Work of the Senate

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the American people have been frustrated in recent years with the dysfunction they see in Washington. Their assessment of us has been correct. The biggest symbol of dysfunction has been the inability, as the chairman of our Energy and Water Development Subcommittee just pointed out, to do the basic work of government.

There are 12 bills that fund the government, the basic work of government. We haven't passed each of those 12 bills since 1994. So under majorities of both parties, we have had at least some degree of dysfunction, and in recent years they all get balled up into one great big bill. It looks awful, and that is no way to conduct the affairs of the government.

I said that we were going to devote the floor time, which is always at a premium in the Senate, to give us a chance to do the work of what we were sent to do, regardless of party. Fortunately, we had Chairman Alexander, who is arguably the best--or maybe the second best only to the Senator from Maine--bill manager on our side, take up the first bill, and there were some snags along the way. It took a little bit longer than we had hoped, but we have completed it. We have completed it at a record early time. We are going to keep on doing this right up until we break on July 15 to go to the conventions.

We are going to give the Senate every opportunity to do the basic work of government this year. Some have said that because it is an election year, we can't do much. I would like to remind everyone that we have had a regularly scheduled election in this country every 2 years since 1788 right on time. I heard some people say we can't do it because we have an election next year, and others have said we can't do whatever it is because we have an election this year. We have elections in this country right on time, and that is not an excuse not to do our work.

We will turn to transportation, which is chaired by the Senator from Maine, Ms. Collins, and military construction, chaired by Senator Kirk. We are going to bind those two together and move them across the floor, and then we are going to turn to the National Defense Authorization Act and pass that before the Memorial Day break, and then we are going to turn to the Defense appropriations bill right after authorization, and hopefully we can do that in a record short period of time because all of the amendments should have been offered on the authorization bill which will come right before it.

I thank Senator Alexander for his good work and look forward to having Senator Collins pick up the baton and continuing the great progress we are making.

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