Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2010--Continued
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I commend my colleagues Senators Grassley and Wyden for wanting to solve a problem. I appreciate them being willing to put some solutions forth.
I think it is important that we talk about the bigger picture when we talk about secret holds. I want to make it clear that I am not interested in holding anything in secret. As a matter of fact, whenever we do it as part of Steering, we let the cloakroom know we are holding a bill.
I think it is important that America knows what we are talking about here. At this point in the Senate, 94 percent of all of the bills are passed by unanimous consent. So this is hardly a lack of productivity. What this means is that 94 percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure and, very often, no score from the Congressional Budget Office.
When I first took over the Steering Committee, one of the things I learned quickly is that whenever we are having a break--if we are going for a week, such as we are after this week--on my way to the airport I would get a call from staff telling me there were dozens of requests to pass bills by unanimous consent. They knew we were going out of town. A lot of them had pretty big pricetags on them. You don't get $13 trillion in debt when you are doing things right. Part of the problem is that 94 percent of the bills that pass the Senate pass in secret. The problem is not secret holds; it is the secret passing of bills, when often we don't even know who is requesting passage. If we didn't have staff available at night when they run their so-called hotlines--which means the phone in your office rings and they ask if you will agree to pass a bill, and you have not read it and you don't know what it costs, but if you don't agree to pass it by unanimous consent, you are holding the bill.
If you ask to read it for a day or so, it is likely that some association is getting e-mails from either the Republican or Democrat side saying that Senator DeMint is holding this desperately needed piece of legislation, which nobody else has read.
I would be glad to work with my colleagues on dealing with this issue if they believe secret holds are a problem. I think that passing 94 percent of the bills without anybody reading them or knowing they are being passed is not a good way to do business. I think it is fair to have some system where, first, you cannot secretly ask for a bill to be passed by unanimous consent. That is what goes on today.
We should look at the Coburn-McCaskill measure where, if you want something passed by unanimous consent in the dark of night, you have to put it on the Internet for at least 3 days, with a cost from the Congressional Budget Office, so that we know what we are getting into.
Again, I remind you that we don't have a problem in Washington of not
passing enough bills or spending enough money. The problem we have is we are passing bills that we don't even read that have pricetags that are running our country into a crushing debt. Again, I want to work with my colleagues. But if you are opposed to secret holds, which are really not a problem--and I am not aware of one where we don't know who is holding it. I have a problem with people asking that bills be passed in secret, and that 94 percent of the bills in this place get passed that way.
There are a lot of pressing issues we face as a country, but one of them is not secret holds. If we want to spend floor time debating it, I want to be involved with that debate. We have no problem here with things that are being slowed down. The problem we have is that every week--like this week--we are adding to our spending and borrowing more money as a country, increasing our national debt, and we are expanding the Federal Government. This is not something we need to speed up. We need Members of the Senate to read bills. We don't need to be talking about holding a bill when someone innocently asks to read a bill and to let you know tomorrow.
Let's work on this. If you want bills to go through quickly, let's get rid of the secret passing of bills that have never been on the Internet or seen the light of day. This is something where I know my colleagues are well intended, but the real problem is the secret bills and Members secretly asking to pass them. I will be glad to let you know I am holding them.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for being willing to work with colleagues. It is unfortunate that he has spent a decade on this bill and missed the main point. The main problem is secret bills, not secret holds. But if the Senator is willing to modify his amendment with the Coburn-McCaskill language and if it includes revealing who is trying to pass the bill, along with putting it online with a Congressional Budget Office score, I will be glad to support the Senator's efforts for this amendment. But I will not support the adoption of his amendment a la carte without the language being modified to include the Coburn-McCaskill language and the revealing of whoever is asking that bill be passed.
Again, I will enjoy working with my colleagues if this is important to them to get this amendment adopted. Again, I think there are certainly more pressing issues, but I am not interested in holding anything secretly. If the Senator will work with us on modifying his language, I think we can get this adopted and maybe even by unanimous consent.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source