Unanimous-Consent Request

Floor Speech

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST -- (Senate - February 27, 2008)

Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday, at 3:16 in the afternoon, the Senate voted to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2633, which is a bill to provide for the safe redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq.

After the cloture vote, I made a proposal that we would have postcloture debate for a period of time, a significant period of time, agree to the motion, and then go to the bill. But once we completed action on this, S. 2633, we would have a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the next matter that I talked about earlier today. That consent was rejected.

I ask unanimous consent that all postcloture time be yielded back, and the motion to proceed be agreed to; that upon disposition of S. 2633, the Senate proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2634; further, that if cloture is invoked, notwithstanding rule XXII, the Senate then proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3221, the housing bill.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader.

Mr. McCONNELL. Reserving the right to object, the question of the Iraq debate, once again at this particular juncture, was not the decision of the minority. Nevertheless, having put the Iraq issue back before the Senate, there are a number of members of my conference, many of whom have been to Iraq recently, who were anxious to discuss the undeniable progress that has occurred in Iraq over the last 6 months.

We had a good discussion yesterday. I have more members who would like to continue the discussion today. There is obviously an opportunity later in the morning or this afternoon to discuss further with the majority leader the possibility of shortening the time.

But for the moment, there are a number of Senators on my side of the aisle who are anxious to discuss the progress in Iraq, happy to have the debate time. Therefore, for the time being, I object.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, let me say briefly, the matter before us, the Feingold withdrawal amendment is in basically the form it has been before us, has been voted on four times before. Each of the times it was voted on in the past, one could argue that things were going less well in Iraq than they are today. The highest number of votes the Feingold withdrawal proposal has received at any point in these 4 votes is 29 votes.

It will be, should it be voted on, defeated once again. It certainly should be because now we have had 6 months or so of undeniable progress on all fronts. The security situation is dramatically improved. Even on the political side, where I think Members on both sides were frustrated with the new Iraqi democracy, they finally have begun to take the kind of steps that are needed--the debaathification law was approved, local elections have been scheduled for later in the year.

They are finally making some progress on the Government side as well as the undeniable progress on the security side, at this point, not brought about strictly by American troops but also the sons of Iraq. These people who decided to defend their neighborhoods and defeat, help us defeat al-Qaida, have grown dramatically in terms of numbers and commitment.

So there is, as I indicated, a lot of interest on our side in continuing to at least point out the progress that has been made in Iraq, both in terms of security and on the political side. So we will have that discussion later into the morning, and the majority leader and I will have an opportunity later in the day to discuss where we go from here.

Source