Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. For more than a month, I have been coming to the floor to talk about student loan reform. I have said that to an outside observer, this is an issue that should have been an easy bipartisan slam dunk. I have noted that the proposals put forward by both President Obama and congressional Republicans have been strikingly similar. We both agree on the need for a permanent reform, and we agree on the need to help all students and not just some of them. Yet here we are after the July 1 deadline and Democrats are still blocking bipartisan student loan reform.
You have to ask yourself why. It is because they have prioritized politics over helping students. There are basically two different Democratic groups battling for supremacy: a more responsible reform-permanently faction and a more political campaign-permanently faction.
In the first group are the sensible Democratic Senators who agree with both President Obama and Republicans that it is time to finally solve this issue. Washington should actually help students and stop using them as pawns in a political chess match. They support the bipartisan compromise plan put forward by Democratic, Republican, and Independent Senators alike.
Unfortunately, this faction is opposed and outnumbered by the campaign-permanently Democrats. They are the ones whom I suspect would actually prefer to see rates lapse so they can manufacture another campaign issue. To hear the musings of some top Democrats, one would have to conclude that the Democratic leadership is on the side of campaigning permanently and against helping students.
As the majority leader put it a few weeks ago: ``[We're] not looking for compromise.''
Another Democratic Senator in leadership boasted a goal in this debate was to show ``the difference between the two parties on a key issue.''
I mean, this is just the kind of thing that makes people so cynical about Washington. Washington Democrats yell and wave their arms about the need for something, and then they appear to do everything possible behind the scenes to sabotage it, apparently so they can manufacture a politically convenient crisis. They are doing it on student loans, and they have been doing it with nominations too.
All week it seems they have been breathlessly telling any reporter who will listen that we have a nominations crisis around here; that Republicans are holding up the President's nominees. It is really laughable.
To hear some of the over-the-top rhetoric, one would think Republicans have blocked all of the President's second-term Cabinet nominees. But then, of course, you would be entirely wrong.
The truth is, since the President swore his oath of office in January, the Senate has confirmed every single Cabinet pick that has been brought up for a vote--every single one of them.
Let me repeat that. Every single one that has been brought up for a vote, all of them have been confirmed. Many of them have been confirmed on unanimous or nearly unanimous votes. Yesterday, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee announced his support for an up-or-down vote on Gina McCarthy's nomination to be EPA Administrator.
So there is no question she is going to be confirmed.
It is clear that facts are getting in the way of the Democrats' arguments, which is why they are forced to gin up this fake--absolutely fake--nominations ``crisis.'' It is why we see them bringing out all the nominees who have been appointed to office either illegally or who are exceedingly controversial. Democrats themselves have delayed consideration of these nominees literally for months--because the majority leader determines the timing--so they could pull them all out of the woodwork at the same time, in the hopes the Senate would reject them.
Democrats are out there daring the Senate to do it. They want it so badly it appears to be their goal. And there is a reason for this. It is because the far-left base seems to be getting fed up with the democratic process. The big labor bosses are sick of waiting for the special interest legislative kickbacks they must feel they are owed, and now they know that altering the rules of our democracy is the only way to get what they want.
This isn't going to work. The facts show the truth, and the truth is that any crisis over nominations is a crisis of Washington Democrats' own making--one they have stirred up intentionally--an absolutely manufactured crisis by any objective analysis.
As of last night, there were 140 nominees pending in various committees. These nominees are under the control of the majority, not us. And there are a little over two dozen or so eligible for expedited floor consideration, many of whom Republicans have already said we would pass unanimously. Why hasn't the majority leader called for votes on any of these folks? Clearly, if anyone is obstructing here, it is the majority leader, because this whole conversation isn't about making the Senate work better, and he knows it. It is all about his power grab. Well, let me caution him again to think long and hard about what he is doing.
As one of the most senior members of the Democratic Party said yesterday, deploying the nuclear option would mean breaking the rules to change the rules--breaking the rules to change the rules. As the majority leader himself once said, it would ``ruin our country.'' And we all know why. Once the trigger is pulled, there would be no limit to the consequences, not just for Republicans or for our country but for Democrats too. They should think very carefully about the ramifications for them when a future Republican President makes his own appointments to the Cabinet and to the Federal bench.
Look, we know Senate Democrats are not serious about implementing student loan reform. They have already demonstrated that by blocking just about every bipartisan effort to do so. But on the nuclear option, it is certainly my hope that cooler heads will prevail. I have to believe they will choose the long-term health of our democracy and of their party over what frankly amounts to the narrowest--the narrowest--of short-term political considerations. Pulling the nuclear trigger is not something the history books will look favorably on, and they know it. And, of course, there will be consequences.
When the President was in the Senate back in 2005, and the then-Republican majority was thinking about something akin to this, this is what the President had to say. ``If they choose to change the rules and put an end to the democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse.'' The President was entirely correct.
Senator Reid said in 2009, a couple of years ago, ``There is no way I would employ the use of the nuclear option. No way.'' He said it would ``ruin our country.'' He said, ``It would have destroyed the Senate as we know it.''
Hopefully, that was not then and there is some different standard now. And, of course, we know we had this debate at the beginning of the year. Actually, we have had it at the beginning of the last two Congresses, and the Senate--the occupant of the Chair had newly arrived here--voted on two rules changes and two standing orders, after which the majority leader said, ``The rules issue for this Congress is over.''
He gave his word in January of this year. We are waiting to see if that word will be kept.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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