Energy And Water Development And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 - Conference Report - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I will be very brief. I want to back up the comments recently made by Senator Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and our majority leader.

How can we, in the midst of two wars, stop the Department of Defense authorization bill on the floor when our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, Americans across this country are risking their lives? We have this stall tactic on the floor, where they will not even allow us to bring this up for a vote for the Department of Defense authorization. A lot of people around here go back home for parades and wave the red, white, and blue and salute our troops and tell us how much they love them and then come to the floor and engage in stall tactics and filibusters to stop this.

I would say to the other side of the aisle: Don't go home and wave the flag of patriotism if you will not at least give us a chance to vote on the bill our men and women in uniform are counting on. Too many of them are doing just that. I might also tell you that when it comes to unemployment benefits, we know what is going on in America. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. As of September of this year, the end of September, 400,000 Americans lost their unemployment benefits, another 200,000 will occur within this month and then 1.3 million total by the end of the year. We have asked the Republicans: Will you let us extend unemployment benefits for people who have no way to sustain their families? No. They want to filibuster this. They want to offer amendments that have nothing to do with this whatsoever. They want to drag it out. They have no sensitivity to these people who have lost their jobs and are struggling to keep their families together under the most difficult circumstances. The Homeland Security conference report is another one. That is going to pass soon, and we are having difficulty from the Republican side getting any kind of agreement getting this measure enacted. This is a measure about the safety and security of our country.

The Commerce-Justice bill, this is one Senator Mikulski brought to the floor. It includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement. We could not get a single Republican yesterday to agree with us to bring this bill to a vote after it sat on the floor for an entire week, waiting for amendments that were promised and never delivered.

Now we have the Energy and Water conference which could pass, an important bill to put people to work in America. We had a vote earlier today, it was 79 to 17--people thought it was a great bill. Now it is being stalled. It is being stopped.

The bottom line is we came here to do some work, not to dream up ways to stall and not do the people's work. Too many people are being disadvantaged by this tactic. It is the tactic of the minority. It is one they will pay for because the American people understand they have no proposal when it comes to health care reform--nothing. Now they have no agenda when it comes to these important items for our men and women in uniform, for the people who are unemployed across America to keep us safe through homeland security and basic bills for law enforcement and for Energy and Water appropriations. They want to stop them all, stall them all.

That may be a good tactic that some of their political consultants have given them but don't think the American people are going to accept it.

ORDER OF PROCEDURE

I ask unanimous consent that when Senator Udall is recognized, Senator Udall of New Mexico is recognized this evening, he control up to 1 hour of that time as in morning business and it be in order for him to engage in colloquies during this time; at the conclusion of that hour, Senator Coburn be recognized to speak for up to 1 hour; at the end of that hour, it be in order for Senator Udall to be recognized for another hour under the same conditions as identified above; and at the conclusion of that hour, Senator Coburn again be recognized for 1 hour as identified above.

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Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator, and under the hour he has been given, I thank him for yielding a few minutes. Let me say, what happened to you in the conference committee has happened to all of us. You had an amendment adopted in the Senate. As I understand it, we all supported it. It died in conference. It is frustrating, something you believe in, something we all voted for, and you didn't get your way. But does that mean we are going to stop consideration of this conference report; we are not going to pass an Energy and Water appropriations bill because your amendment didn't survive in conference? If all 100 Members in the Senate took that position, we would never pass anything.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DURBIN. When I finish. The fact is, each of us has to accept the reality here. We don't always get what we want. I have been denied opportunities in conferences for things I cared for.

One of them, for example, was to say the Federal Government was going to make up the difference in pay from activated Federal workers who served in our Guard and Reserve. Year after year it would be adopted on the Senate floor and killed in conference by the chairman from Alaska. Did I stop the money for the Department of Defense because of that? Of course not. I said: Tomorrow is another day and I will fight for it another day. But to stop the bill and say we are going to hold on for 30 hours or more because I didn't get my amendment in conference?

When it comes to the unemployment benefit, we are paying for these the same way every President has paid for them, through the FUTA tax. It is paid for. Frankly, it should be. These are people who paid into unemployment compensation for the day when they would need it and now the money is coming back out to pay them. But some people here have a different theory how they want to pay for it. So hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans are waiting for the latest Republican theory on how to finance unemployment benefits. It is cold comfort to them to know we are having this great academic debate when a question about food on the table and taking care of their family is No. 1 in their minds. That is the problem with what has happened here.

You can always dream up a reason to vote no. You can always dream up a better idea. But at some point the business of government has to get on. People count on us--in this case, hundreds of thousands of unemployed people.

Let me say a word about public option, and then I will yield the floor back to the Senator from New Mexico. If we didn't get the message loudly and clearly Monday night about the public option when the health insurance industry threatened us and said: If you pass health care reform, we are going to raise your premiums, if the message didn't come through loudly and clearly that they not only have the power to do that, we empowered them to do it in ways no other company can because they are exempt from antitrust laws, the only way to keep them honest is to make sure health care reform does not disadvantage workers and businesses and families is to have a not-for-profit option, a public option that people can choose for health insurance. I fully support that public option. Those who say I am not sure if I would go that far have to accept the reality. Health insurance, private health insurance companies will impose premiums, they will fix prices because they can--they are exempt under McCarran-Ferguson--and they can allocate marketplaces so they can own markets. They are in a dominant position. The only thing that can stop them is competition and the only competition that can work is a public option, one that comes in and is not profit driven but tries to provide quality care for people at affordable cost. I fully support the public option. I thank the Senator from New Mexico for yielding.

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