Media Stakeout With Senator Jon Kyl; Senator Trent Lott; And Senator John Cornyn
Statement
OHIO CLOCK CORRIDOR, THE CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D.C.
2:35 P.M. EDT, TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2007
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SEN. KYL: Let me just start here and then turn it over to Leader Lott. Actually, I think I have an apology. I've been talking about the do-nothing Democrat Congress, and I think I owe an apology to the Democratic leaders. It turns out that they've done a couple of things.
First of all, minimum wage was passed. Now, Monday was the 200th day of this year, and it seems to me that we might want to look for more accomplishments than that. And so we did, and sure enough, we've actually named 21 post offices. So I think that we should apologize and acknowledge that this post office Congress has actually in the first 200 days had some achievements of which we were not aware.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Leader Lott.
SEN. LOTT: There's no doubt the American people expect us to do more than we've been doing, to work together. They'd probably like the post office bills and having them named after various people, but I think they -- I know they expect a lot more of us.
As I go into my own state and other states, I have people come up to me and say, "When are you all going to start working together, producing results on things that do concern me and concern us?" The fact is we have not passed a single appropriations bill this year, and here we are in the latter part of July. We finally will take up a Homeland Security appropriations bill in the Senate, which, by the way, is $2.3 billion over what the budget would allow for and probably going to go up beyond that.
We had a chance to get the Defense authorization bill done last week, but when Majority Leader Reid couldn't get the Iraq language he wanted, he just pulled that bill. Now he's talking about trying to come back and maybe pass pieces of it, but not the underlying Defense bill that has authorization for equipment, for supplies, for quality of living, pay raise and a number of other very important issues.
There are some things we could be doing together. But it's all about the Democratic agenda that they outlined at the beginning of the year, which they continue to insist on, which we are not going to do.
We're going to insist on taking up issues that really are important to working Americans. We're going to insist on controlling spending. We're going to insist on making the tax cuts permanent that have had a tremendous impact on the economy of this country. And I hope that when we come back after the July recess, we'll find a way to put focus on passing more important things than naming post offices.
SEN. CORNYN: Let me just ask you to connect a few dots. Sixteen percent of the public approve of the job that Congress is doing. During the last six months, we, as Senator Kyl said, not only named 20 post offices. We've had 300 investigations, 600 oversight hearings, an average of six a day. We have seen a partisan censure resolution contemplated by Senator Feingold. And we pulled the defense authorization bill from the floor of the Senate for the reasons, as Senator Lott said, that the Democrats could not get the withdrawal language that they insisted upon.
Meanwhile, our men and women in uniform have been denied the three-and-a-half percent pay raise that that bill would have provided for. The MRAP vehicle, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle that are designed to defeat IEDs in Iraq, are not being shipped because they were not provided for, or the bill that provided for them has been pulled from the agenda of the Senate. And in other words, we are literally doing nothing, not doing anything that is particularly substantial.
So I agree with Senator Kyl that perhaps we ought to acknowledge what they have done. But what they have done is not enough, and what we offer is the ability to work together to try to find some common ground and pass legislation that the American people want to see us work together on and that would benefit all of them.
(Cross talk.)
Q (Off mike) -- ethics bill -- (off mike)?
SEN. LOTT: Unfortunately we have not been able to get the lobby and ethics reform into a traditional conference.
I understand that perhaps now Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi and the head of Common Cause are writing this bill, in some (quarters ?) that I'm not familiar with. So I don't know what to expect that would come back to the Senate in what form or when. I think that's a tragedy.
I mean I worked on lobby and ethics reform last year and earlier this year. This is something that we could do, should do and should do in a bipartisan way, but it doesn't appear that we're going to be able to have a traditional conference. And we won't know what's going to be in it until we see it in a form that may just limit the Senate to just one vote without having a good chance to have real input into it.
Q Senator Specter has raised the specter of a special prosecutor to handle contempt of Congress citations. Any thoughts?
SEN. LOTT: Well, I'd want to talk to Senator Specter about that. I doubt that that is necessary, you know, but I'd want to hear his thoughts on it and why he thinks that might be necessary.
I'd -- you know, I think that we're in a process of that thing -- sort of thing getting out of hand anyway. Congress is trying to force a constitutional confrontation. They know full well that what they've been trying to do in terms of subpoenas and getting testimony out the White House constitutionally have a problem with that, and I believe the answer to it is -- I'm not going to get all, you know, uptight about it -- the courts will make that decision. Let them decide. Let's go ahead and get the process going and let the courts make a determination.
But I want to come back to how you get things done around here because there have been periods of time when we have gotten things done working together between the House and the Senate of one party and the president of another party. We did it in the `90s, it can be done. I had a recent experience working with Senator Rockefeller on the FAA reauthorization bill. We started off on this premise: Okay. Jay, we can fight over issues we're going to disagree on or we can find those areas where we can come to an accommodation and agreement that would be in the best interests of aviation in America, all those involved, and that's what we can move forward. And that's what we did.
Surely, we could have disagreed on some of the aviation issues, some of the union issues as a part of aviation, but we didn't start from that premise. The premise was: We need to get this done for transportation, for aviation in America. That's the way we could do a whole lot of issues if we would begin from that point of view.
Q So will you do children's health insurance that way?
SEN. LOTT: We have not -- we've not done it that way in committee.
Q (Off mike) --
SEN. LOTT: The Finance Committee came out with a tremendous explosion in the cost of the program, covering a lot more children that we ever had before.
Q (Off mike) --
SEN. LOTT: It was always aimed -- the Child Health Insurance Program was aimed at low-income children. But it's been expanded to include what we would call middle-income children -- and adults.
And so we came up with a product that is extremely expensive, more than doubling in cost, and a fallacious pay-for, because the revenue will never show up. So there's an example where we could have come up with something that would be affordable, we could have found ways to pay for it. We didn't do that.
Q But it has bipartisan support.
SEN. LOTT: It does have bipartisan support, but it's got --
Q Senator -- (inaudible) -- Mr. Hatch has been working with Jay Rockefeller, just like --
SEN. LOTT: No, he wasn't -- well, he -- I guess he was working with Jay Rockefeller, yeah.
Q (Off mike.)
SEN. LOTT: But we came up with a very bad result there. It didn't work.
Q Senator Lott, can you speak to the Southwick nomination? Why has Senator Cochran himself not asked him to be re-listed yet? And when do you expect that will happen?
SEN. LOTT: Well, we would prefer not to have a vote until we have the votes. And we continue to make the point about how qualified this nominee is for the 5th Circuit. Judge Southwick -- he was an appellate court judge. He sat on almost 7,000 cases when he was an appellate court judge. Just eight months ago, the Judiciary Committee confirmed him to be a district federal judge, unanimously, and now, eight months later, they've decided that may -- well, maybe he's not qualified. Even their gold standard of approval, the ABA, rated him as unanimously well-qualified.
So this is -- it's a part of their slow walk process. I think we approved maybe three appellate court judges this year. And they're trying, I guess, to -- you know, have control over who goes on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
I understand there's another nominee now that's been recommended -- it's a woman -- and that maybe they are going to try to find some objections to her.
So that's why Senator McConnell is very disturbed about the pace and about what he understood was the agreement of how we were going to move these appellate court judges through the process.
(To colleague.) Do you want to comment on that?
SEN. : No.
Q Senator Lott?
SEN. LOTT: Yes.
Q May I follow up on this contempt question? You said it's a matter that should be left up to the courts now. But the Bush administration's position on criminal contempt may prevent it from getting to the courts if their position is that Congress can't compel Justice to take a case to a grand jury.
So how do you think that it should get to court? And Specter talked about inherent contempt through the Senate process -- (off mike). Would you support that to get the issue to court?
SEN. LOTT: You know, I'd want to talk to Senator Specter about it. And I'm standing with two guys who are on the Judiciary Committee and have more expertise in this area than I do. You got any thoughts on that?
SEN. KYL: This is a theory I have not explored with Senator Specter. I'd want to talk to him too.
Q What about --
SEN. KYL: But could I just say -- look, how many investigations, Senator Cornyn, up to now? We've had hearings, about 600 hearings -
SEN. CORNYN: Six hundred. It's 300 investigations.
SEN. KYL: Three hundred investigations. The people actually, I think, in the last election -- I know, because I ran -- were really interested in their representatives coming back here and solving problems that were important to them. How many of those problems important to them have we solved? None. And it doesn't look like we're on a path to do that.
And trying to have -- you know, pick fights with the administration over subpoena authority over and issue which is essentially a dead letter at this point, the U.S. attorneys issue, is not a way to either improve Congress's image, I submit, or advance the agenda of the American people to get things done. It's an unnecessary fight. It's for partisan purposes. It's over an issue which is not something the American people have expressed a lot of concern about, and ends up in a dead end, in any event. So it seems to me that to focus on that kind of issue is exactly what we're criticizing here.
Q Do you disagree with Senator Lott that this is an issue the courts should decide, then?
SEN. KYL: If the issue gets to the courts, the courts are going to decide it. As the attorney general said this morning, it is not unknown in our system of government that there are disputes between the legislative and executive branch. Ordinarily, they are worked out. But this may be one of those situations in which the judicial branch has to play referee, but that's not a foreordained conclusion yet.
Q And as for a special prosecutor?
Q (Off mike) -- subpoena supported by Republicans on your committee that the White House is essentially ignoring.
SEN. KYL: No, I -- listen, I don't agree with that characterization. The administration has made an offer to Congress. Congress has refused the offer. All right? Reasonable people can differ --
Q (Off mike) -- the subpoenas still stand, though.
SEN. KYL: Yes, of course. But you asked me a question. Now, all I'm telling you is that the administration responded to that subpoena with an offer of providing information. That offer has not been good enough insofar as the leadership of the committee is concerned. So you have a standoff right now. That's not unknown in the history of the republic. It's not a good thing. In really important matters, you need to try to get it resolved. I -- my personal opinion is this is not the kind of matter that ought to use up an awful lot of our time when there are more important things to be done here.
Q Thank you.
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