America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, for weeks now we have seen Democratic Senators come to the floor and attack the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The tone of these attacks against Senator Grassley have been vicious and they have been very personal. I believe Democrats have embarrassed themselves, and they have done a disservice to their constituents and to the U.S. Senate.

Senator Grassley is an outstanding public servant. He has been relentless in representing the interests and the views of the people of his home State of Iowa. He has not missed a vote in 27 years. He holds townhall meetings in every one of Iowa's 99 counties every single year. That is how seriously Chuck Grassley takes his responsibility to serve and to represent the people of his home State. Every other Member of this body should be trying to copy his example, not coming to the floor to criticize him or take cheap shots, as the Democrats have been doing in an attempt for political gain.

What Senator Grassley wants should be the same thing all of us want when it comes to momentous decisions--decisions like who will have a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. He wants to give the people a voice. That is what Senator Grassley wants for the people of Iowa, and that is what I want for the people of Wyoming.

Senator Enzi and I had a telephone townhall meeting last month, talking to people around the State of Wyoming. The great majority of the folks in Wyoming agree with Senator Grassley, agree with Senator Enzi, and agree with me about the next Supreme Court Justice and giving the people a voice. This isn't just something that Republicans are making up because we don't like this nominee, although there is plenty not to like; it is what past chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee have done, Democrats as well as Republicans.

In 1992 Senator Joe Biden--now Vice President Joe Biden, but then Senator Joe Biden--came to the Senate floor to explain his rule, called the Biden rule, and it had to do with Supreme Court nominations. On this Senate floor, Joe Biden said that once the Presidential election is underway, ``action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.'' That is what Vice President Joe Biden said when he was a Senator. Those are Joe Biden's words--former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is the same position Senator Chuck Grassley currently holds. Senator Biden at the time said the temporary vacancy on the Court was ``quite minor''-- ``quite minor,'' he said--``compared to the cost that a nominee, the president, the Senate, and our nation would have to pay for what would assuredly be a bitter fight.''

Senator Biden was one of the Democrats who voted to filibuster Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. So was Senator Pat Leahy, who once also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Obama and Senator Harry Reid--that is right, Barack Obama, currently President of the United States, then-Senator Obama, and Senator Harry Reid, once majority leader, now minority leader--voted for that filibuster.

Back in 2005, when Senator Reid was the Democratic leader, he said: ``Nowhere in [the Constitution] does it say the Senate has a duty to give presidential nominees a vote.'' Senator Reid even went so far as to unilaterally change the rules of the Senate on nominations a few years ago. He was in the majority then; now he is in the minority.

That is what Democrats have done and what they have said about things like nominations to the Supreme Court and other important jobs for the country.

We have elections in this country for a reason--it is so we can hear directly from the people what they think and how they want us to act on their behalf.

In 2014, the American people rejected the path the Democrats in Washington were taking. They put Republicans in charge of the House and the Senate because they wanted us to act as a check and a balance on what President Obama was doing. Democrats want to ignore the will of the people on this Supreme Court nomination.

The President wants to say it is his decision and his alone. Well, it is not just his decision. Now that the election season is upon us, it should be the people's decision. Republicans understand that, Senator Grassley clearly understands that, and Democrats actually used to understand it. We need to give the people a voice. Energy Industry Jobs

Mr. President, I would also like to speak briefly about something going on in my home State of Wyoming. Late last week, two of our State's largest coal mines announced they would let go 15 percent of their workers--465 families now living with the terrible pain of loss of a job. Wyoming has seen thousands of hard-working men and women lose their jobs in the energy industry over the past few years, people working in oil, gas, and coal.

Democrats in Washington should never forget that the regulations they and this administration impose have real impact on real people. When Members of the Congress focus obsessively--and it is a misguided obsession--on ideas like climate change, they do grave damage to the hard-working families all across this country who are trying to provide energy for America and provide for their families.

When Democratic Presidential candidates say they want to keep our resources in the ground, they send shock waves through communities that depend on energy jobs. When the Obama administration promotes green energy at any cost, it does great harm to Americans who are working to produce red, white, and blue energy. Seven years of overregulation has taken its toll on coal country. The Obama administration has taken away these people's jobs, and now it is trying to take away their dignity because a person's job is related to their identity and dignity in so many ways.

My goal is to make American energy as clean as we can, as fast as we can, without raising costs and causing pain to American families. That means investing in new ways to develop Wyoming's incredible energy resources and finding new markets for those resources. Energy is known as the master resource. It is the master resource for a reason, and America provides and produces the energy we need for a strong economy as well as a healthy environment. There are bipartisan ideas and bills here in the Senate to help us do both. We should never give up on that goal.

American energy production has powered our economic recovery and has been the workhorse for the American economy for the last 7 years through the economic recovery. It is time for us here in the Senate, here in the country, certainly here in Washington, to return that favor and to help get these Americans back to work.

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