Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013 -- Motion to Proceed -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I was on the floor, as was the Presiding Officer, listening to the distinguished Republican leader's glowing tribute to this fallen warrior. We were moved, certainly, by it.

He preceded his comments by talking about what is happening to the Senate and the fact that even though we are debating, supposedly, the first energy legislation to come to the Senate floor since 2007, the majority leader's--Majority Leader Reid, who has the power under the Senate rules to basically be the traffic cop, to decide which amendments get heard and voted on and which ones do not--comment was to the effect that the majority leader has essentially shut the Senate down and denied the minority an opportunity to offer their amendments and to get votes on amendments.

I know people listening must say: Well, here they go again talking about the prerogatives and rights of Senators. But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the rights and prerogatives of the people I represent, 26 million Texans who are being shut out of a debate on--of all topics--energy.

We take great pride in the fact that Texas is an energy-producing State, and it is one of the reasons why our economy has been doing better than much of the rest of the country, because we have responsibly, and with the right kind of environmental stewardship, taken advantage of this gift of the natural resources that we have in our State.

Thanks to the innovation, and thanks to the investment and the hard work of a lot of people, we are doing better--thank you--than the rest of the country when it comes to job creation.

It really offended me when the majority leader this morning said:

Mr. President, during today people will be watching [presumably in the gallery, on C-SPAN, maybe on the evening news] and they will see a quorum call, nothing on the screen. Why? Because we are in the midst again of one of these never-ending filibusters of the Republicans--hundreds of them, hundreds of them. Let me remind everyone, Lyndon Johnson was majority leader for 6 years.

Well, I would just interject Lyndon Johnson didn't run the Senate the way Senator Reid does, when he was majority leader. Senator Reid continues:

During that period of time he had to overcome one filibuster.

Mr. President, I have lost track. It is hundreds and hundreds of filibusters that we have had to overcome, and we have the Republicans coming here saying today: Well, all we want are a few amendments. They do everything they can to stop us from progressing on legislation and things that are good for this country.

He is talking about the 45 Senators on this side of the aisle--that we will do everything we can to stop from progressing on legislation and on things that are good for the country. How insulting can you be?

We are going to have differences of opinion, sure. That is why are here. That is why they used to call the Senate the world's greatest deliberative body, because on the floor, not even Majority Leader Reid can shut me down or any other Senator who stands and is recognized by the Chair to speak on a matter of importance to their State or to the country.

But to have the majority leader come to the floor and say that what we are trying to do is stop progress on legislation and things that are good for the country--he goes on. Senator Reid accuses us of trying to stop:

Anything that is good for Barack Obama they think is bad for the country, and they, for 5 1/2 years, have opposed everything that this good man has tried to do. It is a shame.

So anyone out there wondering what is going on, it is another of the hundreds of filibusters they have conducted.

Majority Leader Reid has been a Member of the Senate for a long, long time. He knows this is not true.

So why he would come to the floor of the Senate and say it is puzzling to me.

We had 2 years when President Obama and Senator Reid's party could do anything they wanted. How is that? Well, because they had 60 votes in the Senate, which is sort of the magic number, when you can basically do anything you want in the Senate because the minority doesn't have enough numbers to stop the majority or to check their power.

So Democrats had the House of Representatives, with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. They had the Senate, with 60 votes, Harry Reid as the majority leader, and they had Barack Obama in the White House.

What did we get in those 2 years? Well, one of the things we got was ObamaCare. We know it was sold on the basis of: If you like what you have you can keep it, your premiums would go down $2,500 and, yes, you could keep your doctor too. But none of that proved to be true--none of it.

We got Dodd-Frank. Do you remember Dodd-Frank?

That was the legislation following the financial crisis of 2008 and the meltdown on Wall Street that was very damaging to the economy of this country; there is no doubt about it. What we got with unrestrained and unchecked single-party efforts during the time when they controlled both branches of government--the executive and the legislative branches--was legislation that targeted Wall Street, but Main Street was actually the collateral damage. I hear that from my credit unions and community bankers in Texas all the time, that the regulations are strangling them and keeping them on the sidelines, hurting the economy and hurting job creation.

My point is the Framers of our Constitution understood it is important to have vigorous debate on the differences of opinion each of us bring in representing our various States. The Constitution makes the point, in Article I, Section 1, that ``all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.''

I ask the majority leader, if the Constitution vests all legislative authority in the Senate and the House, what happens when half of the Senate is shut down and denied an opportunity to participate in the legislative process?

The Constitution goes on to state what kind of legislative power is vested in the Senate and the House. Section 8, Article I of the Constitution lays out a laundry list of powers the Congress has--the sorts of things Congress is intended to legislate on. It contains everything from the ``Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises ..... To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization ..... To coin Money ..... To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; To establish Post Offices and post Roads; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts ..... To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court.''

The list goes on and on. Of course, finally, the last phrase in Article I, Section 8 is laying out the power of the Congress to legislate, where it says, ``To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.''

So I ask the majority leader: If the Constitution grants the Congress the power to legislate and specifies all of the things we are supposed to legislate on and do as the elected representatives of our various States, what happens when we are shut out of the process, when we are denied an opportunity to represent the people who elected us to office, who have entrusted us with a sacred responsibility and a stewardship?

It is beyond outrageous. It is beyond outrageous for the majority leader to make the remarks he made this morning that I previously quoted because he knows they are not true. He knows they are not factual. The Constitution itself guarantees my constituents, all 26 million of them, the rights laid out in the Constitution in Article I. When they vote for a U.S. Senator, they are entitled to have their Senator participate in the legislative process. We are not guaranteed the right to win these votes, but we are given the responsibility and the privilege of representing them in this place, and we cannot do it when the majority leader runs this place like a dictator.

We are debating--supposedly--an energy efficiency bill. As I said, it is the first time we have had an energy debate on the floor since 2007. There are a lot of very good ideas that have been offered to improve the underlying piece of legislation. I have no doubt the underlying legislation would pass. It will pass, if the majority leader allows us an opportunity to offer and debate our proposals for improving the underlying bill, but if he is going to shut us out of the process and deny the people I represent a voice and an opportunity to improve this piece of legislation, we are not going to cooperate.

The majority leader keeps saying no to amendments, and he denigrates our right on behalf of our constituents to offer amendments and to get votes on those amendments. I know I have come to the floor before, as other Members have come to the floor, and tried to speak on this topic. I know sometimes this sounds as though it is all just about process. It is about process. How boring could that be. It is important because in essence the majority leader has imposed a gag rule on the minority in the Senate, a gag rule in the world's greatest deliberative body--no more.

I don't know what the majority leader is afraid of. Is he afraid of a vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline? I think I saw a poll the other day that said roughly 61 percent of the respondents to that poll thought this was a good idea, that we get more of our energy from a friendly source, such as the nation of Canada, and rather than having to transport all of it in tank cars on trains that occasionally crash and cause a lot of damage, it might be better to build this pipeline so we could safely transport that oil from Canada down to refineries in my State, where it could be converted into gasoline, aviation fuel, and the like, and in the process create an awful lot of jobs.

Sixty-one percent, according to that poll I read, said they thought that was a pretty good idea. Yet the majority leader will not even allow a vote on that amendment. He will not allow a vote on minority amendments. He will not allow a vote on Democratic amendments. I bet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle must be frustrated, indeed, because they have been denied an opportunity to participate in this process, too, thanks to the autocratic powers being exercised by the majority leader.

Here is another idea this side of the aisle had for an amendment we would like to get some debate and a vote on. We are not asking to win. We can do the math. We know we are in the minority. But these are important topics. Vladimir Putin invades Crimea, the Russian Army is building up in the Ukraine and causing havoc in that country, and it looks like he is not going to stop. The President said we are going to make sure there is a cost imposed as a result of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, so we are going to impose a number of sanctions. The fact is, as my colleague from Arizona, the senior Senator from Arizona, has said, Russia is a gas station posing as a country. I think that is a pretty humorous way of saying the energy Russia produces and transmits to Ukraine and Europe is its main source of economic power and revenue. If we could undermine that by exporting more energy from the United States to Europe, that would dissuade Vladimir Putin, perhaps, in addition to other things we might do, but the majority leader will not even allow us an opportunity to vote on that issue. By the way, it will also continue to create more jobs in America.

Here is what the majority leader has done. Since he has been majority leader, he has basically blocked any opportunity for Republicans to offer amendments on legislation 84 times--84 times--including 14 times just this year. He has shut us out. He has imposed the Reid gag rule and said: I don't care what the Constitution says. I don't care that you were elected by the people in your State to come here and be their voice and to offer their ideas on legislation. I don't care. We are not going to allow it, is what Majority Leader Reid has said 84 times.

Then he has the audacity to impugn our motives this morning, to insult the job we are trying to do to represent our constituents. He calls that a filibuster. George Orwell wrote a book called ``Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' where he talked about how people can twist the ordinary understanding of the English language in a way that is very dangerous. But I would suggest that no definition of filibuster could be derived from the fact the majority leader has imposed his gag rule, has shut us out of the legislative process, and denied us the opportunity to do what the Constitution guarantees. He calls that a filibuster? Give me a break.

So the majority leader comes to the floor this morning and says: If you are watching C-SPAN or if you happen to be visiting the Capitol and are in the gallery, all you are going to see are quorum calls. You are going to hear nothing but crickets on the Senate floor because there is not going to be anything happening there.

The reason that is true, in large part, is because he has shut down the process. He has denied us a voice. He has denied us an opportunity to participate in the legislative process the Constitution talks about in the provisions I just read.

I am probably not going to persuade Majority Leader Reid about the error of his ways because I don't think he cares. I don't think he cares. It is not going to affect whether he is reelected in Nevada, perhaps, and there is nothing the minority can do, given the fact the majority leader has extraordinary power under the Senate rules and under the precedent of the Senate. He can get away with it, if the Senate allows it, if the public allows it. But that is why it is important to come to the Senate floor and expose this fraud for what it is. It is a fraud.

The majority leader is trying to deceive the American people into thinking that by speaking out against this gag rule we somehow are an obstacle to passing legislation. We have certain responsibilities to the people who sent us, and that responsibility does not include sitting down and shutting up when we are being run over by a freight train by the name of Senator Harry Reid. It is outrageous. It is outrageous.

Thanks to the majority leader we likely will not have any amendments on this piece of legislation. I think at last count there were roughly 30 ideas we had that we would like to offer amendments on. We have even proposed to Majority Leader Reid that we would take those 30 or 40 amendments and talk among ourselves and maybe we can reduce those to 5 or so relevant amendments--items that have to do with energy, with jobs, with national security. His answer is, no, forget it.

Instead of accepting responsibility for his decision, he blames us for filibustering. What does he expect us to do? To be quiet? To sit in our offices while he runs this railroad that used to be known as the world's greatest deliberative body, runs over our rights and the rights of the people we represent? Well, we are not going to sit down and shut up. We are not.

Back in my younger days I used to be a practicing lawyer. I would be hired by a client to come into court and make an argument on their behalf, to give them the representation they were entitled to under our system of justice. I had my argument and the opposing party had their argument and their lawyers and their witnesses, and they came in and presented it before a jury of either 6 people or 12 people, depending on the court you were in, and we would ultimately settle that dispute between the parties, kind of like the difference of opinion we have here on how the Senate ought to operate and what business we ought to be conducting.

In court, when you have a dispute between opposing parties, the judge and the jury who are impartial will listen to the facts, and the judge will decide what the law is that applies in that kind of case, and then you will have a verdict. And that law, with the judgment the judge signs incorporating those findings of fact by the jury, is how the case is decided.

How does that work here in the Senate? What is the analogy? The best analogy I can think of is that we will indeed have a verdict, but it is going to be by the voters in the midterm elections come November.

My only conclusion is that the majority leader must be afraid of having this sort of robust debate because he knows it will expose some of his members to votes they may have a hard time explaining back home. There actually may be some accountability, Heaven forbid. So his answer is to shut down the Senate. It is very sad.

VETERANS ADMINISTRATION

Mr. President, with each passing week we are finding out more and more about institutional failures within the Department of Veterans Affairs. We recently learned that the Phoenix VA system had a secret waiting list designed to conceal a massive backlog of delayed appointments, and that some of the veterans who were put on this secret waiting list actually died while waiting to get the treatment they deserved.

Now we are learning that staffers at a VA outpatient clinic in Fort Collins, CO, were deliberately showing their clerks how to create fraudulent appointment records. In the meantime, there are still more than 589,000 VA pension and compensation claims pending nationwide, and a majority of them are backlogged according to the VA's own criteria, which is more than 4 months.

Every day it seems as though we learn of a new part of this scandal because whistleblowers stepped forward and said: Yes, that was happening where I worked too.

Yesterday, the Austin American-Statesman published a story entitled ``VA employee: Wait list data was manipulated in Austin, San Antonio.'' The story says:

A Department of Veterans Affairs scheduling clerk has accused VA officials in Austin and San Antonio of manipulating medical appointment data in an attempt to hide long wait times to see doctors and psychiatrists, the American-Statesman has learned.

..... the 40-year-old VA employee said he and others were ``verbally directed by lead clerks, supervisors, and during training'' to ensure that wait times at the Austin VA Outpatient Clinic and the North Central Federal Clinic in San Antonio were ``as close to zero days as possible.''

The medical support assistant ..... said he and other clerks achieved that by falsely logging patients' desired appointment dates to synch with appointment openings. That made it appear there was little to no wait time, and ideally less than the department's goal of three months.

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Mr. CORNYN. Scandals such as these confirm the VA lacks safeguards against official abuses, and it also lacks accountability--the kind of accountability that would ensure American veterans get the care and support they need in a timely fashion.

In the wake of the Phoenix revelations--and now, more urgently after what happened at Fort Collins and now reports of abuses at San Antonio and Austin, perhaps--I have called on the majority leader to hold hearings on these scandals, and I reiterate that call today.

I also reiterate my call for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign his position and to let someone else take on the reforms necessary to get the VA back on track.

As I said yesterday, and as the American Legion noted, Secretary Shinseki is an American patriot who did multiple combat tours in Vietnam and has devoted his life to serving his Nation. He deserves nothing but our respect for that service. But, unfortunately, the VA scandals on his watch have been so numerous and so outrageous that they demand immediate accountability, and it has become clear to me that Secretary Shinseki is not the right person for the job.

He has been in charge of the Department more than 5 years. Under his watch, many of the VA's problems have gotten worse, not better. These problems call for new leadership and a new direction.

As Dan Dellinger of the American Legion said on Monday:

There needs to be a change, and that change needs to occur at the top.

I emphasize again the urgency of the situation.

I know the President yesterday was talking about the urgency of dealing with climate change. I hope the President and Congress would act with at least the same kind of urgency the President was arguing for when it comes to climate change, when it comes to our veterans--some of whom are dying, waiting to get the treatment they are entitled to.

What the VA needs is full-scale institutional reforms which introduce much stronger safeguards against administrative abuses and much greater accountability for senior officials. Because, let's face it, the VA's problems go well beyond a few rogue health care personnel and administrators in Phoenix and Fort Collins, CO.

At a time when American veterans are facing enormous physical and psychological and financial challenges, the Federal Government is letting them down. Don't take my word for it. According to a recent survey of war vets from Afghanistan and Iraq:

Nearly 1.5 million of those who served in the wars believe the needs of their fellow vets are not being met by the government.

One Iraq veteran--a former Army staff sergeant named Christopher Steavens--told the survey group he had been trying to get health care and financial relief for more than a half year, and had yet to hear back from the VA. They hadn't even gotten back to him and responded. He said:

When I raised my right hand and said, ``I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America,'' when I gave them everything I could, I expect the same in return. ..... It's ridiculous that I've been waiting seven months just to be examined by a doctor--absolutely ridiculous.

Sergeant Steavens is right. It is ridiculous. But it is more than that. It is disgraceful, and it dishonors the brave service our men and women in uniform have given on our behalf. It is past time for us to get serious about fixing the problem.

Again, to underscore the urgency of these issues, the survey I mentioned a moment ago found that one out of every two Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans says they know a fellow servicemember who has attempted or committed suicide. One out of two knows somebody who has tried or has successfully committed suicide, and our message to the veterans is: Just wait. Be quiet. Sit down. Shut up.

It is unacceptable. As I said earlier, Secretary Shinseki is an American patriot. But after 5 years as head of the Veterans' Administration, it is time for him to step down and make way for new leadership.

More important, it is past time for the Veterans' Administration to start honoring its promise to America's heroes. The status quo is unacceptable and no one disputes that. The only question is: Are we going to do something about it? Appointing a new Secretary would be a good start.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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