FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Madam President, we are going to have two or three votes at 5:30. A number of the Senators who have amendments dealing with the supplemental have agreed to come at that time as soon as the votes are over and start debating those amendments tonight. We would like to get as much of that debate out of the way tonight as possible so we can start voting at a reasonably early time tomorrow.

The debate today on FISA has been stimulating, has been very thorough and good. As I understand it, there are three FISA amendments we are going to vote on tonight. That will still leave Senator Wyden's amendment, and we will worry about taking care of that tomorrow sometime.

I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30 any remaining debate time on the pending amendments--Leahy, Merkley, and Paul--be yielded back and the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the pending amendments in the order provided in the previous agreement; that there be 2 minutes, equally divided, prior to each vote and that all after the first vote be 10-minute votes.

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Mr. REID. We have two very important measures to finish. I appreciate the collegiality of the Senators on this most important piece of legislation dealing with the espionage on our country part, and we should be able to work it out tomorrow. But we have 21 amendments we have to dispose of dealing with the supplemental. Some of those will be agreed to and would not need votes, but we have a lot of debate time on that in addition to votes. If we just did the votes alone, it would be 8 hours of voting.

We hope to be able to narrow that down, as soon as we have something more definite, so the Senator and Senator Wyden and others can complete the time, and set up a time that is appropriate for Senator Wyden's amendment.

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am not sure my distinguished Republican counterpart has followed what has taken place in the House of Representatives. In the House, as reported by the press and we all know it, one of the plans--it did not have a name, it was not Plan B, I don't know what plan it was because they had a number over there--but this plan was to show the American people that the $250,000 ceiling on raising taxes would not pass in the House. Why did they not have that vote? Because it would have passed. They wanted to kill it. The Speaker wanted to show everybody it would not pass the House, but he could not bring it up for a vote because it would have passed. A myriad of Republicans think it is a fair thing to do and of course every Democrat would vote for that.

The Republican leader finds himself frustrated that the President has called on him to help address the fiscal cliff. He is upset because ``the phone never rang.'' He complains that I have not delivered the votes to pass a resolution of the fiscal cliff, but he is in error. We all know that in July of this year we passed, in the Senate, relief for middle-class Americans. That passed the Senate.

We know Republicans have buried themselves in procedural roadblocks on everything we have tried to do around here. Now they are saying we cannot do the $250,000 because it will be blue-slipped. How do the American people react to that? There was a bill introduced by the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee in the House, SANDY LEVIN, that called for this legislation. The Speaker was going to bring it up to kill it, but he could not kill it. Then we moved to Plan B, the debacle of all debacles. It is the mother of all debacles. That was brought up in an effort to send us something. He could not even pass it among the Republicans it was so absurd--``he'' meaning the Speaker.

It is very clear now that the Speaker's No. 1 goal is to get elected Speaker on January 3. The House is not even here. He has told them he will give them 2 days to get back here--48 hours; not 2 days, 48 hours.

They do not even have enough of the leadership here to meet to talk about it. They have done it with conference calls. People are spread all over this country because the Speaker basically is waiting for January 3. The President campaigned on raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year. The Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of this year. Obama was elected with a surplus of 3 million votes. He won the election. He campaigned on this issue.

Again, the Speaker cannot take yes for an answer. The President has presented him something that would prevent us from going over the cliff. It was in response to something the Speaker gave to the President himself. But again, I guess, with the dysfunctional Republican caucus in the House, even the Speaker cannot tell what they are going to do because he backed off even his own proposal. The House, we hear this so often, is controlled by the Republicans. We acknowledge that. I would be most happy to move forward on something Senator McConnell said they would not filibuster over here, that he would support and that BOEHNER would support, if it were reasonable. But right now we have not heard anything. I don't know--it is none of my business, I guess, although I am very curious--if the Republican leader over here and the Speaker are even talking.

What is going on here? You cannot legislate with yourself. We have nobody to work with, to compromise. That is what legislation is all about, the ability to compromise. The Republicans in the House have left town. The negotiations between the President and the Speaker have fallen apart, as they have for the last 3 1/2 years. We have tried mightily to get something done.

I will go over the little drill, to remind everyone how unreasonable the Republicans have been. Senator Conrad and Judd Gregg came up with a proposal to pattern what they wanted to do after the Base Closing Commission. The Commission would be appointed, they would report back to us, no filibusters, no amendments, yes or no, as we did with the base closings. We did a great job there. We closed bases over two different cycles, saving the country hundreds of billions of dollars. We brought that up here--I brought it up. We had plenty of votes to do it, except the Republican cosponsors walked away and wouldn't vote for it. That is where Bowles-Simpson came from.

Again, people talked about why don't we do Bowles-Simpson? One problem: The Republicans appointed there would not vote for it, generally speaking.

Then we went through the months and months of talks between the President and BOEHNER. Both times BOEHNER could not deliver because they refused, because of Grover Norquist, to allow any tax revenues whatsoever. We had meetings with Vice President Biden and Cantor. Cantor walked out of those meetings. He is the majority leader in the House. We had the Gang of 6, we had the Gang of 8, we had the supercommittee. They were doing good things dealing with entitlements and revenues. One week before they were to report by virtue of statute I get a letter signed by virtually every Republican: Too bad about the supercommittee, we are not going to do anything with revenues.

This is not a capsule of a couple days. This has been going on for years. They cannot cross over the threshold that has been built by Grover Norquist. People who are rich, who make a lot of money, they are not opposing raising the taxes on them. The only people in America who do not think taxes should be raised on the rich are the Republicans who work in this building. Any-time the Speaker and the Republican leader come to the President and say we have a deal for you, the President's door is always open and mine is too.

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are going to have to decide, my friend says, how we are going to move forward on a bipartisan basis. Even on the Sunday shows we have just completed, with FOX network, Chris Wallace pushed one of the Republican leaders very hard: Would you filibuster something the Democrats brought to the floor? He refused to answer the question. He would not say, and he kept being pressed.

We are in the same situation we have been in for a long time here. We cannot negotiate with ourselves because that is all we are doing. Unless we get a signoff from the Republicans in the House and the Republican leader, we cannot get anything done. For them to talk about a bipartisan arrangement, we have done that. The President has given them one, given them two, given them three, and we cannot get past Grover Norquist. We tried hard, but when there is no revenue as part of the package, it makes it very hard. John Boehner could not even pass a tax proposal that he suggested over there where he would keep the taxes the same for everybody except people making over $1 million a year. No. Grover and the boys said, no, can't do that. He didn't even bring it up for a vote.

I am here. I am happy to listen to anything the Speaker and the Republican leader have. They have a way of getting to the President. They don't need my help. I am happy to work with them any way I can, but the way things have been going it is not a good escape hatch we have. They are out of town now for 2 days, 48 hours. That is where we are.

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