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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is a shame that we don't have more of an opportunity to pass more bills, particularly bills that are not controversial. This is an opportunity that we should take to pass noncontroversial bills every time we get the chance.

We have four bills coming out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that we can, and I believe we should, pass today--bills with no substantive objections that I am aware of, bills that have been cleared by both parties in the Senate, bills that will have positive impact for Americans--Americans that the bills themselves were designed to serve.

And yet, sadly, I am anticipating an objection today when I offer those up for passage. So why am I anticipating an objection? Well, I am looking forward to hearing from my colleague--my friend and colleague from New Mexico--Senator Heinrich, on what objections he might have to a bill from Senator Hawley that would designate America's National Churchill Museum in Missouri as a national historic landmark. I am looking forward to hearing from him what problems he might have with Senator Padilla's uncontroversial bill to adjust the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I am looking forward to hearing what changes he would propose to Senator Husted's bill, which simply adjusts the boundaries of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, or what he thinks would be harmed by passing a bill from Senator Gillibrand and Minority Leader Schumer, his own colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that would establish the Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historical Park.

All the bills that I am offering have passed out of this body and did, in fact, pass out of this body last year with unanimous support-- not just bipartisan but unanimous support. All are locally supported. All should be passed today.

And I fear they might not be, and I am really looking forward to why--looking forward to hearing why my colleague might want to stop these--because if there are real substantive objections to these bills, to any of them, bring them forward. I will be the first to work with him or others who may have concerns on those. Perhaps, then, we can work to improve the bill and resolve what concerns might exist around it to get it to a place where everyone is happy with it and where we could get something done for the American people.

After all, this is the business of law making. But I don't think we are likely to hear substantive objections today, based on what I have heard. I don't anticipate that my friend and colleague Senator Heinrich will offer substantive objections or changes that he wants made to these particular bills. I hope I am wrong.

But if he doesn't have any problems with the substance of the bills, then why not let them pass? Well, there is a tendency sometimes exhibited in the Senate, and I have seen it done by people of both political parties and by Members at different ends of the political continuum, from time to time. When Members want leverage, sometimes, they will reach for whatever is popular, in some cases even what is uncontroversial.

During the shutdown, we saw a parallel use of the technique with some using air traffic controllers, TSA officers, and Coast Guard families as pressure points because the public trusted those people and needs the services that they routinely and uniquely perform.

And, sometimes, Members--again, of both political parties and of every political persuasion--will sometimes use popular bills the same way. In other words, they will oppose popular, noncontroversial bills not because they are controversial or unpopular but because they are uncontroversial and popular. They are blocked because their broad support makes them useful cargo for a lands package or another aggregated legislative vehicle packed with measures that might not withstand scrutiny under the light of day if they were considered on their own or even when paired with a small handful of other bills.

Instead of moving bills off the floor one by one or two by two in a transparent, bipartisan process, some would prefer a really big omnibus package, often prepared by staff behind closed doors, where only a few Senators and no members of the public are participating or even allowed to participate. Then Members are told to take it or leave it in its entirety--up or down, binary choice, no other option, no amendments, no adequate time for debate. Simply, take it all or leave it all, even the uncontroversial and the popular.

Now, this puts many of us--particularly, those of us from public lands States, like Utah, where the Federal Government owns two-thirds of the land--in a difficult position. In States like mine, almost every action requires some sort of ``Mother, may I'' from the Federal Government.

This is not a process that can continue, at least not one that can continue without causing a lot of other problems. So as chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I have set out to change that. I have set out to--at least with regard to noncontroversial bills that have passed the Senate in the last year, unanimously, it is a good place to start--where there is consensus, because there is consensus.

My aim is to build on the progress from last year, when this body passed out 41 bills, and to that end, I have suggested that we start by passing the bills, at least a few of them, paired Republican and Democrat bills at the same time--bills that passed the Senate unanimously last year, including bills that the ranking member himself agreed to less than a year ago.

And, again, if there is a policy objection, then let's hear it. I am more than willing to work with you to address whatever substantive objections there might be.

But these bills should pass in the light of day, where every Member-- Republican or Democrat or Independent--could be part of the process.

This has been going on, back and forth, in one way or another for a few months. In May, I came to the floor and asked unanimous consent to pass two Republican bills alongside two Democrat bills, both of which, like the bills that are at issue today, passed the Senate unanimously last year. Now, this drew an objection from the other side of the aisle.

And in July I came to the floor again and offered to work with the ranking member on these bills. I offered two additional Republican and two Democrat bills that passed out of this body last year, also with unanimous support, and it drew the same objection.

Now, as always, I have offered to work with the ranking member and the minority if they have any substantive concerns on any of these bills, and I make that offer again now. But as you may see in just a moment--as I suspect we will see; I can't tell the future--I haven't heard any substantive policy concerns with them.

Now, a small minority of Members who want to block bills--including bills supported by, introduced by, sponsored by Members of their own caucus--just because they want them in a broader package isn't going to cut it.

Now, 2 weeks ago, you had the junior Senator from Alaska, Senator Sullivan, who came to the floor and asked consent to pass his bill to give Alaska Native Vietnam veterans the land they earned and have long been owed. At the request of Senator Padilla and the ranking member, Senator Sullivan paired his bill with the bill from Senator Gallego, keeping it bipartisan.

However, to the surprise of Senator Sullivan and the Native Vietnam veterans who were relying on the legislation, this, too, drew the aforementioned objection, moving the goalpost again.

That process isn't defensible. It is not sustainable. It is not going to work. It is not going to work for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that I have heard from our counterparts in the House of Representatives--including in a conversation as recently as just a couple of hours ago with Chairman Westerman, my committee chairman counterpart on the House of Representatives side--that this is problematic. They want them to come over not as a big, sewn-together package but as bills, even if passed while paired over here. They will also be paired over there.

Sometimes, the concern is raised: Well, then Democrat bills will suffer and atrophy over there, while Republican bills are prioritized and passed to the exclusion of the Democrat bills.

This is not true. In fact, because these bills are passed as a matter of course--routinely passed--under suspension of the rules on the House side--and I believe suspension of the rules requires a super majority, about 290 votes--these always end up getting paired together. You end up with Democrat-Republican balance as they submit them on the floor.

So, today, I will again ask the minority to work with me to pass both Republican and Democrat bills--bills that, yet again, are noncontroversial and have passed this body unanimously within the last year.

These four bills are just the start. I have a list of 19 bills that Republicans are prepared to pass today. My staff has shared the list with the ranking member's staff. In fact, we did so weeks ago. And yet we continue to hear talk of an objection today.

I am willing to commit to working with my colleagues on the lands bills they wish to pass, with the understanding that, as we bring them to the floor to try to pass them by unanimous consent, we will continue to pair them so that there is balance.

So, please, let's work together. We can do this. This isn't hard.

There is a lot in the legislative process that is difficult. The last thing we ought to be doing is making the areas where we do agree, where there is unanimity, to make that, too, part of the unresolvable conundrum of bills.

And another thing happens. If we do this, it tends to slow down the process. Last year, there was an effort to try to sew a bunch of these together for some sort of year-end lands package. One thing led to another, and we got to the end of the year, which was the end of the Congress, and as the list got bigger, it got more and more difficult to sustain it. Whereas, if we go a little bit at a time, pair a few Republican bills and Democrat bills, bring them forward, pass them by unanimous consent, little by little, throughout the 2-year Congress, we are much more likely to be able to achieve passage, not just in the House but also here. That is a recipe for success.

But when we box stuff that has been passed unanimously, where there is no substantive policy objection, it is not the best way to serve those who elected us.

Our country faces huge challenges. And in many of those challenges, public policy consensus can be difficult--not impossible--to achieve but much more difficult than it is with these bills, these unanimously passed bills from just last year.

We have health prices that are soaring. Our national debt is out of control. How can we come together as a legislative body to tackle these more vexing issues if we can't even agree to something as unanimously supported, as totally noncontroversial, as a proposal to adjust the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Dayton Aviation Heritage National and Historical Park?

The American people deserve a government that tells them what it is doing and why. The American people deserve bills that succeed or fail on their own merit in a digestible format. They do not deserve a process in which someone can slip a controversial idea past the public without debate by smuggling it into a much broader package, consisting mostly, but not entirely, of completely uncontroversial bills? This Chamber should reject that approach. If nothing else, then, because it has failed. It brought us to failure in the last Congress at the end of last year, just as it will end in failure if we try to do that again.

We have been told--we have been reminded by our counterparts in the House of Representatives as recently as a few hours ago--it will also contribute to failure over there. We can do better. This is a start. This won't solve all of our problems or resolve all of our disagreements, but it will bring this one to a close because there is no disagreement here.

At the end of the day--this should end today but only if we insist bills be able to stand on their own two feet and that we are willing to bring them forward one by one, two by two, with Democrat and Republican balance.

650, America's National Churchill Museum National Historic Landmark Act from Senator Hawley; S. 432, Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historic Park Establishment Act from Senator Gillibrand; S. 2434, to amend the Dayton Aviation Preservation Act from Senator Husted; and S. 1142, Golden Gate National Recreation Area from Senator Padilla.

Look, the package just proposed by Senator Heinrich harkens back to a time when a Senate sometimes did those things. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. More recently, it doesn't work. More recently--as recently as a year ago--it proved not to work right here in the Senate and has proven not to work over in the House.

My friend and colleague insists that this process isn't working. It is not working only because of this particular objection. It is not working here only because of these specific pairings--pairings suggested to us by the ranking members' own staff a matter of weeks ago.

It is not just that he has voted for these within the last year, 11 months ago; these specific pairings were suggested by his own team to mine. I don't understand why this means that we should put them all together.

Now, let's take it at face value. We received word that this was happening just a few hours ago. Just a few hours ago, we got the bill that, to my knowledge, hasn't been read yet. Let's assume for a second all that this does is to put the exact text in each of those four bills into one large bill introduced in Senator Heinrich's name, then brought to the floor. I struggle to understand why that is acceptable, but passing them in one fell swoop, in one unanimous consent request on the floor of the Senate, is objectionable to him.

We heard a moment ago an argument that I foreshadowed a moment ago-- the argument that somehow this would result in Democratic bills in the other Chamber being neglected while Republican bills were expedited. Were this a concern that were borne out, in fact, it would be a reasonable and legitimate one. But we have been told by the House not only that they will pass these, if at all, on the suspension calendar, which requires a supermajority vote, about 290 votes, as I recall, but that because it has to be passed that way over there--they pair them just as we pair things here quite frequently with uncontroversial bills like this to make sure we have party balance between Republican bills and Democratic bills.

We have been told it will cause problems and likely signal doom. The two bills, when we sewed them all together in one package, that is not how they like to do it over there and, in many cases, not how our Members want to do it here--from our own colleagues today, some of whom are affected by these bills who are concerned about what this practice will do to them.

So, look, we tried to do this. We paired these according to suggestions made by the ranking member's own staff. We requested a meeting with him in September. We were rebuffed, declined. We remain ready to meet at any time to discuss how we can do them. I am simply trying to move bills that have been sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats in a fair and balanced fashion, in a way that everyone can understand in the Member-driven process for which this body was built and rather uniquely designed.

Yet my colleague, the ranking member, continues to object. It makes me wonder what the end is here. If the end is passing good legislation, legislation that we can all agree on, then why not pass these now? It isn't always possible to present bills like this. It is not on every issue, which is not lost on any of us, but on most issues we don't have unanimity. We pass a lot by unanimous consent, but not everything can pass that way.

These bills, individually, are uncontroversial here, and they are in the House. But they become controversial the minute someone insists that they be sewn together in one package where you have to vote for all of them or none of them in order to get them through. That kind of practice--used by Members of both parties at times in the past with varying degrees of success but less success more recently--is a type of extortion for bills imposed on the bills that have no opposition and that have no substantive objections. There is no legitimate reason to not pass these here today.

I can't, in good conscience, let that process continue. I will work with any Member, Republican or Democrat, including the ranking member, to move noncontroversial bills and get them across the finish line for our constituents. I will be happy to do it with packages like these that are fair and balanced between the two parties.

It is not an objection that is rooted in anything about these bills. It is just a vehicle by which they are presented. But if we have to sew them all together in one package, that is not going to work. It is not going to work here. It is not going to work on the other side of this building.

So I will continue to come to the floor and try to move these, particularly these noncontroversial bills that have passed unanimously within the last year. We will be back to do this.

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