Mr. President, discrimination has never served America very well. When it applies to those who serve America in the Armed Forces, it is both disgraceful and counterproductive. The theory behind don't ask, don't tell is a thing that…
Mr. President, discrimination has never served America very well. When it applies to those who serve America in the Armed Forces, it is both disgraceful and counterproductive.
The theory behind don't ask, don't tell is a thing that happened way in the past. The theory behind this should be a thing of the past, and we should put the policy behind us. It is obsolete, it is embarrassing, and it weakens our military and offends the very values we ask our troops to defend. We need to match our policy with our principle and finally say that in the United States, everyone who steps up to serve our country should be welcomed. That is the only argument that is right and it should be enough.
That is not the only reason we should repeal it. Repealing it will make our military stronger. It doesn't make America safer to discharge troops with critically needed skills, and that is exactly what has happened. This policy is responsible for the discharge of about 14,000 highly qualified service men and women--people whom we have spent millions of dollars training--and we never will know how many wanted to sign up but stayed away because of don't ask, don't tell. It doesn't make us stronger to limit military readiness of an all-volunteer force. Don't ask, don't tell doesn't help morale; it hurts morale.
The other side may feel passionately that our military should sanction discrimination based on sexual orientation, but they are clearly in the minority and they have run out of excuses. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supports repealing it. So does the Secretary of Defense. The vast majority of the military say that it would not oppose repeal. The majority of Americans support repealing it too. There is simply no evidence and no justification--legal, military, or otherwise--for keeping this policy in place. There is no reason to keep America's citizens from fighting for a country they love because of whom they love.
The next Speaker of the House has asked why we would get into this debate. He said, Why should we get into this debate during a time of two wars and ongoing security concerns? I think wartime is exactly the right time to do everything we can to strengthen our military. It couldn't be a better time.
What opponents of don't ask, don't tell don't want to ask is what this policy tells us about equality between our principle and our practice. We can no longer ask our troops to die for a flag that represents justice and ask them to be false to themselves while they do it.
The other side knows it doesn't have the votes to take this repeal out of the Defense Authorization Act, so they have been holding up this bill for a long time--for months. And the latest--the Chair certainly has known about it--is a letter from 42 Senators in a further effort to stall this legislation, saying we have to finish the tax bill and we have to finish the spending bill before you can do anything of a legislative nature. What kind of sense is that, when we are so crammed with things to do? With all the things we have to do, why would they do that, other than simply trying to avoid it, and they have been doing it for a long time. We tried every possible way to move forward. When they refuse to debate it, they also hold up the other good and important, urgently needed parts of the bill. It is not only don't ask, don't tell.
The bill before us contains an across-the-board pay raise for all of the members of the military. More than that, we authorized over 35 different bonuses and special pay incentives that our troops depend on to make ends meet. Let me be clear: Failure to pass this bill means our troops will lose these benefits.
The chairman of the Armed Services Committee was on the floor today saying if we don't do it today, we can't do it. In fact, everyone knows they have stalled this so long, they have stalled this so long that meeting cloture--the average time for a conference committee on this bill is 70 days--70 days; not 7, 70 days.
The bill also contains provisions that would expand health care for troops and their families and significantly enhance mental health care for servicemembers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It would fund critical troop protection needs such as MRAPs and up-armored humvees, which are desperately needed on the battlefield. It would support critical missions in Afghanistan, including expanding intelligence collection efforts, disrupting Taliban finances, and building the Afghan National Army so that Afghanistan can take responsibility for its own security. These are not minor or unimportant issues. These are life-and-death matters for real Americans risking their lives for us, for our defense. We ask our troops to trust us and fight for us and be brave enough to stand in the line of fire. When we send our troops into battle, we do so because we believe strongly that we stand on the right side of history. We have to believe that, because we know the consequences of war and the terrible burdens it carries.
Not far from here--I hope the Presiding Officer has the opportunity to see this during his tenure here in the Senate--is the Congressional Cemetery. It is worth going and seeing. It is 2 miles southeast of where we stand right now on the banks of the Anacostia River. It is a final resting place of veterans of every war this Nation has ever fought. It is not Arlington. It is the Congressional Cemetery. It is also where 19 U.S. Senators, more than 70 Congressmen, a former Speaker of the House, and a former Vice President are buried. One tombstone there belongs to an Air Force sergeant who fought in Vietnam. He became famous shortly after that war ended when he tried to be in the military and out of the closet at the same time.
He lost that fight. His tombstone at Congressional Cemetery reads as follows:
When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for
killing two men and a discharge for loving one.
America is better than that. When it comes to equality in the military, we know which side is the right side of history. The only question is whether we are brave enough to stand there.
In a few moments, I will move to reconsider the motion to proceed to this bill. This legislation is critical for our troops, and it is unconscionable to leave here without passing it. I bent over backward to find a way to get this bill done. It is clear that Republicans--a few of them--don't want to vote on repealing don't ask, don't tell. They are all doing what they can to stand in the way of the bill. They want to block a vote on this issue at all costs, even if it means we do not pass the Defense authorization bill for the first time in 48 years, even if it means our troops don't get the funding and protections they need.
What we have gone through to try to get this bill on the floor reminds me of a story--it is not a story; it is an experience I had as a boy. I don't know how old I was. Let's say I was about 11. As everyone knows now, I was born in a little town on the southeastern tip of Nevada. I never traveled anyplace. I was a teenager before I went to Needles, CA, which was about 50 miles from Searchlight.
My brother, 10 years older than I, got out of high school and got a job in Ash Fork, AZ, working for Standard stations. It was a big deal that he was going to take his little brother there to spend a week. I was excited. It was wonderful. Ash Fork was quite a ways from Searchlight--a couple hundred miles. But the reason I am telling you this story is that my brother was busy after work with his girlfriend-- more so than with his little brother--so he palmed me off a lot of the time on his girlfriend's brother, who was a little bit older than I. There wasn't a thing in the world her little brother could do as well as I could. In all the games we would play, do you know something? I never won a single game. Why? Because he kept changing the rules during the game. It didn't matter what the game was, he kept changing the rules. So I was always the loser.
Well, that is what is happening here on this bill. It doesn't matter what I do; before we get to the end of it, they change the rules again. How about four amendments--two on each side? No. Anyway, we have gone through all these different iterations and everything. No, we can't do it.
I have already tried to bring this bill to the floor twice this year. In fact, I offered to bring it up this summer, with no restrictions, but the Republicans refused this request. It is just like I talked about my trip to Ash Fork, AZ, where I could not win because the rules kept being changed--because my friends on the other side of the aisle blocked both of these attempts. Now we are trying to get this bill done in a lameduck session when everybody knows we have so much to do and we don't have time for unlimited debate. Some of the requests have been really unusual. Seven days of debate. Think about that. Seven days of debate in a lameduck session. I have tried my best to find a way forward that would ensure a fair and reasonable opportunity for colleagues on the other side to offer and vote on amendments.
Over the last 20 years, we have had rollcall votes on an average of 12 amendments during consideration of the Defense authorization bill. So in an
effort to be as fair as possible, I have made it clear to my colleagues that I am willing to vote on 15 relevant amendments, 10 from the Republicans and 5 from the Democratic side--some Democrats don't like that, but we would do it--with ample time for debate on each amendment, but we never can get enough time. We started out with an hour, but that is not enough. My colleagues on this side of the aisle are demanding even more time--time they know is not available. There are not enough days in this calendar year to do what the minority is asking, and they know this. They want the tax and the spending bills done first, as we have talked about. At the same time they say we need to wait, they say they need as much time as possible to consider the bill. It is impossible to do both. It is illogical and unreasonable. It is quite clear that they are trying to run out the clock. Senator Levin said here this morning that they probably would have done it anyway. That is too bad.
I want to be clear that my remarks should in no way be taken as a criticism of my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins. Quite the contrary. She has tried. I have respect for her, and I have worked with her as the only Republican on a number of occasions--and two or three others on occasion--to try to move forward on many of the Nation's top priorities. I believe she has been doing her very best. But for her I would not have been able to get any of these arrangements that they turned down. At the same time, members of her caucus are working equally as hard to defeat this measure at all costs.
In my effort to get this done, I don't know how I could have been more reasonable. Despite the critical importance for our troops, for our Nation, and for justice that we get this bill done, we have not been able to reach an agreement. I regret that our troops will pay the price for our inability.
I now move to reconsider the vote that has previously been made on this matter.
It is nondebatable. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to S. 3454 be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be agreed to, and the Senate now vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 3454, upon reconsideration.
Mr. President, I hope my friend heard the nice things I said about her in my statement.
They were pretty good. I want to be very candid with my friend. In an effort to do the things the Senator from Maine and I talked about with Senator Lieberman on a number of occasions, including yesterday and the day before, all of those require filling the tree, every one of them. That is just the way it is. The only way we can have some control over amendments is to do it that way.
The answer to my friend's question--would I fill the tree--the answer is yes.
The agreement is that I have made a number of different offers and have made other suggestions. In direct answer to the Senator's question, we have to fill the tree, of course. We have to work through the amendments. I tried to come up with some agreement on amendments and time and what some of the amendments would be. That is how we always do things here.
I will also say this: I have had kind of a hard thing to work through because all I have worked on in the last few weeks has been with the overhanging problem of not--42 Republicans, in a letter, have said: You are not going to do anything legislatively. Mr. President, they have proved that they are not allowing us to do anything legislatively. Certainly, this is a legislative matter.
I think I have been as clear as I can be. I, of course, would be willing to work on the amendment process with my friend. But as far as agreeing to something right now, I cannot do that.
Mr. President, as I stated in my remarks earlier, this is not any kind of a legislative wrangle I am having with my friend from Maine. She has been the only person I could talk to about this legislation. I appreciate her time and efforts. But the only way we can do this--and we do it all the time--is I fill the tree and we will try to work through the amendments with some agreement after that is done. This has been taking months to do--months. The time has come, as Senator Levin said, to stop playing around.
Mr. President, I simply make the following request: I ask upon reconsideration, cloture is invoked--the reason I
do this, we can get to where I want to go. It takes three votes. We can do it with three votes or one vote. Upon reconsideration, cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed. Then the Senate can proceed to the bill and would be able to enter into an orderly process for consideration of the bill, allowing different amendments. We have already been through that. There is no need to go through that number. But we have talked about 15--5 from us, the Democrats.
So I make my request. I ask unanimous consent that the motion to proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to S. 3454 be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be agreed to, and the Senate now vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 3454, upon reconsideration.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, did the Chair rule on my request?