Floor Statements

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I understand 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, and I object to my own request, all en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions which are at the desk: S. Res. 387; S. Res. 388.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, September 16; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 115, S. 2296; further, that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly conference meetings.

Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, we expect one rollcall vote on the motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 60 at approximately 2:30 p.m. and another rollcall vote on the motion to proceed to Senator Paul's budget resolution around 5:30 p.m. tomorrow.

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

Mr. President, 24 years ago, on a bright September day whose blue sky I still remember, terrorists hijacked four planes and flew three of them into the Twin Towers in New York City and into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, possibly headed for this building, was brought down in a field in Pennsylvania after heroic passengers rose up to stop the terrorists.

No one who lived through that day will ever forget the shock, the terror, and the tremendous wave of resolve. We saw the worst of which humanity is capable in the attacks, but we saw the very best of America in the aftermath--the heroic passengers on Flight 93; the firemen who walked up the stairs, into the towers, as civilians were running down; the ordinary Americans who rushed to help; the lines to donate blood; the vast donations raised; the renewed sense of patriotism and national unity.

Twenty-four years on, most of the visible scars of the attacks are gone. The Pentagon and One World Trade Center stand proudly. But my thoughts and prayers on this anniversary remain with those who still bear the invisible scars of that day--with them and with all those in the years since who have stood between our country and terror.

Rules Change

Mr. President, later today, the Senate will move forward on amending the

Senate rules to restore the Senate precedent of the en bloc confirmation of Presidential nominees.

I have spent plenty of time here on the floor explaining why we are having to take this step. The longtime practice of the Senate was expeditious confirmation of Presidential nominations, often in blocks, using the procedural mechanism of voice vote or unanimous consent. That didn't mean rubberstamping every nominee, but it did mean that the Senate allowed the President to assemble his team so that he could carry out the job for which he was elected.

But over the years, Democrats have steadily eroded that bipartisan tradition--first during President George W. Bush's administration, then dramatically during the first Trump administration, and finally to where we are today. And where we are today is beyond erosion. Democrats have flat-out broken the Senate confirmation process.

We are more than 7 months into President Trump's current term, and the Senate has yet to confirm one single civilian nominee by unanimous consent or voice vote. To put that into perspective, by this point in his administration, President Biden had had 76 civilian nominees confirmed by voice vote--76. President Trump has not had one--the first President on record to be in this position--the first President on record.

Democrats have dragged out the process on every single civilian nominee, including on nominees they ended up supporting on final passage. Sixty-two out of the one hundred thirty-nine nominees we have confirmed have been confirmed with Democrat support. Democrats have refused to voice-vote any of them. Why? Petty partisanship--nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

The Democrat leader, of course, would claim that it is because we are dealing with historically bad nominees, but I won't waste time today debunking that. I don't need to. It has been debunked for me by the fact that close to half of President Trump's nominees have received Democrat support on final passage and by the scores of Trump nominees who have emerged from committee with bipartisan support.

No, this isn't about historically bad nominees; this is about petty partisanship. Democrats and their political base cannot deal with the fact that the American people elected President Trump, and so they are dragging out every confirmation in retaliation.

It would be fine if this Democrat temper tantrum didn't affect anyone else, but Democrats' historic obstruction is having serious consequences. In addition to the obvious problem of delays in filling important positions in the administration, having to engage in the time-consuming cloture process on every nominee ties up the Senate floor, preventing us from considering important legislation.

Advice and consent on Presidential nominations is part of our job as Senators, but it is not the only part of our job. The Senate is first and foremost a legislative body, but that primary role is getting crowded out by the need to be constantly considering nominations.

Now, when I became majority leader, I made it clear that one of my priorities was to get the Senate functioning again, and the Senate can't function effectively as a legislative body with the confirmation process in the state that it is in right now. So today, the Senate will move forward on amending the rules to restore the longstanding precedent of confirming Presidential nominees expeditiously.

It would have been nice not to have to go through this process. I think there are a lot of Democrats who are aware that they have created an untenable situation, and it would have been nice to see them acknowledge that and move to return to longtime Senate precedent. But despite extended efforts to engage Democrats, we still haven't gotten to a solution to the problem that they created, and time is about to run out. One way or the other, we are going to fix this today--fix it and restore the longtime Senate precedent of expeditious confirmation and the Senate's role as first and foremost a legislative body. It is not too late for my Democrat colleagues to join us. I invite them to do so.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 366.

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I would just say to my colleagues on the Democratic side: How much time is enough? How much time is enough?

The proposal that we are voting on, or want to vote on, and just asked consent to get on has been around for 2 years--introduced by Democrats. They had a hearing in the Rules Committee. It has been around for 2 years. In fact, what we are supposed to vote on today is less expansive than the bill that was discussed in the Rules Committee, the Democrat Rules Committee--a proposal made by Democrats. We don't include judges in this. Your proposal did.

We are asking you to vote on a Democrat proposal, and you are saying: No, we won't even vote on it; we won't even get on it.

Give me a break. Two years is not long enough? How about 8 months--8 months of this? Eight months of this. Look at that chart. Zero. Every President going back to 41, George H.W. Bush, has had a majority--a supermajority--of their nominees approved here in the Senate by unanimous consent or voice vote. Look at that: 98 percent--98 percent for Bill Clinton, 90 percent for George W. Bush, 90 percent for President Obama, 65 percent for Trump 1, 57 percent for Biden. Not trending in the right direction, which argues for everything that is being said here today about we need to fix a broken process. But that-- that is an embarrassment. Zero.

Show the other chart. We have a second chart here. This is what we are talking about. We have to fix this, guys, and we have had plenty of time to do it. Eight months. Eight months. This is what we left on before the August break was this issue. So now we are 6 weeks into it. We have had all week. I have been saying all week: We are going to vote on this on Thursday one way or the other; we are going to change this process in a way that gets us back to what every President prior has had when it comes to the way that these nominees are treated here in the U.S. Senate--by both sides, Republicans and Democrats; both Presidents, Republicans and Democrats. This is the way it has been handled. Look at that. Zero. President Biden had 530 of his nominees confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.

This, ladies and gentlemen, has to be fixed. We offered you a proposal that had your fingerprints on it. It wasn't even your fingerprints; you initiated it. And all we are saying is: Give us a chance to vote on it. And even some of your own Members--the Senator from Oregon said: I want an amendment. We said: Fine, you can have an amendment vote.

But we need to vote. We need to fix this. And, yeah, we could drag it out over the weekend, and you could start adding more conditions and more ideas. The good idea fairy will start to circulate around here and we will have a whole bunch more conversations and it will drag on and nothing will get done.

It is time to move. It is time to quit stalling. It is time to vote. It is time to fix this place. And the ideal way to fix it would be in a bipartisan way: Democrats and Republicans coming together behind a proposal that makes all the sense in the world and that both sides agree, frankly, is the right solution to do this.

We looked at them all. We looked at all the options. We had some very good people who spent the month of August examining how to fix this process in a way that would get us to an outcome that preserved the institutional prerogatives of the Senate, that preserves advice and consent of the Constitution, but gets away from that embarrassing statistic and the fact that we are spending all our time.

Do you guys like the fact that we are a personnel department, that the Senate spends two-thirds of its time on nominees? We have cast over 500 votes this year in the Senate, more than any Senate in history at this point in the term of the Senate.

To finish just the nominees in the pipeline today between now and the end of the year, we would have to cast another 600 votes--not to mention all the intervening time periods and filing cloture and everything else. That is what this means: another 600 votes. We have cast over 500 in the first 7 months of this session. We have to cast more than that in the last 3\1/2\ months just to get the pipeline cleared, which doesn't mean all the additional noms that are coming through--or judges.

This is a broken process, folks. That is an embarrassment. That is what you gave us.

No, I won't yield.

We are going to fix this. We are going to start to fix it today, I hope. And I would hope that when we have people in good faith put forward an offer, that you would, at least, let us get on that good offer--a solution, a solution that is bipartisan, initiated by Democrats 2 years ago, which has been talked about ad infinitum, ad nauseam, just this week alone--not to mention in the 6 weeks going back to the end of the July work period.

So, Mr. President, I object.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I make a point of order that, consistent with the precedent of the Senate established November 21, 2013, the threshold for cloture on an executive resolution for the en bloc consideration of nominations with a calendar number on the Executive Calendar, other than those on level 1 of the executive schedule under 5 U.S.C. 5312 or article III judges, is a simple majority.

I appeal the ruling of the chair and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, as expected, there has been some commentary on the process I initiated Monday--a process to restore Senate precedent and codify in Senate rules what was once understood to be standard practice, and that is the Senate's acting expeditiously on Presidential nominees to allow a President to get his team in place.

I will say that the commentary has felt somewhat muted so far, and I suspect that is because Democrats know they don't have a leg to stand on here. After years of partisanship and slowly eroding the confirmation process, they finally went all the way and broke it, and they have to know that. So it is no surprise that they aren't exactly able to mount a compelling defense of their position or a compelling attack on the Republicans' move to fix the Senate.

On top of that, I suspect it is even possible that some Democrats are secretly relieved that we are restoring Senate precedent. After all, I suspect Democrats would prefer not to reap what they have sowed this Congress. The prospect of the blanket obstruction of every single nominee of a Democrat President can't look that attractive.

Of course, the Democrat leader has made an attempt to attack Republicans' measure and defend his party's historic obstruction, and one thing he is fixated on is his claim that Democrats' historic obstruction is justified because President Trump has put forward ``historically bad'' nominees. But I would just like to ask, if these nominees are as historically bad as the Democrat leader claims, why are Democrats voting for them in committee or on the Senate floor? Why

have 62 of the 139 civilian nominees the Senate has confirmed so far been confirmed with Democrat support? Why are Trump nominees emerging from committee with bipartisan support? Is the Democrat leader suggesting that his own Members are supporting historically bad nominees?

On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman came down to the floor and asked for unanimous consent to confirm a nominee for U.S. attorney who was reported from committee by voice vote and who has the support of the two Democrat Senators from his State. Is the Democrat leader suggesting that the senior Democrat from Minnesota and the junior Democrat from Minnesota are conspiring with President Trump to put in place historically bad nominees?

I completely respect Democrats' right to dislike some or, for that matter, many of President Trump's nominees and to oppose nominees they consider to be historically bad. I have opposed more than one Democrat nominee in my time. But let's get real here. This obstruction is not about historically bad nominees. The scores of nominees who have emerged from committee with bipartisan support are not historically bad.

The U.S. attorney candidate for Minnesota, supported by the senior Democrat Senator from Minnesota and the junior Democrat Senator from Minnesota, is not a historically bad nominee, and the only reason--the only reason--the Democrat leader objected to his confirmation by voice vote Monday, along with the confirmation of a Trump nominee who had previously been nominated by President Biden, is petty partisanship-- petty partisanship that is well on its way to turning the Senate from a legislative body into, in the words of the senior Democrat from Minnesota, a ``full-time employment agency.''

Before I close, I also want to mention one other complaint from the Democrat leader yesterday, and that is his claim that Republicans' attempt to restore Senate precedent on the en bloc consideration of nominees is somehow going to eliminate transparency.

To hear the Democrat leader tell it, you would think the Senate was going to start approving nominees in the dead of night, behind closed doors in the Capitol basement. I didn't notice the Democrat leader objecting to a lack of transparency when we approved packages of Biden nominees, some of which probably did happen in the dark of night, albeit in the full light of the C-SPAN cameras.

Of course, I should also mention that, before any floor consideration, all of these nominees will have gone through the committee process, which will have provided still another forum for Members to air concerns.

The amendment to the rules Republicans are proposing is an idea with a bipartisan pedigree. It would restore Senate precedent, and it would restore sanity to a confirmation process that Democrats and Republicans alike have complained is broken.

Despite their historic blockade, I think a lot of my Democrat colleagues are well aware that we can't continue as we are. So I say to those colleagues, many of whom I know do care about this institution: Join us. Let's protect decades of Senate precedent on confirmations and get this institution fully functioning again.

Mr. President, I understand that there are two bills at the desk due for second readings.

Mr. President, in order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I would object to further proceeding en bloc.

Mr. President, 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 was horrified to hear moments ago that

conservative activist Charlie Kirk had died after being shot today while speaking at an event on the campus of Utah Valley University.

Political violence, which this attack seems to be, has no place in this country--none. I am deeply disturbed by the threat of violence that has entered our political life, and I pray that we will remember that every person, no matter how vehement our disagreement with them, is a human being and fellow American deserving of respect and protection.

My prayers are with Charlie Kirk's wife and children and his whole family, with the doctors and nurses who cared for him, and with all those who were present at the shooting.

Mr. President, I move to table the Senate amendment No. 3849.

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask that the reading be dispensed with.

I have an amendment to the text of the underlying bill.

Mr. President, I ask that the reading be dispensed with.

I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

I move to recommit the bill to the Committee on Armed Services with instructions.

Mr. President, I ask reading be dispensed with.

I ask for yeas and nays on the motion to commit instructions.

Mr. President, I have an amendment to the instructions.

I ask consent that the reading be waived.

I ask for yeas and nays on my amendment.

Is there a sufficient second?

There appears to be a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays are ordered.

Amendment No. 3868 to Amendment No. 3867

Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be waived.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I have 10 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: