Promoting Energy Savings in Residential Buildings and Industry - Motion to Proceed - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am sorry we are ending this session and going home for August with this. This is an attempt to go to a conference committee with the House of Representatives to agree on how much money we as a government will spend next year.

Each Chamber has passed a budget resolution. The Senate passed one. The House passed one. The basic constitutional approach to this is to bring the two together, work out our differences. This is, in fact, the 18th time we have asked the Republicans for their consent to go to this conference committee to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate and the 18th time that a Republican Senator has stood and objected.

We have heard speech after speech about how bad it was that the Senate never passed a budget resolution. I bet you heard it too. So we passed one. We did not get any help from the Republicans in passing it, but we passed it. Then, when it came time to try to work out our differences with the House of Representatives, Republican Senator after Republican Senator stood and said: No, we do not want to meet with the House of Representatives, even though it has a Republican majority.

Well, what difference does it make if we agree on this number? Can life go on? It makes a big difference. You see, earlier this afternoon we had this bill on the floor, S. 1243. It is a bill for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Senator Patty Murray of Washington chairs that appropriations subcommittee. Senator Susan Collins of Maine is her vice chairman on the Republican side. They worked long and hard on this bill.

It is a $54 billion bill. It pays for the basics when it comes to transportation in America; TIGER grants so that communities can build the roads they need; money to rebuild bridges that are falling down; airports in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida. It has the Housing and Urban Development Program in it as well, housing for poor people, housing for veterans.

Well, it came to a procedural vote today on the floor. It was a dramatic moment. The Senator from Maine, the Republican Senator who has worked on this for so long, stood and begged her colleagues on the Republican side to join her in moving this bill forward. She put in a lot of work, and she went through this long list of 85 different amendments that have been considered on this bill, how everybody has had their chance if they wanted to change it. Senator Murray of Washington said the same thing.

Then the Republican leader Senator McConnell came to the floor and said: I am asking all the Republicans to vote no. Vote no because we have not reached an agreement on the budget resolution; we have not reached an agreement on the total amount of money we will spend next year.

So they all voted no--all except Senator Collins. Every one of them voted no because we did not have an agreement on the budget resolution.

So I just came to the floor and said: Why don't we sit down and try to reach an agreement on the budget resolution? And a Republican Senator said: No, I object to that.

Where does that leave us? They will not pass the bills--appropriations bills--for something as basic as transportation and infrastructure because we do not have an agreement on a budget resolution, and they will not give their consent for us to sit down and agree on a budget resolution.

The games politicians play. When we had this press conference outside, there were people from the construction industry--iron workers, transportation workers, some of them in hard hats--and one of them got up to the microphone and said: I don't know what is going on inside those rooms with all that wrestling, but we need more jobs in America. Why can't you pass a bill to create more jobs in America?

I think most Americans, wherever they live, would agree with that ironworker. Most of them would not understand what just happened today--how the Republicans, except for one, all voted against that bill for transportation, saying we had not reached an agreement on how much we were going to spend, and then they turned around and objected when we came forward and said: Then let's try to reach an agreement. They objected. You just heard it on the floor.

I respect my colleague from Florida. And do you know the reason for the objection? He is afraid we may resolve the issue about our debt ceiling. Do you know what the debt ceiling is? The debt ceiling is America's mortgage. When we vote for spending bills, we have to borrow some money to cover what we are voting for.

Many on the Republican side say: We want to vote for spending bills, but we do not want to be held responsible for the money you have to borrow to pay for it.

If we fail to enact a debt ceiling at the end of this year, America will default on its debt for the first time in history. The economic recovery we are seeing now will disappear. Jobs will be lost. Businesses are going to contract, some will fail. It is totally irresponsible to say: I just hope we never extend that debt ceiling.

We need to do that. We did it 16 times under President Ronald Reagan--16 different times under President Reagan. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is an issue of responsibility and fiscal responsibility.

I am saddened that we had such a good run for 2 weeks where we were working together and we end on such a sour note. I am saddened we could not pass this good, basic bill--a bill which had bipartisan support coming out of the committee. I am saddened that the Senator from Maine was the only Republican Senator who would vote for this bill today. And I am saddened that we will end this session with an objection to the House and Senate trying to sit down together and work out their differences.

If you wonder why the approval rating of Congress is at rock bottom, I am afraid we have seen today in the proceedings of the Senate exactly why that is the case.

I yield the floor.

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