Climate Security

Floor Speech

CLIMATE SECURITY -- (Senate - June 04, 2008)

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Mr. DURBIN. Because it is after midnight and the staff has gone through so much today reading this bill, I will make my comments brief. It is hard to believe how much time we wasted today when we could have been considering the global warming bill and passing and considering important amendments. Now we find ourselves past midnight, after wasting hour after hour, when the Republican minority asked the amendment be read, every word of it read into the record, when that was totally unnecessary, an amendment which was available to us days ago, at least in summary form weeks ago, a total waste of time. It is a continued effort by the Republican side of the aisle to slow down and stop any effort to make progress on legislation people care about across America.

It is all their party has left. GOP stands for graveyard of progress. They don't want us to do anything. Today they wasted an entire day of the Senate.

I will close by saying, what troubles me the most is that the Republican minority leader would come to the floor with this sense of urgency about three district court Federal judges, a sense of urgency, yet does not share that same sense of urgency about the global warming that is changing the world we live in. The world will little note nor long remember those three judges, as good as they may be individually, but it will remember that we wasted an entire day and perhaps wasted our best efforts this session to take up the single most important issue for the survival of the planet.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. DURBIN. The Record speaks for itself. First, the Republicans insisted on the entire 30 hours, that the 30 hours be set aside for general debate on the bill before we could reach an amendment. We gave them their 30 hours for general debate and asked them during that period of time to produce the list of amendments that they wanted to consider on the bill. We gave them a list of amendments we would start with. The first was a bipartisan amendment, Senators BIDEN and LUGAR. When we asked them for amendments to the bill, once again, they failed to produce the list. It was very clear what was going on.

Then they proceeded, unfortunately, to tax the energy and stamina of the staff by having them read every word of the bill into the record, a complete waste of time. First, we burned off 30 hours in general debate with no amendments being produced by the Republican side. Then they came to the floor and took another 5 or 6 hours, maybe more, for the staff to read this into the record. This was not a good-faith effort in amending the bill or even debating the bill. That, unfortunately, is a reflection of what we have seen over and over and over, a record number of filibusters, a record number of Republican attempts to stop or slow down the debate on pending legislation. It is because, of course, they don't want us to see us enact legislation. They don't want to see us address the issues of the day. They are hoping this Congress will be as unproductive as the last Republican Congress.

We are not going to let that happen. We are still going to fight for important legislation. On this particular bill, on a global warming bill, we will have another vote. But if it goes down, if it doesn't move forward, it is because the Republicans are following their strategy that has been read into the RECORD, a strategy which focuses, as they say, ``much more on making political points than amending the bill.''

That is their strategy. It has been made a part of the RECORD. It is very clear what has happened.

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