Executive Session
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I am glad an agreement has been reached in which President Obama will finally get Senate confirmation votes on his appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Labor, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. This agreement, as I understand it, will also provide that the President's new nominees for the National Labor Relations Board will be rapidly confirmed. That is a step forward.
While this agreement addresses the immediate need for the President of the United States to have his Cabinet and his senior staff confirmed, this agreement today only addresses one symptom of a seriously dysfunctional Senate. The issue that must now be addressed is how we create a process and a set of rules in the Senate that allows us to respond to the needs of the American people in a timely and effective way--something virtually everyone agrees is not happening now. The Senate cannot function with any degree of effectiveness if a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to pass virtually any piece of legislation and if we waste huge amounts of time not debating the real issues facing working people but waiting for motions to proceed hour after hour where nobody is even on the floor of the Senate.
The good news is that I think the Nation is now focused on the dysfunctionality of the Senate and the need for us to have rules or a process that allows us to address the enormous problems facing our country. When people ask why is it that Congress now has a favorability rating of less than 10 percent, the answer is fairly obvious: The middle class of this country is disappearing. Real unemployment is somewhere around 14 percent. The minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Millions of people are working in jobs that pay them poverty wages. Tens of millions of people today lack health care, while we have the most expensive and wasteful health care system in the world. The greatest planetary crisis facing our Nation and the entire world is global warming, and we are not even debating that issue.
The Senate is a very peculiar institution. It is peculiar in the sense that any one Member--one of 100--can come down here on the floor and utter two magical words that bring the Senate to a complete halt; that is, ``I object.'' I will not allow the Senate to go forward, which means the whole government shuts down. I object. I object.
What we have seen in recent years--especially since Barack Obama was elected--is an unprecedented level of ``I object,'' of holds, of a variety of mechanisms that bring the functioning of the Senate to a halt. All of this takes place at a time when millions of people cannot find jobs and at a time when kids are graduating college deeply in debt and millions of others are now choosing not to go to college because we are not addressing the issue of higher education. It takes place at a time when our infrastructure--our roads and bridges and airports and rail systems--is crumbling, when our educational system is in need of major reform, and the gap between the people on top and everybody else is growing wider.
The American people perceive this country has major problems that must be addressed. What does the Senate do? We are sitting here waiting 30 hours for a motion to proceed, to see if, in fact, we can vote on a piece of legislation that requires 60 votes. Time and time again we do not get those votes.
When votes come up, I would like to win, to be on the winning side. That is natural. Everybody would. But what happens here--and the American people by and large do not fully understand it--we do not vote on issues. What happens is the debate ceases because we do not get motions to proceed. So we do not vote on a jobs program, we vote on whether we can proceed to a jobs program to create millions of jobs. We do not vote on whether we can keep interest rates low for college students who are borrowing money, we vote on whether we can proceed to have the vote.
What we have seen in the last several years is an unprecedented level of obstructionism and filibustering. Between 1917 and 1967 there was more or less an agreement in the Senate that a filibuster would only be used under exceptional circumstances. There were only some 40 or 45 filibusters in a 50-year period. When Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the late 1950s, in his 6-year tenure as majority leader he had to overcome a filibuster on one occasion. Since Harry Reid has been majority leader in the last 6 1/2 years, he has had to overcome 400 filibusters or at least requirements for 60 votes. The amount of time we are wasting is unconscionable.
Furthermore, what the American people do not know is that time after time we are winning. We have the votes to win and have shown that on very important issues. In terms of one major issue, just as an example, right now, rather tragically, we have a situation as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision that corporations and billionaires can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections.
As bad as that is, what is even worse, they can hide their contributions--not make them public. Guess what. The Senate by a majority vote said: That is wrong. If you are going to contribute huge amounts of money into the political process, the people have a right to know who you are.
We have a majority vote on this issue. We could not get it passed because we needed 60 votes.
The American people know our tax system is enormously flawed. We have major corporations--General Electric and other corporations--that in a given year, after making billions of dollars in profits, pay zero in Federal taxes. Legislation was passed on the floor of the Senate by a majority--legislation that begins to address that issue--but we did not have 60 votes.
We provided emergency relief to senior citizens who several years ago were getting no COLAs for Social Security. We had a majority vote but could not get 60 votes.
We had a majority vote to say that women should be paid equal pay for equal work. A majority of Senators said that. We couldn't get it passed.
What we have seen in recent years is reasonably good legislation getting a majority vote, but we cannot get it passed because time after time we need 60 votes. What we are operating under now is a tyranny of the minority.
The American people go to vote. They elect Obama President, and they elect a Democratic Senate. People who campaigned on certain issues--as people go forward trying to implement their campaign promises, they cannot do it because we cannot get 60 votes.
Once again, at one point in Senate history, from 1917 to 1967, the filibuster was used very sparingly--only in exceptional circumstances. Since that point, have Democrats--and I speak as an Independent--have Democrats abused the system? Have they been obstructionist? There are times when they have been. But since 2008 what has happened is the Republicans have taken obstructionism to an entirely new level. Virtually every piece of legislation now requires 60 votes, and virtually every piece of legislation requires an enormous amount of time.
What do we do? My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have made the point that the Senate is not the House. And they are right. In the House there are 435 Members and majority rules. The majority has a whole lot of power. The minority doesn't have that much power. People have said: We do not want the Senate to be like the House, and I agree with that. The Senate should not be the House.
Senate Members should be guaranteed the right to offer amendments, not be shut out of the process. Whether you are the minority or the majority, you should have the right to offer amendments. There should be thorough and lengthy debate. If a Member of the Senate wants to stand here on the floor and speak hour after hour to call attention to some issue he or she believes is important, that Senator
has the right, in my view, to do that. If that debate goes on for a week, it goes on for a week. Senators, whether in the minority or the majority, have the right to call attention and to debate and focus on issues they consider to be important. But at the end of that debate there must be finality. There must be a majority vote--51 votes should win. The concept I support is what is called the talking filibuster. Minority rights must be protected. They must have all the time they need to make their point. But majority rights must also be protected. If democracy means anything, what I learned in the third grade was that the majority rules, not the minority.
What is happening in our country is not only enormous frustration about the very serious economic and environmental problems we face, there is huge outrage at the inability of Congress to even debate those issues.
For example, I am a very strong believer that the minimum wage in this country must be significantly raised. It is now about $7.25. I would like it to go up to $10 an hour, and even at $10 an hour people working 40 hours a week will still be living in poverty, but we have to raise the minimum wage. My strong guess is that if we do not change the rules, despite overwhelming support in this country for raising the minimum wage, we will never get an up-or-down vote here on that issue because Republicans will obstruct, demand 60 votes, and filibuster the issue.
If my Republican friends are so confident in the points of view they are advocating, bring them to the floor and let's have an up-or-down vote. Let the American people know how I feel on the issue, how you feel on the issue, but let's not have issues decided because we could not get 60 votes for a motion to proceed. Nobody in America understands what that is about.
Do you want to vote against the minimum wage? Have the guts to come and vote against the minimum wage. Do you want to vote against women's rights? Come on up, have your say, and vote against women's rights. Do you want to vote against global warming? Vote against global warming. At least let us have the debate the American people are demanding.
I will conclude by saying I am glad the President will finally be able to get some key appointees seated. I was a mayor so I know how terribly important it is for a chief executive to have their team around them. I am glad he will get some key appointees.
Everyone should understand that what we are doing today is dealing with one very small part of an overall problem, which is the dysfunctionality of the Senate. I hope--having addressed the immediate crisis--we can now go on and address the broader issue, which is making the Senate responsive to the needs of the American people. Let's have serious debates on serious issues and let's see where the chips fall.
I yield the floor.
Source