Self-Created Results

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPTS

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, one of the greatest orators in the history of English-speaking people was Winston Churchill. I can't tell you how many times I have read and reread his speeches and heard his great efforts to summon the courage of the British people during World War II.

In one respect the speech earlier this morning by Senator McConnell was Churchillian, in the tradition of Winston Churchill, because they once said to Winston Churchill: What do you think history will have to say about you? He said:

I'm not worried about what history has to say about me because I'm going to write the history.

This morning Senator McConnell decided to write the history of the Senate session. Unfortunately, his version was a little bit different than the memory of most of us in terms of what has actually happened.

This we do remember: In the beginning of the Obama Presidency, a short time after the President had been sworn in and asked to try to take this failing economy and put it back on its feet, when we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, when businesses were failing, when American families were losing one-third of the value of their savings, when the stock market was plummeting, when we ran the risk of a global fiscal crisis, when we were sending $800 billion to the biggest banks in America to save them from their own greed and stupidity--at that time the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, said: ``My highest priority is to make sure that Barack Obama is a one-term President.'' His highest priority.

That is a fact. That is on the record. That is on tape if you want to see it. And he lived up to that in terms of his own ambition as the Republican leader.

When the President came up with a stimulus bill to turn this economy around, we had three Republicans who would join us, three of them. What happened to those three Republicans?

One of them, Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, was then threatened with defeat in the Republican primary for joining in a bipartisan effort to save the economy. He switched parties, came over to the Democratic side, and said: It isn't the Republican Party I remember. Another, Senator Snowe of Maine, announced her retirement a few months back and said: I can't take the partisanship and division. The third, Senator Collins, still survives. Those three were the only three who would stand up with the President to try to get this economy back on track.

When it came to health care reform, after months of effort by Senator Baucus to bring in Republicans to craft the bill, Senator Grassley, who was leading the effort on the Republican side, went back to Iowa in August, had a town meeting and said: I am finished. No more bipartisan negotiation on health care reform. And they would not give us a single vote, not one vote to pass health care reform.

The same thing was true when it came to Wall Street reform to put in oversight to avoid another fiscal crisis generated by the perfidy of greed on Wall Street.

Time and time again the Republicans refused to stand with us. To my left is Senator Conrad of North Dakota. He has been our chairman of the Budget Committee. He put in a sincere, bipartisan, good-faith effort to deal with the deficit--with Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican of New Hampshire, a man who commanded respect on his side of the aisle, as Senator Conrad does as well. They came up with a notion. Here is what it was.

We would create a commission that would investigate the deficit crisis, and if 14 of the 18 members of the commission voted to go forward it would come immediately to the floor for a vote.

We had a lot of Senators who were cosponsoring that. Democrats and Republicans finally said that will break the logjam. Then we called it on the floor. I ask Senator Conrad, does my memory serve me correctly that the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, who was a cosponsor of this deficit commission, along with six other Republican Senators, changed their votes on the floor and defeated the very bill they had cosponsored to deal with our Nation's deficit?

The Senator didn't hear that this morning, did he? All the speeches from the other side about dealing with the deficit. Perhaps Senator McConnell and those six other Senators, those remaining, would like to explain why they reversed course and said no; they didn't want to be part of the effort. But it happened. It happened for certain.

As Senator Reid came to the Senate floor and explained, they have broken all records in the Senate for filibusters. Boy, I tell you what: If you have a cable TV at home and you have C-SPAN on it and you turn on the Senate, I know a lot of people across America are calling into the cable channel providers and asking for a refund. Why in the world do we have this channel where nothing happens except an occasional mention of a Senator's name during a quorum call?

Does anyone know why? There were 382 filibusters on the Republican side; 382 delays in the Senate. What sort of issues are they filibustering? I just saw one this week. It was a veterans jobs bill. A veterans jobs bill was the subject of a 2-week filibuster. It was a bill which should have passed by voice vote. If every Senator who went back home for a Fourth of July parade, grabbed the flag and walked down the middle of the street and said how much they loved the veterans would have voted for it, we would have passed it. Instead, they filibustered it. It was one of 382 filibusters.

I am glad Senator Conrad is here to explain this whole budget resolution issue. He can do it better than anyone. I will tell the Senator I took a look this morning at the 30 Senators on the Republican side who got up to speak and about 10 of them talked about the fact that there was no budget, that we didn't have a budget this year, and we don't have a budget next year. I then looked at the votes on the Budget Control Act. Those same 10 Senators voted for the Budget Control Act, a law which controls the budget for 2 years.

I am calling for an official investigation by the attending physician to see if there is something in the coffee urn in the Republican cloakroom causing amnesia so that these Senators would come to the floor and forget they voted for the Budget Control Act and make speeches like they didn't or never heard of it.

Let me say something about entitlements. Senator McConnell spoke to the issue of entitlements. He is right; it is an important part of what we need to do to right this ship to deal with our deficit. It would have been part of the conversation for the Conrad-Gregg commission, which seven Republican Senators torpedoed, including the Republican majority leader. We can go through the bills, as the majority leader has, and talk about the efforts we have made.

We have passed bills on a bipartisan basis. We passed a postal reform bill to ensure that the best postal service in the world survives. We passed it with a bipartisan vote--dead in the House.

We passed a transportation bill. Senator Boxer and INHOFE put it together. It was a strong bipartisan vote to build the infrastructure of America. It passed in the Senate. It died in the House.

We passed a farm bill with Senator Stabenow of Michigan and Senator Roberts of Kansas. It was a bipartisan farm bill that gave us a good architecture for the future of farm programs and reduced the deficit by $23 billion. We passed it on a bipartisan basis in the Senate. It died in the House of Representatives. The tea party faction in the House will not allow it to go forward.

Senator Reid also made the point earlier. What was the first Republican amendment on the Transportation bill? Think about this for a second. It was the first Republican amendment on the Transportation bill. They wouldn't let us move forward to that bill unless we considered an amendment which would reduce the opportunity for women across America to have access to family planning. That was on the Transportation bill. Now they are arguing that we are finding ways to slow down the Senate? The Blunt amendment was defeated, but it is an indication of the political gamesmanship that has gone on at the expense of the important bills such as the Transportation bill.

The last point I wish to make is this: We know that if we are going to thrive in this country, the middle-class working families in this country need a chance.

The Senators on this side of the aisle, as well as President Obama, want to give working and middle-income families a tax break. We passed a bill so they will have a tax reduction to help them as they struggle from paycheck to paycheck. We sent it over to the House of Representatives, where it is never going to be taken up for a vote. That is the sad reality.

So as the Republicans came to the floor this morning and gave us this grand vision of when they were in control, they tried to rewrite history. Maybe Churchill is capable of doing that, but I would say the Republican Senators failed to meet that challenge this morning.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source