Floor Statements

Madam President, I will say that I join the Senator from New York in welcoming another West Virginia Governor to the Senate. Governor Manchin succeeds a man who is irreplaceable in the Senate's history--Senator Byrd--but he brings to our Senate the skills of a Governor. Governor Rockefeller and I are very partial to those skills. We think the Senate needs more Governors. Governors are accustomed to looking for consensus, to making things work, to making things happen. We have a different sort of job here in the legislature, but those qualities are important, and especially important now when we have such large challenges to face, such as the fact that we are spending $3.7 trillion and collecting $2.1 trillion. All of us are shocked by that, and we have to deal with it one way or the other.

I welcome him and I welcome his wife, a distinguished educator, to the Senate family. I know she is here today, so we welcome her and look forward to learning from her as well.

I join Governor Rockefeller in saying it was a great speech. Your maiden

speech is always your best speech. I remember walking with the University of Tennessee basketball coach in Knoxville in the dogwood parade--or in some parade before the season started. He was very popular before the season began. And Senators who make maiden speeches always have their best speeches then, as basketball coaches always are most popular at the beginning of the year.

But I look forward to working with Senator Manchin. He will make a tremendous contribution to the Senate. I am glad I was here to hear his outstanding address, and I thank the Senator from New York for his courtesy in letting me make my remarks.

Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Kentucky. He is on the mark. Our priorities are two: One, to make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs; two, to reduce the Federal debt.

The Paul amendment makes it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. Why? Because it permits more contractors to hire more people to do more work at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer.

Also, according to the General Accounting Office, it will help lower the Federal debt. In fact, the GAO has recommended changes to the Davis-Bacon Act as a means for trimming the Federal deficit. Leaving the law the way it is, applying the Davis-Bacon law to construction projects all over the country, will mean fewer jobs, less construction, higher taxes, and a higher Federal debt.

Passing the Rand Paul amendment will mean that we will make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. Day after day in this Senate, we should be acting on legislation that remembers that in Tennessee, for example, we have had 24 straight months of unemployment above 9 percent.

I am glad to be a cosponsor of the Paul amendment because, in my State and across the country, it will make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs instead of adding to the debt, creating fewer jobs, less construction, slower airport contracts, and higher taxes.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from New York, the Senators from New Mexico and Oregon, and Senator Harkin of Iowa for their efforts--some over many years--to achieve two goals: to help make the Senate a place that is better able to deal with the serious business that comes before us, and second, to preserve the Senate as a unique forum--unique in the world, really--as a legislative body that protects minority rights.

This is an important step forward--the reform of the Senate--but the reform the Senate needs is a change in behavior, not in its rules. These rules move us in the right direction, but the behavior that the Senator from New York spoke about and that the majority leader and the minority leader spoke about is what, in the end, will make the most difference.

I have talked with many Senators on both sides of the aisle. We have done a lot of talking both on the floor here and off the floor about where the Senate is today, and a great many of us feel the Senate is a shadow of its former self in terms of its ability to function as a truly deliberative body.

It is hard to see how the majority can complain after a legislative session where they passed health care legislation, financial reform legislation, and other legislation that may have even resulted in the diminishing of their numbers. They had a productive session, from their point of view. But the truth is, on both sides of the aisle--on both sides of the aisle--we wish to see the Senate function in a different way.

The majority leader and the Republican leader have put out in a colloquy what that way is, and that will govern what we do. But basically, I believe it is this: We want the same thing--a Senate where most bills are considered by committee, where most bills come to the floor as a result of bipartisan cooperation, where most bills are then

debated and amended and then voted upon.

To someone who may have just tuned into the Senate, they may say: Well, that is a very simple solution. I thought that is what the Senate was supposed to be. It is what the Senate is supposed to be. It wasn't so long ago that it was the standard operating procedure. Senator McConnell said it was just a few years ago. He and Senator Reid have both been here a number of years.

I remember watching the Senate--and I have mentioned this before in this debate--between 1977 and 1985, when Howard Baker of Tennessee and Robert Byrd of West Virginia were the Republican and Democratic leaders. I had worked for Senator Baker before that as a legislative assistant. I knew Senator Byrd. Here is what went on then, and here is what could go on today: Most pieces of legislation that came to the floor started in committee. That gave us a chance to see what they did and to improve them and to hear from voices from all over the country. That legislation then came to the floor.

During Senator Baker's day, when he was the majority leader, he would rarely bring a bill to the floor unless both the Republican chairman and the Democratic ranking member supported it because he didn't want to waste the Senate's time. He knew that the Senate's 60-vote requirement forces consensus.

People talk about the filibuster. But what we have is a requirement that most important bills get 60 votes. If you are sitting with 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans, you don't have to have an advanced degree in mathematics to figure out if you don't have some Democrats and some Republicans, you don't get to 60.

So Senator Baker was saying back in the 1980s, bring the bill to the floor if it has the Republican chairman and the Democratic ranking member's support. Then the call would go out for amendments, and sometimes there would be 300 amendments filed.

The Senator from North Carolina or Tennessee might file 40. And no one said: Whoa, stop. You cannot do that. Instead, they said: Bring them on in. Sometimes there would be 300 amendments. Then Senator Baker or Senator Byrd would ask for unanimous consent to close off amendments. Well, I guess because the Senators by that time were exhausted from writing amendments, they all agreed to it, and then they started voting.

Now, it got to be Wednesday or Thursday, and the party secretaries would go to the Senators and they would say: I notice you still have 30 amendments waiting. Maybe you would only like to offer 15. It might get to Friday, and they would say: I notice you have five left. Maybe you would only like to have one. But if they had one they wanted to get, they almost always got the amendment. That is what the real importance of this agreement is today.

The difference of opinion we have had that has caused us to degenerate, in some cases, to a body that has not functioned as well as it should has been because on that side of the aisle--the majority-- people did not want to vote. It is like joining the Grand Ole Opry and saying: I do not want to sing. Some Republican Senator might offer an amendment that side does not want to vote on, and they say, well, we do not want to vote or they say, well, we do not want to work on Friday. So they go home. And they put pressure on the majority leader to use a procedure called filling the tree which cuts off votes and the right to amend. The majority leader used that power to cut off all amendments and debate 44 times. That's more than the last 6 majority leaders combined. Then what happens over here? Well, then Republican Senators, now in the minority, say: Well, we are not going to get amendments; we are going to start objecting. So we have what is called a lot of filibusters. We say: You are counting filibusters when you cut off our right to offer amendments. They say: You guys over there are keeping us from doing our business. On both sides, there is some truth to what has been said.

So I think most Senators are happy with this result. I think they will be. I hope it works. I mean, the idea would be that the leaders will do their best to see that most bills go to committee, come to the floor, and that when they do, if the Senator from North Carolina has an amendment the Senator from Tennessee would rather not vote on, she offers it anyway if she wants to, or if I have one she would rather not vote on, I may offer it anyway because it is important to the people of my State, even though we might be in a political minority at the moment. I believe that in most cases, if most Senators in the minority have that opportunity, that will help us get back to the kind of Senate we want to see.

I wish to compliment Senator Udall, Senator Merkley, and Senator Harkin. I learned a long time ago in life that if you start out in one direction, you do not always get exactly where you want to go, but you do not get anywhere if you do not start out. I think what they have done with their intelligence and diligence and persistence in this has created a period of time here where the Senate is taking some steps today that will help the people of this country know that serious issues--and we have plenty of them--the debt, for example, where 42 cents out of every dollar we spend is borrowed; jobs, for example, and in my State we have had 24 months of 9-percent unemployment or higher-- these changes will help us deal better with those issues. I will have more opportunity to talk about those after lunch later this afternoon. I want my friends on the other side to have a chance to make their points before we adjourn or take a recess for an hour.

Fundamentally, the steps we are taking make a difference. The one I am especially glad to see is the effort to make it easier for a President--any President--to staff his or her government. One of the problems--and Senator Reid talked about it--is we confirm too many people. It is not necessary for us to confirm the PR officer for a minor department. There is no need for that. The Secretary needs to go ahead and be able to appoint that person. We need to be able to work on more important issues.

Secondly, we have created a phenomenon in this town that I refer to as ``innocent until nominated.'' We have created a situation where any citizen who is invited by the President to serve in his government has to run such a gauntlet that it is almost impossible to get to the end of the gauntlet without being branded as a criminal. The reason is, we have a maze of conflicting forms in the executive branch, plus an IRS audit, and a maze of conflicting forms in the Senate. It not only delays, but it traps people and it tricks people into filling out one definition of ``income'' here and another one there. We all know this is true. We all know it needs to be fixed.

We have tried to fix it before--not just some of us; the majority leader and the Republican leader tried to fix it, and they didn't get it done. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins tried to fix it, and they could not get it done. And 2 years ago, at a bipartisan breakfast which Senator Lieberman and I hosted, we had a whole group of us who said: Let's try to get this done. We talked to President Obama's administration about it. They said: Sure, go ahead. We would like to see that happen, either for us or for the next President. But we could not get it done because of resistance in this body to giving up any sort of power.

Right now, we have a unique confluence of support for the idea of making it easier for any President to staff his or her government. The majority leader and the Republican leader are solidly behind the effort. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins are solidly behind the effort. Senator Schumer and I are working on a bill to do that, and we hope we can succeed. This opportunity, this window would not have happened if it had not been for the work of the Senators who have been arguing for reforms.

The other step we are likely to take is abolishing the secret hold. I think that is a good idea. I speak from experience. When I was nominated by the first President Bush to be Education Secretary, a Senator put a hold on my name, and it took 3 months to get it off. I finally found out who it was. I never knew exactly why he did it or why he took it off, but it might have helped if I had known it a little earlier. So I think it is a good idea. The majority leader put a hold on one of my TVA nominees, but he did it publicly. So I put a hold on one of his nominees, and

I did it publicly. And we worked it out. So there is nothing wrong with asserting our rights, but we might as well do it in public. I congratulate the Senators for making that effort. Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley have been working for more than a decade on that, as well as other Senators.

The step that says that if an amendment has been filed and on the Internet for 72 hours, we cannot require the clerks to read it all night long--that is a very commonsense proposal. I know it will be greatly appreciated by the employees of the Senate who have the job of reading the amendment. If they had a chance to vote, this would probably be the resolution on which they would like to have a chance to vote yes.

So these are important steps in the right direction which we will have a chance to talk about more today as the debate goes on. But I would like to end where I began. What we need most in the Senate is a change in behavior in addition to this change in rules. We need to preserve the Senate as a forum for minority rights. We need to preserve the 60-vote requirement for major votes. That will force consensus. That will cause us to work together. That will build support out in the country for the result of what we do because they can see that both Republicans and Democrats think, for example, that the way we have gone about trying to make Social Security solvent is a good way, rather than one side or the other just jamming through their partisan way.

There is a reason it is a good idea for this not to be a body that operates by a simply majority as the House does. I mean, the House can repeal the health care bill overnight. Bring it over to the Senate, and that side says: Let's stop and think about it. The House, if it is Democratic, can repeal the secret ballot in union elections overnight, and it did with its vote in the last Congress. But when it came over here, the Republican side said: Let's stop and think about it. The American people are better served by having these two different kinds of bodies, and the Senate and the American people will be better served both by the rules changes we are likely to adopt this afternoon and especially by the agreement by the majority leader and the Republican leader, which I feel confident has the backing of almost all of us, that we would like to work in a Senate where most bills are considered by committee, where most bills come to the floor, and where Senators, most of the time, have an opportunity to offer their amendments and debate. To be sure, there will be times when, if it is repeal of health care, that side does everything it can to exercise its rights to stop it, or if it is repeal of the secret ballot in union elections, this side will do everything we can to exercise our rights to stop it. But that will not be the ordinary course of events if this works the way we hope it does.

So I hope my friends on the other side feel good about what they have done. They have not achieved everything they sought to achieve, but we rarely ever do, particularly in a body of 100 that operates by consent of 100. What they have done, I believe, in addition to the rules changes we are likely to adopt, is create a window in which we have had a good, open discussion about the kind of place we want to work, the kind of Senate we hope would serve the American people the best, and we have come to a consensus about a change in behavior, which I believe in the end will be more important than the change in the rules.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Senator Grassley and Senator Wyden and more recently Senator McCaskill, have pointed out the obvious fact that so-called holds that Members of the Senate place on nominations or legislation should be public. I think that is a good idea. That has bipartisan support. I believe today we will change the rules to make that clear, and I congratulate Senators Wyden, Grassley, and McCaskill for their perseverance and persistence in pushing this ahead.

I have always been glad to be public with my holds. I remember when Senator Reid filibustered my TVA nominee by putting a hold on him, so I filibustered one of his Nevada citizens by putting a hold on him. Then we were able to work it out. But Senator Reid and I made our objections public. I knew what he was doing and he knew what I was doing. That is important to build confidence in the Senate.

Senator Grassley is on his way over and he has been the partner with Senator Wyden on reforming holds for some time. I would like to say to Senators Wyden and McCaskill and others--as I have already said to Senators Udall and Merkley--that the efforts they have made to change the rules of the Senate have created a window of opportunity which I believe those of us on both sides of the aisle believe will make the Senate a better functioning forum. These Senators will not succeed in all the changes they are seeking to make but this window of opportunity will allow the Senate to better function as a place to discuss serious issues.

The majority leader and the Republican leader earlier today said they were going to do their best to see that most bills come to the floor after first going to committee. Then once bills get here we will have amendments. I think that is what most of us want. We want a chance to represent the views we have and those we are elected to represent. Sometimes our views are in the minority. Sometimes we are very solitary with our views. Maybe we are the only one who has a particular view. But we want a chance to be heard and a chance to offer amendments to express our views.

I think we are preserving the Senate as a forum in which that can be done, but at the same time we are making it a more effective place in which to do that. I congratulate Senator Wyden and his colleague, Senator Grassley, and others for their efforts.

Mr. President, the Senator from Oregon has talked about the number of nominations that couldn't be considered. I am sure the Senator from Oregon remembers that there cannot be a filibuster on a motion to proceed to a nomination. All the majority leader has to do is bring it up. You can't debate that. If he should bring up the motion to proceed to a nomination, and if a Senator over here or over there objected, then the motion can be put to a simple majority vote. When I was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to be Education Secretary, a secret hold was placed on my nomination. Senator Metzenbaum, as it turned out, had a hold on my nomination for 3 months when all it would have taken for me to be confirmed was for the majority leader to bring my name to the floor. Then if we had gotten 60 votes for it, we could have debated for 30 hours and had a final vote on my nomination.

What would happen during the 30 hours? We don't have Senators going out to dinner except on the other side of the aisle. Because under the current rules, in those 30 hours, one Senator gets 7 hours to speak. We know a Senator can do that because a distinguished Senator from Vermont demonstrated very capably that he was capable of doing that not long ago. He did a great job. People all over the country saw it, wrote him, and he became a little bit of a celebrity for that day. Senators are still capable of that. But if a Senator had wanted to take the whole 30 hours in a postcloture period, he then has to get 23 more Senators to join him in taking an hour of that 30 hours. Without getting into the complications of it, if Senators fail to talk, then the majority leader can say those are dilatory tactics and force any Senator who wants to extend the debate to be very uncomfortable. That Senator would have to get up to 23 Senators to come join him at some time during the speech and take 7 hours himself. The reason why that hasn't been done is because the majority didn't want to do it.

Now I am not just saying that. The master of the Senate rules, Senator Byrd, said it in his last testimony before our Rules Committee last May.

He said this:

Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is

undoubtedly the antidote to the malady.

Senator Byrd was talking about what some considered the abuse of a filibuster. Most recently, before he died, Senator Byrd said:

Senate Majority Leader Reid announced that the Senate would

stay in session around the clock and take all procedural

steps necessary to bring financial reform legislation before

the Senate. As preparations were made and cots rolled out, a

deal was struck within hours and the threat of a filibuster

was withdrawn. I heartily commend the majority leader for

this progress, and I strongly caution my colleagues as some

propose to alter the rules to severely limit the ability of a

minority to conduct a filibuster.

I know what it is to be majority leader, and wake up on a

Wednesday morning in November, and find yourself a minority

leader.

Senator Byrd said the Senate rules provide the means to break a filibuster. He went on to describe that.

Mr. President, I don't want to suggest to the distinguished whip, who knows the rules of the Senate much better than I, or to Harry Reid, the majority leader, how to break a filibuster that he thinks is an abuse. But they know how to do it. That takes a little trouble. You cannot go out to dinner and have a glass of wine, as the Senator from Oregon was talking about. You have to sit on that side of the floor and have 50 Senators ready. You can sit there and say: I would like for the Senator from Tennessee to assert himself. And you can stay all night. I imagine if you do that once or twice, or if we voted on more than zero Fridays, which was the number of Fridays we voted on last year, you could confront filibusters.

After I finish my sentence, I will yield the floor to the Senator from Illinois.

I say to my friends, what we are trying to do today is to move past this time where we point out that the majority leader has cut off our right to amend and debate six times more than recent majority leaders. That is what gets everybody stirred up over here. It is like telling us we can join the Grand Ole Opry, but we can't sing.

We are here to let people know what the people in Tennessee and other States think. We might be in the minority, but we are in the Senate where the minority is supposed to have a voice.

When, time after time, you bring a bill to the floor and cut it off, and you call that a filibuster--that is why we are upset. You are upset because as a result of that you didn't get to bring as many bills to the floor as you would like. We are trying to put that all behind us today. This window of opportunity has produced what I think is important. These rules changes we are going to adopt are good and will move us in the right direction.

The real value of this whole effort has been to cause us to think about how the Senate operates and realize the best way to do it is for most bills to go to committee, come to the floor, and for most Senators to get to offer most of the amendments they want to offer and get them voted on. We might have to vote on a Friday--maybe even a Thursday night or maybe even a Saturday. It might be that the majority has to confront a filibuster by saying: Senator so-and-so, if you are going to slow us down, we are going to make you use that 30 hours. You are going to have to talk your 7 hours and get 23 other Senators, and we are going to be here to see that you do it.

My guess would be that you do that about once, maybe twice, and that would end that particular problem. My real guess is if this general attitude that the majority and minority leaders talked about earlier today occurs, then you will see very few uses of the filibusters you think are inappropriate. The Leaders described an attitude which is that we are going to do our best to see that most bills come to the floor, that most Senators get to offer the amendments they want, and that Senators get the votes on those amendments they want. If you think inappropriate filibusters are occurring, according to Senator Byrd, you have the means to confront them.

My hope is that this whole exercise not only is producing some rules changes that are valuable but a change in behavior on both sides of the aisle which will be valuable. We will wait and see.

I am happy to yield to my friend from Illinois.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, since the distinguished whip has apparently renamed this amendment the ``which side of the aisle goes out to dinner'' amendment, let me ask him this: Isn't it true that if your side didn't go out to dinner--since you asked to be elected to the Senate, you raised a lot of money, and you worked hard and defeated some Republican to get here--if you really think somebody over here is abusing their minority rights by filibustering, then why would you go out to dinner, and why would you not want to be here and hear that person talk and respond to him? Why would you not do that?

Isn't it true that Senator Byrd said that forceful confrontation to the threat of a filibuster is undoubtedly the antidote to the malady? He did not want us tampering with this 60-vote procedure we have that forces consensus.

My question to the majority whip is this: Why did you go out to dinner so often--through the Chair--when instead, you could have been here, under the rules as Senator Byrd suggested, dealing with abuses to the filibuster or what you consider they were?

Madam President, I have already congratulated Senator Udall, Senator Wyden, Senator Merkley, and Senator Harkin for stimulating a good, full discussion about two objectives. No. 1 is, how do we make the Senate the best possible place to deal with serious issues that come before our country, because we have plenty of them right now, starting with our national debt and the high unemployment rates. They have done a good job on that. They have led us today to adopt what I believe are two important steps, one having to do with secret holds and another having to do with taking time away, that might otherwise be better used, by having the clerk read an amendment.

This debate has also produced a couple of other things. One is to create broader support than we have had over a number of years on dealing with the persistent problem of the difficulty a President has in staffing the government. Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, when they were whips, tried to deal with this issue. We had three bipartisan breakfasts on this, working with the White House, 2 years ago. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who are the committee chairs, have tried to deal with this issue. And we have all failed so far.

But Senator Schumer and I will be introducing a bill which we will be discussing with committee chairmen and ranking members especially, and it will have the support of the leaders, Senators McConnell and Reid. It will have the active involvement of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins. What we hope to do is two things. One is to reduce the number on Senate confirmed positions--Senator Harkin spoke about this a little earlier. He has been a ranking member and a chairman. He basically said that we don't need to spend our time here having Senate confirmation of hundreds of part-time boards and commission members or the public relations official for some department. We should focus our attention on issues that affect the American people such as jobs, debt and terror.

The second thing we should do is to end this practice of making it so that the citizens who are invited by the

President of the United States to serve in our government are innocent until nominated. We drag them through a maze of conflicting forms, many of them created by the executive branch and many of them created by the Senate. These nominees fill out forms that trap them and trick them and embarrass them. It is surprising that anybody will accept the opportunity to serve. I remember majority leader Howard Baker was nominated by President Bush to go to Japan as Ambassador. Everybody in the Senate knew him very well. He was voted ``Most Admired Senator'' by Senators on both sides of the aisle in the 1980s. It cost him $250,000 to fill out the forms so that he could be the Ambassador to Japan. I could give many examples of similar difficulties.

Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find your house and put your kid in school if you come to work here. We need good people in the government. We need to be able to attract them here. We should fix the current system. I greatly appreciate the work Senators Schumer, Reid, McConnell, Lieberman, Collins and others have done. I hope our colleagues will join us in bringing this forward in an expedited way.

I ask unanimous consent to include at the end of my remarks, remarks I made on March 9, 2009, on the Senate floor entitled ``Innocent Until Nominated.''

Madam President, only two other things.

I wish to congratulate Senator McConnell and Senator Reid for leading us in this way. Changing rules is an important step forward. I do not in any way want to diminish what I believe we are about to do, but we need a change in behavior more than we need a change in rules. This debate has caused us to talk across party lines about what we want, and I think what we want is what Senator Udall said as a whole. We would like most bills to come through committee and then come to the floor. We want to have a chance for most Senators to be able to offer most of their amendments and then to get votes. That is what we should try to do most of the time. Sometimes the Republicans will want to repeal the health care law, and the Democrats will use all of their resources to defeat our efforts. Sometimes the Democrats in the House will send over a bill to repeal the secret ballot in union elections, and Republicans will try to defeat that. We will use all of our resources in those instances. But that won't be most of the time. Most of the time, we will be able to do our jobs better to represent the people who sent us here.

I hope those who have provoked this discussion feel a sense of satisfaction about what they have done, even though I know that in every case they didn't get exactly what they want.

Finally, I ask unanimous consent that a long response to Senator Harkin's excellent comments on his amendment which he has been fighting for for 16 years, be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Senator Harkin is very straightforward about his difference of opinion. He believes we ought to bring every debate eventually to 51 votes. So I would respectfully term his amendment as sort of a ``hang me now or hang me later.'' We know that eventually it is not 60 votes we are going to require, it is 51, and he says that is the way it ought to be. I disagree. So do many others.

I will just cite two distinguished Senators who spoke on the floor of the Senate about 5 years ago when a number of Republicans got it in their minds that they would like to change the filibuster rule as it affects judges. This is what Senator Harry Reid said then:

The filibuster is far from a procedural gimmick. It is part

of the fabric of this institution that we call the Senate.

For 200 years we've had the right to extend the debate. It's

not a procedural gimmick. Some in this Chamber want to throw

out 214 years of Senate history in the quest for absolute

power. They want to do away with Mr. Smith as depicted in

that great movie being able to come to Washington. They want

to do away with the filibuster. They think they are wiser

than our Founding Fathers. I doubt that's true.

The then-Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, referring then to the Republican majority:

Then if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they

choose to change the rules and put an end to Democratic

debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock

will only get worse.

I would suggest that, as a result of this discussion, we preserve the Senate as an institution, a forum for deliberation where minority rights are protected.

But we have also taken some important steps forward--or are about to--with rules changes to make them function better. We have reached a consensus among ourselves--informally, anyway--that is represented by the colloquy that will be placed in the Record by Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. They said what we want is an opportunity to represent the American people the way they sent us here to do it, which is to take legislation, bring it through committee, bring it to the floor, and for us to have a chance to amend, debate, and vote. That would be most of the time. Some of the time we will exercise our minority and majority rights to defeat a bill, because that is also what we are sent here to do.

I thank the Senators for this spirited debate. As far as I know, there are no more speakers on the Republican side.

Exhibit 1

Floor Remarks of U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), ``Innocent Until

Nominated''

(March 9, 2009)

Mr. President, in the midst of much talk about

bipartisanship and not much to show for it, I have a

nomination for an issue upon which we can work together, and

that is this: review the maze of conflicting forms, FBI

investigations, IRS audits, ethics requirements, and

financial disclosures to make it possible for President Obama

and future Presidents to put together promptly a team to help

them solve big problems.

This is an urgent problem today because during the worst

banking crisis since the Great Depression, the man in charge

of fixing the crisis, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,

apparently is sitting in his office without much help, at

least from any Obama Presidential appointees.

According to news accounts, among the key vacant positions

at the Treasury Department are the Assistant Secretary for

Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy;

the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis; the Deputy

Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy; and

the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs.

The first choice for Deputy Secretary of the Treasury appears

to have withdrawn her name from consideration.

Four months after the President's election, according to

TheBigMoney.com, the list of vacancies on the Treasury

Department Web site shows that ``Main Treasury Building is a

lonely place, conjuring up visions of Geithner signing dollar

bills one by one . . ., watering the plants, and answering

the phones when he's not crafting a bank rescue plan.''

Of course, there are the career employees available and at

least one holdover Assistant Secretary and various czars in

the White House--but even one of the czars has expressed

concern about the slow pace of filling Treasury Department

jobs at a critical time.

Part of the problem may be attributed to the Treasury

Secretary's boss, our impressive new President, who is

nevertheless subject to the criticism that he is living over

the store but not minding it.

Presidents have many problems to solve, but no one ever

suggested that the wisest course is to try to solve them all

at once. There is a tradition that Washington, DC, can only

do one thing well at a time. And Presidents are supposed to

exclude from the White House the merely important issues so

they may deal with the truly Presidential problems, which

surely must not include being distracted by debates with

radio talk show hosts.

President Eisenhower, who knew something about leading

complex organizations, said in 1952: ``I will go to Korea.''

The country relaxed and elected him, confident that the

general would end the Korean war.

We need for President Obama to say in Eisenhower fashion

``I will fix the banks''--and then stay home long enough to

do it. Then the country might relax a little and gain some

confidence that this might actually happen, which is the

first step and perhaps the main step in economic recovery.

But the President needs a team at Treasury to help persuade

the American people that he can and will get the job done.

The President has brought on himself some of the difficulty

of putting together a team. In addition to having too many

balls in the air at once, in my opinion, his standards for

hiring sometimes seem to have the effect of disqualifying

people who know something about the problem from being hired

to solve the problem.

But another part of the President's difficulty in filling

jobs--one that has afflicted every President since

Watergate--is the maze of investigations and forms that

prospective senior officials must complete and the risk they

run that they will be trapped and humiliated and disqualified

by an unintentional and relatively harmless mistake.

I voted against the nomination of Secretary Geithner

because I thought it was a bad example for the man in charge

of collecting the taxes not to have paid them. And I thought

his excuse for not paying was not plausible. But that does

not mean that we should disqualify every Presidential nominee

for minor tax discrepancies that result from the complexity

of our Byzantine Tax Code, a Tax Code which has reached 3.7

million words, according to a January report by the National

Taxpayer Advocate, and which is badly in need of reform.

I suspect very few Americans with complex tax returns can

go through a multiple-year audit without finding something

with which the IRS might disagree.

Take the case of former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, President

Obama's nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative, who

headlines report paid back taxes primarily because he failed

to list as income--and then take a charitable deduction on--

speaking fees that he gave away to charity. Common sense

suggests, and his tax preparer thought, what Mr. Kirk did was

appropriate. After all, he did not keep the money. The IRS

apparently has a more convoluted rule for dealing with such

things. In any event, the matter is so trivial as to be

irrelevant to his suitability to be the trade nominee.

Tax audits are only the beginning. There is the FBI full

field investigation during which friends of the nominee are

asked such questions as: Does he live be and his means?

When I was nominated for Education Secretary a few years

ago, one of my friends replied to the FBI agent: Don't we

all?

There are Federal financial disclosures. Then there is the

White House questionnaire, and, of course, the questions from

the confirming Senate committee. The definition of what

constitutes ``income'' on some forms is different than the

definition of ``income'' on others. It is easy to make a

mistake.

This is not as bad as it could be. We have a Democratic

President and a Democratic Congress with big majorities in

both Chambers. So the nominees have gone through fairly

quickly. But when the Congress is of a different party than

the President, the congressional questionnaires expand and

sometimes delay the nomination for more weeks.

Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a

lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find

a house and put your kid in school.

The motto around here has become: ``Innocent until

nominated.''

Every legal counsel to every President since Nixon would, I

suspect, agree that in the name of effective government, this

process needs to be changed. Most have tried to change it,

but in Washington style, new regulations pile up on top of

old ones, creating a more bewildering maze. So I have this

suggestion--and one of the Senators to whom I want to make

the suggestion is here today, the Senator from Connecticut. I

suggest Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who are the

chairman and ranking member of the committee with

jurisdiction over this mess and who have a tradition of

working well together, should set as a goal to clean it up by

the end of the year. Invite all the former White House

counsels of both parties to give their opinions. Consolidate

and simplify the forms so we learn only what we need to know.

To help with this, I suggest that Senators Lieberman and

Collins form one of those ``gangs'' that we occasionally form

in the Senate, maybe a dozen or more Senators equally divided

among both parties--some from the Homeland Security and

Governmental Affairs Committee and some not--in order to

limit the possibility that everyone will run away from the

final recommendations because they fear someone might think

Senators are not interested in ethical and good government.

Good government right now means fixing the banks and having

the best possible team to do it.

As a Washington Post editorial writer said yesterday of the

President:

As he convened his ``health care summit'' at the White

House . . . the stock market was hitting another 12-year low,

General Motors was again teetering on the brink of insolvency

and the country was still waiting to hear the details of the

Treasury's proposal to bail out banks. Maybe we can make this

grand bargain with our new President: If you will keep your

eye on the ball--in this case, fixing the banks so the

economy will get moving again--we will work in a bipartisan

way to make it easier for you and for future Presidents to

promptly assemble a team and govern us properly.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Madam President, this amendment puts into effect what the Republicans called in the health care debate the Bunning rule, which is, if it is not on the Internet and not available for 72 hours, it shouldn't be brought up.

We think this is a sensible--I think this is a sensible amendment, and I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. President, this amendment might be called the ``if you are going to hang me later, hang me now'' amendment. This would eliminate the filibuster by making certain that it only took 51 votes, eventually, to pass a bill. This filibuster, according to the current majority leader in 2005, ``is a part of the fabric of this institution we call the Senate.'' Former Senator Obama said in the same year, ``If the majority,'' he then referred to the Republicans, ``chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.''

We have agreements today that will begin to end fighting and gridlock, bring bills to the floor, having more amendments.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the proposal.

Mr. President, in his last appearance before the Rules

Committee, Senator Byrd quoted James Madison's description of this body as a necessary fence against rulers and transient impressions and said the right to filibuster anchors this necessary fence and we must never, ever tear down the only wall, the necessary fence, that the Nation has against these excesses.

This amendment does not tear down that fence, but it seriously weakens it. I recommend a ``no'' vote.

Mr. President, in his last appearance before the Rules Committee, Senator Byrd said:

Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is

undoubtedly the antidote to the malady.

He also said:

I also know that current Senate rules provide the means to

break a filibuster.

If Senator Byrd, who knew the rules better than any of us, thought that, we don't need to change the rules.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to congratulate the Senator from New Mexico. He has been persistent and diligent and enormously well intentioned in this effort throughout the Rules Committee hearings and throughout the floor debate in seeking a way to help make the Senate function better, at the same time preserving the Senate as a forum for deliberation and protection of minority rights.

We have a difference of opinion about whether that is best done by allowing changes of rules by 51 votes or by 67, which is the way the Senate rules currently prescribe. His proposal to change the rules certainly can be considered on the Senate floor in the regular order, and we would be happy to work with him to do that as long as it was by 67 votes.

So because of that difference of opinion, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Senator from Iowa has, for at least since the early 1990s, been forcefully arguing for his position. We have the same difference of opinion fundamentally that I mentioned in connection with Senator Udall's amendment. We are glad for these rules changes and amendments to come to the floor, but only if they are approved or rejected with the requirement of 67 votes. So for that reason, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Senator from Oregon is a former speaker of the house in Oregon, and he has been a long observer of the Senate, having come here first working for Senator Hatfield, and he has been effective and passionate in his views.

Today, I was reviewing some remarks made by largely Democratic Senators, from 4 or 5 years ago, when some Republicans got the idea that it might be a good idea to make this a more majoritarian body, and Senator Schumer, Senator Reid, Senator Clinton, and Senator Obama all said it would be a mistake.

So although I greatly respect the Senator from Oregon, we have a difference of opinion about whether it is in the best interest of the Senate and of the country to change the rules in this way, so I object.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I had a good discussion with the Senator from Iowa. This is a longstanding proposal of his. He has thoughtfully considered it. Even though I admire him, I do not admire the proposal.

What we would like to do is let the Senator from Iowa make his proposal. I will listen, and when he has made the proposal, I will ask him to yield me a few minutes and we may have a little discussion back and forth on the merits of the proposal. With that in mind, I object.

I thank the Senator from Iowa for his consistency over the years with his proposal. I wonder if I can make a few remarks on his proposal, and if he has time, if he is still here, maybe I will pose a question to him. I see the Senator from Kansas is also here. He spent a lot of time on the Rules Committee on this subject. He is one of our most forceful speakers on the matter, and I would defer to him, and then I know there are other Senators--the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from New Mexico--who have some proposals to offer. There may be other Senators on the Republican side who come to the floor.

First, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an address I made yesterday at the Heritage Foundation entitled ``The Filibuster: Democracy's finest show . . . the right to talk your head off.''

I borrowed those words from H.V. Kaltenborn and ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.''

I am a little amused by the suggestion the Senator from Iowa made and others made that somehow the Senate has been paralyzed for the last couple of years. Most of the people I know are concerned about what the Senate did do, not what it did not do. It is hard to say you are paralyzed when you pass a $1 trillion stimulus bill, health care law, financial regulation law, et cetera, et cetera.

As far as the claim that Republicans are holding things up goes, I have a few comments. We did not have a budget last year. Most households have to have budgets. The Senate ought to have one. Why didn't we have a budget? It wasn't the Republicans holding it up. As the Senator from Iowa said, under our rules, it only takes 51 votes to pass a budget. During the last couple of years, the Democrats had 59 or 60 votes. So the reason we did not have a budget is because the Democrats did not want to pass a budget, or at least that they did not pass a budget. It had nothing to do with the Senate being ``broken.''

The Senator from Iowa made this Rules proposal in 1995. He has made some modifications in his proposal but basically this is the same as he offered in 1995. I remember those days pretty well. It was right after the so-called Gingrich revolution, in 1994. Republicans took control of the Senate and of the House of Representatives. The Senator from Iowa made his proposal to diminish the effectiveness of a filibuster. What did the Republicans do? The Republicans, had the most to gain--at least temporarily--from being able to get their agenda through the Senate. But every single one opposed the proposal. Every single Republican Senator in 1995 said: No, we may love our agenda, but we do not want to change the Senate. We don't want to jeopardize the Senate as a forum for forcing consensus and protecting minority rights and letting the voices of all of the people be heard on the Senate floor.

Not only the Republican Senators in 1995 had that opinion. Here are some things that were said mostly in 2005 by Democratic leaders. There were some Republicans who had the same idea the Senator from Iowa has about diminishing the effectiveness of the filibuster. In this case, they wanted to diminish the use of filibusters on judicial nominations. There was great consternation because Democrats decided to filibuster President Bush's judges. I didn't like that either. This is what has been said by Democrats.

Senator Robert Byrd in his last testimony before the Rules Committee:

We must never, ever, ever, ever tear down the only wall,

the necessary fence, that this Nation has against the

excesses of the Executive Branch.

What is that necessary fence? That necessary fence is anchored in the filibuster.

Senator Schumer of New York in 2005:

The checks and balances which have been at the core of this

Republic are about to be evaporated.

This was in response to the Republicans who were trying to diminish the effectiveness of the filibuster in 2005. ``The checks and balances'' Senator Schumer said, ``which say that if you get 51 percent of the vote, you don't get your way 100 percent of the time.''

Former Senator Hillary Clinton:

You've got majority rule. Then you've got the Senate over

here where people can slow things down, where they can

debate, where they have something called the filibuster. You

know, it seems like it's a little less than efficient. Well,

that's right, it is. And deliberately designed to be so.

Senator Dodd more recently:

I'm totally opposed to the idea of changing the filibuster

rules. I think that's foolish, in my view.

Senator Byrd:

That's why we have a Senate, to amend and debate freely.

Senator Dodd:

I can understand the temptation to change the rules that

make the Senate so unique and simultaneously so terribly

frustrating. But whether such temptation is motivated by a

noble desire to speed up the legislative process or by pure

political expediency, I believe such changes would be unwise

. . .

Therefore, to my fellow Senators who never served a day in

the minority, I urge you to pause in your enthusiasm to

change Senate rules.

Just two more.

Senator Reid, who was then the Democratic leader but the minority leader, said in 2005:

The filibuster is far from a ``procedural gimmick.'' It's

part of the fabric of this institution that we call the

Senate. For 200 years we've had the right to extend the

debate. It's not procedural gimmick. Some in this chamber

want to throw out 214 years of Senate history in the quest

for absolute power. They want to do away with Mr. Smith, as

depicted in that great movie, being able to come to

Washington. They want to do away with the filibuster. They

think they're wiser than our Founding Fathers. I doubt that's

true.

Then there was one other Senator who spoke and who said this, the Senator from Illinois, Senator Obama:

Then if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they

choose to change the rules and put an end to the Democratic

debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock

will only get worse.

I think the last 2 years in the Senate have been an aberration. We have had no incentive for the majority to take the ideas of the minority because the majority had these huge majorities, nearly 60 votes here, and a Democratic President.

So when Senator Corker, my colleague from Tennessee, began to work on the financial regulation bill, there came a time in the process where the Democrats said: Well, you know, we like Corker, and he has got some good ideas, but we do not need his vote to pass this bill. We have got the votes. We won the election. We will write the bill.

So the Senate has had no consensus. Instead, we had a Democratic financial regulation bill. We had a Democratic health care bill. We had a mostly Democratic stimulus bill. We might have had one or two Republicans vote for it.

For the last 2 years, we have not had any experience in working across party lines. What the filibuster does is say, you are not going to pass anything in the Senate unless at least some Republicans and some Democrats agree. You will not pass anything unless you get a consensus.

Then that will change behavior, and people say, okay, let's bring a No Child Left Behind bill to the floor. But it has got to have the support of Senator Enzi and Senator Harkin or it is not going anywhere, because it has got to have 60 votes to move forward. What is the advantage of that? The advantage of that is the comparison of the Civil Rights bill in 1964, and the health care law of 2009.

In 1964, after a bitter fight led by Senator Russell of Georgia, the Civil Rights bill passed the Senate, overcoming a filibuster. The bill was written in the Republican leader's office. It was not just sent over there in the middle of the night during Christmas, it was written in his office. You had President Johnson, a Democrat, and Senator Dirksen saying, this is good for the country. A lot of people hated the bill. And some people thought it did not go far enough.

What did Senator Russell do, who had fought that bill for his whole term here? He went home to Georgia and said, I did everything I could to stop it, but it is the law, and we must obey it. So not only does the Senate need a consensus to get a better bill, we need a bill that the country will accept.

Compare that to the health care law in 2009. A lot of good intentions went into the health care law. I know that. Senator Harkin was in the middle of that, but the fact of the matter was that it was a Democratic bill. It was rammed through Christmas Eve in the middle of the night. We barely had a chance to look at the bill, and it passed with a solely partisan vote.

And what happened? Instead of everybody going home and saying, it is the law of the land, we support it, an instant movement was created to repeal it and replace it. I hope we will not do what Senator Harkin suggests. I think his proposal will create a situation where the majority says: well, we are going to hang you, but we will hang you in 3 days instead of tonight. They will narrow it down until they can pass a measure with 51 votes.

So if the Republican House of Representatives passes a bill to repeal the health care law, then you know Senate Republicans would pass it, too, if we have got 51 votes. Or if the Democratic House, as they did last year, passes a bill to repeal the ballot in secret elections then the Democrats over here will pass it, too, if they have 51 votes. But when a consensus is required, if bills such as that come from the House to the Senate, we in the Senate say, whoa, let's think this over. We do not pass it. We do not pass it unless we have some kind of consensus.

That does not mean all the Republicans and all of the Democrats must always agree. We had almost all of the Republicans and some of the Democrats on the tax agreement that was passed in December. On the New START treaty, we had almost all of the Democrats and some of the Republicans support it. But in each case, at least you had substantial consensus from both parties, and I think the country respects and appreciates that.

I think the Framers knew what they were doing when they created a majoritarian House, in other words, the freight train that can run through whatever the result of election is. And when they created a different kind of Senate. A different kind of Senate that Senator Byrd eloquently has said has been one where we can say, you are not going to pass anything unless we do it together. That is called consensus. That is called cooperation. I think the American people would be greatly relieved.

My question I wish to pose through the Chair to Senator Harkin is, what is a filibuster? Senator Sanders was on the floor for several hours on the tax debate last month. He spoke for 8 or 9 hours. I guess that is a filibuster in the traditional sense. But I think the kind of filibuster the Senator from Iowa is counting is this: let's say Senator Reid brings a health care bill to the floor, and I rush over to offer an amendment to the health care bill, and Senator Reid says: Sorry, I am going to cut off your amendment. Then I object. Senator Reid calls what I tried to do a filibuster.

If we are just talking and amending and debating, that is not a filibuster. It is not a filibuster until the majority leader cuts off debate and amendments. So what the Democrats are counting as filibusters is the number of times they have cut us off from doing what we are supposed to do, which is, amend and debate.

It is like being invited to sing on the Grand Ole Opry, and getting there and you are not allowed to sing. The people of Tennessee do not expect me to come up here and sit on a log just because the distinguished majority leader says he does not want my amendments. What was traditional in the Senate is that Senators could offer amendments and debate, at almost any time, on almost any bill. In the days of Senator Byrd and Senator Baker, they would have 300 amendments filed. They would start voting. So some Senators would say, well, it is Thursday, don't we go home? The Leaders would say no, we are going to vote, unless you want to

give up your amendment. Instead of doing that, we did not vote on one Friday in the Senate this past year, and a lot of Senators on both sides of the aisle do not want to vote on controversial issues. If we look for consensus, if we were willing to vote on controversial issues, and if we ended the 3-day work week, if the majority thinks the minority is abusing the filibuster, they can confront it. They can sit over there and they can say to us, okay, Senator Alexander, 60 of us are ready to cut this off. We are ready to get on to a vote. So you have got 7 hours that you can speak, then you have got to get 23 other Senators to take the other hours. If you stop talking, we are going to put the question to a vote, and we have got some motions we can make about your being dilatory. In other words, we can make life miserable for you, because we are going to do this all night long.

Senator Byrd said in his last testimony: The rules exist today to confront a filibuster.

So my question to the Senator from Iowa which I would pose through the Chair is: What is a filibuster? Is a filibuster when I come down to the floor to amend the health care bill, and the majority leader says, sorry, I am going to use my powers to cut it off? You cannot amend the bill. And then he files cloture.

That is what he calls a filibuster, I think. What I call it is cutting off my right to amend, right to debate, right to do my job.

Exhibit 1

The Filibuster: ``Democracy's Finest Show . . . The Right To Talk Your

Head Off''

(Address by Senator Lamar Alexander, Heritage Foundation, Jan. 4, 2011)

Voters who turned out in November are going to be pretty

disappointed when they learn the first thing some Democrats

want to do is cut off the right of the people they elected to

make their voices heard on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

In the November elections, voters showed that they remember

the passage of the health care law on Christmas Eve, 2009:

midnight sessions, voting in the midst of a snow storm, back

room deals, little time to read, amend or debate the bill,

passage by a straight party line vote.

It was how it was done as much as what was done that

angered the American people. Minority voices were silenced.

Those who didn't like it were told, ``You can read it after

you pass it.'' The majority's attitude was, ``We won the

election. We'll write the bill. We don't need your votes.''

And of course the result was a law that a majority of

voters consider to be an historic mistake and the beginning

of an immediate effort to repeal and replace it.

Voters remembered all this in November, but only 6 weeks

later Democratic senators seemed to have forgotten it. I say

this because on December 18, every returning Democratic

senator sent Senator Reid a letter asking him to ``take steps

to bring [Republican] abuses of our rules to an end.''

When the United States Senate convenes tomorrow, some have

threatened to try to change the rules so it would be easier

to do with every piece of legislation what they did with the

health care bill: ram it through on a partisan vote, with

little debate, amendment, or committee consideration, and

without listening to minority voices.

The brazenness of this proposed action is that Democrats

are proposing to use the very tactics that in the past almost

every Democratic leader has denounced, including President

Obama and Vice President Biden, who has said that it is ``a

naked power grab'' and destructive of the Senate as a

protector of minority rights.

The Democratic proposal would allow the Senate to change

its rules with only 51 votes, ending the historical practice

of allowing any senator at any time to offer any amendment

until sixty senators decide it is time to end debate.

As Investor's Business Daily wrote, ``The Senate Majority

Leader has a plan to deal with Republican electoral success.

When you lose the game, you simply change the rules. When you

only have 53 votes, you lower the bar to 51.'' This is called

election nullification.

Now there is no doubt the Senate has been reduced to a

shadow of itself as the world's greatest deliberative body, a

place which, as Sen. Arlen Specter said in his farewell

address, has been distinctive because of ``the ability of any

Senator to offer virtually any amendment at any time.''

But the demise of the Senate is not because Republicans

seek to filibuster. The real obstructionists have been the

Democratic majority which, for an unprecedented number of

times, used their majority advantage to limit debate, not to

allow amendments and to bypass the normal committee

consideration of legislation.

To be specific, according to the Congressional Research

Service:

1. the majority leader has used his power to cut off all

amendments and debate 44 times--more than the last six

majority leaders combined;

2. the majority leader has moved to shut down debate the

same day measures are considered (same-day cloture) nearly

three times more, on average, than the last six majority

leaders;

3. the majority leader has set the record for bypassing the

committee process bringing a measure directly to the floor 43

times during the 110th and 111th Congresses.

Let's be clear what we mean when we say the word

``filibuster.'' Let's say the majority leader brings up the

health care bill. I go down to the floor to offer an

amendment and speak on it. The majority leader says ``no''

and cuts off my amendment. I object. He calls what I tried to

do a filibuster. I call what he did cutting off my right to

speak and amend which is what I was elected to do. So the

problem is not a record number of filibusters; the problem is

a record number of attempts to cut off amendments and debate

so that minority voices across America cannot be heard on the

floor of the Senate.

So the real ``party of no'' is the majority party that has

been saying ``no'' to debate, and ``no'' to voting on

amendments that minority members believe improve legislation

and express the voices of the people they represent. In fact,

the reason the majority leader can claim there have been so

many filibusters is because he actually is counting as

filibusters the number of times he filed cloture--or moved to

cut off debate.

Instead of this power grab, as the new Congress begins, the

goal should be to restore the Senate to its historic role

where the voices of the people can be heard, rather than

silenced, where their ideas can be offered as amendments,

rather than suppressed, and where those amendments can be

debated and voted upon rather than cut off.

To accomplish this, the Senate needs to change its

behavior, not to change its rules. The majority and minority

leaders have been in discussion on steps that might help

accomplish this. I would like to discuss this afternoon why

it is essential to our country that cooler heads prevail

tomorrow when the Senate convenes.

One good example Democrats might follow is the one

established by Republicans who gained control of both the

Senate and House of Representatives in 1995. On the first day

of the new Republican majority, Sen. Harkin proposed a rule

change diluting the filibuster. Every single Republican

senator voted against the change even though supporting it

clearly would have provided at least a temporary advantage to

the Republican agenda.

Here is why Republicans who were in the majority then, and

Democrats who are in the majority today, should reject a

similar rules change:

First, the proposal diminishes the rights of the minority.

In his classic Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

wrote that one of his two greatest fears for our young

democracy was the ``tyranny of the majority,'' the

possibility that a runaway majority might trample minority

voices.

Second, diluting the right to debate and vote on amendments

deprives the nation of a valuable forum for achieving

consensus on difficult issues. The founders knew what they

were doing when they created two very different houses in

Congress. Senators have six-year terms, one-third elected

every two years. The Senate operates largely by unanimous

consent. There is the opportunity, unparalleled in any other

legislative body in the world, to debate and amend until a

consensus finally is reached. This procedure takes longer,

but it usually produces a better result--and a result the

country is more likely to accept. For example, after the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, by a bipartisan

majority over a filibuster led by Sen. Russell of Georgia,

Sen. Russell went home to Georgia and said that, though he

had fought the legislation with everything he had, ``As long

as it is there, it must be obeyed.'' Compare that to the

instant repeal effort that was the result of jamming the

health care law through in a partisan vote.

Third, such a brazen power grab by Democrats this year will

surely guarantee a similar action by Republicans in two years

if Republicans gain control of the Senate as many believe is

likely to happen. We have seen this happen with Senate

consideration of judges. Democrats began the practice of

filibustering President Bush's judges even though they were

well-qualified; now Democrats are unhappy because many

Republicans regard that as a precedent and have threatened to

do the same to President Obama's nominees. Those who want to

create a freight train running through the Senate today, as

it does in the House, might think about whether they will

want that freight train in two years if it is the Tea Party

Express.

Finally, it is hard to see what partisan advantage

Democrats gain from destroying the Senate as a forum for

consensus and protection of minority rights since any

legislation they jam through without bipartisan support will

undoubtedly die in the Republican-controlled House during the

next two years.

* * *

The reform the Senate needs is a change in its behavior,

not a change in its rules. I have talked with many senators,

on both sides of the aisle, and I believe most of us want the

same thing: a Senate where most bills are considered by

committee, come to the floor as a result of bipartisan

cooperation, are debated and amended and then voted upon.

It was not so long ago that this was the standard operating

procedure. I have seen the Senate off and on for more than

forty years, from the days in 1967 when I came to the Senate

as Sen. Howard Baker's legislative assistant. That was when

each senator

had only one legislative assistant. I came back to help Sen.

Baker set up his leadership office in 1977 and watched the

way that Sen. Baker and Sen. Byrd led the Senate from 1977 to

1985, when Democrats were in the majority for the first four

years and Republicans were the second four years.

Then, most pieces of legislation that came to the floor had

started in committee. Then that legislation was open for

amendment. There might be 300 amendments filed and, after a

while, the majority would ask for unanimous consent to cut

off amendments. Then voting would begin. And voting would

continue.

The leaders would work to persuade senators to limit their

amendments but that didn't always work. So the leaders kept

the Senate in session during the evening, during Fridays, and

even into the weekend. Senators got their amendments

considered and the legislation was fully vetted, debated and

finally passed or voted down.

Sen. Byrd knew the rules. I recall that when Republicans

won the majority in 1981, Sen. Baker went to see Sen. Byrd

and said, ``Bob I know you know the rules better than I ever

will. I'll make a deal with you. You don't surprise me and I

won't surprise you.''

Sen. Byrd said, ``Let me think about it.''

And the next day Sen. Byrd said yes and the two leaders

managed the Senate effectively together for eight years.

What would it take to restore today's Senate to the Senate

of the Baker-Byrd era?

Well, we have the answer from the master of the Senate

rules himself, Sen. Byrd, who in his last appearance before

the Rules Committee on May 19, 2010 said: ``Forceful

confrontation to a threat to filibuster is undoubtedly the

antidote to the malady [abuse of the filibuster]. Most

recently, Senate Majority Leader Reid announced that the

Senate would stay in session around-the-clock and take all

procedural steps necessary to bring financial reform

legislation before the Senate. As preparations were made and

cots rolled out, a deal was struck within hours and the

threat of filibuster was withdrawn. . . . I also know that

current Senate Rules provide the means to break a

filibuster.''

Sen. Byrd also went on to argue strenuously in that last

speech that ``our Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be

a continuing body that allows for open and unlimited debate

and the protection of minority rights. Senators,'' he said,

``have understood this since the Senate first convened.''

Sen. Byrd then went on: ``In his notes of the

Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, James Madison

recorded that the ends to be served by the Senate were

`first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly,

to protect the people against the transient impressions into

which they themselves might be led. . . They themselves, as

well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to

err also, from fickleness and passion. A necessary fence

against this danger would be to select a portion of

enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness

might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils.' That

fence,'' Sen. Byrd said in that last appearance, ``was the

United States Senate. The right to filibuster anchors this

necessary fence. But it is not a right intended to be

abused.''

``There are many suggestions as to what we should do. I

know what we must not do. We must never, ever, ever, ever

tear down the only wall--the necessary fence--this nation has

against the excess of the Executive Branch and the resultant

haste and tyranny of the majority.''

What would it take to restore the years of Sens. Baker and

Byrd, when most bills that came to the floor were first

considered in committee, when more amendments were

considered, debated and voted upon?

1. Recognize that there has to be bipartisan cooperation

and consensus on important issues. The day of ``we won the

election, we jam the bill through'' will have to be over.

Sen. Baker would not bring a bill to the floor when

Republicans were in the majority unless it had the support of

the ranking Democratic committee member.

2. Recognize that senators are going to have to vote. This

may sound ridiculous to say to an outsider, but every Senate

insider knows that a major reason why the majority cuts off

amendments and debate is because Democratic members don't

want to vote on controversial issues. That's like

volunteering to be on the Grand Ole Opry but then claiming

you don't want to sing. We should say, if you don't want to

vote, then don't run for the Senate.

3. Finally, according to Sen. Byrd, it will be the end of

the three-day work week. The Senate convenes on most Mondays

for a so-called bed-check vote at 5:30. The Senate during

2010 did not vote on one single Friday. It is not possible

either for the minority to have the opportunity to offer,

debate and vote on amendments or for the majority to

forcefully confront a filibuster if every senator knows there

will never be a vote on Friday.

There are some other steps that can be taken to help the

Senate function better without impairing minority rights.

One bipartisan suggestion has been to end the practice of

secret holds. It seems reasonable to expect a senator who

intends to hold up a bill or a nomination to allow his

colleagues and the world know who he or she is so that the

merits of the hold can be evaluated and debated.

Second, there is a crying need to make it easier for any

President to staff his government with key officials within a

reasonable period of time. One reason for the current delay

is the President's own fault, taking an inordinately long

time to vet his nominees. Another is a shared responsibility:

the maze of conflicting forms, FBI investigations, IRS

audits, ethics requirements and financial disclosures

required both by the Senate and the President of nominees. I

spoke on the Senate floor on this, titling my speech

``Innocent until Nominated.'' The third obstacle is the

excessive number of executive branch appointments requiring

Senate confirmation. There have been bipartisan efforts to

reduce these obstacles. With the support the majority and

minority leaders, we might achieve some success.

Of course, even if all of these efforts succeed there still

will be delayed nominations, bills that are killed before

they come to the floor and amendments that never see the

light of day. But this is nothing new. I can well remember

when Sen. Metzenbaum of Ohio put a secret hold on my

nomination when President George H.W. Bush appointed me

education secretary. He held up my nomination for three

months, never really saying why.

I asked Sen. Rudman of New Hampshire what I could do about

Sen. Metzenbaum, and he said, ``Nothing.'' And then he told

me how President Ford had appointed him to the Federal

Communications Commission when he, Rudman, was Attorney

General of New Hampshire. The Democratic senator from New

Hampshire filibustered Rudman's appointment until Rudman

finally asked the president to withdraw his name.

``Is that the end of the story?'' I asked Rudman.

``No,'' he said. ``I ran against the [so-and-so] and won,

and that's how I got into the Senate.''

During his time here Sen. Metzenbaum would sit at a desk at

the front of the Senate and hold up almost every bill going

through until its sponsor obtained his approval. Sen. Allen

of Alabama did the same before Metzenbaum. And Sen. John

Williams of Delaware during the 1960's was on the floor

regularly objecting to federal spending when I first came

here forty years ago.

* * *

I have done my best to make the argument that the Senate

and the country will be served best if cooler heads prevail

and Democrats don't make their power grab tomorrow to make

the Senate like the House, to permit them to do with any

legislation what they did with the health care law. I have

said that to do so will destroy minority rights, destroy the

essential forum for consensus that the Senate now provides

for difficult issues, and surely guarantee that Republicans

will try to do the same to Democrats in two years. More than

that, it is hard to see how Democrats can gain any partisan

advantage from this destruction of the Senate and invitation

for retribution since any bill they force through the Senate

in a purely partisan way during the next two years will

surely be stopped by the Republican-controlled House of

Representatives.

But I am not the most persuasive voice against the wisdom

of tomorrow's proposed action. Other voices are. And I have

collected some of them, mostly Democratic leaders who wisely

argued against changing the institution of the Senate in a

way that would deprive minority voices in America of their

right to be heard:

From Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Jimmy Stewart: Wild horses aren't going to drag me off this

floor until those people have heard everything I've got to

say, even if it takes all winter.

Reporter: H.V. Kaltenborn speaking, half of official

Washington is here to see democracy's finest show. The

filibuster--the right to talk your head off.

Sen. Robert Byrd's final appearance in the Senate Rules Committee

SENATOR ROBERT BYRD: We must never, ever, ever, ever, tear

down the only wall, the necessary fence, that this nation has

against the excesses of the Executive Branch.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: The checks and balances which have been

at the core of this Republic are about to be evaporated. The

checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the

vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time.

FORMER SEN. CLINTON: You've got majority rule. Then you've

got the Senate over here where people can slow things down

where they can debate where they have something called the

filibuster. You know it seems like it's a little less than

efficient, well that's right, it is. And deliberately

designed to be so.

SEN. DODD: I'm totally opposed to the idea of changing the

filibuster rules. I think that's foolish in my view.

SEN. BYRD: That's why we have a Senate, is to amend and

debate freely.

SEN. ALEXANDER: The whole idea of the Senate is not to have

majority rule. It's to force consensus. It's to force there

to be a group of Senators on either side who have to respect

one another's views so they work together and produce 60

votes on important issues.

SEN. DODD: I can understand the temptation to change the

rules that make the Senate so unique and simultaneously so

terribly frustrating. But whether such temptation is

motivated by a noble desire to speed up the legislative

process or by pure political expediency, I believe such

changes would be unwise.

SEN. ROBERTS: The Senate is the only place in government

where the rights of a

numerical minority are so protected. A minority can be right,

and minority views can certainly improve legislation

SEN. ALEXANDER: The American people know that it's not just

the voices of the Senator from Kansas or the Senator from

Iowa that are suppressed when the Majority Leader cuts off

the right to debate, and the right to amend. It's the voices

that we hear across this country, who want to be heard on the

Senate floor.

SEN. GREGG: You just can't have good governance if you

don't have discussion and different ideas brought forward.

SEN. DODD: Therefore to my fellow Senators, who have never

served a day in the minority, I urge you to pause in your

enthusiasm to change Senate rules.

SEN. REID: The Filibuster is far from A `Procedural

Gimmick.' It's part of the fabric of this institution that we

call the Senate. For 200 years we've had the right to extend

the debate. It's not procedural gimmick. Some in this chamber

want to throw out 214 years of Senate history in the quest

for absolute power. They want to do away with Mr. Smith, as

depicted in that great movie, being able to come to

Washington. They want to do away with the filibuster. They

think they're wiser than our Founding Fathers, I doubt that's

true.

FORMER SEN. OBAMA: Then if the Majority chooses to end the

filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end

to Democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness

and the gridlock will only get worse.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I have had a number of discussions with the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Oregon. I respect their proposals and will have more to say about them, but I think since they have waited such a long time to make their presentations I will merely state my objection now and have more to say later. So I object.

Madam President, I have enjoyed this extensive opportunity to hear my colleagues on a very important subject about what the nature of the Senate will be. I am going to have about 10 minutes of remarks on the comments of Senators Merkley and Udall, and then I will yield to Senator Wyden, for his comments.

If I could say anything from deep down within me to my colleagues who are so exercised about this, it would be this: Before we change the rules, use the rules.

We talk about Senator Byrd a lot because he understood the rules so well. I have often told the story of when Senator Baker became the Republican majority leader in 1981. He went to see Senator Byrd, the Democratic leader, and said: Senator Byrd, I am suddenly the majority leader. I will never know the rules as well as you do, so I will make a deal with you. If you will not surprise me, I will not surprise you. Senator Byrd said: Let me think about it. The next morning he told Senator Baker he would do that.

The reason I mention those two Senators is because, before we get too mired down in our differences, let us think for a moment about what our goal ought to be. The goal for the Senate, to me, is to return the Senate to the way it operated during those 8 years when Senator Byrd and Senator Baker were the leaders of their parties. Four years Senator Byrd was the majority leader and 4 years Senator Baker was the majority leader.

I have talked to staff members, some of whom are still around. Senator Merkley's history goes back to Senator Hatfield in 1976, but I first came in 1967 as Senator Baker's legislative assistant, when there was only one legislative assistant per Senator. In 1977, I came back and spent 3 months with Senator Baker when he became the Republican leader, and I followed him pretty closely during the next 8 years.

Here is the way it worked back then.

The majority leader--whether it was Senator Byrd or Senator Baker-- would bring a bill to the floor. He would get the bill to the floor because Senators knew they were going to get to debate and amend the bill. The Senator from Oregon is talking about no debates occurring today. Well, of course there are no debates, because when Republicans

come down here with amendments, the majority leader doesn't let us offer them. All those cloture motions he is talking about means the majority leader is cutting off my right to represent my people and offer an amendment in a debate. They are calling a filibuster a cutoff. It wouldn't be a filibuster if the majority leader weren't cutting off my right, which he has done more than the last six majority leaders combined.

But let's go back to what our goal should be. Senators Byrd or Baker would say: OK. The Energy bill or the education bill is up, everybody get their amendments in. They might get 300 amendments filed. At some point, the majority leader would say: I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be cut off. Of course, they would get that after a while because everybody had all the amendments in that they could think of.

You didn't go to the majority leader down on your knees and say: Mr. Majority Leader, may I please offer this amendment or that amendment. You just put your amendment out there, and then they started voting.

Then Senators Byrd and Baker did something else we don't do today, which is why I am talking about using the rules before we change the rules. They debated, they voted; they debated, they voted; they debated; they voted. Of course, 300 amendments are a lot of amendments to get through. So the leaders and the staff would say to the Senator from North Carolina or the Senator from Oregon: Are you sure you want 25 amendments? It is Wednesday night. No, 10 will be enough. On Thursday night they might say: Are you sure you want these five amendments? It is Thursday night. We are going to be here Friday, and we are going to finish this bill. We will be here Saturday if we have to be, and we will be here Sunday. You are going to get your amendments, and we are going to vote on it, but we are going to finish the bill. That is what the leaders did.

Sometimes there would be a piece of legislation that would come up where one side or the other wanted to kill it and so they would try to kill it. That's just like we would do today, if Democrats were to bring up a bill to abolish the secret ballot in union elections. We would do everything we could to kill it. If the House passes a bill and brings it over here to repeal the health care law, the Democrats are going to do everything they can to kill it. That is separate. But most of the time under the leadership of Senators Byrd and Baker, the bill came to the floor, there was bipartisan cooperation, and there were amendments.

Why was there bipartisan cooperation? Because the leaders knew that unless they had it, they wouldn't move an inch. Being good Senators, they wanted to do their jobs. In fact, Senator Baker would often tell his Republican chairmen: Don't even bring the bill to the floor unless the ranking member, the Democrat, is with you. So most of the time, you would have the Democrat and the Republican there together and they would allow amendments, would fight other amendments off, and they would get to a conclusion. There weren't so many filibusters because the majority leader wasn't cutting off the right to debate and calling it a filibuster. This is a word trick is what this is.

I have talked to a lot of my friends on the Democratic side and a lot of Republicans and I think we basically want the same thing. I think we want a Senate that works better. I think it is now a mere shadow of itself. I agree with Senator Merkley about that but not because of filibusters. It is because the majority leader is cutting off debate and calling it a filibuster.

The majority leader and the Republican leader I commend today because they have been talking about how we can do better. We all know that changing our behavior will be more lasting than changing the rules. I am glad Senators Reid and McConnell are working on this. They have asked Senator Schumer and me to work on it some more, and we are going to do that. We have had several meetings and we have another this afternoon and we will keep working. We will consider carefully these proposals or any others that come, and we will see if we can come to some agreement about how to move ahead.

My heartfelt plea is before we change the rules, let's use the rules. Going down through the list of reform suggestions:

The motion to proceed--that is a difficult one for many of us because if you are in the minority the motion to proceed is your weapon to require the majority to give you amendments.

Secret holds--Senator Wyden tells me he and Senator Grassley have been working on that for 15 years. They have Republican support and Democratic support for it. Maybe this is the time to deal with secret holds. I make my holds public. When I was nominated for the U.S. Education Secretary by President Bush, the Senator from Ohio held me up for 3 months and never said why. I went around to see the Senator Rudman from New Hampshire and asked him what to do. He said when he was nominated by President Ford to the Federal Communications Commission, the Senator from New Hampshire held him up. Finally Rudman withdrew his name and ran for the Senate against the Senator and beat him. That is how Senator Rudman got in the Senate. Secret holds is an area that has had a lot of work and bipartisan support.

The right to offer amendments--the problem I have with altering the current rules is that offering amendments is what we do. I went to see Johnny Cash one time in the 1980s, and I asked him a dumb question, I said: Johnny, how many nights are you on the road? He said: Oh, 200. I said: Why do you do that? He said: That is what I do. If you are on the Grand Ole Opry, you sing. If you are in the Senate, you offer amendments and you debate. That is what we do, that is what we are supposed to do. Yet we have not been allowed to do it.

Talking filibusters--if we are talking about the postcloture period, the problem with that is the majority has not used the rules. If I object to going forward with a bill, the majority, if they think I am abusing the rules, can say OK, Senator Alexander, get down there on the floor because we are going to be here all night. And you can only get 7 hours and then you have to line up 23 other Senators to take 1 hour each, and if you stop talking we are going to put the question to a vote. If you do a number of certain other things we are going to make a dilatory motion. In other words, the majority can make it really hard for a Senator who objects.

Someone said one, two, three, or four Senators can hold this place up. They cannot hold it up. Because if you have 60 votes you can pass anything. If you have 60 votes you can pass anything and Senator Byrd said in his last testimony before the Rules Committee that you can confront a filibuster by using the rules.

The last two things we could do are, No. 1, we could stop complaining about voting. It happens on the Republican side and the Democratic side. If somebody offers an amendment that is controversial and everybody runs up to the leader and says we don't want to vote on that, then too bad. We are here to vote. That is why we are here so we should do that.

The third thing we can do, and Senator Byrd suggested this in his last testimony, is let's get rid of the 3-day work week. There is not enough time for all the Senators to offer their amendments and there is not enough time for the majority to confront the minority if they think the filibuster is being abused if we have a 3-day work week, and we never vote on Friday. We did not vote on Friday one time last year.

Let's use the rules. If you think we are holding something up improperly, confront that Senator. Run over him. You can do it. You have the power to do it if you have 60 votes. In this new Congress there will be plenty of opportunities there.

Finally I am going to take these five suggestions and work with Senator Schumer and work with my friends on the other side. They are very thoughtful. Senator Udall spent a lot of time on this, Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley spent 15 years. Senator Merkley used to be a speaker. We have talked a number of times. I greatly respect his work in his State and the fact that he has seen the Senate for a long period of time. I am taking very seriously everything that is said here. I am just worried about turning the Senate into the House.

We have a majoritarian organization over there. They can repeal the health

care law or they can get rid of the secret ballot in union elections with a majority vote. If you turn this place into that, you just go bam, bam and it is done. The Senate is the place for us to say: Whoa, whoa, let's see if we can get a consensus before we do anything.

When we get a consensus we not only get a better bill, but usually, the country accepts it better. The American people like to see us cooperating. They like to see us coming up with a tax bill or treaty or civil rights bill or a health care bill or a financial regulation bill, where we all have something in it. They feel better about that product. It is the check and the balance that is the genius of our system.

Obviously we can do some things better around here. I am committed to trying. I thank my friends for the amount of time and effort they have given. I am going to take everything they have said very seriously and in the spirit they have offered it. But I hope a part of our solution is that we use the rules before we change the rules because this is the forum to protect minority rights, this is the forum to force a consensus, and we dare not lose that. We dare not lose that.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, as I said earlier, Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley and Senator McCaskill and others have worked on this, some of them for as long as 15 years. They have made significant progress in gaining bipartisan support. I am going to object but only for the reason that this is one of the items we will be discussing and working on over the next few weeks with the hope that perhaps we can get agreement over here and agreement over there. It has been mentioned by all of the speakers today. It is a very serious proposal. But because we do not want to resolve it today, I object.

Mr. President, I came to the floor to express my admiration for the Senator from Arizona. I was listening to his address and I heard my colleague from Tennessee.

Senator Kyl's work on nuclear modernization is no surprise to any of us who know him very well because his approach to issues is a principled one, and once he determines the principle, he is dogged. He is a determined person. He basically took this issue of nuclear modernization, which is not on the lips of very many people in the United States--the question of whether our nuclear weapons are safe and reliable, whether they will work--he pulled it out of a trash bin and put it on the front page of a national debate.

He did it in connection with the START treaty, but as he said in his own remarks, this should be done whether you are for the START treaty or against the START treaty. It is completely independent, in that sense.

In my view, under no circumstances should the START treaty be ratified without doing this. That would be like reducing our weapons and leaving us with a collection of wet matches. We need to make sure what we have left works. But this is sort of the showhorse/workhorse Senator distinction. This is an issue on the back burner. It is an unpleasant issue. No one likes to talk about making nuclear weapons, each one of which could be 30 times as powerful as the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and ended the war, but it is a part of the reality in the United States and in the world today.

As Senator Corker was saying and as Senator Kyl said when each of us visited in different times, different places--Senator Kyl came to Tennessee. I was with him there. He has talked to many more people than I have on this subject--these weapons are being modernized in facilities that are completely outdated. It would be as if we were making Corvettes in a Model T factory.

Worse than that, it is not just an inconvenience to the workers there, it is a threat to their safety, and it is a waste of taxpayers' money. As the Senator from Arizona said, after a certain number of years--I am not sure of the exact number anymore, maybe 15 years, some number of years--this pays for itself. The modernization of these facilities, the bringing them up to date, means the taxpayers will pay just as much to operate these old facilities as they would to spend $5 billion or $6 billion or whatever it is to improve these two big new facilities and the other infrastructure and the other things we need to do.

It ought to be said as well that not one of these facilities is in Arizona. This is not home cooking by Jon Kyl. This is a man who, for a couple decades, has made our nuclear posture his business and has made sure he knows as much about it as anyone and has made sure the rest of us paid attention to it when we might be more interested in the issue of the moment. So it is an example of a Senator doing his job very well. I am deeply grateful for that and I am proud to serve in the Senate with such a person.

I would like to mention the letters I had printed in the Record yesterday. They are such an integral part of the remarks of Senator Kyl and Senator Corker--the letter to the President of December 16, from Senators Inouye and Cochran, the ranking members of the Appropriations Committee on both sides of the aisle, and Senator Feinstein and I, who are both members of the appropriate subcommittee for dealing with this, as well as the President's response of December 20.

In concluding my remarks, I would like to also congratulate Senator Kyl for his comments about advanced funding. We want to do things in an orderly way in government, but it makes no sense for us to build buildings in the most expensive way, particularly when there is an urgent deadline that is in the national interest. So if indeed by building these buildings more rapidly and saving the annual maintenance costs we could save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when we are borrowing 42 cents out of every $1 and every one of us is going to be looking for ways to save money, Senator Kyl's suggestion about advanced funding, which may not be the way the Department of Energy has done it before, ought to be the way we do it now. We didn't used to have a big dip like we do now. Let's look for ways to save hundreds of millions of dollars. We know we are going to have to modernize these weapons, START treaty or no START treaty, as the Senator said. We know we are going to have to save money. Let's accept the Senator's suggestion about advanced funding of these large facilities. As one member of the appropriations committee, I am going to do my best to follow his suggestion.

I am here to congratulate him for a superior, statesmanlike piece of work, both on the treaty which he has

worked to improve but also on the nuclear modernization issue which he single-handedly has put upfront before those of us in the Senate and the American people and it makes our country safer and more secure.

I ask unanimous consent to have 4 or 5 minutes.

I listened to Senator Kerry's remarks just now. This is an excellent discussion. Not only do I applaud Senator Kyl for resurrecting the whole focus on nuclear modernization, I applaud the President for the updated report that was received on November 17. A lot of work was done. This is a lot of money to say we want to make sure these nuclear weapons work and we are going to spend $85 billion over 10 years.

The intent of Senator Kyl's amendment, though, is not to tie the President's hands, it is to give him more options. I think it is to encourage this big, slow-moving government not to waste the money but to save money. The language says: The President shall certify to the Senate the President intends to accelerate, to the extent possible, the design and engineering phase.

At the Oak Ridge facilities, which Senator Kyl visited, he was told that the savings annually to taxpayers of having the new facility versus the old facility are in excess of $200 million. So every year we do it, every year this is completed, the taxpayers save $200 million. So if the President and the Appropriations Committee should decide that a 2-year or 3-year advanced funding will save $200 million a year at a time when we are all dedicated to trying to save money, we should do that.

You might say, well, why do we need to say this in the Senate? The answer is, we have never done it before. And the U.S. Government, if you have never done it before, takes a little nudge to pay attention to it.

So Senator Kyl has made an amendment, and if I understand it correctly, Senator Kerry amended the amendment a little bit to make it softer, to say, the President intends to accelerate, to the extent possible. So this is suggesting to the Department of Energy, which has never done it this way before, that we think it is a good idea, if it is practical, and if it saves money.

There is also the matter of getting it done on time. Senator Kyl talked about that, the dates we talked about in the executive session. So I would argue to my colleagues that the Kyl amendment is respectful of the President's prerogatives, which he ought to have. He is the manager of the government. He is the Commander in Chief. But it says: If we can think of a way to do this in a way that saves $200 million a year, year after year after year, why should we not do it?

I will bet during the next session of Congress, if we do our job properly in this body, we are going to be competing with each other to find ways to save $10 million a year, $20 million a year, $100 million a year, because of the incredible deficit. We have got bipartisan concern about that deficit. We had two Democratic Senators and three Republican Senators support the debt commission.

I would suggest to my friend from Massachusetts it is not possible that you have modified the Kyl amendment to the extent it ought to be accepted, so that the President can get a signal from the Senate that if he thinks he can do this, to the extent possible, that accelerating the building of these big facilities by 2 or 3 years, if it would save $400, $500, $600 million, that we want to encourage him to do that. That is my only thought.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator. No one is doubting the President's commitment. He has made an extraordinary commitment. I congratulate him for that. It is just the suggestion of doing it a little differently, if the President thinks it is practical, because it might save $200 million a year, year after year after year. A suggestion from us like that could make the difference in those savings. I thank the Senator for working in that spirit.

Madam President, I will vote to ratify the New START treaty between the United States and Russia because it leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come and because the President has committed to an $85 billion 10-year plan to make sure those weapons work. I will vote for the treaty because it allows for inspection of Russian warheads and because our military leaders say it does nothing to interfere with the development of a missile defense system.

I will vote for the treaty because the last six Republican Secretaries of State support its ratification. In short, I am convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the New START treaty than without it. Last week, I joined Senators Inouye, Cochran, and Feinstein in a letter to the President stating that we will vote to ratify the treaty and to appropriate funds to modernize our outdated nuclear weapons facilities and that he, the President, requests those funds in his budget.

Last night, I received a response to the President saying he would do so. I ask unanimous consent to have printed both letters in the Record.

Madam President, why are these two so necessarily linked--the treaty and the plan for nuclear weapons modernization? The answer is, if we are going to reduce our number of warheads, we want to make sure we are not left with what amounts to a collection of wet matches. Defense Secretary Gates said:

There is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible

deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile

without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing

a modernization program.

In a November 24 statement, Senators Kyl and Corker said they ``could not support reductions in U.S. nuclear forces unless there is adequate attention to modernizing those forces and the infrastructure that supports them.''

Senators Kyl and Corker deserve credit for untiring efforts to fund properly nuclear modernization. President Obama deserves credit for updating the nuclear modernization plan in such a significant way.

I have reviewed that so-called ``1251 plan'' completed November 17 of this year, which calls for spending $85 billion over the next 10 years. I have visited our outdated nuclear weapons facilities. I am convinced the plan's implementation will make giant steps toward modernization of those facilities so that we--and our allies and adversaries--can be assured that the weapons will work if needed.

The President's statement that he will ask for these funds and the support of senior members of the Appropriations Committee means that the plan is more likely to become a reality. The President agrees that in tight budgets these funds should be considered as defense spending.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a summary of the appropriations recommended by

the plan mandated by section 1251 of the 2010 Defense authorization bill.

Madam President, I will offer an amendment at the appropriate time to the resolution of ratification to require an annual update of the 1251 report, which the President's letter says he will do.

Under the terms of the treaty, the United States may have 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, each one up to 30 times more powerful than the one used at Hiroshima to end World War II.

The United States will also gain valuable data, including through inspection operations that should provide a treasure trove of intelligence about Russian activities that we would not have without the treaty, and that we have not had since the START treaty expired on December 9, 2009.

Over the weekend, the President sent a letter to the Senate reaffirming ``the continued development and deployment of U.S. missile defense systems.'' There is nothing within the treaty itself--I emphasize ``nothing in the treaty''--that would hamper the development of missile defense or its deployment. Our military and intelligence leaders all have said that.

Obviously, something could happen down the road involving differences over missile defense systems that could require either country--Russia or the United States--to withdraw from the treaty. That is any sovereign country's right with any treaty. In 2002, President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because of our desire to pursue missile defenses to protect us from an attack by a rogue state.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the President's letter on missile defense.

Madam President, ratifying this treaty would extend the policies of President Nixon, President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush, as well as Democratic Presidents.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the statements of the last six Republican Secretaries of State, all of whom support ratification of the treaty.

Madam President, I will vote to ratify this treaty. The vote we are about to have today is about whether to end debate. The majority's decision to jam through other matters during this lameduck session has poisoned the well, driven away Republican votes, and jeopardized ratification of this important treaty.

Nevertheless, this treaty was presented in the Senate on May 13, after 12 hearings in two committees and many briefings. The Foreign Relations Committee reported the treaty to the Senate on September 16 in a bipartisan vote of 14 to 4. For several months, there have been intense negotiations to develop a realistic plan and the funding for nuclear modernization. That updated plan was reported on November 17. The Senate voted to proceed to the treaty last Wednesday. I voted no because I thought there should still be more time allowed for amendment and debate.

Despite the flawed process, I believe the treaty and the nuclear modernization plan make our country safer and more secure. It will allow us to resume inspection and verification of disarmament of nuclear weapons in Russia. The head of our missile defense system says the treaty will not hamper our missile development program--and if it does, we can withdraw from the treaty.

All six former Republican Secretaries of State support ratification of this treaty. Therefore, I will vote to ratify the New START treaty and during the next several years vote to fund the nuclear modernization plan.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I congratulate my colleague from Tennessee, Senator Corker, for his usual common sense, as well as the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin, for his courage on the debt commission.

I believe that the decision made tonight about the omnibus bill is best for the country, but there could have been a better result. It would have been along the lines of what the Senator from Illinois described. If we had been able earlier in the year to agree on a budget in the Senate, which is how much are we going to spend, and if we could have gone committee by committee--and there are 13 subcommittees, and we both serve on the Appropriations Committee--and we could have brought those to the floor by August, voted on them, and got on with it so the government could run, that would by far be a better result.

There is no need to say why that didn't happen, whether it was a Democratic or Republican fault. It didn't happen. So that falls on all of us to look ahead and see if it can't happen in the future. I believe it can. In fact, I believe that it must. We have a time coming up next year when we will be asked to raise the debt ceiling. We will have before us a recommendation from the debt commission that five of the six Senators who served on it voted for. They stuck their necks way out to do that. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from North Dakota, and three Republican Senators, as well. So I think it is incumbent upon all of us--we can find points of division fairly easily. That is not hard to do. Finding points of consensus is harder. Cutting taxes is easier. Reducing the debt is going to be harder.

So in the next 3 or 4 months, when we come back, I hope we will build on the

conversation that I heard earlier this week with Senators Warner and Chambliss, and a group of nearly 20 Senators on both sides, who committed themselves to work on the debt commission. I hope we can, in the Appropriations Committee, start out the year with some way of agreeing on a ceiling, and then work together to work within that ceiling so we can run the government.

A continuing resolution for a year is a lousy way to run a government. It wastes money, because you end up funding things that should be cut and not funding things that need increases. I think this was the right result for the American people of the choices we had tonight. But there could be a better choice. It is our responsibility to see next year if we can offer ourselves, and therefore the American people, that choice.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, during the 1980s, somehow the Senate took a survey among themselves about who was the most admired Member of the Senate, and according to press reports, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee was the most admired Senator by both Republicans and by Democrats. If such a survey were to be taken today, Judd Gregg would certainly be at the top of that list for most of us. There is not a better Member of the Senate.

Much has been said about him, so I will say three things quickly because there are other Senators who wish to speak. First, Judd Gregg is of New Hampshire, not from New Hampshire. Sometimes we say, Senator so-and-so is from Tennessee or from New York or from South Dakota or from Maine, but the Senator whose roots are where roots are supposed to be is ``of'' his State. Judd Gregg sounds as though he is from New Hampshire. He acts as though he is from New Hampshire. He is from New Hampshire. He votes as though he is from New Hampshire. The Old Man of the Mountain, which was a rock up in New Hampshire, could be seen by those who drove by it. The rock fell down a few years ago and I thought: Well, maybe the best way to replace it is to put Judd Gregg back up there because he is of New Hampshire.

Second, Judd Gregg is a very good politician. I know that from direct experience. There is such a thing as the ``Gregg machine'' in New Hampshire. Those who have the temerity to run for President find that out. It was on the other side of my efforts when I was there, and to give an example, one day a reporter asked me: Well, Mr. Alexander, what is the price of a gallon of milk? Of course, I knew what a gallon of milk costs, but I made the mistake of turning around to someone and asking, just to make sure what it was. A press person overheard it, and the next thing I knew, the ``Gregg machine'' had spread that story all over the state that this fellow in a red and black shirt didn't know what the price of milk was. So they are a very intimidating, effective crowd in New Hampshire.

The third thing, the final thing I will say about Judd is one reason I admire and like him so much is that I so often agree with him. I agree with him on conservation issues, on education issues, on fiscal issues but especially on his view of this body, which he expressed so eloquently many times but especially in his remarks today. Judd Gregg knows and understands that this body is the Citadel of the protection of liberty in our government. He said that today. It is the place where we avoid the tyranny of the majority. It is a place where the voices of the American people are heard, where we have open amendment and open debate. He has been an effective advocate for that. He understands we are not just a debating society, but that in the end, we are a governing body; that the purpose of our 60-vote majority is to force consensus and a compromise so we can act, so we can do our job.

Judd leaves a wonderful legacy. He has many friends here. He will continue to have many friends here, this Senator who is of New Hampshire, who is a pretty good politician and with whom I so often agree. My special best wishes to his wife Kathy, with whom I also agree. Thank you.

I am here tonight in the spirit of my late friend, the author of Roots, Alex Haley, who lived and died by these words: ``Find the good and praise it.''

I am here to praise Senator Warner, Senator Chambliss, and the bipartisan group of Senators who have focused their attention on this urgent crisis that our country faces, the national debt.

This is the way the Senate is supposed to work: to see an urgent need, develop a bipartisan consensus to get to work on it, come up with a strategy to deal with it, and get a result--not just make speeches but get a result.

We have heard the evidence. We have had the good example set by five Members of our body--two Democrats, three Republicans--who took a courageous step in their action on the fiscal commission earlier this month. The Senate should follow that example.

I am encouraged by what I hear from the bipartisan group of Senators addressing our debt issue. This is the way the Senate is supposed to work. Let me conclude with just one example from history. I picked up a book the other night called ``The British Overseas.'' It is a British historian's view of the American Revolution.

He pointed this out: At the time of the American Revolution, the interest on the national debt of the British empire amounted to one- half of the national revenue of the British empire. In other words, at the time we fought for and won our independence, Great Britain had an unconscionable debt. The debt forced the British into some imprudent decisions. One was the Stamp Act and one was a little tax on tea, which occurred at about that time.

So big debts force big countries into bad decisions. The leadership we have seen across the aisle is a good start for the serious effort toward dealing with our debt crisis. I am here today to commend those Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who are part of it.

I yield the floor for the distinguished Senator from Colorado.

Mr. President, I was glad I had a chance to hear the Senators from Colorado and Oklahoma. I congratulate the Senator from Colorado on his reelection and look forward to working with him. He mentioned the importance of working across party lines. One area where we have the chance to do that, and where he can make an especially significant contribution, is in the area of fixing No Child Left Behind, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He has a lot of experience, earned the hard way on the ground, in that area. He is on the relevant committees, and I look forward to working with him.

Second, I join the Senator from Colorado in support for the tax plan agreed upon by the President and the Democratic and Republican leaders.

I have noticed that over the last two days, a large number of the news stories are about who wins and who gets political points for this tax agreement. I think the story is: the American people win. The focus of this Congress should be how to make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. Virtually every economist who has come before us, either called by Democratic Senators or Republican Senators, has said raising taxes on anybody in the middle of an economic downturn makes it harder to create private sector jobs.

This tax agreement, which would stop the automatic increase of taxes for tens of millions of Americans, makes it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. So does the provision to provide 100 percent expensing for businesses. What that means is, companies that buy equipment in the next year can immediately deduct those costs. There is also a provision giving working people in this country during the next year a reduction by about one-third in what they pay on the payroll tax. That will mean these workers have more money in their pockets and perhaps they will spend it and perhaps that will help the economy grow as well.

In addition, there is the provision to give some certainty to the estate tax. Some want zero tax, some want 100 percent tax. But this comes to a common, reasonable decision for 2 years. No one on the Republican side of the aisle is completely happy with this agreement. We want the tax rates permanently extended where they are today or at least to not let them get higher. We believe that short-term decisions about taxes don't create the kind of certainty that does the best job of helping to create private sector jobs.

We welcome the fact that the President of the United States has accepted this as a part of an agreement, and at the same time, he has gotten the priority that he put a high goal on, which was the extension of unemployment compensation. Republicans don't like to see that passed in a way that adds to the debt. So we have some Democrats who don't like everything in the bill and also some Republicans who don't.

We have something we have not seen very much of for the last two years. Instead of ``we won the election, so we will write the bill,'' we have a different attitude: Let's sit down and talk and see what we can do for the good of the country. I think this will not only result in the tax bill being passed, I think it will result in it being accepted by the people of this country. I think it will help build confidence in our economic growth. I think it will help build confidence in the ability of our government to function and deal with big problems.

I congratulate the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate and the House and the President for bringing the agreement this far. We have a ways to go; it is not decided yet. But it is a good step in the right direction. Instead of scoring political points, for a change, I think we are trying to score some points for the American people. When they get their paychecks in the middle of January and see the lower withholding and when they find out the amount of taxes they are not going to have to pay in a tax increase, I think they are going to be grateful.

Today, I was thinking that a Tennessee small businessperson looking at next year might say: Well, they are not going to raise my taxes and take the money my company earned and give it to the government. Maybe I will spend some of that money to hire somebody or spend some of that money for new equipment since they will let me deduct those costs. Maybe I will go ahead and do that this year instead of over the next 2, 3, 4, or 5 years. Maybe that will help my business grow, and maybe I will hire somebody new.

Maybe it will say to the people who work at that company: I am going to have a little more money in my pocket, I will go out and spend it, and maybe I will buy some of the goods made in other small businesses and the economy will grow.

There is no doubt this adds to the deficit, but there are two ways to reduce the deficit. One is to reduce spending, which we must do. We have an opportunity to deal with that, as the Senator from Oklahoma talked about. The other way is to create new revenues, and the way you do that is economic growth.

This bill will help make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. That is economic growth. That helps reduce the deficit.

I congratulate Senator Coburn, who spoke before the Senator from Colorado. Senator Coburn, Senator Crapo, Senator Gregg, Senator Conrad, and Senator Durbin, the majority whip, all voted for the debt commission report. That was a courageous act on behalf of all five of them. It is one thing to go around the country saying we need to reduce the debt; it is another thing to take on a wide-ranging proposal that actually does that because it is very painful. You can't just say we are going to get rid of earmarks, which don't save a penny. You can't just say we are going to focus on discretionary spending, other than that which affects defense, which is 15 percent of the budget. You have to deal with things such as national defense and Social Security, and you have to deal with Medicare and Medicaid.

It is true the debt commission report didn't do as much on entitlements as I would like it to do. I am proud of the members of the commission. They have given us a serious proposal and I intend to take it seriously. I intend to do my best to support as many of its provisions as possible, so we can take a step forward, not just in creating private sector jobs but in attacking our other major goal, which is reducing spending so we can reduce the debt.