Recognition of the Minority Leader

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I sat here patiently and listened to the majority leader's speech, and I hope he will do me the courtesy to listen to mine, since this is a very important day in the history of the Senate. I want to make a couple of observations, which I hope my friend the majority leader will listen to.

First, he is trying to justify in advance what would be a very clear failure to honor his very clear commitment not to break the rules of the Senate. What he is referring to are his own statements, not mine, regarding extraordinary circumstances. He said that, not me. In other words, to justify breaking his clear commitments not to break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate, he is attributing to me something somebody else said, and that somebody else, by the way, is him. He is attributing to me something he said.

We need to keep our commitments around here and not break them, and we need to be honest about quoting people around here. This is about trying to come up with excuses to break our commitments. What this is about is manufacturing a pretext for a power grab.

I listened very carefully to what the majority leader had to say. What he is saying, in effect, is he doesn't want to have any controversy at all attached to any of the nominees. In other words, don't ask any questions. Advise and consent means sit down and shut up.

He was complaining about the number of questions the nominee for EPA Administrator was required to answer.

What he conveniently left out was the chairwoman Senator Boxer requested 70,000 documents. Why is it OK for the chairwoman to request 70,000 documents and somehow if the ranking member makes a lot of requests it is some violation of some comity? When the Founders wrote ``advise and consent,'' I don't think they had in mind sit down and shut up.

It is noteworthy that all of the people he is complaining about got confirmed. So what he is saying is he doesn't want any debate at all in connection with Presidential appointments, just sit down, shut up, and rubberstamp everything, everyone the President sends up here.

On the calendar right now there are 21 nominations--21. There are 148 in committee. We don't control the committees, he does: 148 in committee, 21 on the calendar. It is pretty obvious Senate Democrats are gearing up today to make one of the most consequential changes to the Senate in the history of our Nation.

I want everybody to understand, this is no small matter we are talking about. I guarantee you it is a decision that if they actually go through with it, they will live to regret. It is an open secret at this point that big labor and others on the left are putting a lot of pressure on the majority leader to change the rules of the Senate and to do so, as he promised not to do, by breaking the rules of the Senate. That would violate every protection of the minority rights that has defined the Senate for as long as anyone can remember.

Let me assure you, this Pandora's box, once opened, will be utilized again and again by future majorities and it will make the meaningful consensus-building that has served our Nation so well a relic of the past.

The short-term issue that has triggered this dangerous and far-reaching proposal is simple enough. The hard left is so convinced that every one of the President's nominees should sail through the confirmation process that they are willing to do permanent irreversible damage to this institution in order to get their way, and it appears as if they have convinced the majority leader to do their bidding and hijack the Senate. They are not interested in checks and balances. They are not interested in advise and consent. They are not even interested in what this would mean down the road when Republicans are the ones making the nominations. They want the power and they want it now. They do not care about the consequences. The ends justify the means ethos has been resisted by basically every Senate leader in the past and it is a clear and unequivocal violation of the public assurances that the current majority leader made to the entire Senate, his constituents, and the American people just a few months ago.

What is worse is we got to this point on the basis of an absolute fairytale, a fairytale. Obviously, the left needed an excuse to justify such an unprecedented power grab, so they simply made up a story about Republicans blocking the President's nominees. The majority leader is entitled to his opinion, but he is not entitled to his facts. The facts are the facts. Here is the real story. Almost nothing about this tale so often repeated around here holds up to scrutiny.

The facts are that this President took office and the Senate has confirmed 1,560 people. The Senate has confirmed every single one of the Cabinet nominees who has been brought up for a vote--every single one. The President has gotten nearly three times as many judges confirmed at this point as President Bush in his Presidency.

Here is the point. What this whole so-called crisis boils down to are three nominees the President unlawfully appointed--as confirmed by the courts. A Federal court has held the three nominees were unlawfully appointed. Two of the three are direct parties to the litigation and the third one was appointed at exactly the same moment in the exact same way. One of these nominees has been held up by inaction over at the White House related to structural reforms that the administration and even the nominee himself, Mr. Cordray, now say they are willing to work with us on. The fact is, indisputably, we have been confirming lawfully nominated folks routinely and consistently: The Energy Secretary, 97 to 0; the Secretary of the Interior, 87 to 11; the Secretary of the Treasury, 71 to 26; the Secretary of State, 94 to 3, just a few days after the Senate got his nomination; the Secretary of Commerce, 97 to 1; the Secretary of Transportation, 100 to 0; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, 96 to 0; the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 91 to 7; the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on a voice vote--in other words, unanimously.

What about the nominees still awaiting confirmation who have not--not been unlawfully appointed? The Senate is ready to vote on them too. Regretfully, in my view, frankly, all of them appear ready to have the votes to be confirmed. I don't necessarily support them, but they have the votes to be confirmed. Why don't they call them up? The majority leader determines what the order of business is around here. He could have scheduled votes if that is what he wanted to happen. Why don't we have a vote on the Secretary of Labor? What about the Administrator of EPA? The NLRB nominees who were not unlawfully appointed--there are some other NLRB nominees who were not unlawfully appointed--why aren't we voting on them?

As I said, pending the expected negotiations on reforms to the CFPB, the Senate would likely confirm the chairman to that position as well.

We need to be honest about what is going on around here. The only crisis is the crisis the Democrats are creating with their threats to fundamentally change the Senate, something the majority leader said just a few years ago he would never even consider. Here is why he said that: Because going down this road is ``ultimately ..... about removing the last check in Washington against a complete abuse of power.''

Those are the words the majority leader himself used in describing the very thing he is now threatening to do--the very thing he is now threatening to do.

Let me sum up what is going on around here. Senate Democrats are getting ready to do permanent damage to this body to confirm three unconstitutionally appointed nominees by a simple majority vote. They are willing to break the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate in order to confirm three nominees that the Federal courts have said were unlawfully appointed. Every other nomination we are talking about has either already been confirmed or is on the way to being confirmed, but they will not call them up. He gets to decide when we vote. Where are the callups for EPA and Labor and the three NLRB nominees lawfully appointed?

If this is not a power grab, I don't know what a power grab looks like. The President appoints three people unconstitutionally, the second highest court in the land confirms they were unlawfully appointed, and Senate Democrats want to break the rules of the Senate to confirm them. This is not the story we just heard from the majority leader, but this is a fact.

The entire phony crisis--absolutely phony, manufactured crisis--boils down to three unlawfully appointed nominees. The Democrats say we are holding up the others. It is not true. He gets to schedule the votes. Where are they? Bring them up. The truth is, if there is anyone to blame for holding up things in the Senate it is the Democratic majority. They are the ones blocking nearly 30 fast-track nominations, many of whom Republicans have already agreed to confirm unanimously. They are the ones, the Democrats, who have yet to schedule votes on McCarthy and Perez, despite the fact that both of these highly controversial nominees already have enough votes to clear the 60-vote hurdle.

I do not like the facts, frankly, and I am not going to be voting for either of these nominees. Tom Perez in particular is a far left ideologue whose record of bending the rules to achieve his ends is deeply concerning to me and just one of the reasons I plan to vote against him. But to pretend the power to confirm these folks lies in the hands of anyone but the majority leader is totally disingenuous.

The White House knows what I have just said. I have told them. The majority leader would know it too if he spent a little more time working with his colleagues in a collegial way and a little less time trying to undermine and marginalize people.

The real reason, as I said, is that the far left and big labor are leaning hard on Democrats to go nuclear. Go nuclear--they love the sound. The majority leader is about to sacrifice his reputation and this institution to go along with it because what they truly want is for the Senate to ratify the President's unconstitutional decision to illegally appoint nominees to the NLRB and the CFPB without the input of the Senate. They know they cannot get that done under current rules. They know time is not on their side. The second highest court in the land ruled unanimously that President Obama had no power to do what he did. Another court has since concurred. Now the Supreme Court is set to hear the case in just a few months. They obviously thought it was important enough to be dealt with at the highest Court in the land.

This is not a fight over nominees at all. It is a fight over these illegal, unconstitutionally appointed nominees. It is laughable to think Democrats would ever agree to such a thing if we were talking about a Republican President's unlawful nominees--laughable.

It is equally irrational to think we would go along with this. In fact, no Senator, regardless of party, should ever consider ceding our constitutional duties in such a way.

I advised the Romney team before the election that if he won and I was ever elected majority leader, I would defend the Senate first in these battles. I would defend this institution against a Republican President trying to abuse it. That is a precedent set by majority leaders, such as Robert Byrd, who revered this institution because they knew what it was to be in both the majority and the minority. It is what the best leaders of the Senate have always done. It is absolutely tragic to think these days may be over.

Here are the battle lines. On one side are people who think the President should have the power to unconstitutionally ignore Congress and their constituents.

Those are people who believe in it so firmly that they are willing to irreparably damage the Senate to ensure they get their way. They are willing to do something the majority leader himself said would contribute to the ruination of the country. I am not making up his quotes; that is what he said.

On the other side are the folks in my conference, and even some Democrats, with the courage to speak up against this power grab. We are the folks who believe deeply that a President of any party should work within the bounds of the Constitution, and that Senators of both parties should fulfill their own constitutional obligations to thoroughly vet nominees. We also believe in giving those nominees a fair hearing. If you look at the facts, you will see we have already been doing that.

As Senator Alexander noted, no majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate. Well, if this majority leader caves to the fringes and lets this happen, I am afraid that is exactly what they will write. In the majority leader's own words: Breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American. Those are his words, not mine.

I hope the majority leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on the issue of delay, there are 148 nominations in committees. The majority leader's party controls the committees. They can come out at any point. On the calendar of business on the floor 21 nominees are pending.

The majority leader, I am sure, will remind everybody he always gets the last word so I am sure he will speak again. But I would remind everybody of the core point here: He gave his word without equivocation back in January of this year that we had settled the issue of rules for the Senate for this Congress. That was in the wake of a bipartisan agreement to pass two rule changes and to pass two standing orders. So at the core of this is the majority leader's word to his colleagues and the Senate as to what the rules would be for this Congress. He gave his word, and now he appears to be on the verge of breaking his word.

Secondly, the only nominees--let's make sure we understand this--likely to have a problem getting cloture are the ones who were unconstitutionally appointed, according to the Federal Court in the District of Columbia.

So where we are is the majority leader wants to fundamentally change the Senate after breaking his word in order to jam through three nominees the Federal Courts have said were unconstitutionally appointed. That is where we are.

I think it is a sad day for the Senate. I hope the majority leader will reconsider what I consider to be a highly irresponsible action on his part.

Is the Senator from Tennessee going to pose a question to me or to the majority leader?

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