Insular Areas and Freely Associated States Energy Development

Floor Speech

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Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, one of the great things about America is that two Senators with different outlooks, from different States, can come to the same conclusion, as we have on this legislation.

What the Senator from South Carolina has just said is not only my hope and my prayer, but I hope it will be the hope of the whole of the Senate as we embark on the Nation's business next year. And let's see if we can get along. Let's see if we can work together in a civil way. Let's see if we can find that elusive consensus that has been so elusive in the course of these past very contentious and highly partisan and highly ideological years. Let's see if we can get it done.

There is a lot to be done. I am going to have the privilege of serving with the new chairman of the Commerce Committee, John Thune of South Dakota. I will be the ranking Democrat on that committee. John and I have already started having personal and private conversations about working together and getting things done, and I am looking forward to it.

So in the words of the Senator from South Carolina--of which he is very sincere--I want to echo those words, and I am not only sincere, I am very determined. Now, we will see if it works, but this we know: The people of this country want it to work, and they want us to work together. They are tired of this nonsense they see.

So we come here late on a Friday night and we have in front of us our responsibility to spend taxpayer money, hopefully wisely and responsibly.

It is one of our chief duties.

So the appropriations bill is in front of us. I will vote for it. There are a lot of good things in it. Previous speakers have mentioned those things.

We have to be prepared to take on the Nation's enemies, those whom we identify and those whom we don't identify. They are all lurking out there in many different ways.

We have to help the health of this country by continuing to try to give the appropriate amounts to institutions such as the National Institutes of
Health. There was a time a few years ago that they were being cut. That didn't make sense. The head of NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, came to us and said: I have to stop dead in the tracks 700 research grants going out the door to universities and hospitals across this country, research grants for trying to find cures for diseases.

That doesn't make sense. So we are beginning to correct that in this bill, and this bill across the spectrum of government will be able to fund the needs of government. But we have before us what is nothing more than a blatantly partisan attempt to undermine the legislative process and ram through a number of provisions that have no business being in there.

We can hear the note of sadness in my voice that in the process of making legislative sausage, some odiferous ingredients got in the sausage because tucked into this spending bill is a provision to once again bail out big banks and undo some of the reforms we made after the financial crisis of 2008.

Have we forgotten that just 6 years ago our economy was on the verge of collapse? Do we remember when the Republican Secretary of the Treasury got on his knees in front of the congressional leadership and begged them to pass the Troubled Assets Relief Program to try to buoy up the financial institutions so that the entire country would not go into a financial death spiral? Have we forgotten the lessons we learned from that crisis? Have we forgotten what happens when we allow banks to make extremely risky bets and tell them that if they win they can keep the profits, but if they lose the U.S. Government will bail them out?

In this case, this bill would undo part of the financial reforms that say the government isn't going to cover or subsidize the banks' so-called credit default swaps. This is no way to legislate.

There is also a provision in here that would let truckdrivers drive even longer hours without having to stop to rest overnight. Eliminating this rule--this rule that simply requires truckdrivers to stop for some rest once in a while--is a direct threat to public safety. It endangers motorists on America's highways.

What we have seen is that what happens when truckdrivers make a mistake because of the lack of sleep, that lack of sleep increases risk. We enacted these rest requirements to protect folks, to make traveling on our highways just a bit safer. They are common sense. But this safety provision is reversed in a spending bill, of all places.

I intend to raise this issue in the commerce committee next year and hope to have the support--and I know I will--of the Senator who is now presiding in the Senate.

It doesn't stop there. Look what they are trying to do to health care. There is a provision in here that would gut part of the new health care law that helps to keep insurance premiums stable. Why would we want to make people pay more for health care? Do you want to score some political points with your base? Do you want to do it on the backs of millions of hard-working Americans who are already struggling to make ends meet? Well, the American people deserve better. If we want to change policy, let's have an open and honest debate on the issues, not some backroom deals tucked into a spending bill.

But we are down to the moment of truth, and it is either this spending bill--which in large part is very good. The alternative is uncertainty and a stop-start kind of appropriations process that will do no one any good.

It is essential for there to be financial fiscal certainty in the funding of the government for the remainder of this fiscal year. So I am going to vote for the bill.

As I conclude, I, too, want to say a word about the Senators who are retiring, and I will make this very short.

I am glad the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is coming back to the floor, and I will happily yield to her very wise stewardship. Having already spoken about the extraordinary measures, I would just mention one thing while she is here. I have told this to her privately.

Today I spoke to former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Kay Bailey and I had the privilege of being in the right place at the right time when this Nation's human space program was at a crossroads. There was no direction. There was uncertainty and debate in the administration as to what direction it would take, and the task fell to Senator Hutchison and me to try to give that direction with passage of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.

That act has served as the template for the direction of NASA. It needs to be updated with other authorization bills because that was 4 years ago. Yet there are Senators in this Senate who have prevented us, when there is no other objection, from getting unanimous consent to pass the NASA authorization update.

But there is a safety valve, and the safety valve is the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from Alabama, as they have taken the template of the 2010 NASA authorization bill and fleshed it out and put flesh on the bones of the structure each year, including this bill.

I will speak at length at another time about our colleagues who are all such personal friends of mine who are departing: Senator Hagan; Senator Pryor--one of my best friends in the Senate, someone with whom I have met in private prayer sessions each week we were in session; Senator Begich; Senator Udall; and that mighty fighting force known as Landrieu of Louisiana as well.

Some of our other retiring Senators I have had the privilege of speaking to at the time they gave their farewell speeches on the floor. I look forward to further comments.

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

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