Senate Resolution 67- Amending Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate to Revise the Number of Affirmative Votes Required to End Debate on Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly in support of this resolution. First of all, I wish to thank my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Tennessee, for his leadership in introducing this legislation. The Senator from Tennessee has shown great leadership on this issue. With his mastery of the Senate rules, his familiarity with the procedures of the Senate, the Senate's history, and his love for the Senate as an institution, the sponsor of this measure understands and appreciates the importance of maintaining order in the Senate. It is to this issue I would like to speak briefly.

When the Senate made this change in November of 2013, what happened was all of a sudden we had a split--a split that occurred between on the one hand the wording of the rule itself that governs cloture, on the other hand the precedent by which the Senate purports to be governed. So separate and apart from what the history tells us--from how often the Senate either has or hasn't used cloture on the Executive Calendar--there is this separate distinction that has now arisen.

The cloture rule says it takes three-fifths--a vote of three-fifths of the Senators--to bring end to debate on a particular matter. The rule itself makes no distinction between the Executive Calendar and the legislative calendar. It makes no distinction between ordinary legislative business where we are legislating and making law on the one hand and on the other we are meeting to decide whether to confirm a Presidential nominee. The rule doesn't distinguish, but the precedent now does.

When our colleagues on other side of the aisle voted in November 2013, appealing the ruling of the Chair, they reversed the precedent. They acted contrary to the language of the rule itself. This creates a certain amount of uncertainty, and that uncertainty I think needs to be resolved. We don't want to operate in an environment in which we have the rule saying one thing and the Senate precedent saying another thing.

So it was out of a certain amount of practical necessity that we looked to this as an alternative. In order to bring Senate practice back into harmony with the rules of the Senate, the best way we could come up with to do that would be to change the language of the rule.

Of course to change the language of the rule it takes 67 votes. While we are not certain what is going to happen, this is perhaps the only thing we could think of that could possibly get 67 votes--67 Senators saying yes, we can do that.

So it is very important that we have rules that are clear--rules that will apply regardless of who is in the White House, regardless of which party happens to control the majority of the seats in this body. If, after all, we are making the rules that would govern the country, if, after all, we are being asked to confirm Presidential nominees to high positions, we need to be following our own rules.

We have to remember also that one of the things we have prided ourselves on, one of the things that has distinguished the Senate from other legislative bodies--we call ourselves the world's greatest deliberative legislative body--is because from the very beginning this has been the kind of place where in theory we will continue to debate things as long as basically any one Member wants to continue to debate. Cloture is an exception to that. Cloture allows for three-fifths of the Senators present to decide it is time to bring the debate to an end, even if a minority of Senators want to continue. But it requires a supermajority.

There are many reasons to do this, but one of the reasons I think is important to point out is because it protects the right of each Senator to continue to offer improvements, to point out flaws and offer potential improvements to legislation--the amendment process. The amendment process is itself of course different in the context of legislation than it is in the context of a Presidential nominee.

I am personally not aware of any means by which one can amend a nominee. I am not aware of any process by which one can confirm a Presidential nominee's right hand but not his left.

I support this change. I think this change is important for this body and for the continuity of the Senate rules and I am grateful to the senior Senator from Tennessee for his efforts in this regard, which I wholeheartedly support.

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