Default Prevention Act of 2013-- Motion to Proceed--

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Madam President.

I am not part of this group of 14, I believe it is, but I wish to thank them. I know a little bit about how hard it is to try to pull something together in an emerging situation, and they have done it. I see Susan and Amy and Lisa here on the floor, three Senators who played a major role in this effort. I wish to thank them for taking the time, having the courage, and putting forward the ideas they did. I also wish to thank the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, because I think their coming together essentially averted what I saw as a potential catastrophe.

Although there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, I think we are in the home stretch. I think what we see is both a continuing resolution and the debt limit being extended, albeit not for long. Coming over here somebody stopped me and said: Well, we will be right back here in 3 or 4 months. Our challenge is to make that not so.

I also wish to thank Senator Cruz, with whom I have had occasions to tangle, but he has said that he will not stand in the way of the vote. To me that is very important, because nobody knows what really will happen if we do not pass the debt ceiling in a timely way. In a way it is a big lesson in itself: Let us not go there again, and let us use this 3- to 4-month period in a wise and willing way to sit down, as the group of 14 did, and work out issues before we are right back from where we came.

I think another part of the agreement that is very good is that it allows the Budget Committee to go ahead and conference. Senator Murray sits next to me. After her 20 attempts to move this body to conference, all of which failed, it looks as though now it will happen. Here is what that means. That means we will have a budget for next year, from which the appropriations allocations will be drawn very quickly, and then our bills can be brought into conformance. I happen to chair one of the appropriations subcommittees, and that is the committee that includes the modernization of our warheads, the Department of Energy, as well as the Army Corp of Engineers. Beginning tomorrow, seven big labs were going to begin to shut down: Los Alamos, Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley; as well as our nuclear program reactors were being shut down and put in safe conditions. Thirty thousand contract employees were going to lose their work, and the contract says they cannot be reimbursed for any day that is not worked. So that presented a particular special situation.

In the time I have been here, the Senate has become a very different body, and maybe now is not a bad time to say that. We used to be able to do much more along the lines of what the group of 14 has done. But I think scar tissue has built up in this house. I think it has built up in this house for one reason, and that is the prodigious use of cloture--a significant change because a majority body has been turned into a supermajority body. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is everything, albeit but the simplest thing, has to have 60 votes. We had a clean debt resolution and cloture, and we did not have 60 votes even to debate the issue on the floor.

That has never been what the history of this body has shown. It has never been one of the reasons why I wanted to join this body. I have always felt that this body was sort of the prime of political officeholders--not the bottom but the top--and has always shown a willingness as to how this democratic process can work, by people sitting down together, understanding that our two-party system demands compromise to be able to make any progress at all. What I have found is that is less and less available to those of us who want to problem solve, who want to sit down and work out issues.

So I look forward to more efforts such as this effort that just took place, and I would very much like to join this esteemed new group of Senators for the future, because we cannot be here again in 4 months.

I was surprised--and I don't quite know what to do about it--but what I find is that people in the House too, who have come here with a very small number of votes, believe they so know what is best for this Nation, above anybody else, they are willing to do whatever they need to do to get their way. That is just not the way these bodies have traditionally worked. Now, that hasn't worked so far.

I think what is before us, which is a very simple 3-, 4-month advance of a continuing resolution, of the debt limit, verification of income, and the ability of the Budget Committee to go back to work, really signals that this next 3 to 4 months are so important to do what we need to do to restore comity to this body and the other body. Just think if we can find points of agreement in 3 to 4 months and then go ahead and regularly extend the debt limit for its full length of time, do away with the continuing resolution. It has been 3 or 4 years with no budget, and it has to stop.

So I am hopeful, with the leadership that now appears to have come together between Senator Harry Reid and Senator Mitch McConnell, that these months can really be dedicated to a bringing together of both sides around problem solving. All I can do is pledge myself to do my utmost to help us get there. So this is just one step on the road.

Again, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. So I hope this is going to pass this body today, pass the House, and that we go out with a resoluteness to come back another day and work together to solve what are some very major problems before us.

So thank you very much. I yield the floor.

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