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Floor Speech
I have a hold on nominees coming out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because it has been almost 4 months since Donald Trump and Marco Rubio illegally and unilaterally shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development under the guise of a so-called review, which should be done by now. This is in violation of the appropriations law, the Foreign Assistance Act, and probably the Impoundment Control Act.
Here is the thing: As a direct result--and it is not so common that you can say ``as a direct result''--of something that was done by the Secretary of State and the Administrator of USAID, people are dying. Children are dying. Mothers are passing HIV-AIDS to their children. Disaster survivors are being stranded with nowhere to turn. All of this suffering is because of what the United States is doing, in contravention of their own laws.
So I will not expedite confirmation of State Department nominees until and unless this administration starts complying with the law and being accountable to Congress.
I want to make two other points here. I will stipulate that it would be a very nice time to send our Ambassador to the Holy See. It would be an auspicious time to do so. But let's understand how hard it would be to do this in the normal course of business.
You file cloture. It is a cloture petition. The majority leader is in charge of it. You put it at the desk. You wait a day. You take a procedural vote. Two hours later, you take the final passage vote. You have your Ambassador. Why do I know this? Because we are doing this on nine other nominees this week.
So it was the choice of the Senate majority to prioritize the Chief of Protocol; the Legal Adviser for the Department of State; the Secretary of the Air Force; the Deputy Secretary of Energy; the Deputy Secretary of the Interior; the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources; the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; the Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget; and the Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
If this is a very important and time-sensitive confirmation, all we need to do is have the majority leader file a cloture petition, we wait 1 day, and then we vote. It is perfectly available to us, if that is an urgent matter, to just do this in the normal course of business.
As I was talking to the Senator from Missouri, with whom I have a pretty solid working relationship, I was explaining that when I was in the majority and we were trying to get confirmations through, I spent a fair amount of time talking to people who had holds. I would always go to their offices, sometimes catch them on the floor, sometimes go to the cloakroom, and say: Hey, what would it take to release this hold?
To this moment, not a single Member has walked up to me and said: What would it take to release the hold? Not the majority leader, not the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, not the Senator from Missouri, not anybody.
The normal way that the minority flexes its authority is to slow things down, even if it is slightly. And this is all this is--like a day, plus 2 hours. So if this is important, we can get it done this week. If it is important for me to release those holds, then somebody should come and talk to me. I remain ready and willing to talk to Leader Thune or any Republican colleague as we continue consideration of these nominees going forward.
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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I am just a little bit taken aback by the personal--the tone here. But I do enjoy working with the Senator on the Commerce Committee, so I am not going to respond in kind, except to say something very simple, which is: It is Tuesday. If we file a cloture petition--which is not my authority--tonight, there will be one intervening day, and then we vote on Thursday.
So if this is important to the majority leader, all he has to do is file a cloture petition.
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