Moving Forward

Floor Speech

MOVING FORWARD -- (Senate - December 05, 2007)

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, reclaiming the floor, I know for anybody who might be watching on the outside that all of this parliamentarian talk probably makes your eyes glaze over. But the fundamental problem is this: As recently as a year ago, my party was in the majority, and I had the same problem--Senator Frist and I had the same problem my good friend from Nevada has: Our members do not want to cast any dangerous votes, any votes they do not want to cast.

The first session of the previous Congress, the 109th, was the most productive legislative session of my time here

in the Senate. I recall Senator Frist and myself saying over and over and over again to our members that if we are going to pass this bill, we are going to have to give the minority their votes. And people were whining and complaining about having to cast votes. I recall the Democratic whip, the Senator from Illinois, saying: The Senate is not the House, and making the point that the minority is going to get its votes in order to advance legislation.

I understand that my good friend from Nevada gets complaints from his members about having to cast votes, but the fundamental responsibility of the majority is to pass legislation. In order to do that in the Senate--we do not have a rules committee--you have to work with the minority, and you have to give the minority side a reasonable number of amendments. That is the case on the consideration of the alternative minimum tax fix, and that is also the case with regard to the farm bill.

Now, my advice both privately and publicly to my good friend, the majority leader, on the farm bill is take it up and go forward, which is the way we have done it in the past, and it is amazing how quickly you move along. You can sometimes spend more time trying to get a consent agreement, which by its very nature requires every single Member of the Senate not to object--we could have made more progress on the farm bill by simply going to the bill, taking up amendments, and moving forward. That was my advice. It is still my advice. If we turned to the farm bill, even if we didn't have a very narrow amendment list, we would make dramatic progress and make it quickly. Why? Because I think there are significant numbers of Members of this body on both sides of the aisle who want to pass a farm bill. There may be a few who don't but a significant number do.

So here is where we are, December 5. We have nearly a full year's worth of work to finish before we adjourn for Christmas. It is a little after noon, and we are talking about why we are getting started now--I gather based on some misunderstanding about phantom objections that, in fact, did not exist on this side to the Environment Committee meeting.

We have offered our good friends a path forward on the AMT, on troop funding, on appropriations, on the Energy bill, and the farm bill. Yet we cannot seem to get the kind of bipartisan agreement that allows the minority to have some say over amendments in moving forward.

On the AMT, the chair of the Finance Committee called the Republican proposal constructive and said that it was the beginning of an agreement. That was yesterday. We want to make sure 23 million people are not ensnared by this middle-class tax hike and that the tax returns of 50 million Americans are not further delayed. The consequences of a delay will be felt by millions of taxpayers who will see a delay in their refunds next year.

It is, however, important to virtually every member of my conference that the alternative minimum tax, a tax that will never be levied and never be collected, not trigger a tax increase on a whole lot of other Americans. The effort to ``pay for'' the AMT is highly offensive to members on my side of the aisle, and I think the majority knows that, and the way to get the AMT and the extenders passed is not to ``pay for'' them--in other words, not to go out and raise taxes on a lot of other Americans in order to continue basically the status quo. We know we are never going to levy the AMT, and we are never going to collect it. The same is true with the extenders. We know we will pass that package. That is existing tax relief. Why should we raise taxes on some other Americans in order to maintain the status quo, which is the absence of an alternative minimum tax and the extension of the extenders? That is a very strongly held principle, and I believe that is the view of enough Senators to insist that is the way it goes forward.

Now, we know what they plan over in the House. They are going to send the AMT over there, and they are going to pay for it and send it back over here. I think that is a huge mistake; it is an excuse for raising taxes on a whole lot of Americans.

With regard to the remaining appropriations bills, the Democratic leader and I have had a number of constructive conversations. We are going to be talking to the administration later in the day on that subject. Any discussion of finishing up the year is going to have to include funding for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know we have had this debate a lot of times--at last count, 63 Iraq votes in the House and Senate this year. We know that even when the war was going poorly and there was great opposition to the surge, at the end of the day the funding was there. Now the surge is succeeding, and the war is going better. Why would we not continue the funding now that things are going better when even the majority, which did not favor the effort in Iraq, provided funding when it was going poorly? As part of any settlement of the 11 appropriations bills, we are going to have troop funding into next year.

On FISA, I think we have a way forward. The majority leader and I have talked about it. I think we both have the view that the underlying bill will probably be the intelligence measure. I think we should be able to construct some kind of consent agreement in that particular instance where I don't think there is much of a demand for amendments--some amendments but not a whole lot--that will allow us to go forward.

On energy, Senator Domenici tells me that he had an understanding with the majority leader and with the chairman of the Energy Committee in the Senate as to what would and what would not be in an energy bill that we would finally pass. It is my understanding that an energy bill that the House may act on, I gather today, I am not sure--is it today? Does someone know? It is likely to include tax hikes and utility rate increases for those of us in the Southeast. Now, in what way would an energy bill that raises taxes, when oil is about $100 a barrel, and has the practical effect of raising utility rates all across the Southeast be beneficial? My understanding was that the majority leader and Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman agreed that was not going to be a part of the proposal. I do not know whether it will be a part of the proposal when it comes over from the House, but that agreement ought to be kept and those provisions ought to be removed.

Finally, at the risk of being redundant, let me say again on the farm bill that we have enough time. Most of the negotiations that are going on, are going on off the floor. We do have floor time. It remains my advice to the majority leader to get on to the farm bill, process amendments, and move forward. I think that would be a way to make progress. It is probably going to be very challenging to get as tight a time agreement on amendments, as tight a number on amendments as the majority leader would like. We spend so much time doing that; we could be processing amendments here on the floor and moving forward with the bill.

Let me say in conclusion that we do want to be cooperative, but the reason we have had a lot of impasse this year is because a very narrow majority is, in effect, trying to dictate amendments to the minority. That will not work in the Senate. One of the prices of being in the majority--it is better to be in the majority than not. I would rather be in majority than not. But one of the prices you pay for being in the majority is you have to take votes you do not want to take in order to advance legislation.

So I would say to my good friend from Nevada, he is going to have as much cooperation as I can possibly muster. I am anxious to help us move forward on all of these issues he and I have been discussing here this morning.

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