Floor Statements

I understand there is a bill at the desk due for its first reading.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, March 14; that following the prayer and the 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 resume consideration of H.R. 933, the continuing appropriations bill, under the previous order.

Tomorrow we will continue to work through the amendments to the CR. There will be at least one rollcall vote at approximately 11:15. We hope to complete action on this bill tomorrow.

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, following leader remarks, the Senate will be in morning business until 12:30 today. The majority will control the first 30 minutes, the Republicans the second 30 minutes. Chairman Mikulski and Ranking Member Shelby are expected to make opening statements about 11 o'clock this morning.

Just as an aside, this is a new day in the Senate. We are so grateful for the hard work of Senators Mikulski and Shelby. The amendment is offered as their substitute amendment. I am very proud of the work they did. We are going to have to work through a number of amendments, but when it is all over, we are going to send over a bill I hope the House will accept. If not, we will have a quick conference--I hope that is not necessary--and continue the work on our other appropriations bills and finish the problems we have had in being behind.

The CR will fund the government until October 1. We hope by then we can complete work on our appropriations bills, so in 2014 we don't have to go through all this again--CRs and omnibuses and all that kind of stuff.

We are going to recess from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. today for weekly caucus meetings. We have extended that for an extra 15 minutes because the President is going to be here today.

We expect to begin consideration of H.R. 933, which is the appropriations bill I just talked about, following the caucus meetings we are going to have.

Earlier this year, with November election losses fresh in their minds, top Republicans promised a kinder, gentler Republican Party, a Republican Party that cared about ``every American . . . achieving their dreams.'' Republicans bandied about words such as ``fairness'' and ``opportunity.'' They made overtures toward women and Hispanics. They promised cooperation and an end to brinkmanship. House Majority Leader Cantor even spoke of ``an agenda based on a shared vision of creating the conditions for health, happiness, prosperity for more Americans and their families.''

Rebranding, we thought, was underway. Then a few weeks passed and the Republican emphasis on fairness and equity made a direct U-turn back to where they started. Today the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan will unveil an extreme budget that is anything but balanced. This budget reflects the same skewed priorities the Republican Party has championed for years, the same skewed priorities Americans rejected in November. The Ryan budget will call for more tax breaks for the wealthy, an end of Medicare as we know it, and Draconian cuts to education and other programs to help America's economy grow and prosper.

We have heard it many times and I will repeat it. Yogi Berra famously said, ``It's deja vu all over again,'' and it really is. We have seen this before, deja vu all over again. The Ryan budget will shower more tax breaks on millionaires and continue to tilt the playing field to the advantage of big corporate interests and raise taxes for the middle class.

I know Congressman Ryan is held out to be this guru who understands things so well. What he understands is gimmickry and that is what he has done so well. He has pulled the wool over the eyes of those people in the House and they continue following him, but his

budget is anything but balanced, anything but fair. Members of the House should look at what they are being led into--or out of.

This plan, just like last year, refused to close a single tax loophole in order to reduce the deficit. Yet it guts investments in education, health care, public safety, scientific research, and job- creating clean energy technology. The Ryan budget would end the Medicare guarantee and force seniors into a voucher program. It would ax preventive health care such as cancer screenings and charge seniors more for prescriptions and further reduce the funding for food inspectors, police, and first responders generally. As if protecting the wealthy special interests is not bad enough, the Republican budget also devastates the economy, costing jobs and slowing economic growth.

Not only is this a wrong approach, it is the same old approach. To make matters worse, the Paul Ryan Budget No. 3--he has done it two other times--used the same fuzzy math and gimmickry as his previous two budgets, relies on accounting that is creative at best and fraudulent at worst to inflate its claims of deficit reduction. We believe it is critical to stabilize the deficit, but it will take more than accounting gimmicks to achieve real deficit reduction.

At a time when corporations are making record profits, the stock market is soaring, and wealthy Americans' income continues to rise, the deficit reduction should not have to be at the expense of middle-class families, senior citizens, and the poor. Americans have demanded a fair approach to deficit reduction for all Americans--Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. They want a fair approach to deficit reduction that makes sensible cuts and asks profitable corporations and the wealthiest among us to share the burden--balanced.

We have been listening. That is why this week Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray will introduce a budget that reflects those balanced priorities. Her plan, the Democratic plan, will cut wasteful spending and reduce the deficit, close tax loopholes that benefit the rich, and invest where the economy needs to grow, to go really hard, to continue to build, to grow. It will create a strong middle class.

Congressman Ryan and his Republican colleagues in Congress have taken a different approach, an approach that makes it plain they missed the message in the November elections. Their budget once again will put moneyed special interests ahead of middle-class families, and no amount of rebranding will hide that.

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

Madam President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 21,

Madam President, we expect to adopt the motion to proceed to this bill this afternoon and start on the amendment process. I have spoken to the Chair and the ranking member of this committee, and we are anxious to move forward and start doing some legislating.

As I said this morning when I opened the Senate, this is exemplary, the work done with the two managers of this bill, and we need to make sure we move forward on it. It would be good if we would have amendments that would be in some way germane and relevant to what we are doing, but we are going to take all amendments and try to work through them as quickly as we can. I hope people would agree to very short time agreements. I would hope we do not need to table the amendments. I hope we can move forward and set up votes on every one of them.

Mr. President, I am somewhat amazed and stunned. You would think that someone who is given an answer to the question--yes--should pretty much be satisfied.

We have been trying to keep the government from shutting down. I appreciate the work done by the Speaker. I didn't agree with his bill, but I appreciate what he did, and he did it in a timely fashion.

The chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski, has been negotiating with her Republican counterpart, Richard Shelby, for days now. They worked all weekend, late into Sunday night, and they worked out a bipartisan agreement. They offered the amendment here. Now we hear from a couple of Senators: Let's not take up the bill. They need more time.

I thought people wanted to have an open amendment process on this bill. Offer amendments. Now it appears that the day is gone. I guess we won't be able to offer amendments today. I have said all along that we would turn to it as soon as possible. Our Republican colleagues said they want to see the first amendment that was to be offered. They saw that. They were originally given to certain people in the leadership office on Saturday about noon, and there has been every effort to work together on this matter. They wanted to see the first amendment that will be offered. I have indicated that was done; they saw it. There were negotiations to get to where that is. But now Senators want to prevent us from going to the bill. Remember, if I file cloture today, the earliest we can have the vote is Thursday.

We are going to finish this CR, and we are going to finish the budget before there will be an Easter recess. That is a fact. So everyone should understand that delaying on this--because they want to read the bill more deeply, I guess--doesn't really make a lot of sense.

We are going to do the budget resolution. I have made that clear, and I emphasize that now. And the Republicans have been talking about--even though it is basically without foundation--that we haven't had a budget resolution. We haven't needed one. We had one that was not a resolution, it was a law that set the standards for what we would do with our budget. It set ceilings on how much we would spend. As a result of that, we were able to get the funding for our subcommittees and appropriations. But they want a budget resolution, which isn't as good as law, and we are going to do everything we can to get that done.

So if Republicans object to allowing the Senate to be in consideration of a bill negotiated with Republicans, then the only people who will be disadvantaged are other Republicans who want to be able to offer amendments.

So I regret that again we have come to this. Just when you think it can't get worse, it gets worse. There are things we have to do. The CR is one of those. If it means cutting into the April recess--we have 2 weeks to do a lot of things people have planned for some time--then that is what we will need to do. But I am stunned.

I learned about this when we had the President at our caucus. I really am flabbergasted that here we are on the eve of doing something together, regular order, but regular order around here is stopping every bill from going on the floor. That is what the regular order is here. I thought we had some kind of an agreement at the beginning of this Congress that this wasn't going to go on anymore. We had that 2 years ago. We changed the rules here a little bit.

There is going to be tremendous angst within my caucus and I think the country to continue trying to legislate with the burdens that we bear, that just one or two people do everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into everything we do. As a country, we are being looked at as being inoperable. It is too bad. It is not good for this institution, and it is really not good for the country.

Object to what?

Mr. President, through the Chair to my friend from Arizona, this is a 587-page bill that has been available to the public because the vast majority of this bill is identical to what the House already passed-- identical. He, along with his staff and the Senator from Oklahoma, have had days and days to look this over.

I want to make sure everyone understands I can only do so much. I try not to be too sensitive, but the Senator from Oklahoma seems to have a problem--I assume he was referring to me or perhaps he was referring to Senators Durbin, Schumer, and Murray. Here is what he said on one of the Sunday shows:

``The Senate's not nearly as dysfunctional as it is made

out to be . . . '' said Coburn. ``Our problem in the Senate

is the leadership in the Senate.''

I don't know if he is referring to Senator McConnell, I don't know whom he is referring to, but one day he should look in the mirror.

I want to try and get along here. The vast majority of the stuff that is in this bill came from the House of Representatives. It has been available for days. I cannot remember what day we received this. I think it was last Wednesday or thereabouts, so it has been many days.

I know Senator McCain very well. He and I came to the House and the Senate together. I understand how he feels about these issues. I don't blame him for being upset about some of the things in this bill, but it is not our fault. We are trying to get a bill to fund the government, and what we need to do is get on the bill.

I am criticized for not allowing amendments to be offered. We cannot have amendments offered until we get on the bill. I think it would be much better if we could get on the bill. If people want to offer amendments, it is kind of jump ball here. We have 100 Senators, and a few of them want to offer amendments. We cannot dictate what amendments will be offered before we even get on the bill.

I hope my friend from Arizona will take some time with the staff and look the bill over--it has been around since last Wednesday or thereabouts--so we can get on the bill. The time is being wasted. We have to finish this and the budget before we leave for Easter vacation.

We can do the bill this week, next week or the week after that. We have to get this done. I am not trying to fight with anybody, but as I said, I do have some sensitivities about my friend from Oklahoma continually berating the leadership in the Senate. I have come to the rationalization that maybe he is talking about his own leadership. I don't know.

Of course.

If my friend would yield-- Mr. McCAIN. I appreciate the majority leader's responsibilities, and I appreciate his frustration. I hope he will understand ours and we will try to move this as quickly as possible.

For many years and decades Senator McCain has been a watchdog of what goes on with spending in this country. I expect that from him, so I don't say that in a negative fashion. I don't have a problem with Senator McCain looking over this legislation so he feels comfortable with moving on to it, and then if he has amendments to offer, we can move on amendments. I have no complaint about John McCain.

Madam President, it used to be, before the last Congress, the Senate had two speeds: one for deliberation and one for getting things done. Senators saved the deliberation speed for truly great issues of the day, and when we needed to get the country's business done, we came together to work things out. It used to be that all appropriations legislation was business the Senate came together to work on and to finish. Sometimes it was 1 day, sometimes it took 4 or 5 days, but we got it done.

These days--for the last 3 years--the Senate has one speed: slow-- real slow. And we haven't had appropriations bills for a number of years because we haven't been able to do them because of the speed-- slow. Even when we are talking about preventing a government shutdown, even when there is broad agreement across party lines that we want to prevent a government shutdown, even then we are stuck in slow.

Madam President, when we got the bill from the House, I didn't like it especially, but, as I said earlier--and I still feel this way--the Speaker at least got it to us at a decent hour, not at the last minute. These two good Senators, Shelby and Mikulski, worked very hard for days to get this done. Now, frankly, I didn't like some of the things Senator Mikulski agreed to, but I was with her, and we agreed to do the things together because we wanted to get a bill done. We swallowed a lot of pride. She gave up things in her bill she has worked on for decades and gave in to others so that they would feel better about this bill.

So then we come here today and are blindsided. This bill has been in the public for days. It passed the House last week, and 85 to 90 percent of the bill that is the so-called amendment was in the House bill.

We are going to finish this bill or not finish it before the recess. If we can't get 60 votes, then it will fail and the government will shut down but not for anything we have done--not for anything we have done. We have a few Senators who are doing everything they can--and have been doing it for years--to throw a monkey wrench into everything we do here. We should have been legislating today.

I came to the floor last week and said we are going to have a CR, we are going to have amendments. I said that when we opened the Senate yesterday. I have tried my best to move to this bill.

The Senate cannot continue like this. I took everyone at good faith at the beginning of this Congress when we made a few changes. I thought those changes would be helpful. To this point, they have done zero because we have had no cooperation from the Republicans.

The Senate has changed, Madam President. I am sorry the Presiding Officer, who has a wonderful background, has not seen the Senate and how it really should work. A small group of Senators has kept the Senate in slow, slow gear. They have prevented us from even starting debate on this important bill. We can't even start the debate on it. People want to offer amendments.

We had Senator Harkin waiting to offer an amendment, and we had Senator Cruz here waiting to offer amendments. They can't. We are through for the night, so we have wasted basically 2 days when we could have been considering amendments to this bill, and that is a shame.

We have a limited number of Senate days. In our lives, we have a limited number of days. The time of the Senate is too precious to spend it this way, so I am filing cloture on this bill. We will have a vote on proceeding to it on Thursday. How about that? Isn't that great? We are going to vote to proceed to it. So we will be on the bill Thursday, and we can start offering amendments on Thursday.

Cloture Motion

I have a cloture motion at the desk, Madam President.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I hope the record is very clear that I do not criticize Senator Shelby. He has done his best. He was a tremendous advocate for what he thought should be in this bill. But we are going to have Senators stand up and talk about what is wrong with this place when, after all the work that goes into a bipartisan bill, we are stymied from going to that bill and offering amendments.

With the tremendous work Senator Coburn has to put into this so he can finish it in the next 12 hours, maybe we can move to the bill tomorrow. But I know he has a lot of work to do on the bill, so we will have to see how he feels about it tomorrow.

Madam President, I want everyone to hear what I am saying now. If somebody comes to me and says: You can get on the bill if you give me these amendments, I won't agree. We will have cloture on it on Thursday.

We are through the dealmaking stage. We have been dealmaking on this bill--an important piece of legislation--for more than a week, and if a Senator comes to me and says: You can go to the bill tomorrow, but I want to make sure I have all these amendments, the answer is no.

Following leader remarks, the Senate will be in morning business until 5 p.m. today. Following that morning business, the Senate will proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of Gary Taranto to be a U.S. circuit judge for the Federal Circuit and the nomination of Andrew Gordon to be a U.S. district judge for the District of Nevada. At 5:30 there will be at least one rollcall vote-- on the Taranto nomination. We hope the Gordon nomination will be confirmed by voice.

We hope to begin consideration of the continuing appropriations bill which we received from the House. It is going to be filed immediately. We need to complete action on this bill by the end of the week.

I am told S. 505 is ready for its second reading; is that correct?

The President pro tempore. The majority leader is correct. The clerk will report the bill by title.

I object to any further proceedings with respect to this bill.

Mr. President, this evening the Senate will vote on two judicial nominations: Richard Gary Taranto, of Maryland, to be U.S. circuit judge for the Federal Circuit and Andrew Patrick Gordon, of Nevada, to be U.S. district judge for the District of Nevada.

Andrew Gordon, of Las Vegas, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987 after receiving his bachelor's degree from Claremont McKenna College in southern California--the so-called Harvard of the West. He is a partner with the law firm of McDonald Carano Wilson, where he began practicing many years ago and is now a partner in that law firm. As a member of that firm, he handles complex commercial disputes. He focused on alternative conflict resolution and regularly serves as an arbitrator and mediator. He also performs a variety of pro bono work, including handling adoption proceedings. For example, he represented an inmate on death row in a habeas corpus proceeding.

He has consistently been named as one of the best lawyers in America. I had the good fortune to practice law at the same time his father Hank practiced law in Las Vegas. Hank was a well-known lawyer in Las Vegas.

There is no doubt in my mind that Andy Gordon will serve the court well and be one of Nevada's great judges. I am looking forward to his confirmation.

Mr. President, we are going to take up legislation this week to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year. I applaud the committee work done by Chairman Mikulski and Ranking Member Shelby. These two individuals are seasoned veterans. They have worked hard to get this legislation done, as only they could do. They are two of our most senior Members and two of the most respected Members.

The measure we are going to work on starting today was passed by the House of Representatives last week. It is not perfect, and we hope to improve upon that. There will be amendments offered. I am working on a process to consider those amendments. This week will offer another opportunity for the Senate to return to regular order, an opportunity for this body to legislate through cooperation, through compromise, as we used to do. This legislation will be a test of the Senate's good will. America's economy is poised to grow and expand. The last thing it needs is another manufactured crisis, such as a government shutdown, to derail its progress.

For some public servants the political fires are lit by their first trip to

Washington or by being moved by a memorable party convention speech. For others the history of military service leads to a career in public service. For still others a single issue, such as a proposed freeway through a vibrant community, propels them into politics. But for Senator Carl Levin, serving Michigan families is something of a family business. Senator Levin's father served as a Michigan corrections commissioner. His uncle Theodore was chief judge for the district court in the Eastern District of Michigan for many years.

I was elected to Congress in 1982--the same year Senator Levin's brother Sander was elected to the House of Representatives. He has been ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He is a distinguished Member of the House of Representatives, having served that body for going on 31 years.

The first time I met Carl Levin was over here. I was in the House, going to run for the Senate. We met in his office. The first thing I said was, I came to Washington a few years ago with your brother, elected in the same class.

He said: Yes, he is my brother but also my best friend.

How about that? That is something I have never ever forgotten. These two brothers, natives of Detroit, have done much for the State of Michigan.

Carl Levin is truly an outstanding Senator and an even better man. He is the longest serving Senator in his State's history. He dedicated his life to Michigan families long before he was elected to the Senate. He served as general counsel to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission and as assistant attorney general for the State of Michigan. He served two terms on the Detroit City Council, one of them as president of the city council. As a Senator Senator Levin has consistently advocated for Michigan families, whether that meant supporting the auto industry, protecting Lake Michigan, holding credit card companies accountable or securing funding for sons and daughters serving in the U.S. military.

As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin is the Nation's most respected voice on national security and the most powerful advocate for the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. As chairman of the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, he has sought truth on behalf of American families time and time again. He led investigations of the 2008 financial crisis, abusive credit practices and abusive credit card practices, and a long, extensive, extremely enlightening bit of work on the Enron collapse.

His dedication to the Senate is matched only by his dedication to his own family. He and his loving wife Barbara have been married for more than 50 years. They have three daughters and six grandchildren.

I am confident Carl is looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren, taking long walks through his and Sandy's tree farm. It is a wonderful place they go. They don't harvest anything; it is just a bunch of trees, and they love that tree farm.

I so admire Senator Levin. Clearly, when he retires in 2 years, the Senate will lose its powerful voice for military families and issues that need to be investigated by this body. Michigan is a much better place because of Carl Levin. Our country, the United States, is a much better place because of Carl Levin's service.