Infrastructure
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, today, the Democratic leader appears to be intent on calling a vote he knows will fail. For several weeks now, Republican and Democratic Senators have been working together, trying to assemble a bipartisan package for our Nation's infrastructure.
It is an important and a complex subject. They are talking about big projects and big sums of money. They are still talking, still working, still negotiating in good faith across the aisle. But these discussions have yet to conclude. There is no outcome yet, no bipartisan agreement, no text, nothing for the Congressional Budget Office to evaluate, and, certainly, nothing on which to vote, not yet.
So, obviously, if the Democratic leader tries to force a cloture vote on a bill that does not exist, it will fail.
Around here, we typically write the bills before we vote on them. That is the custom. Of course, here in the Senate, a failed cloture vote does not mean no forever.
In the middle of the early COVID crisis, back in March of 2020, with Americans under stay-home orders and financial markets plummeting, Senate Democrats withheld cloture on the CARES Act multiple times so they could continue haggling behind the scenes.
Now, this was during a real emergency. Every day, every hour, was crucial. But Senate Democrats blocked cloture multiple times until various details were fine-tuned to their liking.
Here is what the Democratic leader said while his side tanked those cloture votes last March--March of 2020:
The Majority Leader was well aware of how this vote would go before it happened, but he chose to move forward with it anyway, even though negotiations are continuing. So who is playing games?
That was the Democratic leader in March of 2020, in the middle of a national emergency.
That, of course, was a fast-moving global crisis, with bipartisan text already in hand. There was a bill. Yet Senate Democrats insisted on taking their time in the middle of this national 100-year pandemic. Now, we are talking about long-term infrastructure investments that will play out over many years, but he wants to vote before any agreement even exists.
So this stunt is set to fail. The Democratic leader will be free to change his vote and move to reconsider whenever a bipartisan product actually exists.
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