Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007

Floor Speech

LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - August 02, 2007)

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I am rising to speak against the compromise that deals with the issue of secret holds. I would agree with the Senator from California, the distinguished chairman of the committee, that what we have in this report is probably better than what we have today because secret holds are secret, and nobody knows who is holding a bill. The public's business ought to be public, and it isn't today. But I do take exception to what is before us in regard to secret holds for the simple reason that there wasn't any necessity whatsoever to compromise.

Secret holds are rules of the Senate, or procedures in the Senate, and this body spoke with 84 votes in favor of what Senator Wyden and I put before the Senate. Basically, this makes it so liberal that it is practically meaningless what we are doing about secret holds.

Article I, section 5 of the Constitution of the United States reads in part:

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.

That means that the House of Representatives would have no say whatsoever in the Senate rules, but a conference was used for negotiations between the House and Senate. That was used as a rationale for changing what Senator Wyden and I had previously gotten passed in the Senate. So when the Senate debates and passes changes to its rules, that ought to be the final word. But that wasn't the final word, as we are seeing today. That is what happened with the House package of rules changes that the body passed in the Congress, and we didn't attempt to tell the House what they ought to do.

However, since the ethics reform bill that the Senate passed in January also contained changes to the Lobbying Disclosure Act and other laws, the entire bill needs to pass both Houses of Congress and be signed by the President. Nevertheless, that does not change the fact that under the Constitution, only the Senate determines its rules and procedures, and the Senate, in an overwhelming majority, spoke. So why shouldn't it be left just the way Senator Wyden and I had originally introduced it.

What has happened is, the Senate had a full open debate about it and passed the changes that we did in Wyden-Grassley. Now we have a situation where the majority leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the House rewrote major provisions in this package, including rewriting Senate rules that had already passed the full Senate.

In conference, one provision that was changed was a provision that I referred to which Senator Wyden and I had been working on for years to end the practice of secret holds because the public's business ought to always be public. Any Senator who has guts enough to put a hold on a bill ought to be willing to stand up and say who they are. Only in the Senate can a single Member prevent legislation or nominations from being considered under the so-called procedure of holds. Holds do not exist in the House.

Senator Wyden and I were successful in passing an amendment in last year's ethics reform bill by a vote of 84 to 13 on public disclosure. That same language was included in the bill without a vote in this Congress. But you know how things go on around the Senate. We had prominent Senators, people who run this body, who told Senator Wyden and I that ``they get the message,'' after 6 or 7 years, and, finally, we were going to end this secrecy. That bill wasn't enacted, but we included those identical provisions in this bill.

Senator Wyden and I pushed for that provision because we believed the public's business ought to be done in public. Every Senator has the right to object to a unanimous consent request to proceeding to a matter. Senators have every right to object to a unanimous consent request publicly, but I see no legitimate reason Senators should be able to be secret about what they are doing in the Senate. It has been my policy for years to place a brief statement in the Congressional Record each time I place a hold, with a short explanation of why I placed that hold. It has never hurt me one bit, and Senators should have no fear following a requirement of the public's business being public. In other words, nothing secret. If you want to hold up a bill, just have guts enough to say so.

So I say the Senate has spoken in passing our very well thought out provision. And I should add that this provision was written with the help and advice of Senator Lott and Senator Byrd, both former majority leaders with much valuable insight about how the Senate works. Yet even though the Senate has already spoken as a body on this matter, a single Senator has single-handedly rewritten part of this provision, overriding what I consider overwhelming support in the Senate to end secret holds.

In the version that was Senate passed, we allowed 3 days for Senators to submit a simple public disclosure form for the Record, just like adding your name as a cosponsor to a bill. The intent is not that it is somehow legitimate to keep a hold secret for 3 days, but we wanted to give Senators ample time to get their disclosure to the floor to be entered into the Record. The rewritten provision, as Senator Feinstein has said, gives Senators 6 legislative days instead of those 3 days. It is absurd to think that Senators need over a week to send an intern down to the floor with this simple form.

Of greater concern is that the rewritten language requires Senators to disclose a hold only after a unanimous consent request is made and objected to anonymously on the Senator's behalf, and then they have 6 days after that. That is too late. By that point, particularly at the end of a session, it is going to make this process meaningless. By that point, a hold could have existed for some time, perhaps without the sponsor of the bill even realizing it.

Furthermore, since the majority leader controls the Senate's schedule, he would hardly object to his own request to bring up a bill or nominee. He would simply not bring up a bill or nominee being held up by a Member of his own party. If a Member of the minority party were to attempt to ask unanimous consent to proceed to a matter, he would object on his own behalf to protect the majority leader's prerogative to set the agenda, and any secret holds by members of a majority party would remain secret.

I am deeply disappointed that this provision that Senator Wyden and I worked so hard on, over a period of at least 6 years, to finally get a vote of 84 Members of this body supporting it, and then, because it was almost a fait accompli as seen by leaders of this body--powerful Senators in this body--just to put it in, in January, in the bill that is before us because it would be done--so-called ``getting the message,''--well, who has forgotten that they got the message that they had to change this? And that is what is so irritating.

I am going to vote for this bill, but this was something that didn't need to be in a bill. It didn't need to be negotiated. This was decided by the vast majority of the Senate. But you know what it tells me. There are still people around here who don't want the public's business to be public. They want to do things in secret. They do not have guts enough to say they want to hold up a bill. So we end up with this convoluted thing we have of 6 days, but it isn't even kicked in until after there is an attempt by somebody to ask for a unanimous consent request to bring up a bill, and then only at that point, and then there is 6 days after that.

So I have stated my piece. I am not very happy. I hope Senator Wyden is as unhappy as I am and will try to do something in the future.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank the distinguished chairman, my friend from Montana, for initiating this important discussion. I would like to put this discussion into a broader historical context. For over 20 years, chairmen of the Finance Committee have employed a practice of opposing narrow tax provisions, commonly known as ``rifleshots.'' The legislative change we will discuss in some detail is really a formalization of the practice the Finance Committee has maintained over the past two decades.

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