Resting the Troops

Floor Speech

RESTING THE TROOPS -- (Senate - July 11, 2007)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am sorry the Republican leader would not yield for a question. My question would have been, the 60-vote requirement for this amendment so that our troops have time to rest before they are redeployed into combat, this 60-vote requirement which the Republican leader says is routine and normal, I was going to ask the Republican leader, in the two previous Defense authorization bills brought to the floor of the Senate, how many times did we impose a 60-vote requirement on amendments to that bill? The answer is none, never. It was always a majority vote. Now the Republican side has said: We insist on 60 votes for every amendment to the Defense authorization bill. Those following this debate, watching it either in the galleries or on C-SPAN, may wonder what is the big deal. Why? What is the difference?

The difference is obvious. We are about to consider a debate on the war in Iraq. This Senate is evenly divided. With Senator Johnson recuperating, it is a 50/49 Senate with 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans on the issue of Iraq. One of the Democratic Senators votes on the other side. So on any given issue, it is 49 to 50, closely divided. Now the ranks on the Republican side are breaking and changing. We now have Republican Senators who are stepping out and publicly saying they disagree with the President. At least five of them have publicly said we need to change the direction of our policy in Iraq. Do the math. If we start with 49 and pick up 5 Republicans, we have 54. That is a majority. We could start carrying amendments to change the policy of the war in Iraq. The Republican leader knows that. So how does he protect the President's position? How does he stop the will of the Senate? By imposing a new standard of 60 votes. Now it takes 60 votes, not just a majority. For the last 2 years, a majority was good enough when it came to every amendment on the Defense authorization bill, including amendments about the war policy in Iraq. But not this time. This time, Senator McConnell has come up with a new McConnell standard when it comes to the Iraq war policy, that it takes 60 votes in the Senate.

The Republican leader can come up with procedural obstacles also. He can make it more difficult. He can continue to slow down the debate on ethics reform. He can slow down the debate when it comes to the war in Iraq. But there are a lot of Senators on this floor on both sides who are going to stick to this task. We are not going to give up that easily. We understand what is at stake. We have lost over 3,600 of our best and bravest American soldiers. For us to prolong this debate, to set up these artificial obstacles in order to perpetuate a policy which is taking the lives of our men and women in uniform, is unacceptable.

The Senator from Kentucky, of course, has his rights under Senate rules. I respect that. But to impose this new standard of 60 votes and then to say on the floor that this is routine and normal is not a fact. That is why I wanted to ask him that question. In the last 2 years, a majority vote was what was used on the Senate floor over and over again when it came to these important issues. We should return to that same majority standard.

I would say to the Senator from Kentucky who tried to defend the President's position, he should go back to his State, as all of us have, and speak to the families of the soldiers, understand what they are going through. Of course, every family of a soldier overseas is lost in prayer and worry every single day about their loved one in battle. But this administration, this President sends these soldiers over again and over again without rest, without retraining, without the equipment they need in battle. That is unacceptable. That is not a standard we should allow when it comes to our defense of America.

Senator Jim Webb, who has offered this amendment, is a ground-combat veteran of Vietnam, as is Senator Hagel, another cosponsor of this amendment. They and Senator Inouye, a veteran of World War II, know what it is like to put on that uniform and risk your life in battle. What they are asking for is time for these soldiers to come home and have a chance to be with their families, to rebuild their lives, to rest, try to put their lives back together, reassociate themselves with their families, retrain, and be ready if they are called again. What I hear from the Senator from Kentucky is: That is unacceptable. This is the President's call. He can keep sending these men and women over again and again, even though it is more dangerous every time they are sent into battle without appropriate rest and training.

When it comes to the vote, the Senator from Kentucky tells us a majority of the Senate is not enough; we need 60 votes to give our soldiers an opportunity to get the rest and retraining they deserve. That is unfortunate. It is part of the obstructionism we are now seeing every single day from the Republican side of the aisle. That isn't why we were sent to Washington. If five or six Republican Senators want to join the Democrats in trying to change the policy in Iraq, they should be given that chance. Using these procedural obstacles is unfortunate for this country and certainly unfortunate for the soldiers.

I yield the floor.

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