En Bloc Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I am very hopeful that my colleagues here will move forward on this bipartisan, clean continuing resolution so we can get our government open again.

I do want to just explain to the American people and maybe some of our friends in the media a little dirty secret that is going on down here on the Senate floor. A lot of my Democratic colleagues are getting frustrated, not with us--not with us. We have had three already cross over and vote with us. There are a lot more who want to do it.

They are frustrated because they know we have got to reopen the government. They know this is the way to do it, a simple, bipartisan, clean continuing resolution. We have been doing this all the time here in the Senate. We have done it over 10 times during the Biden administration on the Republican side, but there is frustration.

I will give you my sense of why there is frustration on the Democrat side. Usually, in this place, when you run for leader--Democrat leader, Republican leader--and you are in leadership, there is kind of an unwritten rule that the leader will protect the broader membership and broader Members--on votes and different things. That is kind of what leadership is about.

This is the first time I have seen in my entire time here in the U.S. Senate where, on the Democrat side, the broader membership seems to be protecting just the leader. We all know why. He is worried about his left flank; worried about getting primaried.

So my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are getting frustrated, not with us. They know this is the right way to do it.

They are getting frustrated because they think they are having to protect their leader. This isn't the way it works--is supposed to work here. The minority leader previously called blocking a clean, bipartisan CR to get bigger demands from their side ``political idiocy.''

What we are viewing right now is a lot of political idiocy coming from the other side, and my colleagues on the Democratic side are really starting to get frustrated, not with us but with their own leader.

I am hoping on this vote, in the next hour or so, for the American people, for the institution of the U.S. Senate, we have a couple more Democrat Senators who have the courage to break with the political idiocy we see right now on their side.

Vote with us. Reopen the government. They know it is the right thing to do. I hope that happens.

Vote on S. Res. 412

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