Filibuster

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened to this debate very carefully because I have great respect for both of the Senators--the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from South Dakota.

I have seen both of them operate as effective legislators on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I have seen both of them entertain amendments, both friendly and not so friendly, on the floor of the Senate and deal with them in a fair fashion. I have seen both of them use the U.S. Senate to achieve legislative goals, some that I shared and some that I didn't share.

But I have to ask them, in all candor, as I listened to the speech about preserving the Senate as we know it, if they are really taking a look around at the Senate as we know it. Do you know how many amendments were debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the year 2019--in the entire year? America's greatest deliberative body considered 22 amendments in that year. Six of them were offered by one Senator--Senator Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky. You remember them, as I do. He basically said: Here is a gun to your head. If you want to go home, I get a vote. He got his vote. And as he reminded me, he lost every one of those amendments. So 6 of the 22 amendments were, frankly, one Senator's effort to have a recorded vote, and that is all it was.

Sixteen substantive amendments in a year, and you are arguing that we cannot change the Senate, we cannot transform the Senate, we cannot consider changes to the rules of the Senate. I know better.

I know that you are a good legislator, and you are as well, Senator. I know that you can take a bill through a committee, bring it to the floor, defend it on the floor, and go through the amendment process. We all know that that is how the Senate was designed to work.

What happened? What happened to the Senate? Well, if you take a look at the number of cloture motions to end a filibuster that were filed some 13 years ago, they averaged about 68 a year. Do you know how many we now have? Over 250 a year.

This is out of control. It is so much out of control that when you take a look at the ordinary business of the U.S. Senate and you take a look at the memories you may have of passing a budget resolution, we don't do that anymore, do we? You take a look at passing appropriation bills. You remember sitting on the Appropriations Committee and proud to be there, as I am too. I loved that committee. It was a great committee to serve on. We actually took agencies and went through hearings and drew up budgets and took them to Appropriations subcommittees and actually considered amendments in the committee and then brought them to the floor and had amendments on the floor. Yes, that happened in your political lifetime and in mine. It no longer occurs. Do you understand the Senate which you are defending is a Senate which no longer engages in that kind of debate?

What does it boil down to? There were meetings of the Big 4 or the Big 8, or whatever number there happens to be. They decide all 12 appropriations bills, and we sit on the outside of the room holding our hands patiently, hoping that something we wanted is included. Is that the Senate that you ran for? Is that the Senate you do not want to change? Tell me seriously. It can't be.

Those of us on this side of the aisle say to younger Members: You would have loved the Senate if you just could have seen it, but you have only been here 6 years. So you missed it.

There was a time when we did debate on the floor. Do you remember when Dodd-Frank came to the floor? Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby were managing that bill. This was the most dramatic change in Wall Street policy in a generation or more. I remember it because I offered what I believe was the 25th amendment on the floor--25 amendments on this bill that had already come out of the Banking Committee. I offered the 25th amendment on debit cards, and they announced that it would be a 60-vote margin. All the others had been a simple majority to that point. I surprised everybody, including myself, and passed that amendment. And then more were offered.

Do you remember the immigration reform bill? Do you recall what happened there? I can tell you because I was on the Gang of 8 that wrote the bill. We went through the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama was determined to derail the bill. He said: I have dozens of amendments, and I am going to offer them all. Well, he stopped at about 20 because he wasn't passing most of his amendments. Then it came to the floor, and we faced the same amendment process, amendment after amendment, and the bill was passed on the floor of the Senate.

That was within my political lifetime and yours as well. It worked. Why is it not working now? Why is this such an empty Chamber? Why are there all of these empty desks when there are so many things that need to be done in America? Because we have stopped legislating. We have stopped debating. We have stopped amending.

You say: Boy, we have to preserve this. We have to do everything we can to preserve this.

We know better than that. This is not the Senate that we are witnessing. This is some aberration, some use of the filibuster.

In the first 3 years, with Senator McConnell in charge, we had more filibusters and cloture votes than in the entire history of the U.S. Senate. It is out of control, my friends, my colleagues, fellow Senators.

It is out of control, my friends, my colleagues, my fellow Senators. I don't know what the answer is in terms of rule changes, but I will tell you this.

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Mr. DURBIN. In just one moment.

I will tell you this: To argue that we need to preserve this is to really discourage anyone from becoming a Member of this body if we are not going to legislate, if we are not going to tackle the real issues of our time.

I look at the Presiding Officer. He stepped up on the last immigration debate that we had on a bipartisan measure. I thank him for doing it. It wasn't easy, politically. That was what the Senate once was not that long ago.

I do yield for a question.

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Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from South Dakota, thank you. I said earlier, and I meant it--I think you are a good legislator, as are the Senator from Alaska and many others, and given a chance, you prove it. We just don't get the chance anymore. No budget resolution. No appropriations bills. One bill, really, of any substance comes to the floor of the Senate each year now. It is the Defense authorization bill, by tradition. Come hell or high water, we are going to bring up that bill. And I am glad we do, but that is it. End of story. The rest of the time, what do we spend our days doing? Watching the clock go by for 30 hours so we can have a vote on the next nomination. Is that the Senate you ran for? Is that why you went through the sacrifice and asked your family to join you in that sacrifice to be in public life? No. Not for me, it isn't. I am here to do something. I think we can do something. We have proven it in the past.

The Affordable Care Act. Books will be written--they have already been written about what it took to finally pass it, but eventually it was enacted into law and signed by the President and changed the lives of millions of Americans. I am glad I voted for it. It was not a bipartisan effort at any stage. I wish it were.

The point I am getting to is this: I don't know what the answer is in terms of changing the rules, but I am not going to stand in defense of the status quo. I do not believe the notion that we cannot touch the Senate and its traditions really is defensible in light of what we have seen on the Senate floor for the last several years--years.

I just have to tell you, I am surprised now that the Republican position articulated by your leader and by the whip is status quo: Leave it as is. It is fine. It is just great. Don't you change the Senate.

Well, I think the Senate needs to change.

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would love the junior Senator from Massachusetts to address that question himself when he gets his chance on the floor.

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Mr. DURBIN. Happy to yield

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, with her permission, I will add a question mark to the end of that statement to the Senator from Alaska, to thank her and warn her that we are coming dangerously close to debating on the floor of the Senate. It almost never happens, and we are coming close to it.

We are actually asking one another: Do we have to change the rules to finally make the Senate work, or is there another way? I am open to other ways. I am open to demonstrations of that. But I will tell you, it is a frustration. It is the determination to make certain that, for the people of Illinois who returned me to the Senate, we actually do something, achieve something; that we go home, win or lose, with the feeling that we have been engaged in a process that respected our rights as individual Senators and ended in a vote up or down and a measure passed or failed. That, to me, is why I ran for this job, and I think probably for yourself as well. We are not there, and we are not close to being there

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