Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I would like to compliment my colleague from Illinois. He hit the nail on the head. I will be brief.

The Republican leader said this is a new level of obstruction. I don't know if it is a new level of obstruction; he has been pretty good at it over the years. But certainly, if we wanted to obstruct these bills, we wouldn't have let the motion to proceed go forward. We would have done 17 other things that were done time and time again in the past.

The way to stop this, I would say to the Republican leader, is very simple: Either prevail on Senator Cotton not to offer his amendment--no one is doing that. He has a right to do it. But in the old days, as Senator Durbin said, the way the appropriations process worked, the chair of the subcommittee would say: Don't offer your amendment because it will be defeated and we will help defeat it because it will blow up the bill. Plain and simple. That is still an option.

We didn't offer the Cotton amendment. We could have offered our version of Cotton amendments to blow up this bill. We did not. Whether or not that was his intent--and I will not doubt the sincerity of my friend from Arkansas. But it was offered by the other side, and the onus is on the other side to fix this. The way to fix it is one of two: Either prevail on the Senator from Arkansas to pursue his goal here-- that is certainly his right, but don't do it using the appropriations process as a hostage to move forward on his bill--or tell him that if he offers the bill, Republicans will vote against it as well. Then we can move forward.

That was how it used to work. When I was a junior Member and I wanted to offer amendments, some of them controversial, I would go to our chair or ranking member--depending on whether we were in the majority or minority--and say: I want to offer this amendment. The chair would consult with the other side, and they would come back and say: We, the majority/minority, cannot support this amendment. Then I wouldn't offer it. It would lose. That is the way the process used to work.

I don't begrudge any individual--the centrifugal forces in our politics have pulled things apart, so it is much harder for Members on both sides of the aisle to do it. But let's not turn that around. The obstruction and the failure to deal with obstruction is not coming from this side, it is coming from the other side, and they have an onus to fix it.

One more point before my good friend--and I love him--from Tennessee comes forward. Whatever we did, the President said he was going to veto this. So the idea that this bill would go forward and we would spend all this time on it and then have the President veto it--that doesn't accomplish the goals that I know my good friends, the chair of the subcommittee and the ranking member of the subcommittee, want to pursue. The onus is on us to do it before we get to that.

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Mr. SCHUMER. Will my colleague yield?

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Mr. SCHUMER. I understand that every time the President says ``veto,'' we shouldn't freeze in our tracks, but it would be a lot better if we could avoid that situation because we want this bill to pass and be signed into law.

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