Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, Western Kentucky is still reeling from last weekend's devastating storm, but support is rolling in from around the Commonwealth, our region, and the country as well.

Yesterday, I spoke with the CEO of LifePoint Health. They operate 10 hospitals in Kentucky, including one in hard-hit Mayfield. Miraculously, their Jackson Purchase Medical Center survived the tornado mostly intact. Now it is offering much needed medical services right there in Mayfield.

Nurses and doctors have worked literally day and night. LifePoint Health shipped water tankers to their facility to bolster local supply, and the company has pledged a million dollars to help Kentucky rebuild.

Across our region, individuals and companies are opening their hearts, homes, and wallets to help.

We have received important assistance from here in Washington as well. Yesterday, the President announced the Federal Government will fund the entire cost of debris removal and emergency protective measures in the eight counties hardest hit by the storm for the next month. Local officials won't need to worry about overstretching budgets. They can just focus on rebuilding.

My team and I are working hard to continue connecting Kentuckians with the resources they need. I have set up a portal on my Senate office website to help my constituents access government assistance. It has a full list of services provided by our disaster response Agencies.

Because of the Federal Government's swift action in the past week, victims of these tornadoes can access housing assistance, legal aid, crisis counseling, and more.

I recommend every impacted Kentuckian take advantage of these resources, and my office is here to help you navigate.

I will travel back to Kentucky tomorrow to visit several of the communities that were hit hardest and meet with local leaders who are spearheading recovery efforts. I will listen to their concerns and bring their stories back to Washington to ensure that they get the help they desperately need.

The scene on the ground in Western Kentucky is still devastating and quite discouraging. For far too many families, this Christmas will be tragically abnormal. But we will continue to work together to provide Kentucky with the resources it needs to recover, bigger and better than before. Build Back Better Act

Now, Madam President, on an entirely different matter, two in three Americans want the Federal Government to ``cut back on spending and printing money.'' That is two out of three Americans want the Federal Government to cut back on spending and printing money. But our Democratic colleagues spent the last several months trying as hard as possible to do exactly--exactly--the opposite.

Washington Democrats have spent months trying to borrow, print, and spend trillions more dollars, right into the teeth of the worst inflation in almost 40 years.

They have sought to turn their monthly welfare entitlement with no work requirements from a temporary COVID measure into a permanent policy--cash welfare with no work requirements, literally forever.

Seventy-six percent of Americans say these handouts haven't helped their families at all. Yet Democrats want to dump many billions more.

Just step back and look at all the ways their leftwing wish list could hurt a young family in middle America.

First, they would need to cross their fingers that the private or employer-sponsored insurance they chose to meet their family's specific needs isn't shoved off a cliff in Democrats' latest lurch toward more socialized medicine. And they will have to hope their war on the medical innovation sector doesn't prevent the development of lifesaving cures their family might have relied on some years down the road.

Say the family has one or two young kids. Maybe their ideal arrangement is a church-based daycare. They would need to say a prayer their faith-based center isn't sued and chased out of business thanks to Washington Democrats' toddler takeover.

Their plan would give nothing to full-time parents, grandparent caregivers, nanny shares, or neighborhood co-ops. It would push faith- based providers out of the public square by design, and it could inflate daycare costs--listen to this--by up to $12,000 or $13,000 per child per year.

If Democrats get their way, let's hope neither parent is one of the many Americans who work in our domestic energy sector. Our colleagues' bill has a huge pile of new redtape aimed at putting their industry literally out of business.

But no matter where they work, they will face inflated prices to heat their homes and fill up at the gas pump.

For all of these bad ideas and many more, our colleagues wanted to spend trillions upon trillions more dollars right into the teeth--into the teeth--of runaway inflation that they have already caused.

Yesterday, we got indications the far left's slapdash sprint may be hitting the pause button. Well, that would certainly be great news for the American people. The best Christmas gift Washington could give working families would be putting this bad bill on ice. Senate Rules

Madam President, now, on another matter, as cracks keep forming in the Democrats' reckless taxing-and-spending spree, some of our colleagues seemed to channel their frustration into even more radical attempts to attack our government institutions.

In the span of a few hours, one Senate Democrat had renewed calls to ``nuke'' the Senate and break the rules, and another published a national op-ed arguing that Democrats should attack the rule of law and pack the Supreme Court--two frontal assaults on two branches of government proposed in the space of about 2 hours. Entire generations of statesmen would have seen either one of these unhinged proposals as Armageddon for our institutions. Ah, but apparently today's Democrats try both at once and just call it Wednesday.

We have heard false claims that the Senate obeying our rules to address the debt limit somehow paves the way for radicals to break the rules.

Madam President, I would ask unanimous consent that an additional statement on that subject be printed in a different place in the Record. Elections

Madam President, so, look, we have discussed over and over again why Democrats will not be allowed to federalize our elections and lord over all 50 States like a self-appointed board of elections on steroids. My colleagues across the aisle have pushed absurd bills that would do things like neuter voter ID laws; make every State legalize ballot harvesting; turn the Federal Election Commission into a biased, partisan body; and even send taxpayer money to political campaigns.

It isn't about ``voting rights''; it is a naked power grab. Democrats have been pushing the same kinds of bills literally for years, even as their stated justifications have changed wildly. When Republicans win elections or start polling well, Democrats and the media say our democracy is badly broken, on death's door, and needs a radical overhaul. The answers presented are these policies. When Democrats win elections, Democrats and the media say our democracy is sterling, beyond reproach, and just needs modest safeguards to protect the status quo, but, again, the answers presented are the very same policies.

Lately, their pretext has been demagogic attacks on State voting laws and proposals. If any State scraps any of the temporary pandemic procedures that Democratic operatives favor, the radical left says the sky is falling. But outside of the liberal bubble, nobody buys this nonsense. The country is not buying the hysteria.

On election day last month--listen to this--even in deep-blue New York, voters rejected liberal ballot measures that would have liberalized no-excuse absentee voting and loosened up the rules on voter registration. Both those were voted down in New York. Not even blue New York wants these policies to weaken their elections. But some Democrats want to break the Senate and trash its rules to force these sorts of things on all 50 States? It is beyond absurd.

I understand my colleagues are frustrated they may not get to spend $4.9 trillion on the way out the door for Christmas, but, believe me, lashing out at our democracy, at the Supreme Court, and at the Senate itself is not going to solve anything. Senate Rules

Madam President, last week, bipartisan majorities in the Senate and House passed S. 610 and the President signed the bill into law.

This law prevented painful Medicare cuts and established a one-time, expedited, simple-majority process to make Senate Democrats raise the nation's debt limit with only Democratic votes.

This week, some far-left activists and Senate Democrats who have spent months agitating to ``nuke'' the Senate are pretending that S. 610 represented some novel watershed for the Senate that gives them license to attack the institution.

These are factual claims, and they are false.

First, S. 610 needed to clear and did clear a 60-vote threshold. Sixty-four Senators voted to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the House amendment. The Senate's consideration and passage of the bill fully obeyed the Standing Rules of the Senate.

By contrast, ramming through a different fast-track procedure--or any other piece of legislation--with 50 votes over the objections of Senators requesting the 60-vote threshold would mean ``going nuclear,'' shredding the rules, and destroying the filibuster.

Last week, the Senate followed the rules. The far left wants Democrats to break the rules. There is no comparison.

Second, there was nothing novel about S. 610 establishing a new, limited, expedited, simple-majority Senate procedure via statute.

The Senate has passed many such laws creating many such procedures. Examples date back at least to the 1930s.

The much-used budget reconciliation process--with its limited, expedited, simple-majority Senate procedure--is a statutory creation of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and its amendments.

Other examples include the Trade Act of 1974, the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990, the Congressional Review Act of 1996, the Budget Control Act of 2011, and the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015. In all these instances, the Senate passed laws that set up new, limited, expedited, simple-majority Senate procedures for considering specific issues within specific parameters.

In this historical context, the one-time Senate process that S. 610 created was notably limited and minimalistic. It could only be accessed once, during a narrow stretch of time, for one specific purpose, with no other provisions or amendments permitted.

In sum, the Senate's recent action on the debt limit did not change the filibuster any more than BRAC, TPA, or the Budget ``Super- Committee'' changed the filibuster--which is to say, not at all.

As the widely admired and acclaimed expert on Senate procedure Marty Gold summarized last week, ``this expedited procedure will be created in accordance with the Standing Rules of the Senate, through passage of a regular order bill. The entire process must begin with 60 votes. [And] if it becomes law, it will be the narrowest expedited procedure ever passed.''

Last week's episode did not give radicals any pretext to wreck the Senate. Just the opposite. The Senate's functioning confirmed again that the current Senate rules generate bipartisan compromise when the country needs it. Tribute to Sara Schwartzman

Madam President, now on one final matter, when the Senate does adjourn for the holidays, we will also bid farewell to a talented Senate staff leader who has kept our institution running.

Sara Schwartzman is one of the Senate's finest. Sara has been a familiar face around the Senate and on the dais for more than a decade, and the most visible parts of her work as the Senate's bill clerk have certainly made her ``C-SPAN famous.''

For years, she was among the foremost experts on the pronunciation of ``Mr. Alexander.'' More recently, she has become well practiced in the delivery of ``Ms. Baldwin.'' But Sara's speaking role barely scratches the surface of her crucial responsibilities as the bill clerk. Day in and day out, she and her team are the traffic cops for mountains of legislative text and amendments. Sara tracks the paper and the records. Before the Senate can formally pass anything, it has to make a stop at her desk.

As if these core duties weren't enough to keep even the most meticulous multitasker busy, Sara has generously made herself available to folks throughout the institution as an informal resource. Bill status? Procedural hurdles? Sara's encyclopedic expertise has been just a phone call away. It is safe to say her colleagues will miss this other sort of Senate hotline.

As for Sara, one might worry that someone whose job is a part of every late-night vote and weekend session would struggle to fill her newfound free time, but I understand that, in this case, the Senate's loss is another storied institution's gain. Sara is leaving Washington but staying in public service, working in an exciting role with NASA.

So, Sara, thank you for your years of service, and good luck in the exciting chapters ahead.

(Applause.)

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