Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote.

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I think we have come up with yet another definition of obstruction today. Our Democratic friends are going to prevent the passage of an energy and water appropriations bill because of an amendment that is not yet pending to the bill in yet a new way to blow up the appropriations process.

Our Democratic colleagues were great at dysfunction when they were in the majority, and they are pretty good at it when they are in the minority. No matter what the issue--no matter what the issue--there is some new and creative way to try and throw a monkey wrench into the gears.

I heard over and over and over again that there was broad support on both sides of the aisle for getting the appropriations process moving again. The Senator from Arkansas has been extraordinarily reasonable. He has offered to modify his amendment. He has offered to consider it in some other context. Our chairman, Senator Alexander, has been working on this for 24 hours. It ought not to be this hard to pass an energy and water appropriations bill that would be good for the country and that most of us support.

So I just moved to reconsider my vote, and we need to continue to talk about this because this is a ridiculous place for the Senate to be--ridiculous. We are all adults. We have all been elected by the people of our various States to come and act responsibly.

We are not going to give up on this bill, and when we finish this bill, we will go to a couple more appropriations bills. I think we have a collective responsibility in the Senate--Democrats and Republicans-- to work our way past this snag and figure out the way forward, so we will have time to do that.

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