Water Resources Development Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, this is so challenging. It has now been 47 days since we passed our budget. Senate Democrats have now requested unanimous consent to move to conference--the next step--five times. We want to take the next step in this process. We want to move forward under regular order and continue this debate in an open and public way, but every time we try to take it to the next step, Senate Republicans stand and they say: No. I think this comes as a surprise to the American people. I think they are disappointed. I know I am. I think a lot of people, myself included, expected that after calling for regular order so consistently for so long, Republicans would be eager now to take the next step in the process. Some Republicans say they want to negotiate a framework behind closed doors before they agree on going to conference, but that is what a budget is. It is a framework that lays out our values and our priorities and helps us plan for our country's future. Why can't we discuss that framework in a formal, public conference, which is what we call regular order?

I am sure Republicans are not excited about the prospect of defending their extreme budget all over again in a public conference committee. We all know Americans are not interested in more tax breaks for the wealthiest, they are not interested in Medicare vouchers, but Republicans wrote that budget, they voted for it, they passed it, and they ought to be happy to defend it. I know Senate Democrats are happy to stand and talk about ours.

The American people now deserve to see those two visions. They need to see our visions side by side, contrasted with each other, and they need to see who is willing to compromise and who is not.

We have heard the House Republican leadership doesn't want the Senate to appoint conferees because they don't want to go to conference because they might have to take a lot of difficult votes in the House.

I am sure my colleagues remember the vote-arama we had before we passed our budget. We considered over 100 amendments. We were here until 5 in the morning, the entire time voting on amendments, until every Senator who wanted to be heard to offer an amendment did and we had a very thorough and open debate and we voted a lot. So I don't think the American people are going to be very sympathetic to the argument that the Republicans don't want to go to conference because they are afraid the House has to take a few votes.

This is deeply disappointing to me. The Republicans are now running away from regular order. In fact, they are running right toward another crisis, and they are willing to take our American families and our economy along for the ride.

It should be noted the House Republicans have announced a new conference, but it is not a conference on a budget deal; it is a conference of their Republican Members to decide what they are going to demand in exchange for taking our economy over the debt ceiling. It is absurd, and it is not going to happen. We know because we went through this same thing the last time we approached the debt limit. Just a few months ago, Republicans realized how dangerous it would be to play games with the debt limit and how politically damaging it would be to play politics with potential economic calamity for our country, and they finally dropped their demands. The so-called Boehner rule died, and no amount of wishing by the tea party is going to bring that back.

The Republican strategy now of holding our economy hostage and trying to push us to another crisis is absolutely the wrong approach, and holding our budget conference hostage so they can get to that point is not going to be considered well by the American people.

Getting a deal is not going to be easy. Any one of us knows that. It is going to take compromise. But this constant lurching from crisis to crisis that the House is demanding and is strategizing around is not what the American public wants or deserves.

I am here to say Democrats are ready to take the next step. We need a negotiating party on the other side. They can bring all of their bills to conference and we can talk about it. We can come to a compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word. Oftentimes we don't hear it a lot around here. But I believe many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, frankly, want to return to regular order. They want to move away from these constant crises. I know that is what the American public wants. They want to see we can govern.

I urge those who are coming here time and time again, blocking us from getting to a point to debate our two different budgets and from getting to a compromise, to allow us to get the work of the American people done and allow us to go to conference.

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

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