Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, it is Sunshine Week, and I support transparency throughout government. The public's business ought to be public. That includes right here in the U.S. Senate.

My newer colleagues might be unaware that the Senate has banned what are referred to as secret holds. Since January 2011, a standing order has been in effect, requiring that Senators make public any hold they place on bills or nominations.

A Senator, of course, has a right to withhold consent when unanimous consent is needed to move to a measure. However, there is absolutely no right to do so in secret. The public's business ought to be done in public.

That is why Senator Wyden and I sent a letter to all Senators reminding them of this standing order that we authored requiring disclosure of holds.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Now we spend most of our time in committee hearings and meeting with those we represent. We rely on our party leadership to protect our rights, and we sometimes tell them if we need someone to object on our behalf to moving a bill or a nominee. That happens to be called a hold. A hold should not be secret, I want everybody to know that sometimes I put holds on nominations or bills.

A hold, in other words, ought to be public, as the standing order requires. The Senate affirmed that in the year 2011 by adopting a permanent standing order that Senator Wyden and I wrote. I remind my colleagues, that standing order is still in place.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in the last couple of weeks, I have come to the floor for a few short comments on the Green New Deal. I have compared it to the New Deal of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration and its attempt to get us out of the Depression with the New Deal then.

In his 1932 campaign for President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for what he called a "bold persistent experimentation.'' That is a pretty good description of the New Deal. It wasn't a very cohesive plan, but it was a collection of disconnected policies. In that sense, the Green New Deal emulates its namesake. It, too, is kind of a collection of disconnected policies.

The New Deal of the 1930s failed to pull the economy out of the Depression that actually ended at the beginning of World War II. It is not surprising, however, that it didn't pull us out of the Depression because it didn't create economic growth. Economic growth needs predictable and sensible tax and regulatory policies. We have seen the fruits of this approach under the Trump administration. So let's not, through the Green Deal, kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

The Green New Deal is both breathtaking in its professed ambitions and, quite frankly, laughably weak. It is just a resolution calling on the government to enact a whole range of policies.

Then, why not introduce a bill that actually does something rather than a resolution calling for future implausible actions?

It is supposed to be about protecting the environment. As someone with a track record of real bipartisan achievements that have resulted in a cleaner environment, I don't get it. If you want to know my credentials there, I am the father of the wind energy tax credit, just as an example. We get 38 percent of our electricity from wind in Iowa.

What do universal healthcare--another item of the Green New Deal--or free college tuition or a Federal jobs guarantee program have to do with the environment anyway? All of those things are in the Green New Deal.

The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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