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Leadership. Character. Commitment. |
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vNews organizations seeking more information should call Senator Byrd's Communications Office at 202-224-3904. To hear portions of many of Senator Byrd's speeches, visit the Radio page. Also, high-resolution photographs are available from many events. |
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Remarks by Senator Byrd |
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April 28, 2004 |
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"Another Week, Another Cloture Vote: Political Games in the U.S. Senate" |
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Senator Byrd delivered the following remarks to decry the virtual breakdown in the Senate's legislative responsibilities. Our country is facing record budget and trade deficits. We are in a war of our President's choosing that is not, to put it mildly, going as well as had been expected. Millions
of Americans are without health care and millions more worry about the security of their jobs. These are troubled times and many issues clamor for the attention of the Senate. Yet what is the response of the United States
Senate – the world's greatest deliberative body? Are we debating strategies to quell the violence in Iraq and bring our soldiers home? No. Are we considering plans to shore up Social Security and Medicare? No! Is the Senate deliberating on
how to make America's workforce more competitive? NO! Is the U.S. Senate grappling with reauthorizing welfare reform or the highway bill? NO!! This great deliberative body, which was forged by the Founding Fathers
in the great compromise, has become a factory that manufactures sound bite votes that make great fodder for 30-second political ads, but which do very little to address the many, many challenges facing this country. If this continues, I
fear that the Senate will be little more than an insignificant arm of the political parties and we may as well lower the flag that flies over this Capitol and wave the white flag of surrender in its place. Have we lost the
will to legislate? Is the current leadership afraid to allow the Senate to work its will. The Republican leadership seems to feel that their slim majority gives them a blank check to impose their exclusive agenda. Let me be
clear. IT DOES NOT. The Senate, by its very existence, embodies a core tenet in American democracy: the principle that the minority has rights. The Republican leadership is fast making the committee process a thing of the
past. Further, the leadership has done everything in its power to prevent Democratic Senators from getting votes on their amendments. The United States is faced with a trade deficit that has mushroomed to an all-time
high for the third year in a row! Adding to that unfortunate situation, in August 2002, the World Trade Organization authorized the European Union to impose up to $4 billion in trade sanctions against the U.S. if provisions of the tax
code are not repealed. The Republican Leader brought up the Foreign Sales Corporation legislation to address this situation only after the sanctions were in place. After votes on only two amendments, the Majority wanted to shut
down the amendment process. Many reasons were given, but the truth of the matter is that they did not want to vote on an amendment dealing with overtime rules for American workers. While American companies are losing their
competitive edge, the "my way or the highway" approach of the leadership has delayed a final resolution on this bill. In the past, cloture was a rarely used procedural tool. Not so today. Cloture is routinely filed in an
attempt to limit non-germane amendments. Instead of the phrase "another day, another dollar," the Senate operates in an atmosphere of "another week, another cloture vote." Last November we had three cloture
votes on one day! What great hopes the leadership must have had for the first two votes to schedule three in a row! How can such a move be seen as anything more than political scorekeeping? This Senate has spent an
extraordinary amount of time, energy, and effort on President Bush's judicial nominees. In fact, last November, the Senate set aside the VA-HUD appropriations bill to hold an overnight marathon stunt. The Majority actually set
aside substantive legislation to conduct a circus on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The VA-HUD appropriations bill was never completed. Instead, it was rolled into the omnibus appropriations bill as has become the unfortunate
custom in recent years. We have had 17 cloture votes on six controversial and problematic nominees. The response of the Republican Leadership and the Administration has not been to address the fundamental underlying concerns raised by
various Senators. NO! No negotiation! Instead they choose the course of holding cloture vote after cloture vote and then bash Democratic Senators as obstructionists. And just for good measure, the President – who has had
96 percent of his judges confirmed – moved two of these divisive nominees onto the bench in recess appointments. Now I don't pretend that the conflict over judicial nominees began in this Senate or with this President. But I will state that
this Senate leadership and this President have worked in concert to further politicize the process by which we select members of the judiciary. And it is not just with judicial nominees that the Republican Leadership is doing
the White House's bidding. Rather than have a Legislative Branch which crafts a bill and then sends it to the President to sign or veto, this leadership has allowed this President to control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
During the conference on the omnibus appropriations bill, the Republican Majority allowed the White House to assert itself and put in provisions that had been rejected by one or both houses. Specifically, the provision to allow
increased concentration of media ownership had been rejected by both the House and the Senate. However, it was included in the bill at the behest of the White House. Shameful! The House and Senate were both on record as opposing
overtime regulations proposed by the Administration. Nevertheless, at the urging of the White House, language to block implementation of these regulations was dropped from the conference report. Another example of
allowing the White House to dictate the legislation produced by the Congress is the highway bill. Here is a bill that is important to every state in the union. Every Senator's state will benefit from this bill. The
transportation bills passed the House and the Senate by wide bipartisan majorities -- majorities that could easily override a veto. And yet we are stalled because the White House is demanding that the cost of the highway bill be
significantly lower than what was passed by both houses of Congress. The White House has threatened a veto if the cost of the bill is over its chosen number. And what is the reaction of the Senate leadership to such an
outrageous demand? Did the Senate stand its ground? No. The White House offers a disapproving nod and the leaders scurry like mice, taking the offensive proposal off the table. It was not always like
this. There was a time when the Senate was an independent body, not the errand boy of the White House. It was not always that the Executive Branch effectively dictated what provisions the Congress included in conference reports. This is not how the Senate is supposed to work. The Senate is like a broken bone. Left untreated, we risk that this body will be permanently weakened, never again able to do the work and bear the load for which it was
designed. We must set the Senate back on course, and allow it to knit back together. The current path is reckless, unsustainable, and unwise. The record of this Senate is abysmal. Time after time -- on issues such
as medical malpractice, asbestos reform, and many others -- the Republican leadership has abandoned the committee process of the Senate to bring partisan, divisive bills to the floor to make a political statement and to score political
points with supporters. Now one might dismiss the polarization of this body as a product of the Senate being so closely divided. But this leadership has allowed external forces, most notably pressure from the White House, to
seep into the dealings of the Senate. Is the leadership unaware that the constitution has separate articles for the Legislative and the Executive branches. What has become of civility? What has become of comity? It
used to be unheard of for Senate leaders to seek an active role against each other in campaigns. That time has gone. Has honor gone too? Who cares about honor when a Senate seat might be gained? When did party labels
become more important than honor and the power of ideas? Gone are the days in which there was genuine debate, when Senators listen to the give and take of the discussion to learn about an issue and, sadly, many of the votes we take have a
pre-determined outcome. Yet they are brought to the floor – and this goes for both sides of the aisle – to try to get Senators on record as voting for such and such. Bills are brought to the floor and amendments are offered to create a
public record that can be touted or attacked come campaign season. In all this sound bite and fury, the losers are the people whom we represent. The people who send us to this body to act in their best interests, not to squabble and point
fingers like petulant children. And that is where all these shennagins play out – in front of the American people. People who need affordable health care, or help putting their children through college. People who are afraid
that their jobs will be sent overseas, or that they will lose the pay and benefits that they have worked hard to secure. People on Medicare and Social Security, and people who worry about whether Medicare and Social Security will be there
when it is time for them to retire. People who have sent their sons and daughters to fight half way around the world, and who are afraid that they may not come home. I have served in this chamber for more than four
decades. Times have changed. The world has changed. But our responsibilities and duties as Senators have not changed. Long after the campaign of this November – or the campaigns of many Novembers to come – each Senator in this body
will look back at the content of his or her career and judge whether they made our country a better place. The people send us here to do a job. They do not send us here to play with their lives in order to score political points. It is difficult in this world of instant gratification to think beyond the immediate. But we should all pause for a moment and reflect on the Senate. The Senate is an institution that relies on precedent. What
kind of precedent is being set? In my years in this body, I have spent approximately two thirds of my time in the majority, and one third in the minority – the majority is better, by the way. I would say to the Republican
Leadership that it is unlikely that they will always be in the majority. There will come a time when they may appreciate the rights afforded to the minority. We all need to spend a little time thinking about how it may feel to
be in the other guy's shoes, and about what our silly, selfish games are doing to the soul of the Senate. ### |
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