Republican Filibusters

Floor Speech

REPUBLICAN FILIBUSTERS -- (Senate - June 12, 2008)

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the speech of my good friend, the majority leader, sounds eerily similar to the one he made yesterday morning at exactly the same time, so I won't prolong this back and forth other than to say it is an interesting campaign speech, but the issue before us is, if we do want to legislate, we know how we have to legislate in the Senate. We had the same discussion yesterday morning. The way you don't legislate in the Senate is refuse to let the minority offer amendments.

I know this is inside baseball to most observers who don't follow every nuance of what we do in the Senate, but the way you legislate in the Senate is you call up a bill and you have a free amendment process and then you pass it.

Prematurely filing cloture, filling up the tree, preventing the minority from having any serious impact on legislation doesn't work. You can call that obstructionism if you want, but another way of looking at it would be to say the majority leader would like to turn the Senate into the House, and that is not the way we operate here. The Republican minority is pretty unified over the notion that they do not intend to be irrelevant.

With regard to the issue that is of most importance to the country--global warming--in fact, it is still the pending business. My Members are anxious to offer amendments on that debate. We have been on that measure. We discussed it all day yesterday and have been discussing it in previous days. We actually voted to continue the debate and would like to have a chance to offer amendments to it.

But I think my good friend, the majority leader, would like, rather than giving us a chance to truly amend the bill, to just simply check the box and say: That is another filibuster, and move on.

It is a fact--it is not any kind of Orwellian spin--that gas prices are up $1.70 since the Democratic majority took over. It is also a fact that Republicans, as I indicated in my comments earlier, are open to any of the conservation measures that have been suggested. But the fundamental problem is that our good friends on the other side are not willing to do anything whatsoever on the production side.

Even though I think, for example, that suing OPEC is somewhat ludicrous, I would be open to it if someone on the other side would say: OK, we will sue OPEC and we will add to that a measure allowing the opening of the Outer Continental Shelf, where States want to. I mean, why should the Federal Government prevent a State that actually wants to open the Outer Continental Shelf from doing so?

That is the way you go forward around here, with each side getting something. But, unfortunately, in these debates, they want it their way or not at all, and they do not even want to give us a chance to consider or approve these efforts to increase our production.

So the way to legislate in the Senate is pretty clear. The majority leader and I have been around here a while. We remember when we used to pass legislation, and we also remember how we did it. As I indicated yesterday morning, a good model for big, complicated bills, as the Clean Air Act of 1990 was--it was on the Senate floor for 5 weeks with 180 amendments and everybody participating, everybody offering amendments. We worked our way through the process, and we passed a major piece of legislation. You can't bring up something like a climate bill, fill up the tree and file cloture, and call that a serious effort to legislate.

I am sure it is somewhat confusing to casual observers, all this spin back and forth, but the fact is, the Senate is a place full of serious legislators on both sides of the aisle, and the only way we will actually be able to accomplish anything for the American people is for everybody's rights to be respected, for everybody to have a chance to participate, and at the end of the day to make some kind of bipartisan accommodation that would include some things the other side would like to accomplish, which I might not think is a great idea, but would also include some things that most of my Members believe would make a difference. That is the way to pass major legislation.

So, Mr. President, I enjoy these morning discussions with the majority leader. He is a good friend of mine. I like him a lot, I enjoy working with him, and I hope we can get past making a campaign speech every morning and actually see if there isn't some way to move forward on important legislation for the American people.

I yield the floor.

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