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Floor Speech
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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, Americans want Congress to deliver. Americans want Congress to work. They want Congress to not just work as in being here but work as in collaborate and cooperate in order to get things done. But the reason there are such low expectations is because of days like today.
My colleagues--are they proud of this? Is this what they think their constituents want?
If you go back to any State and talk to, like, normal people-- Democrat, Republican--they probably all agree that this place worked better. So why do my Democratic colleagues seem intent on undermining the normal operating procedure of the Senate, frankly grinding us to a halt? Who is asking them to do this? If they go to the States, are their Democrat voters saying: Hey, listen, can Congress do a worse job? Can you become even less effective?
Now, if you would be too embarrassed to ask your own constituents, you should be embarrassed now.
We are 7 months into President Trump's administration, and we have approved zero percent of his nominees by voice vote or unanimous consent.
You may say: Well, that is not anything strange.
No, it is quite strange. You can see that under H.W. Bush, 98 percent of the nominees were voice vote or unanimous consent; President Clinton, a Democrat, 98 percent; George W. Bush, 90 percent; Barack Obama, 90 percent; Trump 1--if you don't like Trump, you could have stopped then--65 percent; and then President Biden, 57 percent. I guess there has been a decline, but this is an abrupt stop.
It is frustrating. Zero percent. Zero percent.
Now, we would all like to be with our families. We would like to be meeting our constituents. We would like to find out what is going on in our own districts. But we are having to battle this in order to get some of President Trump's nominees through.
By the way, as others have emphasized, these are not controversial nominees. This is like the Ambassador to the Vatican. That is about as noncontroversial as you can be. These are like not the Cabinet Secretary, not the Deputy Cabinet Secretary, but a couple positions below that. So this is obstruction for the sake of obstruction.
The other thing that concerns me terribly--Roy Blunt, a former Senator from Missouri, used to say that whatever one party does to the other party, that party will do it to the other going forward, which is to say that we create precedents in this Chamber. We have always had a precedent of having a significant percentage of people who have been confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent, as we just pointed out on this chart. But now we have to grind, grind, grind--2 hours of debate between when someone is first put up until there is a final vote. But no one in the Chamber debates; it is just that for 2 hours, you find something to do. That will set a precedent.
Now, I love the Senate because I love my country. And our Founding Fathers set up the Senate to be the place where we would come--we the people, with our representatives, would come and make laws that are beneficial for our country.
I grew up with this incredible esteem of the Senate, and now we are seeing the Senate ground down, where the comity, the cooperation that allowed people with different perspectives to come together and find common ground for the benefit of our country is being exploited merely to delay President Trump's agenda. The Ambassador to the Vatican-- putting a stop on his nomination and then his final approval doesn't really stop the President's agenda.
So it is not just shattering precedents, it is creating new ones, establishing a pattern where next time, if Republicans are in the minority, we will, unfortunately, feel motivated to create the same gridlock that is being created here.
I don't know of any American who wants that. I don't know of the most partisan American who wants that because they know that when their side is in power next time, they will want to get something done.
By the way, we are talking about the Ambassador to the Vatican. This is not--this is not--the Secretary of Defense. This is not--you name the position.
Now, I know my Democratic colleagues care about the institution as much as I, and I appeal to that concern. I appeal to that sense of, we have to make this place work if it is going to work for the American people, and must be careful about what we do because it will be done unto us.
I suppose this could be done in the name of resistance. I would say it is resistance to the will of the American people--the American people that want the Congress, that want the Senate to function, to get on to bigger and better things, to not break precedent to set a new precedent where, in the future, we work even less well together.
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