Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2253
Floor Speech
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, my colleague from Ohio and I have worked on a number of different measures on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and I hope to continue to work with him.
I wish to talk a little bit about the process here. It may seem odd, on a bill on which I am one of the lead Republican sponsors, to come to the floor and object to the UC, but let's talk about structurally what is going on here. We said that the only reason there is a problem is there is no pay-for. In other words, we are trying to pass a policy that we haven't taken the time to make a decision about how to pay for it. We can say that we are authorizing the VA to pay for it, but what are they going to do? We haven't provided them with any funds to do it, so what potentially suffers as a result? That is one piece.
We just heard a number of speeches here with Republican freshmen and a couple of veteran Members on the floor talking about being responsible in the budgeting process and actually living within our means and paying for things. Now I am in the uncomfortable position of having to object, potentially--reserving my right to object--to a measure that includes policy that I fundamentally support. What I don't want to do, though, is send something half-baked to the House and pretend that somehow it is going to be taken up before we get back from the recess. It won't be. As a matter of fact, if we don't do our job here, it will probably not move in the House.
So why not work with Senator Isakson, who has done a remarkable job of trying to work with the veterans service organizations that have a concern with the direction we were going with the pay-fors, to find a legitimate way to pay for this policy before we send it to the House and make it more likely that before we get out at the end of the year, this bill will be passed? This is just about being responsible and doing both parts of our jobs--coming up with good policy and then coming up with a way to pay for it.
So for those reasons, I do object.
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