Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I was listening to the chair of the Intelligence Committee just a moment ago talking about this nominee, and I was curious.

I ask the Senator from Arkansas, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, what was the vote coming out of committee for Mr. Ratcliffe?

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Mr. THUNE. OK. So 14 to 3 coming out of committee, and we have now wasted a whole day where we could have been acting on that nomination.

So, really, I think the question before the Senate is, Do we want to vote on these folks on Tuesday or vote on them on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? Because that is what we are going to do. This can be easy or this can be hard.

This is a nominee that came out of the Intelligence Committee 14 to 3. It is a bipartisan nomination to the Central Intelligence Agency. This is about America's national security interests, and we are stalling.

So that is not going to happen. We are going to file cloture on him. You can force us to hang around here, and we can vote on these things Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But we are going to vote on him.

This one shouldn't be hard, folks. I understand there are some that are going to draw some opposition from the other side of the aisle. But Democrats and Republicans, in a very big bipartisan fashion, agree that he is very qualified for this job that is an important job to America's national security interests. And, frankly, I believe, we ought to fill it as soon as we possibly can. So it is going to be a big vote here on the floor.

Everything we are doing right now is just stalling. I don't know what that accomplishes for you, but we are going to be here voting on it.

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