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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, 2\1/2\ years ago, I was sworn in as America's 2,000th Senator, a pretty unique honor for a kid that grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Bridgeton, MO. And as someone who appreciates history, the U.S. Senate has always been held out as the greatest deliberate body in the history of the world.

It is a very uniquely American institution. As our Founders envisioned what our system of government looked like, they wanted something that was very different than the House and something that you had equal representation as opposed to proportional representation, this system of checks and balances in a bicameral legislature, every State, no matter the size, having two Senators was thought of very differently and has proven over the course of our nearly 250 years to be a very important place to protect individual rights and a whole host of other issues that matter to the American people.

There has also been some people whose names are famous. You had Henry Clay, the great compromiser. You had, of course, Webster, Calhoun, and Clay as the great triumvirate. Missouri's first Senator Thomas Hart Benton was known as Old Bullion.

And I want to propose a new name, someone who serves currently in the U.S. Senate: the great arsonist, Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer has singlehandedly, more than any Senator in the history of our Republic, done more to diminish the importance and significance of this Chamber.

And I am going to walk through a few ways in which he has done that. To take a step back for the folks watching on C-SPAN, for the folks in the Gallery, for over 200 years--for over 200 years--the Executive Calendar, which is what we are dealing with today and what this whole debate is about--this Executive Calendar, there was no filibuster ever. It didn't happen. It didn't exist.

Presidents were able to come in; they were able to nominate folks. They were done by unanimous consent. Maybe there was some debate. But to put this in perspective, the folks nominated as judges for the Cabinet and other related posts--judges, for example, weren't even really subject to the filibuster.

Think about this, Clarence Thomas, perhaps one of the most controversial Supreme Court Justices--or that nomination was--got 52 votes. A filibuster wasn't instituted on Clarence Thomas--52 votes and he was confirmed. Any Senator could have moved forward with an effort to filibuster, requiring cloture, and then a vote requiring 60 votes.

So then, of course, you move into sort of the 20th century, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer grew tired of that old institution of having to have 60 votes once that started to be employed. So they decided to change things around here, that you only needed 51 votes for anything other than a Supreme Court nominee. Lit the fuse. Lit the fuse.

Then, of course, now even for Supreme Court nominees, it is only 51. That happened in the 21st century. For the entirety of the 20th century, we didn't have this nonsense that we are doing here today.

I mean, even as we go back into the 1990s and into the 2000s, this Executive Calendar that we are dealing with was done by unanimous consent in voice votes. There are people literally being voted on today, I don't think the Ambassador of Uruguay has been voted on in 50 years; we just did that.

So Chuck Schumer rode shotgun with Harry Reid to upend the Executive Calendar as it relates to judicial nominees. Now, Chuck Schumer is doing that to all these other positions. We have never seen this in the history of our Republic. With over a thousand people that need to be Senate confirmed, the Democrats are requiring--they are filibustering and requiring cloture for every single one of them.

Because of those stall tactics, the 30-hour rule was changed to 2 hours, but this is all about delay. And why? Well, there is a couple reasons. One is the Democrats, at this point, are catering to a very, very radical and growing element of their party. And they are competing to be the greatest resister against President Trump. They can't believe he got back in. They can't believe it.

They tried to throw him in jail for the rest of his life. They invented this Russiagate nonsense in the first term. But the American people sat in that jury box, they weighed all the evidence, they saw all the shenanigans. And they said: Do you know what? We want our country back. We can't believe that you would weaponize the Justice Department against parents who showed up to school board meetings or Catholics or your chief political rival.

They rejected it. They rejected it because they want reform. So now President Trump is offering candidates who are reformed candidates for different positions, but they don't want to do it. And do you know what? Vote no or whatever, but this level of obstruction has never been seen before. It has never been seen before.

And don't even get me started on what Chuck Schumer would do to the legislative filibuster. He is already on record, his colleagues are on record, many of which I have talked to privately and can't believe they would actually do it, but if they are ever in the position that the Republicans are in right now, with a President in the White House, Democratic Senate, and a Democrat House, they will blow up the legislative filibuster.

They have all voted to do it--save Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are no longer here.

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Mr. SCHMITT. No.

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Mr. SCHMITT. They won't do it. They won't yield at all. And by the way, I have had very--I won't mention who--conversations with my Democrat colleagues who pretend to care about this institution and who are on record for that, on record for voting to end the legislative filibuster.

Oh, it is just for one issue. It was just for the voting rights issue. Give me a break--because you know exactly what comes next, DC and Puerto Rico come into the Union, federalizing our elections, packing the Supreme Court, put a shot clock on the Republic on that day.

So here we are now, that is the legislative calendar. We are in the Executive Calendar. They already lit the fuse on judicial nominees. And now Chuck Schumer is lighting the fuse on this. And I have got news for you: A reckoning is coming, because we are going to get back--the Republicans in this Chamber are going to get back to where the Senate always was, where the Executive Calendar isn't being utilized like this.

And so whether it is, you know, because a rule change is coming, if I have anything to say about it--and by the way, in a few hours, we may be recessing, and President Trump is going to get his recess picks.

You have lit the fuse. And let me give you another example of what Chuck Schumer has done. Last year, for the first time in the history of the Republic, articles of impeachment were delivered over to this Chamber, all Senators were seated, all of us.

In every single instance that articles of impeachment have come over to this Chamber if the person was alive or still in office, there was a trial. It happens to be in the Constitution. That is part of our job. There are only three calendars, the legislative calendar, the Executive Calendar, and the impeachment calendar.

The fuse was lit yet again. For the first time in our country's history, Chuck Schumer made a motion to dismiss the articles without a trial, and the Democrats, with a simple majority vote, went along with it.

I don't ever want to be lectured by any Senator on that side of the aisle about how much they care about the institution of the Senate. All three calendars would be lit ablaze, set on fire by the great arsonist and his merry men.

So what are we going to do about it? This is the charge to my Republican colleagues today. The charge is: We are not going to let you do this to the Senate. We are not going to let you destroy this place. We are going to get back to a place it has always been.

And one more example. I heard Chuck Schumer on the floor earlier today lauding the passage of appropriations bills. In my first 2 years in this place, we spent exactly 0.0 minutes on appropriations bills, a Blutarsky, nothing.

Leader Thune has made it a priority to open this place up, to have amendments. In fact, when I carried the rescissions package, I wasn't seeking to box anybody out. Offer your amendments. Let's have free and open debate.

We didn't see that when Chuck Schumer was in charge--not once.

So lit the fuse on judicial nominees. Lit the fuse on the Executive Calendar. Lit the fuse on the legislative filibuster. Lit the fuse on regular order. He will go down in the annals of history as someone with total disregard for this Chamber, the work we are charged to do when we are elected.

But I think Republicans have a chance to course correct today, and I hope we do it to get back to a place that can actually function.

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