for, but I would almost bet it will not get done. So we should, if we are going to have pay-fors, try to figure out how to do it for 1 year.

We should let the conversations go on overnight. I have spoken to a number of Republican Senators; and, of course, I want to assert every bit of influence, help, pressure, whatever you want to say, to try to get this done for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that among a number of cosponsors of this is the junior Senator from Nevada. This is an example of bipartisanship and how it should work. We have one of the most liberal Members of the Senate and one of the most conservative Members of the Senate who have introduced this legislation, and that is what we are working on now.

So I repeat, I hope the conversations continue overnight and we will see where we are in the morning.

I do have a few other things here, and I will be as fast as possible.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further work on H.R. 667, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 1171 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. tomorrow, January 9, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business until 12 noon, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, the time equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the final 30 minutes; and that at 12 noon all postcloture time be considered expired.

Tomorrow we hope to make progress on the unemployment insurance extension. Senators will be notified when any votes are scheduled.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order, following the remarks of my friend, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Portman.

Following my remarks and those of the Republican leader, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1845, the unemployment compensation legislation. We have no votes scheduled yet. When we are able to work something out in that regard, we will notify all Senate offices.

Yesterday's vote to advance a measure which is so vitally important to our country--to extend the lifeline to Americans who lost their jobs during this great recession--was a very positive development, but we are a long way from restoring benefits to 1.3 million people who have been looking for work for months, some of them for years.

The few Republicans willing to even debate this measure have already threatened to vote against even a short-term extension unless it is fully paid for.

Let me start by saying I am opposed to offsetting the cost of emergency unemployment benefits--I repeat, emergency unemployment benefits. I don't understand why my Republican colleagues can't read the script from the administration of their President, our President, President Bush. Five times during his time in office--the second President Bush--we extended emergency unemployment insurance benefits by declaring an emergency, as we should now. We should realize that today there is only one job available for every three people seeking a job. Think about it.

This legislation calls for a 3-month extension. That is all. Let's extend this now and give those people their benefits, and then we will work to see whether we can come up with a long-term solution to this issue. I have heard one of the leaders in the House, one of the Republicans, say we need to do something about opportunities for jobs. We agree. Let's see what we can come up with, but let's extend the benefits for 3 months now.

Through the darkest days of the recession, these unemployment benefits kept millions of Americans from descending into poverty.

I again urge my Republican colleagues in Congress to pass this 3- month extension. It is what the American people want by a vast majority of all political stripes. We need to do this so we can negotiate a long-term solution to this issue. Any lapse or delay in benefits means 1.3 million people will be wondering whether they need to go to borrow money again or to maybe see if they can figure out a way to buy baby formula or gas for their car to go to a job interview if they are fortunate to have a car or a bus ticket.

If Republicans are so interested in paying for this measure, they should propose a reasonable way to do so that doesn't attack the Affordable Care Act or punish American children, as the two proposals they presented yesterday do--go after American children or the Affordable Care Act. They should propose an offset that might actually pass. Instead, they propose a string of political amendments, each more doomed to failure than the last one they offered.

They should also stop masking their reluctance to extend these benefits behind complaints about how many

amendments they have been allowed to offer on this and other legislation. Everyone within the sound of my voice should understand that is hollow. It has become a common refrain for the minority to blame their own frequent obstruction on me. Two Republican Senators held up progress on virtually everything we tried to do under the first term of this Congress. They wouldn't let any other amendments come up unless they got a vote on their amendment.

The fact remains that if my Republican colleagues have complaints about my leadership style, they should also have complaints about Senator Frist, my predecessor. He is a fine man, a Republican leader. We still stay in touch, as I do with the other Republican leader, Senator Lott, whom I worked with very closely. I hear no complaints about their leadership style when they were leading the Senate. During my time as leader, Republicans have offered 7 out of 10 amendments on which the Senate has voted. Seventy percent of the amendments we have voted on in the Senate have been Republican amendments. This has been a greater share than either Senator Frist or Senator Lott offered. During my leadership in the 111th Congress, minority amendments represented a greater share of amendment votes than during any single Congress. Think about it.

So Republicans should stop trying to justify their opposition to helping Americans in need with false claims about what is going on in this institution. Let's start talking about facts rather than fiction-- and there is a lot of fiction going around. Republicans should, I repeat, stop trying to justify their opposition to helping Americans in need with false claims about my leadership.

It is quite interesting to note that House Republican leaders--and I am sure they sent a copy of it to the Senate--have instructed colleagues in a written memo. It says: Show compassion for the unemployed.

I say to everyone that we don't need a memo for us to show compassion to the unemployed.

They also say: Treat them as individuals.

Oh yeah? That is not a bad idea, but it will be very difficult for Senate Republicans to seem sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed while still opposing a helping hand for 1.3 million job seekers. It shouldn't take a memo to realize that unemployed Americans--and particularly those who have been out of work for months--deserve our compassion. We don't need a memo for that, a memo saying: Show compassion. No wonder Republicans in Congress are out of touch with Republicans around the country. Republicans around the country support extending unemployment benefits because they have compassion for those Americans who are in trouble.

Being out of work is not only financially devastating, it is heartbreaking. I recently received a letter from a single mother of two who has lived in Nevada all of her life. She is afraid she will soon be homeless--a single mother. She wrote: ``I have no desire to live off the system.'' She is speaking for virtually everyone we are trying to help. This woman is the rule, not the exception.

To qualify for unemployment is not easy. Someone has to be laid off through no fault of their own, and they have to actively seek work.

These unemployed aren't gaming the system; there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. For every job there are three people trying to get that job. The longer a person is unemployed, the more difficult it becomes to find work. This is not being made up; this is a fact. The long-term unemployed are half as likely as their recently let-go competitors to be hired. But that doesn't stop them from trying. Rather than encouraging these people who are desperate for help to keep looking, cutting off unemployment benefits actually encourages the long-term unemployed to actually drop out of the job market altogether. That doesn't help them, our communities, our States, and our country. It hurts families, it hurts communities, and it certainly hurts the economy.

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

Mr. President, the Republican leader and I don't agree on everything, but we do agree on some. There is one thing no one can dispute we agree on, and that is our love of baseball. We both love baseball season. It gives us an opportunity, when we go home after working here, to turn on the TV and watch a few innings of a baseball game.

For some people, baseball is a very slow, boring opportunity to watch people moving slowly, but Senator McConnell and I love it. We talk about baseball. We love the Nationals. He and I have great affection for the Nationals because of Bryce Harper, a Las Vegas athlete.

The reason I mention that is because today, Nevada's greatest baseball hero--in fact, one of the greatest baseball heroes not of Nevada but of all time--was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Greg Maddux is an extremely nice man--a man of humility. I have gone out to dinner with him and his lovely wife a few times. I know his brother well, who was also a professional baseball player, and he would be the first to say when he was playing baseball and today about how average he was: I am not a great athlete. But he is one of the best of all time.

He started his career with the Chicago Cubs and went on to win 355 professional Major League Baseball games and four consecutive Cy Young awards. Today he received almost 98 percent of all votes cast--the second highest tally in the history of Hall of Fame voting.

So I congratulate this good man on the honor he received so deservedly--I repeat, a man of humility; a man who had probably the greatest control in the history of baseball of being able to throw a ball to the spot he wanted. He is not a big man. That is an understatement. He is not a big man, but he was precise in where he could throw that baseball.

I have such fond memories of Greg Maddux. The last election was kind of a hard election for me. So I called Greg. I called him on his cell phone. I said: Greg, I want you to be a Republican for Reid. Would you do that?

He said: I will do that.

I said: What are you doing?

He said: I am playing golf.

I said: Can you break 80?

And he said: If you leave me alone, I can break 70.

Greg Maddux is a fine man. I have great affection for him and his family. I am sure this is one thing that Senator McConnell and I agree on.

This afternoon, the Republican leader came to the floor to complain about the minority's ability to offer amendments, in particular, to offer amendments on the 3-month extension of the legislation now before this body. It is interesting that during the Republican leader's remarks there wasn't a word uttered about jobs, about unemployment compensation, or the economy--not a word.

So it is very clear what went on here today with my Republican colleagues. Remember, the Republican leader came and Republican Senators came and sat here with him. It is impossible for my Republican colleagues to explain to the American people their callous opposition to the plight of the 1.3 million Americans. About 20,000 of them live in Nevada.

Two very fine Senators on a bipartisan basis have this legislation before this body: Jack Reed of Rhode Island--and Rhode Island is tied, as we speak, with Nevada for the highest unemployment rate in the country--and the other Senator is my friend, the Republican Senator from Nevada, the junior Senator from Nevada Dean Heller. It is an important move they made on behalf of their States and the American people.

Republicans, though, do not want to talk about the problems facing the middle class, as evidenced by what went on this afternoon. They do not want to talk--these Republicans--about the solutions to falling wages and job shortages.

In America today, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is being squeezed. During the last 30 years, the top 1 percent's wealth and income has increased by triple numbers--triple. But what has happened to the middle class during that same 30 years? Their wages have gone down 10 percent--tripling to going down 10 percent.

So they do not want to talk about this, and that is why they plan to vote against an extension of these emergency unemployment insurance benefits. The vast majority of them voted to not even let us get on the bill and have a debate, but a few stepped forward and said: No, we should have a debate on this, and a debate we are having.

My Republican colleagues are looking for a distraction, a diversion, a phony process argument to steal attention away from their unconscionable stand on the issues that matter most to the middle class.

This issue of unemployment insurance was not developed by some political science professor from Harvard or Yale or Stanford. It is something to help people who are in desperate shape.

I repeat, they are looking for a distraction, a process argument to steal attention away from their unconscionable stand on the issues that matter most to the middle class. You have to give them credit, they are doing their best to divert attention away from this issue. This is opposition--and it is coldhearted--to extending unemployment benefits. It is a very tough position to defend, especially when Republicans around America support what Heller and Reed of Rhode Island are trying to do. Democrats support it, Independents, but Republicans in Congress do not and they have said so.

The Republicans' complaint that the majority never allows the minority to offer amendments is false. It is not true. It is another diversion.

During my tenure as majority leader--there has been volumes of stuff written about the obstruction we have had with my Republican colleagues during the last 5 years with the Obama administration. Think of the obstruction that took place when Barack Obama decided to run for reelection.

That was a little interesting because the Republican leader said his No. 1 goal as a Senator and the leader of the Republicans was to make sure he was not reelected. He fell real short on that because he was reelected overwhelmingly. So during that period of time: obstruction, obstruction, obstruction, obstruction, and after he was reelected it continued.

During my tenure as majority leader, the Senate has voted on minority amendments at a higher rate than it did during either of my Republican predecessors--and the largest rate of minority amendments probably in the history of the Senate. But let's just talk about Republican Leader Frist and Republican Leader Trent Lott--both friends of mine. I still am in touch with them all the time. They are people I will always admire and have great respect for.

Since I have been leader, 7 out of 10 amendments on which the Senate has voted have been Republican amendments. Under Senator Frist's leadership, certainly there were not that many, I will tell you that, that were offered by the minority. Under Senator Lott's leadership, only 54 percent of the amendments considered by the Senate were offered by the minority.

During my leadership of the 111th Congress, minority amendments represented a greater share of all amendment votes than during any single Congress during either Leader Frist's or Leader Lott's tenure. Facts.

In fact, often the minority is prevented from offering amendments. Why? Their own Senators will not allow amendments. How many times has the Presiding Officer and others come to this floor and wanted to offer an amendment--objection on the other side because they want to offer an amendment that has nothing to do with anything we are debating on the floor at a given time.

Last year just a handful of Republican Senators held up any legislation. The best example was the legislation

we tried to do dealing with energy efficiency. Energy efficiency. We could not get it done because of Republican obstruction.

Often a particular Republican will prevent any Senator from offering an amendment unless he gets a vote on what he wants voted on first--a little unusual.

So let's not revise history. Let's talk about history as I know it and as the books report how we should know it, what the facts are in the Congressional Record.

We know how under my friend the Republican leader's leadership there has been obstruction in the way of the filibusters. Filibuster is not some right that was placed in the Constitution. It is a privilege that was granted under the Senate rules, and that has been abused big time.

Their obstruction has continued to be unprecedented over the last 5 years. Half of all filibusters waged in the history of the country-- that is 230-plus years--half of them have been waged against President Obama's nominations--half of them in 5 years compared to 230 years.

Last year Republicans mounted the first ever filibuster of a Secretary of Defense--by the way, a former Republican Senator. They even filibustered him.

I understand Republicans do not want to talk about how we can create jobs, how we can boost the economy or any of the other issues that matter most to the middle class. I understand that Republicans are struggling to explain turning their backs on 1.3 million unemployed Americans. But I do wish they would stop trying to justify their opposition to helping Americans in need with false claims and distortions of the truth.

Finally, as I leave the floor, I prefer not to pay for this emergency situation where we have long-term unemployed. This is an emergency, and it should be considered accordingly and should not be paid for in the normal course around here.

We believe in reducing the debt. In the Senate Chamber with me now is someone whom I had the pleasure of appointing to the Bowles-Simpson Commission, the senior Senator from the State of Illinois, the assistant majority leader. He worked hard. We have not followed Bowles- Simpson as a bible, but it certainly has been a guide we have followed. While we could have done better, we have done pretty good. We are approaching having reduced the debt by some $3 trillion right now as we speak. We could reduce it another $1 trillion if we could get comprehensive immigration reform done.

The goal of Bowles-Simpson was $4 trillion. So when I say this is something that has not been paid for ordinarily in the past, that is true, but that does not take away from the fact that we all are going to continue to work on this side of the aisle to reduce the debt.

But I do hear that some of my Republican colleagues want to pay for this. I disagree with them, but that is what they want to do. So far all we have heard from Republicans' pay-fors is this: take a big whack out of ObamaCare. There are 9 million people--approaching 10 million now--who benefit from ObamaCare. So they want to damage every one of those 9-plus million people. Or they have another one: go after children--children--with the child tax credit. Those are their two pay- fors at this point--a little scary, I would think.

So I am waiting, we are waiting for Republican suggestions on how to pay for a full-year extension of unemployment insurance. Let's hear from them how they want to pay for it. They say they want to pay for it. Let's hear what they want to do.