Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations For Fiscal Year 2010 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for keeping up the fight. We have been at it for a long period of time. There has been a dry spell recently when this has not been a major issue. So we didn't feel, when there wasn't an interest in getting rid of secrecy within the Senate, like bringing this up. But now there is all this concern about what is going on with so many holds in the Senate--either bills or nominations--and that it is influencing the productivity of the Senate.

There has been a lot of discussion on the floor of the Senate about this issue, so the opportunity is ripe once again. This is the fourth or fifth time in the last couple weeks we have been at it. I thank my colleague from Oregon for keeping up the fight. I am glad to work with him as a Republican, and a lot of other Republicans who support this effort of making the public's business more public, the Senate's business more public.

Senator Wyden went into the details of the legislation, so I am not going to repeat that. But I want people to know that, from my side of the aisle, he has given an accurate representation, through his explanation, of the intent of our amendment. Without repeating that, I have made it a practice for a long period of time--I don't know, it has been 10 or 12 years--that when I put a hold on a bill or put a hold on a nomination, I have put a statement in the public record so that they know the Senator from Iowa has done this and my reason for doing it.

I want to tell my colleagues who think we ought to maintain the adjective before the word ``hold,'' it hasn't done any harm to me. There has been no retribution because of it. It has given people on a different side of the fence on the issue that I am--with my having a hold on--the opportunity to know it is me, and they can come to me for whatever reasons they want, and see whatever arrangements we can make, or whatever compromises were necessary to move things along; and they knew it was this Senator from Iowa and my rationale behind it. It gives us an opportunity to work out differences. That is what the Senate, being a deliberative body, is all about.

On the other hand, when this Senator from Iowa finds that somebody puts a hold on a nominee or a bill I have an interest in, and it is secret, then this Senator can't go to the other Senator and say, what is the problem? What can we do to work out our differences? Then that impedes the deliberative work of the Senate.

We feel there is nothing wrong with the process of a hold, except for the adjective ``secret,'' which can legitimately be put in front of the word ``hold.'' We want to preserve the deliberative aspect of the Senate. We don't want anybody to pull a quick one on anybody. The hold prevents that from happening. But we ought to know who you are and why you are doing it.

This legislation the Senator from Oregon and I have put forth will do exactly that. It is all about transparency and, with transparency, I think you get accountability. That is what representative government is all about--accountability. The public ought to have a right to know where Senators take a stand. This legislation will permit that.

In the final analysis, if you are a Senator who has guts enough to put a hold on a bill, you ought to have guts enough to let us know who you are. I hope that from now on the word ``secret'' is never anything that is used in the Senate except on things dealing with privacy or national security. Beyond that, the other 99.5 percent of the Senate's business ought to be totally open to the public.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I find myself agreeing with the Senator from South Carolina. I find myself agreeing--I am glad my colleague Senator Wyden also agrees. I raise this point, and I raise it for a point of discussion and consideration, not to challenge the purpose of the Senator from South Carolina.

It seems to me that if we all agree the Wyden-Grassley amendment is a good approach and at least Senator Wyden and I and Senator McCaskill and Senator Coburn and Senator DeMint believe the McCaskill-Coburn measure is a good measure, why would you want to hold up the Grassley-Wyden amendment? Is there a feeling that maybe the McCaskill-Coburn measure cannot rise and fall on its own? Then I think you might leave the impression that there is some subterfuge to see that the Wyden-Grassley bill does not get adopted.

Since there is a consensus on all these points, I think we ought to be able to move forward in a separate way and not use one good idea to leverage another good idea because if they are both good ideas, they can stand on their own. In the process, we do not have to then raise any questions about the legitimacy of the second idea, which would be the McCaskill-Coburn idea on reading legislation and making sure we have a score and making sure it is brought up in an environment where there is not secrecy. Again, what I said about secrecy in this body, it should only affect national security and people's personal privacy. Everything else ought to be the public's business. It is the public's business, and it ought to be public.

I raise the point that each item ought to stand by itself and that the five of us--and there are more than five of us, but at least on the Wyden-Grassley amendment, there seem to be at least three people in this body speaking this morning who think it ought to move forward, and there are at least three in this body, plus two others who are not here, McCaskill and Coburn, who feel the other idea ought to move forward. We ought to move forward separately with the help of everybody involved.

I yield the floor.

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