Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we have had competing claims about who
is really at fault. I think the answer to that question is becoming
unquestionably undeniable to any fair observer. Actions speak louder
than words and there is no denying the actions of the minority party,
which, before this Congress, was the majority party in the Senate for 8
years.

Even in the minority, they are up to their old tricks of blocking
amendments and grinding the Senate to a halt. Given the distortion of
the Senate rules during those 8 years, it is no wonder the American
public, and perhaps even some Senators, are confused about how the
Senate rules are supposed to work. So I wish to take a few moments to
talk about a procedure in the Senate called the cloture motion.

With cloture, the Senate is actually voting on the question: Is it
the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?
The proper use of cloture is when the Senate has had time for debate
and consideration of amendments and it seems as though the Senate is
getting bogged down. If a cloture vote fails, then that means the
Senate has decided, as a body, to keep on considering a particular
piece of legislation. This is a crucial point and one that was
routinely distorted under the previous majority, and they did it for
partisan ends.

A vote against cloture is a vote to continue considering a bill until
at least 60 Senators are satisfied they have had their say and are
ready to vote a bill up or down, yea or nay. It is not always clear
when the Senate has reached that point, so the bill can sometimes
require several cloture votes.

Under the previous majority leadership--and now that group happens to
be the Senate minority--we saw unprecedented abuses of Senate rules to
block Senators from participating in the deliberative process. This
included the repeated abuse of the cloture rule. In order to shield his
Members from having to take tough votes, the previous majority leader
routinely moved to shut down all consideration of a bill even before
any debate took place and even before any amendments could be
considered.

As I stated, cloture is supposed to be used after the Senate has
considered a measure for a period of time and a preponderance of the
Senate thinks it has deliberated enough, and not do it to end
consideration of a bill before it has begun, as the previous majority
leadership did for several years prior to this year.

Let's contrast how our majority leader, Senator McConnell, has been
running the Senate. He has not tried to block minority amendments, as
was done to us when we were in the minority. In fact, we have already
had more than twice as many amendment votes as all of last year.

As the manager of this bill, I have been running an open amendment
process, and I am not afraid to have votes on amendments of all kinds.
In fact, if you are fortunate enough to be elected to represent your
State as a U.S. Senator, it seems to me you have an obligation to the
people of your State to offer amendments on issues that are important
to your State. The American people saw that we were serious about
restoring the Senate tradition of having an open amendment process with
the very first major bill we took up in this new Congress.

Supporters of the Keystone Pipeline bill had the 60 votes to end
debate, but we didn't try to ram through the bill without consideration
of amendments. We had a full, open amendment process as we are supposed
to have in the U.S. Senate, because it is a deliberative and amending
body. There were more than a few ``gotcha'' types of amendments from
the other side, but that is OK because that is how the Senate is
supposed to operate. There was also an opportunity, for the first time
in a very long time, for Senators to get votes on substantive issues
that are important to the people of their individual States. That
should be a big deal for every Senator, but it was not a very big deal
the way the Senate was run previous to this year. When Senators are
blocked from participating in the legislative process, the people they
represent are disenfranchised. We were not elected to serve our party
leadership, but to represent our State, and that is why it was so
disappointing under the previous majority to see Senators repeatedly
voting in lockstep with their party leadership to block amendments and
end debate before it started. I think it is pretty clear from the last
election that that strategy backfired in a very major way. Yet the same
leaders, now in the minority, are up to their old tricks.

The previous Senate leadership routinely used a tactic called filling
the tree, where a former majority leader used his right of first
recognition to call up his amendments and thus block out amendments
from other Senators of both political parties.

When the Senate is considering a number of amendments at once, it
then requires unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment in
order to call up a new amendment, and that is a way to prevent other
Senators from then offering their amendments. If you don't get
unanimous consent to take down an amendment to make room for your
amendment, you don't get the chance to offer your amendment, and
usually that was blocked, and that is why there were only 18 rollcall
votes on amendments all last year, compared to this year. The last time
I counted, so far this year we had 43 votes.

Elections are supposed to have consequences, and the consequences of
the last election are that the new majority decided the Senate ought to
operate as a deliberative and amending body where every Senator can
participate, so Majority Leader McConnell has not filled the amendment
tree.

We have substantive amendments pending as we speak. Nevertheless, the
minority leadership has been objecting to even setting aside the
pending amendment or proceeding to a vote on pending amendments just as
when they used the procedure of filling the amendment tree.

After reporting the human trafficking bill out of the Senate
Judiciary Committee unanimously, they have decided there is one
provision they don't like, so after 3 days of consideration last week the bill has not moved forward. It looks as though the same trick is going on right now. Since
there is an open amendment process--and that is the way Senator
McConnell runs the Senate--we have naturally suggested that they offer
an amendment if they don't like something in this bill. They have
refused to do so, and instead are holding up the entire bill from being
amended and finally passed.

So after opening the bill up to amendments and having considered the
bill for a week, the majority leader has now filed cloture. I want to
be clear what this means. Again, a vote against cloture is a vote to
continue debate and consider amendments. I have voted against ending
debate many times in recent years out of principle when Senators were
being denied their right to offer amendments. No one can say this is
the case right now on this human trafficking bill. We have had a week
of debate, and it is the minority party that is blocking amendments.

Remember that many Members of the now minority party, when they were
in the majority, were adamant that a vote against cloture is a
filibuster and that it is illegitimate to filibuster. I say to my
colleagues, if they truly believe filibusters are wrong and it was not
just cynical political posturing, then you had better vote for cloture
tomorrow.

I will also note that a couple of Senators sent out a ``Dear
Colleague'' letter at the beginning of this Congress calling again for
what they term the ``talking filibuster.'' By this, those Senators mean
that if you vote against ending debate, you should be prepared to talk
nonstop on the Senate floor. Under their proposal, as soon as there are
no Senators talking on the Senate floor, the Senate would move to a
final vote. The problem with this idea under the previous leadership
was that amendments were routinely blocked so it meant Senators would
have to talk nonstop to preserve their right to offer an amendment with
no guarantee they would ever get the chance. That is not the issue this
time.

We have allowed an open amendment process, and it is the minority
party that is blocking amendments. So I would say to all the advocates
of the so-called talking filibuster, if you do vote against cloture,
you are saying you want to debate this bill more before a vote is
taken. In that case, you better put your money where your mouth is.

To all of my colleagues who support this so-called filibuster and
vote against this cloture motion, I expect to see you come down to the
Senate floor and talk nonstop. You can use the time to explain to the
American people why you object to moving forward with this very
important bipartisan legislation to combat sex trafficking. Then when
you are ready to move forward with the vote, let us know.

I yield the floor.

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