Insist on a Fair Process

INSIST ON A FAIR PROCESS -- (Senate - February 07, 2007)

Mr. McCONNELL. Listening to my good friend, the majority leader, should remind us all that the debate we had anticipated having this week--and I might say Members on our side were certainly prepared to have the debate--would not have had any impact on the surge. These were nonbinding resolutions. I would not argue that they were not significant, because Senators would have been put on record. But we were certainly prepared for the debate. What we were not prepared to do is to have a process that denied our side other options in addition to the Levin proposal.

As we were frequently reminded last year by Democratic Senators, the Senate is different from the House. In the Senate, a minority of at least 41 can insist on a process that is fair.

Senate Republicans were united, including members of our conference who support the Levin proposal, in insisting on a fair process. We started out with five different options, gradually pared them down to two--the McCain-Lieberman-Graham proposal and the Gregg proposal relating to supporting the troops. My good friend, the majority leader, objected to allowing us to have two proposals. He only wanted us to have one proposal. So we narrowed it down to one and picked the Gregg ``support the troops' proposal as our one, and the majority leader objected to that unanimous consent request as well, leading us to believe that not only did he want us to limit ourselves to one, he wanted to pick which one. Of course, in the Senate, that is just not possible. This is a deliberative body. It insists on having votes on a wide variety of proposals. Certainly, when we were in the majority last year, we had to vote on a lot of things we might not have liked to have voted on in order to advance a particular proposal. That is the way the Senate works.

At whatever point the majority would like to begin the debate again on Iraq, we will certainly be happy to have it. I particularly wish to thank Senator Gregg for his very important contribution to this debate. That is a vote we will have at some point, on some measure, when we return to the subject of Iraq.

With regard to the continuing resolution, let me just say to the majority leader, he has suggested that I survey our members and see what amendments we might like to offer, since he has indicated amendments may or may not be allowed on that proposal. I would say to him we are paring that down and hope to be able to get him--we have about seven; we are going to try to pare that down to three, submit those amendments to the majority leader, and hope they might be allowed when we do move to the continuing resolution.

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