Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013 - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it seems as if the majority leader and some others are rattling the cage once again in favor of the so-called nuclear option. For those who may not follow this topic closely, this is simply breaking the Senate rules in order to impose majority will on the minority party by changing the procedures by which the Senate functions. In other words, it refers to a process by which the rules of the Senate are broken in order to change the rules themselves.

As the distinguished majority leader has pointed out in the past--right here on the Senate floor in front of his colleagues and constituents and all the American people, Senator Reid affirmed that the proper way to change the Senate rules was through the procedure laid out in those rules. The majority leader, Senator Reid of Nevada, went on to say that he would oppose any effort in this Congress or the next to change the Senate rules other than through the regular order, and he recommitted himself to this proposition in a colloquy with the Republican leader earlier this year.

So I would ask the majority leader: Do you plan on keeping your word or are you going to resort to brute political force and break the Senate rules in order to change the rules and fundamentally transform the nature of the U.S. Senate?

Should the majority leader break his promise, I believe he will inflict lasting and perhaps irreparable damage to this institution. And during a time when cooperation is very important--as it always is--to try to actually solve some of the Nation's biggest problems, poisoning the well by exercising this so-called nuclear option would be the opposite of what we ought to be doing, which is coming together in a bipartisan way to address some of the Nation's biggest challenges.

I would also ask my Democratic colleagues, how do you reconcile your desire for a filibuster-free Senate with the simple fact that Democrats will not always be in the majority in the Senate? As we know, what goes around comes around, and the shoe will always be on the other foot. I can think of a number of legislative proposals that Republicans on this side of the aisle would happily advance with a simple majority--let's say, for example, a full repeal of ObamaCare. That would be a good place to start. As the senior Senator from Tennessee Mr. Alexander recently pointed out, we could finally establish the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada. But the truth is that prudence and a healthy respect for the fleeting nature of power in the Senate, as well as a healthy respect for the voices represented by the minority in the Senate, compel a different course of action because, as we know, the shoe will always be on the other foot at some day in the future.

I think it is worth pausing to examine the source of the majority leader's renewed interest in the so-called nuclear option. On the heels of the President's judicial nominations, many of our friends across the aisle are renewing their wayward cries of Republican obstructionism in the Senate, but the facts simply don't bear this out. The facts do not support this conclusion.

Indeed, as the Washington Post Fact Checker recently pointed out, from nomination to confirmation, President Obama's district court nominees have moved through the Senate at only a marginally slower pace than his predecessors, while his appeals court nominees have sailed through at a much faster clip than President Bush's. The Senate has confirmed 28 of the President's judicial nominees so far this year. By this point in President Bush's second term, this body had confirmed only 10. Twenty-eight under President Obama and 10 under President Bush at this point in their second term. In total, 199 of President Obama's judicial nominees have been confirmed and only 2 have been defeated. That doesn't sound like obstructionism to me.

Meanwhile, the President has failed to produce nominees for 65 percent of the vacant judicial seats, many of which are in my home State in Texas. As the distinguished Presiding Officer knows and as the American people know, it is the President who nominates Federal judges, and then it is the responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent on those confirmations. That is in the Constitution. But if the President doesn't nominate people for these vacancies, then the Senate's role is never engaged on those 65 percent of vacant judicial seats where the President has not even nominated an individual to serve. I would argue that is the true reason for the majority of vacancies and one that calls for the President's immediate attention.

So I hope that during the remaining few weeks here in July before the August recess, we don't see a manufactured crisis over how the Senate operates on nominees. We have some very controversial nominees--for example, three of whom were unconstitutionally recess-appointed by the President. And don't take my word for it. In the case of the National Labor Relations Board, the court of appeals held that those were unconstitutionally appointed in order to circumvent the Senate's constitutional role.

It is true that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken those cases, and we will soon hear--perhaps by next summer--what the Supreme Court's view of the recess appointment authority of a President might be. But we know that at least three of them--two at the National Labor Relations Board and the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee--were recess-appointed and, I think it is pretty clear, in violation of at least the court of appeals' view of what the President's constitutional authority would and should be.

We also have other nominees, some of whom are more controversial than others. We have Gina McCarthy, who has been nominated for the Environmental Protection Agency. We have James Comey, who was this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee and who I believe will enjoy broad bipartisan support as the next FBI Director. We have other more controversial nominees, such as Thomas Perez to the Department of Labor. That is in part due to his activities as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he was harshly criticized by the inspector general for politicizing what should be a nonpolitical position, enforcing the civil rights laws of the United States.

So we are going to have plenty to talk about and a lot to do, but this should not be used as an excuse by the majority leader to break his word when it comes to changing the Senate rules through this nuclear option process. That would be a disservice to the country. It would certainly irreparably damage the Senate as a deliberative body. It would poison the well when we need to work together as much as we can to try to get other important work done. And it would be extremely shortsighted because majorities can be fleeting, and those who are in the majority today will find themselves in the minority in the future. I think that recognition would caution prudence and temper the political ambitions of the majority leader when it comes to jamming through some of these nominees.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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