Mr. President, I haven't been able to watch all the speeches by my friends on the other side of the aisle, but I have watched enough to understand what is going on. This has been a remarkable show of hubris or arrogance from the Republican…
Mr. President, I haven't been able to watch all the speeches by my friends on the other side of the aisle, but I have watched enough to understand what is going on. This has been a remarkable show of hubris or arrogance from the Republican side of the aisle.
One after another, the Republicans have stood to complain about how the Senate hasn't gotten a lot done. The Presiding Officer has been one of the leaders in having a more effective Senate, because my friend, the Presiding Officer, has watched what the Republicans have done. We are going to do something about it. The Presiding Officer knows that, I know that.
What they have done is the very definition of chutzpah. The nerve. What nerve. They are complaining about a result that they themselves created. They have created the fact that we haven't gotten anything done. They are good at it. A bill that would allow veterans to get jobs, they stopped it on a technicality. They have conducted filibuster after filibuster, blocking one bill after another, and then they complain the Senate can't pass anything when they are the ones holding things up. The record is pretty detailed and deep, and I am not going to cover it all today because, really, it is significant.
I said here yesterday, I have been the leader for 6 years. I may be off 1 or 2, but I have had to file motions to overcome 382 filibusters in 6 years. I know the Senate has changed a little bit since Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader, but during the 6 years he was the majority leader, he had to file cloture once. To think that they are here complaining we are not getting
anything done when they are the ones who caused it? And we start from this point.
I have to say, I appreciate the Republican leader being so candid and honest with the American people when he stood at the beginning of this Congress and said his No. 1 goal was to stop President Obama from being reelected. That is what he said. And they have legislated accordingly, stopping us from doing the most important things for this country. Measures to create jobs, they have stopped. Measures to stop jobs from being lost, they have stopped. They have done it so many times.
How about this: We have lost approximately 1 million teachers, firefighters, and police officers because of Republicans stopping us from get things done, really hurting State and local government. So we over here thought it would be a good idea that we stop these significant layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police officers. We want to make sure it is paid for and we agree it should be paid for. So we said, Okay, no more layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police officers, and we are going to pay for it. How are we going to pay for it? Anyone making more than $1 million a year would have to pay a surtax of three-tenths of 1 percent. Every Republican voted against that.
The Veterans Jobs bill I just talked about. The cyber security bill. The Pentagon has said the most important issue facing this country is cyber security. The National Security Agency: The most issue facing this country? Cyber security. We know, they know, the Republicans know, because they were down at the same demonstration I had of our intelligence agency showing what would happen if a cyber security attack took place in the Northeast just dealing with the power grid. We know it can happen.
I have heard Senator Feinstein, the chairman of our Intelligence Committee, say several times it is not a question of if, it is a question of when. The Republicans blocked a cyber security bill, stopped it.
They have conducted filibuster after filibuster, blocking one bill after another. They blocked a bill to stop outsourcing jobs--more than once.
On all these TV ads that you see, we thought it would be kind of a good idea that the American people knew who was paying for these ads. But, no, twice they said let's keep them secret--Crossroads USA or whatever name they have there, all these names that sound so good. But I think we would be better served if people knew the ads were being paid by the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson from Las Vegas or Simmons from Texas who is boasting about giving $34 million to defeat President Obama. And that is what the Republican leader wants.
On the passage of several small business jobs bills, one July 12, just a month or two ago; the motion to proceed to paycheck fairness, violence against women--they stopped us from going to conference on that. On April 16 they blocked a motion to proceed to a bill to reduce the deficit by imposing a minimum tax rate on high-income taxpayers, the Buffett rule, Warren Buffett. He wants to make sure he pays a tax rate comparable to his secretary's. That is what we wanted. They defeated that.
They blocked many bills dealing with unnecessary tax subsidies for these large oil companies. They have held up hundreds of measures out of the Energy Committee--hundreds. It used to be we would pass those just matter-of-factly.
Senator Stabenow had an amendment to decrease taxes on American businesses. She wanted to do that by extending expiring energy tax credits for energy that has created hundreds of jobs in America.
They blocked the nomination for weeks and weeks of Richard Cordray to be the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. They blocked judge after judge. They blocked a motion to proceed to a bill to put workers back on the job while rebuilding and modernizing American infrastructure. It creates jobs.
They blocked motions to proceed to a bill to keep teachers and first responders--in addition to the one I just talked about--and other ones. They blocked a bill to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration. This has been something we have done for 25, 30 years. They blocked it.
We wanted to reduce the deficit by doing something about these outlandish subsidies we give Big Oil--blocked it. We were trying to do a bill to create jobs. We spent weeks because they wanted to dictate what women could do dealing with contraception.
Then they have this little--this little deal with the House Republicans. If we work and are able once in a while to get something done over here, such as a postal bill to save our postal system, then the Republicans block it in the House. The farm bill--reduces the debt by $23 billion--they have this deal with the House and now they blocked that. China currency? The same thing; they blocked it over in the House.
The record is very clear. The party of trying to defeat President Obama has done everything they can to make the economy look as bad as it can because they think if the economy is really bad, it is going to help them defeat President Obama.
The middle class--we know how they feel about the middle class. That was exemplified by statements that came out in the last few days by the Presidential nominee.
This morning, as I said, I wasn't able to listen to everything, but I listened to enough. One party stands for obstruction and the rich. The big lie--listen to this: How many times did we have the Republicans come to this floor and say: They have not passed a budget?
I have served in this Congress for 30 years, and I have admired two people very much for their knowledge of certain things. One person I have admired dealing with the finances of this country more than anyone else is someone with whom I came to the Senate 26 years ago, Kent Conrad. Kent Conrad has come here and time and time again said: Yes, we did not pass a budget resolution because we did not need to. We passed a law. That is why the CR is going forward. We passed a law that set numbers for us.
It is a big lie for them to come here and say we have not passed a budget. It is a lie. It is untruthful.
My friend with whom we have served in Congress, we came the same day, the senior Senator from Arizona, I have said before, and I will say it again: I admire him. I admire his service to our country. But for him to come and say that the Senate is not working well because of the Democrats, that is one of the big lies.
We have tried to legislate. They are holding up virtually everything we try to do, including the Defense authorization bill. I have been waiting for months for them to come to me with an agreement. This is part of the big game they are playing to try to make us look bad when they are the cause of it. They are the reason we have not done this legislation. We can't. We have spent weeks on matters that we would have done before in a matter of an hour or 20 minutes.
Republicans are complaining about a result that they themselves caused. The Defense authorization bill--we are going to come back after the election, and we will get that done with their help.
Here is the issue with Republicans, here is why suddenly they are all upset. They have been upset for some time, but really this week has been something that would upset nearly everyone because--we thought the Olympics were over, but yesterday we saw it in full go.
We had Republicans running to break marathon records, sprint records to get away from their Presidential nominee because it makes it a little hard for them to have somebody running for President representing their party who says: I only have to worry about half the people in this country.
We are going to continue to work to the best we can to move forward with the legislation we believe is important. We are going to come back after the election, during the lameduck. Hopefully, they will decide at that time maybe they have something better to do than try to make the President of the United States look bad.
We are a very fortunate country. We have a two-party system that is the envy of the rest of the world. These parliamentary governments, they work for months and weeks and sometimes longer than that to try to form a government. We don't have to do that. We are a government of laws, and we have a system that works pretty well.
But we know, based on some academic work that has been done--it is not just me talking. We have two of the foremost experts who have watched this country for more than 40 years--Thomas Mann from the Brookings Institute and Norm Ornstein from the conservative Enterprise Institute--who have said the problem with the government today is the Republicans. They said they have been here for 40 years and have never seen anything like it. I haven't seen anything like it, and I have been here 30 years.
We used to work together. When I came to the Senate we had Republican Senators and Democratic Senators. We joined hands and we got things done. But now, because they are being led by someone who believes the most important thing to do is to defeat Obama, we are getting nothing done and they are following him like lemmings off the cliff.