National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014--Continued

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, there has been considerable controversy in recent days over a provision in the recently passed spending package that became known as the Bipartisan Budget Act which cuts pensions for military members, including wounded warriors.

There was bipartisan agreement. People on both sides of the aisle believe that it ought to be fixed, that it was an error and should not go forward, and that there were better ways to find the money--if you have to have money to spend somewhere else--than taking it from military retirees.

But Majority Leader Reid and every single Member of his conference save one stood together to block an effort which I proposed to restore the pensions for the military and also find better offsets. They blocked us from making any alteration to this spending package that was before the Senate, including my amendment to close an egregious tax welfare loophole--a tax credit, a payment directly from the United States of America to illegal aliens--that could pay for these cuts itself. Indeed, the inspector general of President Obama's Treasury Department has said this loophole needs to be closed and would save a substantial sum of money. It is an open gate, allowing massive fraud and illegality.

So we simply wanted to close that loophole. We asked to pay for this new spending by closing this loophole that the Treasury Department asked us to close instead of reducing the retirement benefits by as much as $70,000 for a sergeant who served to age 42 in the U.S. military.

How can this blockade be defended? How did it happen? Why would we be in such a position? Is there any Member in the majority who would really defend the practice we are now undertaking where legislation that clearly needs an amendment to fix a problem in it is not allowed to have amendments, and the legislation is rammed through the Senate?

This has been the pattern around here for far too long. The majority leader is eroding the Senate's historic role as the great Chamber where the issues are debated and changes and amendments are voted on, and he is being enabled and supported by his conference.

Consistently, time and again, when objections are made to try to stop this practice and get amendments and votes on important bills, his conference has stood with him. In other words, his conference is saying: We choose to stand with Majority Leader Reid and his procedural actions which block other colleagues; we choose to stand against even our own Members having amendments and against the right of individual Americans to have their Senator be held accountable--to stand up and be able to offer amendments to legislation to improve it. And if you don't do that, you are accountable for voting for the final bill--which is imperfect and should be fixed.

That is the way the voters hold us accountable. They need to be able to see us vote and look at our voting records and decide whether we are serving their interests, some Wall Street interest, some special interest, or some political group instead of the national interest. That is what this whole system is about.

Now we have before us the Defense bill that is so important for America. I serve on the Armed Services Committee. I have been on that committee for nearly 17 years. We moved this bill out with a big majority. I voted for it in committee, although I expressed great concern about its budgetary problems that needed to be fixed. Unfortunately these problems have not been fixed. But I wanted to see the bill move forward, and I tried to be cooperative.

The bill moved to the floor. The budget problem hasn't been fixed, and there are other problems with the legislation that need to be refined. The bill before us, the Defense bill, spends approximately $500 billion--for the largest single agency in the U.S. Government. Are we to accept that it should pass in this body without a single person having a single idea that ought to be made a part of that bill? Can it not be made better?

The majority admits it is not a perfect piece of legislation. We certainly know that. The American system is designed so that when an imperfect bill moves forward, a Senator can offer an amendment. Maybe it is not a good amendment. Maybe it will be voted down. Maybe it is a good amendment and will be accepted. But no more, not with what is happening here today.

What is happening here today is when Republicans want to offer an amendment, Senator Reid basically says no. He doesn't want any amendments. He then uses a device called ``filling the tree''--because he gets to be recognized first--filling it with a series of amendments, leaving no place, then, for any other Member of the Senate to call up an amendment. And the majority leader won't remove the amendments from the tree unless he decides he wants to.

On this Defense bill, we had two votes on amendments when the bill was up for an entire week. We could have easily had 30 or 40 votes that week had we chosen to do so. So only two votes were held, and none now, and we are moving to final passage. The tree is filled, and we have not been able to force even a single vote to fix matters.

Senator Cornyn offered an amendment this afternoon. He filed a motion to table some of the amendments Senator Reid had placed on the tree, and it was voted down by the supporters of Senator Reid on the other side of the aisle. We have been talking about this for a long time. This is contrary to the history of the Senate.

Senator Cornyn laid out how year after year for 51 years we moved a defense bill through the Senate, and there have been multiple amendments nearly every time but this one. It is unthinkable that the great Senate of the United States would not allow amendments to a bill as significant as a defense bill.

So what does the majority leader do after he fills the tree? Republicans said: Wait a minute, Senator Reid. There were no amendments allowed on the bill. We have amendments.

He said: Oh, you are being obstructionist. I am going to file for cloture. I am going to file a motion to shut off debate, and we are not going to have any amendments.

And then if the Republicans resist and say, we are not going to vote to end debate because we haven't had any amendments, he says, you are obstructionist.

This is the pattern that has been going on. He files cloture virtually immediately with the filing of the bill, and he claims that is a filibuster by the Republicans. So by filing cloture immediately, he contends that Republicans are filibustering a bill; he counts up these filibusters and says: There are too many filibusters in the Senate. You are obstructing the business of the Senate.

In truth, Majority Leader Reid is the one who is obstructing the Senate. He is the one who is blocking debate and amendments.

If you ask a schoolchild somewhere in America, if you ask a senior citizen, a World War II veteran who loves this country and has studied the great principles of America, you say there is a piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate and there is something in it that is wrong--they want to cut benefits for wounded warriors, veterans who served and have been wounded in combat and disabled--and you do not want that to happen, what would you do?

Why, they would all answer, you would file an amendment to the bill to fix this problem.

But not in the Senate today. That is the classical understanding of the way this body ought to operate. That is what James Madison, I am sure, conceived and the way it has worked for so many years. But not any longer. This bipartisan Budget Act is just like the Defense bill--no amendments. No matter how important the bill is, no matter how many problems there are in it, no amendments.

Oh, you want to go back to that old Senate where people could actually debate and have amendments and offer changes and improve it? No longer. That is obstructionist. That is delaying tactics. We won't have it anymore. You are slowing us down. It is unacceptable.

When I vote not to end debate on this Defense bill that is before us, I am not voting to not have a defense bill. That is so obviously wrong it is hard to believe you have to explain it. But we are not voting to do that. We are voting to maintain the classical principle of the Senate where individual Senators from whatever State there is can come to the floor and make a contribution to the country. They were elected by their people. There are almost 5 million Alabamians who elected me. Do I not get to offer an amendment to the Defense bill of the United States? It diminishes my role. It diminishes the role of every single Senator. So I am asking my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have been lemming-like, I call it, defending this abuse of power, to begin to consider what this may mean to them and whether this is the right way the Senate should operate.

There will be some tough votes. We will all have to take tough votes. Probably most people can explain their votes if they know what they are doing. Maybe some cannot and they will be voted out and sent home. So be it. If you cannot defend your vote and you are not casting good votes on bills and you cannot respond effectively as to why you voted for or against a certain amendment, then you ought to be sent home. We are not entitled to these jobs. We have to be elected to them.

I am concerned about it. I believe it goes even beyond the significance of this important Defense bill. I think it goes beyond this grave error in which we are reducing the pay of military retirees when we are not reducing other retirees' pay.

This is not a belt-tightening across the board. It seems to me to be a targeting of one group of Americans, perhaps those who served more than any other group.

Majority Leader Reid continues to complain that the trains are not running on time, not running with enough ruthless efficiency to suit his ideas. So he then uses a filling-the-tree tactic. But that is not all. Although President Obama has had judge after judge after judge confirmed, and Cabinet people and sub-Cabinet people confirmed in large numbers, the Senate refused to approve one appointment recently and refused to fill three Federal judgeships at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because they were not needed. The average caseload for those judges was 149. Of the 8 judges who are there now, there are authorized 11 judges. So the 8 judges there now have 149 cases per judge, whereas my circuit, the 11th Circuit, sitting in Atlanta, has over 700 cases per judge. The national average is around 350 cases per judge.

We do not need to fill three judgeships for which the caseload is not there. The caseload for the DC Circuit is almost half that of the next lowest circuit in the country. So we do not need these judges. The caseload continues to decline. So the Senate refused to give cloture, refused to confirm those judges. So in an act of pique or calculation or deliberateness, the majority leader altered the rule of the Senate about how we ought to conduct business here. He did so by breaking the rules of the Senate.

This is what happened. U.S. Senate rule XXII says in order to bring debate to a close, three-fifths of the Senators duly sworn would need to vote to end the debate. There were not sufficient votes to end the debate on the DC judges because they were not needed. This irritated the majority leader. So he petitioned to the Presiding Officer and the Parliamentarian and he asserted that it only takes 51 Senators to vote to end debate. But rule XXII explicitly says it takes three-fifths, 60 Senators, to end debate. It goes on to say, except when you change the rules of the Senate, and that takes two-thirds, 67. So it takes 67 votes to change the rules of the Senate and 60 votes to end debate.

What did Senator Reid do? He asked the Parliamentarian to say it only took 51. The Presiding Officer, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Senator Leahy, our longest serving Member, and the Parliamentarian said no, Senator Reid, the rule is it takes 60 votes to shut off debate.

So what did Senator Reid do? He used the ability to appeal the ruling of the Chair and he asked his colleagues to overrule the ruling of the Chair, which by any plain reading of the rules of the Senate would be without dispute requiring 60 votes to shut off debate, but he wanted it to be 51 and his colleagues supported him. His colleagues supported him, they supported him and he overruled the Chair, his own Parliamentarian whom he selected and the Presiding Officer that he put in the Chair. They voted to change the rules of the Senate. It is in plain language--with 51 votes, not 67.

This is dangerous, colleagues. This is the kind of thing you see in Third World republics or would-be republics. This is the kind of lawlessness that will endanger the American system of government at its most fundamental basis. It is endangering us. The President says whatever he wants to--you can keep your doctor, the President says your plan is going to save you $2,000 a year, the President says all these things and he gets his bill passed and none of it is true.

I don't see any Members on the floor who voted for this bill, ObamaCare, down here apologizing to the American people, saying I am sorry, the bill I voted for did not do any of the things I promised you it would do and I am willing to have an amendment process on the floor to fix it. No, we are not going to get a vote on ObamaCare. They are going to block

that too. If any attempt is ever made, he will fill the tree and block that vote. So we are not able to bring it to the Senate floor and require Senators to vote on serious issues involving health care for millions of Americans because Senator Reid doesn't believe in it and he is backed by his colleagues.

I guess the President probably says, oh, don't let them vote on ObamaCare, they might change some of it. You know, they are finding out what is in it. We don't want them to actually think they have enough muscle to actually pass a law to fix it or change it or alter it. That would be terrible. Who do they think they are? Do they think this is a democracy or something?

That is where we are. This is huge and significant. We have to confront what is happening. It is very important that we cool down and we get some sort of work going on, but I am not confident at all on that. This effort should result in a retreat from this breaking the rules to change the rules, this nuclear option.

The reason a nuclear option was called that is because once you do that, it blows up the entire Senate. Senator Levin explained the problem very succinctly, one of two Democrats who voted against Senator Reid's attempt to execute the nuclear option and to change the rules of the Senate. He said if a majority can change the rules of the Senate, there are no rules. It is simply what the majority says. There are no standards, there are no rules, there are no procedures. If we can change them whenever we are frustrated by a majority vote in the Senate, there are no rules, there are no protections. That is so true.

That is why what has happened here is so significant. I believe this late-night work and this process to consider nominations is healthy, because it requires us to go through a painful period of introspection as to what is happening to us and how we ought to conduct this great Senate.

This afternoon we did not have the support for Senator Cornyn's resolution. Yesterday, when I made the motion to clear a place off of the tree so my amendment could be heard and voted on, my colleagues, a majority of them, voted no. Only one broke with Senator Reid, actually; one Democrat did. Every Republican voted to allow amendments to go forward, allow my amendment to be heard. The rights of all the Senators in this body to defend their State, to defend equal representation, was undermined.

The two Independents in our Senate, delightful individuals for sure who caucus with the Democrats and vote with the Democrats, maybe sometime they will be willing to prove that the letter ``I'', independent, means something and maybe they will help us stand and defend the heritage of the Senate. We need to make this thing change. We cannot continue to aggregate more and more power into the majority leader where no longer--where the right to demand 60 votes to shut off debate could be further eroded, where we will continue to see bill after bill brought up with no amendments being allowed.

They say oh, well, we are at the end of a year. We must do that. We do not have time. But the Defense bill has been on the floor since June. That is awful. There have been huge amounts of time for us to bring it to the floor. It has been out of committee since June and it should long ago have been brought up and, in fact, it could have been voted on last week with full amendments and we would already be through with that and be gone today.

The Armed Services bill, the Defense bill is an important bill. I am very disappointed we are at a period of impasse, very disappointed that I cannot support going forward with it to final passage because there is no ability to amend it and fix some of the obvious flaws that are in it. It is outside the budget spending limits we agreed to.

The Bipartisan Budget Act was also rammed through the Senate with no ability to offer amendments. This legislation will not allow us to prevent the cut of veterans retirement pay and disabled wounded warriors retirement and benefit pay.

It is a disappointment for me to be in this position. I have tried to be supportive of the Defense bill every year. I worked in committee to do so. I believe last year we got a unanimous vote, Republicans and Democrats, quite a number of times in the committee.

A lot of that is due to Senator Levin and Senator Inhofe's leadership. This time we have a problem, and it is not going well, and I am deeply disappointed. I believe we can do better, we must do better, and I will not be able to vote to support this bill tonight.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source