Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1216.

Mr. President, I 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.

I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 417.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, this a very important piece of legislation. Most of the nuclear weapons program workers are in Nevada, at the Nevada test site. At one time we had 12,000 people working there on a weapons program and many of them got sick because we didn't know the dangers of nuclear weapons. We had many of them sitting above ground and soldiers and workers would be out there with stuff floating around. People can drive out there, if they can get through all the security checkpoints, but they have bleachers still there that were set up to watch the nuclear weapons go off. Then we had about 1,000 nuclear devices at the Nevada test site that were detonated above ground, in tunnels, in shafts. So there truly does need to be a day of remembrance, and I congratulate those Senators who have moved this forward.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 497.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I am told that there are two bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading en bloc.

Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading on these two bills but object to my own request en bloc.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I had a conversation with the Republican leader on Monday, and we went over the things we have to do this work period. We have a lot to do. One of the things we are trying to do-- because we have so much going on around the country; namely, in our States--is we want to try to balance what we do and, frankly, we have some people running for office. But we have made great progress this week so far. We have been able to reach agreement on a number of things that we believe are important.

So having said that--and I have gone over what we are going to do in the next few days--I think it would be appropriate to announce to everyone that we are going to not have any votes on Monday. We have work we are going to have to do here Monday, but we are not going to have any votes. I think it is important Senators know that. We were planning on having a number of votes on Monday. I think that is not necessary now.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 10, 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 be in a period of morning business until 12:00 noon, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees; that following morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session as provided under the previous order; finally, that the filing deadline for first- degree amendments to S. 2363 be at 10:30 a.m. and the filing deadline for second-degree amendments be at 11:30 a.m.

Mr. President, we hope to reach agreement to have the cloture vote around noon tomorrow on the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act. Under a previous order, there will be a rollcall vote at 2 p.m. There will be a couple of voice votes after that.

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

Mr. President, just by chance last night I was reading a book and it included a speech given by John McCain, our fellow Senator. What Senator McCain talked about was some of his experiences in the prison camp in Vietnam where a man by the name of Mike Christian had spent an inordinate amount of time sewing on the inside of the pajama- like outfit they gave him to wear, and he put a flag inside his jacket--his shirt. This jacket was discovered, the flag was discovered by the prison officials, and he was beaten really very much. He was beaten severely. Of course, they ripped the flag out of his coat.

We take for granted saluting the flag. We come in here and we do it every morning. By rote, we stand and do it. I am not too sure that we shouldn't think a little bit more about what we are doing when we salute the flag. I am going to bring that excerpt from home and I am going to submit it for publication in the Congressional Record for everybody to see, about people who have been--for example, Senator McCain was in prison for 5\1/2\ years. As we know, he was, on many different occasions, tortured. So when John McCain salutes the flag and when Mike Christian, a fellow pilot--he was actually a navigator on an airplane--salute the flag, it means a lot to them, and we should encapsulate that when we think about saluting the flag.

I will submit that excerpt for the Record tomorrow. I read that last night, late. I thought, when we salute our flag, we should think about it more than, I am sure, we do all the time.

Mr. President, following my remarks and those of the Republican leader, the Senate will be in a period of morning business for 1 hour. The majority will control the first 30 minutes and the Republicans will control the final 30 minutes.

Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2363, the Bipartisan Sportsmen's Act, postcloture.

The Senate will recess from 12:30 until 2:15 today to allow for our weekly caucus meetings.

I ask unanimous consent that the majority control the time from 2:15 until 3:15 and the Republicans control the time from 3:15 to 4:15.

Mr. President, it is no secret that the Senate, as of late, has been beset by partisan rancor and obstruction: one Republican filibuster and then another, and then another, and still more filibusters. That is why the legislation that is before us today represents a rare opportunity for the Senate to complete work on a bill that enjoys broad bipartisan support.

Senator Kay Hagan's sportsmen's bill is overwhelmingly popular with Democrats and Republicans around the country, and for good reason. Forty million Americans who hunt and fish stand to benefit from this legislation.

The sportsmen's package represents years of bipartisan work--years-- combining some 20 bills important to the sportsmen's community. The bill expands opportunities for sportsmen, promoting an industry that contributes almost $200 billion annually to our Nation's economy. In Nevada, over 200,000 people hunt and fish every year. It is good for tourism. People come to Nevada to hunt for game, including antelope, elk, and bighorn desert sheep. We have wonderful fishing. We don't have a lot of lakes and rivers, but what we have is terrific. That is why fishermen come from around the country to fish in Nevada. To Nevada, it is a $1 billion industry.

I was talking to my friend Senator Bennet from Colorado and he said in Colorado it is a $4 billion industry. I would bet that even in a heavily populated State such as New Jersey there is a lot of hunting and fishing that goes on. It is good for the economy.

Senator Hagan's legislation promotes hunting, fishing, and recreation, all while fostering habitat conservation through voluntary programs. Because of her tireless efforts building bipartisan consensus, Senator Hagan's

bill is cosponsored by 25 Republicans and 19 Democrats. This legislation also enjoys the support of more than 50 national sportsmen and conservation groups all over this country.

As Benjamin Disraeli, the famous statesman from Great Britain, said, ``The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.'' This bill is ready and the opportunity is now. After years of hard work by Senator Hagan and others, now is the time to consider and pass this legislation. But, as always, our success in moving this legislation will depend on the cooperation of all Senators in putting aside political games and petty disputes over amendments in order to pass a bill that will benefit millions of Americans.

This is a bill that is as much a Republican bill as it is a Democrat bill. So why should this bill be killed for procedural reasons? This is a bill they have worked on for many years.

I am hopeful that through bipartisan support we can get this bill over the finish line, as we were able to do with the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act earlier this year, and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act a few weeks ago.

I urge my colleagues to respect the hard work of those Senators who have put this measure before us and allow this matter to pass--and quickly.

I move to proceed to Calendar No. 384, S. 2363, the Hagan sportsmen's bill.

Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:30. Senators during that period of time will be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

At 5:30 we have two rollcall votes, the first on the confirmation of the Krause circuit court judge and the next will be on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2363, the Hagan sportsmen's bill.

Measure Placed on the Calendar--S. 2562

I am told S. 2562 is due for its second reading.

Mr. President, I object to any further proceedings with respect to this bill.

Mr. President, a lot of people within the sound of my voice will not understand what I speak about, which is having an emergency brake or a parking brake on a car. It used to be standard procedure. People would pull out the emergency brake, and 99 percent of the time people would remember to release it before they took off, but sometimes people would forget and that car would still go forward, but it didn't go forward very well. In fact, it would start smoking--``Oh, I forgot to turn that off.''

So emergency brakes, what do they have to do with us in the Senate? What it has to do with us is that it appears the Republicans in the Senate have intentionally left on the emergency brake. For everything we try to do, it is similar to when we used to drive a car and have the emergency brake on. It doesn't move right. It moves very slowly.

Throughout President Obama's time in office, the Republican leadership in the Senate has done its best to keep the brakes engaged, slowing any effort to legislate on even the most bipartisan bills. We should be passing legislation that strengthens our economy and protects working families instead of wasting hundreds of hours--hundreds of hours--as we struggle to perform one of our most basic duties, confirming Presidential nominees.

Last year, in response to unprecedented--I repeat, unprecedented-- Republican obstruction, the Senate was forced to change its rules to ensure that some of the President's nominees received the up-or-down vote they deserve. I am so happy that change was made. It has allowed the Senate to make substantial progress on one of its primary functions. Positions that were once vacant for months--even years--are now staffed with qualified and competent public servants.

In spite of our having changed the rules, the Republicans are still continuing to try to slow everything down.

Again, the brakes are on, and they only have one reason I can come up with for doing this. It is not that they dislike the President's nominees; it is that they want to do everything they can to slow down his administration, to make him look bad and to make Senate Democrats look bad, because they believe that even though they are the cause of the obstruction everybody will say: The Democrats control the Senate, why aren't they doing more?

We can't do more because they have put on the brakes, even though we changed the rules and are moving through judges especially very quickly.

For the viewing audience, on a judge they can only stall for 1 hour, and they usually do. On circuit court judges they get 30 hours, and they take up all of those 30 hours, even though they wind up voting for the judge. On Cabinet nominations they get 30 hours. On subcabinet officers they get 8 hours. That is in the rules. We changed some of the rules, but we didn't change that. In hindsight--we will have to wait and see. If they are going to continue this, we will have to take another look at that. It is outrageous what they have done.

We have made substantial progress, as I have said, on one of our primary functions. The Senate is continuing its progress confirming these nominees in spite of the Republicans putting up roadblock after roadblock. Instead of seeing how their needless obstruction has hurt our country and working with us to confirm these vital nominations, the Republican leadership has responded with what can only be described as a temper tantrum, I guess. I don't know what else to call it. We have already established that they are trying to do it to make us look bad and the President look bad, but think what it is doing and what it has done to our country.

They are mad about a lot of things, I guess. The No. 1 thing they are mad about is Obama was reelected. Remember, Frank Luntz called a meeting here 3 days after Obama was first elected. He said: We have two things we are going to do--and all the Republican big shots were here-- No. 1, we are going to make sure Obama isn't reelected. That was a flop. No. 2, we are going to oppose everything the President wants, and that is what they have done and continue to do.

I have said this before and I will say it again. The first Congress we had a lot of Democrats--58, 59, and for a short period of time we had 60--and we had some moderate Republicans with whom we could work, but they are gone except Susan Collins. They are gone. So even though that first Congress was extremely productive, the next two have been thwarted by the obstructionism we have encountered for everything we have tried to do.

The Republican leader is obviously now resorting to a tactic that I guess they decided to do in the Frank Luntz meeting; that is, just trying to run out the clock. As in a football game, if there is only 1 minute left to go, they say let's just run out the clock or a basketball game or, as we saw over the last few weeks, a soccer game. Stall it. We are ahead. It is tied. That is where we need to stay.

They are just trying to run out the clock. Instead of killing time on the scoreboard, the Republican leader is using the cloture clock to kill the remaining 6 months of this Congress. They want just to go away, preventing nominees from getting confirmed and thwarting Democrats from passing legislation that is good for the middle class.

Would it be good for the middle class to raise the minimum wage? Of course. It would be great. Would it be good for the American public to have it so my daughter, for instance, if she does the same job your son does, that they get paid the same amount of money? They filibustered that. They stopped that. How about student loans? Student loans are the highest debt in America today--almost $1.3 trillion--and we tried to remedy that, make it better for students and of course their families who are paying and have paid over the years for these large loans. Filibuster; extended unemployment benefits, filibuster.

So they are doing this to make the President look bad, make us look bad, but they are still running out the clock. That is what they are trying to do.

Again, so people understand, we get cloture with a simple majority. They can stall for many hours. As I said, circuit court judges get 30 hours, nominees for Cabinet posts get 30 hours, 8 hours for subcabinet, and only an hour on other judges. If we take a close look at how they have utilized the time we have wasted--let's say the last 2 months the Senate has been in session--Senate Republicans have forced us to waste almost 10 days, more than half the time we have been in session. They have wasted 236 hours in order to slow the confirmation of President Obama's nominations--236 hours. Of those 236 hours, Senate Republicans have used 5 hours to actually come to the Senate floor and debate the qualifications of these nominees. The rest of the time we sit, as the viewing public sees, in these quorum calls, where we do nothing. For every hour they have debated these nominations, the Senate Republicans have wasted 46 hours just killing time. Mr. President, 5 hours out of 236 hours is the time they have actually used.

To further highlight the absurdity of their obstruction, the Republicans have voted overwhelmingly to confirm most all of these same nominees they have obstructed and filibustered. So far this year Republicans have blocked immediate confirmation of 22 nominations they later voted unanimously to confirm.

Why are they blocking these nominations they all support? They just want to slow things down. They want everybody to look bad. They know they are not in control--that is what the American public feels--even though they have all of these rules they force procedural gimmicks we have to work our way through. There is no other way to look at what Republicans are doing. This is obstruction for obstruction's sake. The Republican leader is desperate to keep this emergency brake on, hoping that by slowing down every Senate process imaginable, he can run out the remaining 6 months and damage Obama. The harm it does to our country, I guess, is not in their calculation. He is playing a very dangerous political game at the expense of this great country and of course the American taxpayer.

The Senate currently has a backlog of 131 nominees who have been languishing on the Senate calendar for an average of 281 days--281 days. It is particularly outrageous that they are stopping us from confirming noncontroversial career Foreign Service officers and ambassadors.

What does this mean, a career Foreign Service officer? The Presiding Officer has been in government a number of years. He has been Governor of one of the larger populated States in the country. He has been in the U.S. Senate. The Presiding Officer has seen--I am convinced of this--young men and women who decide they want to go into the Foreign Service. They are the brightest of the brightest. They do extremely well in school. They have these tests they have to pass, written and oral. They speak and learn many different languages. They have been waiting their whole career to be named an ambassador. It is a huge thing. It is like being selected to go to the Super Bowl or to be on the Pro Bowl team. But when it comes time to get this position they have worked for for their whole career, they are being held up.

These are ambassadors to places that need American diplomats. You need a boss. Twenty, 25 percent of the ambassadorial spots in Africa they have blocked. These are not political nominees. Most of them are career nominees. They are Republicans and Democrats. When these ambassadors are chosen, they are not chosen based on their political party. They are chosen on merit. We have places such as Honduras, Qatar, Vietnam where we do not have ambassadors.

They are even blocking the Department of Defense, the Navy, the Air Force. They are at the mercy of the Republican leader's clock-killing obstruction. American interests abroad and the defense of our Nation are forced to take a back seat while Republican leadership hopes to make political gains by running out this clock.

So after having returned from the Fourth of July--this country's birthday--I urge Republicans to stop this needless obstruction. What is to be gained by needlessly grinding the Senate to a halt? The only thing I can see

is they think they are going to hurt President Obama, who they are so upset because he got reelected and reelected very easily.

I say to them, if you oppose a nominee, let's have a debate on the nomination and then vote. Do not delay a vote on a career Foreign Service officer who has worked his or her entire life to become an ambassador. Do not delay national security personnel who are needed to protect our Nation. Do not delay key staff people at the Cabinet level from doing their work for the American people.

I do not expect Republicans to give their unanimous consent to every nominee on the calendar. Rather, Senate Democrats are asking that Republicans legislate in good faith. Let's look at these. If there is something wrong with them, let's debate them. If nominees are deserving of their unanimous support--and most of them come out of the committees unanimously--why waste the Senate's time by blocking confirmation of these individuals? There is no reason for doing that.

We have so much to address over the coming weeks. We are going to vote on the sportsmen's bill tonight. We have the highway bill, the emergency supplemental, manufacturing legislation. We are going to do something about the Hobby Lobby legislation we need to correct. There is so much we have to do. We have terrorism insurance. We have to do that. The Export-Import Bank, we have to do that. But we are being stopped from doing all of that.

We have more than enough to keep us busy. That is an understatement. So what we are doing, instead of doing the things necessary for the American people, is we are being forced, because of the obstruction of the Republicans, to sit here and struggle through a few nominations that we can work out by spending 8 hours on this one, 4 hours on that one, 30 hours on this one. It is really unfair to the American people.

Reservation of Leader Time

Mr. President, would the Chair announce the business of the day.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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