Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historical Park Establishment Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. In the past month alone, I have been on the floor several times to pass 12 bipartisan bills which advanced out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs with unanimous bipartisan support.

The difference with this bill is it is not ready. It is just not ready for that consideration, and Senator Daines knows that. The bill has not cleared the committee, and it is not for our lack of trying. It was only introduced a few months ago. And when it was fast-tracked to a hearing at the Senator's request, it was clear that there remained several open questions, and, as of today, many of those questions have still not been answered. And yet we are trying to pass this bill unanimously.

What is happening is that this would be recorded on the Senate floor as a 100-to-0 vote. This bill is not ready for that. The only circumstances under which--especially in Indian Affairs, but mostly in any other jurisdiction, the only way we pass something by unanimous consent is if it has been fully vetted and it is either so meaningless, right--a congratulatory resolution or something--and people just let them go; or it has been so thoroughly vetted that it is really ready and there are no objectors. That is not the case for this bill.

The Indian Affairs Committee has had its most productive years in history these past two Congresses, and we have done it through good- faith, bipartisan work and respecting not just, generally speaking, the process but the bipartisan tradition of the committee itself. We don't have one rule for some bills and another for others. Every bill that has made it through this process is scrutinized by the committee, with feedback from Tribes and others. And if it can be considered, it generally passes out on a bipartisan basis. Actually, our standard is to try to pass these things unanimously, not just one Member of one party and all the Members of the other party. We try to get zero ``no'' votes. If there are any ``no'' votes, it won't pass by consent on the floor.

We have done everything that we can to oblige Senator Daines and accelerate the consideration of this bill, but we cannot pass a bill that is still going through the process. The bill has no score. The bill has no score--something that has been required--sometimes to my chagrin--of every single bill that comes out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. I don't love that standard because sometimes I just want to pass a bill, and sometimes the score is so de minimis that I think it is a little bit of a waste of time. That is not the case for this bill. It is going to score, and we don't have that score yet. And I am not going to make an exception for one bill. It hasn't had a committee markup, and there is no path in the House.

The Senate hotline ran barely a day ago, and offices are still reviewing it. I want people to understand what that means. That means that offices that are not on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs are just getting emailed about this bill. For them, it is an issue of first impression. They are being asked to ask their boss: Do you vote yes on this bill that you haven't even analyzed? Do you vote yes on this bill, and there is maybe 2 days--maybe more but let's assume 2 days left in the actual Congress?

This is an attempt to circumvent our normal procedures. That is not how we do things here.

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