National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in the last 24 hours, Senator McConnell announced that the Senate will still be in session in August. I don't know of any Senator who loves being in Washington, DC, in August. Quite frankly, it is a hot, humid, miserable place. I would much rather be in Oklahoma with other folks whom I serve, getting to spend some time there.

The Senate is in session 11 months of the year. The only month we are not in session traditionally is August. But we have a problem. The work is not getting done in the Senate. If the options are to be in Washington, DC, and get the work done or to be back in my State and see the folks in my State but knowing that the legislative work is undone, then the decision should be to get the work done.

Senator McConnell announced yesterday that in August we will be here. We have two big issues as the reason we should be here in August to get some things done. One is the nominations issue. This is an issue that has, quite frankly, picked up a lot of speed this year. Last year in our nominations process, we had a record slow process to try to get nominations through. This year, more nominations have gotten through.

Let me give an example of what we are up against. In the past 6 Presidents, there have been a total of 25 cloture votes for nominations in the first 2 years of the Presidency--25 total, all 6 combined. Right now, President Trump is at 100 cloture votes so far for his nominations.

You may say, what is the big deal about that? Each one of those basically consumes a full day on the Senate floor--each one. In the past, if it was a controversial nominee, there would be additional time that would be requested, and that time would be done. It has been done 25 times over 6 Presidents. To do it 100 times for President Trump--it is obvious it is intentionally slowing down the Senate because when we are dealing with what is called postcloture debate time on a nominee, we can't deal with anything else. We can't deal with legislation. We can't deal with any other topic, so the Senate comes to a stop. One hundred days have been lost just doing that, lost time.

We have a lot of nominees who still need to go through, which traditionally went through by voice vote or in rapid succession. The White House still has a lot of nominees. They are due to be sent to us as well. They can continue to send those nominees, but the nominees who are here, who have gone through the committee process and have been fully vetted--it is time to bring those to a vote so the President can have his staff.

In 2013, Republicans and Democrats agreed together that things started to slow down a little bit in 2012 on some nominees. Republicans and Democrats came together to change the rule for how much time would be set aside for nominees. Harry Reid did a presentation during that time period and supported a proposal: 2 hours of time for district court judges, 8 hours of time for just about everybody else, except for Supreme Court, circuit court, and the Cabinet--they would still be 30 hours. Republicans joined Democrats in 2013 and agreed on that.

For a 2-year time period, Republicans and Democrats agreed alike that was a reasonable amount of time for postcloture debate--2 hours, 8 hours, or 30 hours, depending on who that was. That expired at the end of 2014. I brought that back up. I brought it to the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee has debated it. The Rules Committee has now voted it out of the committee.

My simple recommendation is, this was a Democratic proposal in 2013 for that time period. I think if it was good for the Democrats in 2013 and 2014, it should be good for Republicans or Democrats from here on out--to not just have it for the next 2 years but to say that is a simple rule to get the Senate back to functioning again.

My concern is, now with 100 cloture votes that have been done in the past year and a half on nominations, the next time there is a Democratic President--and there will be at some future time--you can be assured that the Republicans are going to do at least 100 cloture votes to them, and we will slow down government just as much. That doesn't help us long term. We have to get out of this cycle, and we are in a downward cycle of trying to deal with nominees. We need to be here in August to work through nominees because we have not had enough time because 100 days have been lost just sitting on cloture votes, waiting on that to happen.

The second aspect of this I want to remind people of is this: We need to be here in August, to work through this time period, because appropriations need to be done. In 18 of the last 20 years, this Congress has done an omnibus bill; that is, taking the 12 different appropriations bills, throwing them all together with no amendments, getting the text of it the night before, and saying: Everyone, just vote on it tomorrow. That has happened in 18 of the last 20 years.

We have bad muscle memory. Twenty-five years ago, this Congress would debate those bills one at a time, bring them up onto the floor, and amend them. Democrats and Republicans would have input into those bills, and then they would pass. They would then be conferenced with the House and go to the White House for signatures. That really wasn't that long ago. Quite frankly, college students who are graduating right now have no memory of this Congress ever doing the appropriations process the right way. It has never happened in their lifetime. We have to fix this.

The argument has been that we only have 50 workdays left before the end of the fiscal year. The only way to get some of those workdays back is to add in August. We have to get the appropriations process back on track.

I hope most of this body can remember the early morning hours in March of this year when this Senate passed a 2,232-page omnibus bill that zero Members in this body had read because there was physically not enough time to even read it. We got it late one night and had to pass it the very next night. In fact, the House passed it at noon the next day--merely hours after they received the bill. We can't do this. We can do better. The only way to do it is to get time back in our schedule.

I commend the leader for putting time back in the schedule. Senator Perdue, I, and 14 other Senators wrote him a letter and said that we need to consider this to get nominations done, to get appropriations done. If we cannot get the work done in the time we have, we have to make more time, and we have to get this done.

I commend the leader for this, but I also challenge this body to say that we should not squander the days we have. None of us are going to enjoy being here in August when there are lots of others things we would like to do in our home States, but let's get the work done because it is important for the future of the country, and the country expects us to finish well what we are doing.

Mr. President, I yield back.

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