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Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, when I walked through that door--I guess it was only about 50 minutes ago--I had no intention of speaking. Half an hour ago, I had no intention of speaking today. But I need a little therapy. So congratulations, therapists--I have a couple of things on my mind.

As I stand here--as we stand here--uncertain about what this Saturday morning in August is going to produce, I just had some thoughts. My first thought seems probably pretty basic, and it is to the Democrats in the Chamber--specifically, their leadership.

Breaking news: Donald Trump won the election. He is the President of the United States. You don't have to like it, but he did. He won.

What got me a little bit ramped up this morning was I started thinking about all of Joe Biden's nominees that I voted for, and I got to thinking about the many Cabinet Secretaries in the Biden administration whose cell numbers I still have and I am happy to use. We were in this together.

I got to thinking about how very, very special this institution is, in a country that is made up of self-governed people. We, ladies and gentlemen--we, Mr. President--are the representatives of those self- governed people. And in many respects, what we are going through this weekend is in large part a direct reflection of the division of our country--for sure, for sure. But I submit that we have a higher responsibility than to simply gravitate to the worst instincts but, rather, elevate this institution to a more aspirational conclusion. It is not even really a new conclusion; it is the tradition and the history of this institution.

So as I was looking at the leader's chart in the cloakroom earlier, I see this rather rich history of an institution that, first of all, respects the prerogative of the person who won the Presidency while also protecting our prerogative to have some oversight and to advise and consent.

Boy, when I think of supporting Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense, a decision I came to regret--not because I didn't like him but because he proved to be a pretty bad Secretary of Defense--nonetheless, nonetheless, Joe Biden had won the election, and that is who he chose. When I supported Pete Buttigieg for Secretary of Transportation, I had higher hopes, but we had a decent working relationship, and I was happy to have supported him. When I introduced Shalanda Young in the Budget Committee in her hearing to become OMB Director, that was a decision I never regretted and still do not.

But I will tell you, this morning, as I stand here in early August on a Saturday morning, with this circle of zero percent bright-gray, as though there is such a thing as bright-gray, I am frustrated. This is the future of this place if something good doesn't happen today in this place. And I fear we are going down a path we may never ever be able to go down again--or at least go the other direction.

Some fights aren't worth winning, much less losing. I have always loved this institution and the norms of it, but this is not normal. This is the exception. And this I do not want to ever have become normal. But I, as somebody who appreciated the relationships--and still do--that I have had with Joe Biden's nominees, today, if you were to ask me to vote for a Joe Biden nominee, I don't give a rat's rear who they are, how great they are, how spectacular they may be--I don't care what their credentials are--the message to me is I have to vote no. We darned sure aren't going to let them have it the easy way. We are darned sure never going to do 46 percent of the next President's nominees with a voice vote or unanimous consent because the new norm is we fight every one of them because they won the election instead of us winning the election.

It is not OK, friends.

It is not OK, Mr. President.

Last night, in this Chamber, we did something rather remarkable together with a very large bipartisan vote. We passed not one, not two, but three appropriations bills--as Chairman Collins reminded us, the first time we have done it before the August recess since 2018.

We celebrated for a complete--oh, I don't know--30 seconds maybe. And the American people instead are waking up to this--to this. And what this is--what this is--this is us voting for very low positions in the sub-Cabinet of appointees and nominees--not unimportant jobs, by the way, but low positions in comparison to the Cabinet--one every 2 hours, one every 2 hours, because that is as fast as we are allowed to go with the 1,200 or so nominees that we have the responsibility of confirming or not.

And here is what I fear. I fear that the occasional bad nominee will always pass now, from now on, because we have turned--somebody has turned this into a shirts-and-skins game. So from now until eternity, the first question is going to be: Oh, I don't know. Who won that Presidential election again? Oh, yeah, the other team. Well, we can't allow them to have their nominees on a simple voice vote.

It will, I am afraid, have a very, very, very bad ramification on this institution if we don't correct course sometime today, if we don't come to some sort of an agreement that recognizes that Donald Trump won the election and has the right to have the government that he wants and that we have a prerogative to make sure that it is not just confirmed but that if there are some bad apples along the way, that they get held up for greater scrutiny.

But if this becomes a straight skins-and-shirts game, then all discretion is out the window; then all oversight is really out the window; then the responsibility of scrutiny goes out the window because it is one team versus the other team, with nobody looking out for the American people.

As I said, I didn't intend to get up and talk today. I don't know that I feel any better for it. But we have an opportunity today-- today--to knock out this obstruction by the leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate. If we don't, if something doesn't happen today, then we, in my view, are confronted with the only other choice, and that is a major rules change that acknowledges the new reality in this country. I don't want that to be the case. I am still more optimistic than the path we are on.

With that, thanks for your time.

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