Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2644
Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I want to give a lot of gratitude to my colleague, Senator Coons of Delaware. He is not only with us today on this call for a vote on a bill that was voted out of this Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan manner, but he is also a cosponsor of this legislation and somebody I have been proud to work with.
I want to thank my colleague Jeff Flake for putting himself so far out there in pushing for this legislation. It is a consistent pattern with Jeff Flake. If you know him, you might know that he and I might disagree on a lot of policy, but he is one of the people I have looked up to in the U.S. Senate as someone who understands the role of Congress, the article I branch of government--that the powers of Congress articulated by the Constitution should be seen as sacrosanct, and that the erosion of these powers or the surrendering of these powers to the executive undermines the very ideals of our Constitution that our government should be one of checks and balances on power.
I have seen him step forward and lead in the manner he is showing today. I have seen him step forward when it came to war powers and talking about the authorization of the use of military force and speak forcefully in a bipartisan manner with another of my colleagues, Tim Kaine, in saying: Hey, we have to have a system of checks and balances or the very foundations of this Republic begin to be undermined.
If you know his character, you know he is on the Senate floor because of his deep belief in this Nation, not just today but for the tomorrows to come, and that we must maintain healthy checks and balances on Executive power and within our system of government.
I am grateful for him to come in his final hours as a U.S. Senator still pushing this idea that there should be checks and balances, pushing this idea that there is a bipartisan space to try to preserve the ideals of this Republic, pushing this idea that no one--not a U.S. Senator, not a Congressperson, not even a President--is above the laws of this land because in the United States of America, we believe in the rule of law.
More than this, we talk about the Framers, but every generation of people who are in these seats in many ways are stewards of this Republic. What I respect about my colleague from Arizona is that he takes that seriously. Something from past Members in history who have understood that is that you need to not only make decisions for today but you need to plan for tomorrow. It is an axiom that I know all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle believe: It is better to be prepared for a crisis and not have one than have a crisis and not be prepared.
I am one to believe that we are coming perilously close to the precipice of our Nation having a constitutional crisis. There is an investigation going on that is not a political attack. It is not a witch hunt--whatever may be seen. We already have seen this investigation through a consensus of our intelligence community that is investigating an attack on our Nation. It is something that people from both parties have spoken about--the importance of having an independent investigation. It is something that an appointee of the President, Jeff Sessions, has said we need to make sure the investigation is independent and beyond reproach.
That investigation has already yielded many indictments. It has yielded guilty pleas, and that investigation should be able to continue. There are some people who say: Hey, there is no threat to that investigation, but I am a big believer that if someone shows you who they are or tells you who they are, believe them.
We have a President right now who is attacking this investigation-- the very legitimacy of this investigation--and he is acting like someone who believes this investigation shouldn't be going on at all. I believe that it may not happen, and we may not end up with a constitutional crisis, but if one comes, we should be prepared.
How are we to be prepared? Not by some partisan radical idea, but by a very sobered measured step that is embodied in the legislation that we are calling for right now--to have a modest check and balance on a President's power to end an investigation and dismiss the special counsel. That is what this is all about. It is a modest step of judicial review that could prevent not just a crisis that might happen next month or next year but 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 50 years from now. It is in line with what this body has done in the past of providing a check and balance on Executive power.
We have called yet again, for the third time, for a vote, and a third time we have not been granted a vote on the Senate floor or granted unanimous consent.
I am grateful to be standing with my colleagues for the third time. My hope is that in the fashion we have seen on this floor of recent, that we can work together to ensure we have a check and balance on Presidential power, to ensure the ideal of this Nation of equal justice for all, and to ensure that we can have a country where no one is above the law.
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