{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=SpeechesFloorStatements&ContentRecord_id=09e34943-2470-4b18-96f6-534f7c79759f", "Floor Speech: Nuclear Option", "2013-11-21", "2013", "2013-11", "Republican", "House", "TN", "Lamar Alexander", "A000360", "www.alexander.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "As Senator Byrd used to say: The purpose of the Senate is to have a place where there can be an opportunity for unlimited discussion, unlimited debates, and unlimited amendments.\u00a0 That is why we are here.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Senator Byrd used to say so eloquently that the Senate was a unique body because it provided the necessary fence against the abuses of the executive.\u00a0 That is what Senator Byrd said in his last speech to the Senate when he spoke before the Rules Committee.\u00a0 He said the Senate is the necessary fence against abuses of the executive -- remembering how this country was founded in opposition to the king and the popular excesses.\u00a0 That was what the Senate was supposed to be.\u00a0 I am afraid that ended today.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This action by the Democratic majority is the most important and most dangerous restructuring of the rules of the Senate since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules at the founding of our country.\u00a0 It creates the perpetual opportunity -- as Alexis de Tocqueville described -- that is most dangerous for our country.\u00a0 He said that when he came to our country to visit in the 1830s.\u00a0 The young Frenchman said:\u00a0 I see two great dangers for this new American democracy.\u00a0 One was Russia and the other was the tyranny of the majority.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The action that was taken today creates a perpetual opportunity for the tyranny of the majority because it permits a majority in this body to do whatever it wants to do anytime it wants to do it.\u00a0 This should be called ObamaCare II because it is another example of the use of raw partisan political power for the majority to do whatever it wants to do any time it wants to do it.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In this case what it wants to do is implement the president's radical regulatory agenda through the District of Columbia court.\u00a0 That's what this is.\u00a0 It is not about an abuse of the filibuster.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a big football weekend coming up in Tennessee.\u00a0 Vanderbilt University plays the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let's imagine this:\u00a0 The Vanderbilt-Tennessee game, which is being played in Knoxville, home of the University of Tennessee, and Vanderbilt gets on the 1-yard line.\r\nThe University of Tennessee says:\u00a0 Well, we are the home team, so we will just add 20 yards to the field or whatever it takes for us to win the game.\u00a0 Or the Boston Red Sox are playing at home.\u00a0 Let's say they are behind the Cardinals this year.\u00a0 They get to the ninth inning and they are behind and they say:\u00a0 Well, it is our home field.\u00a0 We will just add a few innings or whatever it takes so we can win the game.\u00a0 That is what the Democratic majority did today.\u00a0 They say:\u00a0 The rules don't allow us to do what we want to do, so we will just change the rules to do whatever it takes to get the result we want.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 That is what they did with Obamacare.\u00a0 We remember that.\u00a0 I was standing right here at the desk.\u00a0 It was snowing.\u00a0 It was the middle of the winter.\u00a0 Senators were coming in, in the middle of the night, and what happened?\u00a0 Among the things the American people like the least about Obamacare is that it was crammed down the throat of the American people by the raw exercise of partisan political power with not one single Republican vote.\u00a0 That is not the way the civil rights bill was passed.\u00a0 That is not the way Social Security and other great bills were passed.\u00a0 They were passed by a bipartisan majority so we could gain the support of the American people.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 Our Democratic majority must have liked that Obamacare night.\u00a0 The American people aren't liking it so much because apparently nobody read the bill very closely.\u00a0 There are millions of Americans who have had their policies canceled.\u00a0 There are going to be millions more when employers start looking at the cost of Obamacare.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 This is Obamacare 2; I say to my colleagues: This is another exercise of raw partisan political power for the Democratic majority to get the result it wants.\u00a0 There is only one cure for it, and that is an election.\u00a0 An election is coming up in about a year.\u00a0 The American people can speak.\u00a0 In the meantime, this has been the most dangerous, most important restructuring of the Senate since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 It is, according to the Senator from Nevada, who is the majority leader -- it is, according to his book in 2008, the end of the Senate.\u00a0 That is what he said this would be, and now he has done it.\u00a0 He has written the end of the Senate by his actions today.\r\n\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 The Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, said to all of us when we were discussing this earlier this year -- he reminded us of the great Senator from Michigan, Arthur Vandenberg, who was the author of the idea of a bipartisan foreign policy.\u00a0 Senator Vandenberg said shortly after World War II that a U.S. Senate in which a majority can change the rules anytime the majority wants is a U.S. Senate without any rules.\u00a0 Let me say that again.\u00a0 A U.S. Senate in which the majority can change the rules anytime the majority wants is a U.S. Senate without any rules.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 So this is not about the filibuster.\u00a0 This is another raw partisan political power grab so the Democratic majority can do whatever it wants to do whenever it wants to do it.\u00a0 It is Obamacare II, and the American people will see it that way when they can take time away from the websites trying to fill out their new insurance policies to be able to pay enough attention to it.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 What is the excuse for this extraordinarily disturbing action today?\u00a0 They are the flimsiest of excuses, and I will take a few minutes to outline what those are.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 The first allegation is that the Republican minority was using the filibuster to keep President Obama's appointees from gaining their seats.\u00a0 Well, let's look at the history from the Congressional Research Service.\u00a0 How many Supreme Court nominees have ever not been seated because of a failed cloture vote?\u00a0 That is a filibuster.\u00a0 The answer is zero in the history of the Senate -- not just President Obama but the history of the Senate.\u00a0 Someone might point to the Abe Fortas case when President Johnson -- I guess it was in the late 1960s -- engineered a 45-to-43 cloture vote so, in Johnson's words, Abe Fortas could hold his head up, but, in fact, the filibuster has never been used to deny a Supreme Court Justice his or her seat.\u00a0 How many Cabinet Members of President Obama have been denied their seat by a filibuster?\u00a0 Zero.\u00a0 This is the Congressional Research Service.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 The majority leader said:\u00a0 Well, what about Secretary Hagel, the distinguished Defense Secretary?\u00a0 He had to wait 34 days to be confirmed.\u00a0 Why shouldn't he wait 34 days to be confirmed?\u00a0 He was confirmed shortly after his name was reported.\u00a0 We had a perfectly adequate Secretary of Defense sitting in the office at the time -- Secretary Panetta.\u00a0 I remember the Senator from Nevada standing over there and asking:\u00a0 What if we are attacked and Secretary Hagel is not there?\u00a0 Well, Secretary Panetta was there.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 The number is zero.\r\n\u00a0\r\nMy point is that the charge is that Republicans had been denying President Obama his nominations by filibuster.\u00a0 Not on the Supreme Court, not to his cabinet, and no district judges, I say to my colleagues.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How many in the history of the country have ever been denied their seats by a failed cloture vote, including President Obama?\u00a0 The answer is zero.\r\n\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0That is very interesting.\u00a0 So what is the reason for this?\u00a0 Well, let's go on.\u00a0 Maybe it was some other nomination that caused such a problem that would justify this dangerous restructuring of the Senate rules.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Let's go to the subcabinet category.\u00a0 These are all the executive appointments below the cabinet level.\u00a0 How many of those have been denied?\u00a0 Under President Clinton, the Senate rejected two nominees of his by a cloture vote.\u00a0 Under George W. Bush, it was three.\u00a0 Under President Obama, it has been two.\u00a0 So in the history of the Senate, the cloture vote has been used to deny seven Presidential nominees their seat, including two for President Obama.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let's go to the one area where there has been a little bit more; that is, the circuit judges. Remember, on the Supreme Court, never; district judges, never; cabinet member, never; but circuit judges, yes.\u00a0 There have been 10 instances where Presidential nominees for the federal circuit courts of appeals have been denied their seats because of a failed cloture vote -- that is a filibuster -- five Democrats, five Republicans.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did this happen?\u00a0 If in all of these other areas it never happens, why did it happen here?\u00a0 Because, as the Republican Leader explained this morning, Democrats got together in 2003 -- the year I came to the Senate -- and said, for the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate, we are going to use the filibuster to deny President George W. Bush 10 nominations to the circuit court because they are too conservative, not because they are not qualified.\u00a0 One was Miguel Estrada, one of the most highly qualified nominees ever presented.\u00a0 One was Judge Pickering.\u00a0 One was Judge Pryor, who used to be a law clerk to Judge Wisdom, as I once was.\u00a0 I know the high respect Judge Wisdom had for him.\u00a0 The end result was that we had this Gang of 14, and the Democrats ended up only stopping five of President Bush's judges, but that was the first time in the history of the Senate.\u00a0 To date, including the judges we are discussing now, the three on the DC Circuit Court, the total is five.\u00a0 So that is it.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0How can anyone say President Obama has not been treated fairly when, in fact, the answer is zero on the Supreme Court, zero on district judges, zero on cabinet and two on sub-Cabinet, and the same on circuit courts that President Bush had?\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 I asked the Senate Historian if President Obama's second term cabinet nominees had been moved through the Senate more swiftly or slower than those of his two predecessors, Bush and Clinton.\u00a0 The Senate Historian told me it was about the same.\u00a0 So on that question, that is a fake crisis.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 The second allegation is that it takes too long for President Obama's nominees to come through the Senate.\u00a0 Well, we have something on our desks called the Executive Calendar.\u00a0 Every Senator has this. There are 44 Senators in their first term, and maybe some haven't had a chance to read it very carefully, but it has on it all of the names of everyone who could possibly be confirmed.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 The way Senate procedure works is a nominee comes out of a committee to the Executive Calendar.\u00a0 Let me state the obvious:\u00a0 All of the committees are controlled by the Democrats.\u00a0 So if we want to report someone for the National Labor Relations Board, it has to be approved by a majority of senators on the committee on which I serve. Democrats have a majority of the seats on the committee; so a nominee gets on this calendar by a majority of Democratic votes.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 So how long have the people on the calendar been waiting?\u00a0 Well, 54 of them have been waiting only three weeks; in other words, they just got there.\u00a0 Most of them aren't controversial.\u00a0 Usually they are approved on a day such as this when we are wrapping up before we go home for a week or two, so half of them would probably be gone today.\u00a0 There are 16 who have been on the calendar for up to nine weeks.\u00a0 That is a very short period of time in the U.S. Senate for people to have a chance to do their other business and get to know the nominees.\u00a0 There are eight who have been on the calendar more than nine weeks.\u00a0 Of the eight, two are being held up by Democrats, and two more are Congressman Watt and Ms. Millett.\u00a0 That leaves four, and one of those is a newscaster who has been nominated to be a member of the board of the Morris K. Udall Foundation and who is being moved along with other people to that foundation board.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, it is not true that there are people being held up for a long period of time because the only way a nominee can be confirmed in the U.S. Senate is if the majority takes someone from this Executive Calendar, moves their nomination -- it doesn't have to go through any sort of other motion; he can do it on his own -- and then we move to consider that person.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, one might say:\u00a0 But someone can hold each up one of those.\u00a0 Yes, we can, under the cloture procedure.\u00a0 But let's take an example.\u00a0 Let's say Senator Reid, the distinguished majority leader, were to come, under the old rules, to the floor and say:\u00a0 I believe Republicans are holding up 10 of our lower-level nominees in an obstructionist way.\u00a0 So let's say he arrives on Monday and he files cloture.\u00a0 He moves to confirm all 10 of those.\u00a0 He takes them off this calendar, he moves them to be confirmed, and he files cloture on each of the 10 on Monday.\u00a0 Tuesday is what we call an intervening day.\u00a0 He can get the rest of them confirmed, by bankers' hours, by Friday if he wants to because after he has that intervening day, there could only be, because we changed the rules earlier this year, eight hours of debate, and his side can yield back their four hours, and then we go to the next one and then the next one.\u00a0 So we have 40 or 45 hours, and we have them all.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 The majority leader, if he wished to, could confirm all of these people very easily unless 41 Republicans said no.\u00a0 But what we have already seen is that almost never happens.\u00a0 In the history of the country, it has happened twice to President Obama on his subcabinet members, never on a Cabinet member; and never on district judges.\r\n\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 So the majority leader had plenty of opportunity to have everybody confirmed if he wanted to.\u00a0 This is why Senator Byrd, who was majority leader and minority leader, in his last speech to the Senate said:\u00a0 There is no need to change the rules -- and I am paraphrasing.\u00a0 I was at the Rules Committee hearing when he spoke.\u00a0 He said:\u00a0 A majority leader can use the rules that we have -- that is, until today -- to do whatever he wants to get done.\r\n\u00a0\u00a0 Then there is the last charge about the District of Columbia Circuit.\u00a0 That was the other pretext for this.\u00a0\r\nSomehow Republicans were doing something wrong by saying it is too soon to cut off debate on the President's three nominees for the District of Columbia Circuit.\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Republicans were doing -- to the letter -- exactly what Democrats did in 2006 and 2007.\u00a0 They were saying that court is underworked, that other courts are overworked, and we ought to move judges from where they are needed least to where they are needed most before we put anymore judges on the court.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is the letter sent on July 27, 2006, by all the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Senators Leahy, Schumer, Feingold, Kohl, Biden, Feinstein, Ted Kennedy.\u00a0 They said \"under no circumstances\" should President Bush's Republican nominee be considered, much less confirmed, by this committee before we address the very need for the judges on the committee.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All we in the Republican Party were saying is -- Senator Grassley has had his bill in since 2003; the Democrats said in 2006 we should not put anymore judges on the court until we look at where the judges are needed -- we are saying:\u00a0 Consider Senator Grassley's bill before you confirm the judges.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So that is the excuse -- the flimsiest of excuses.\u00a0 The idea that President Obama is not being treated at least as well as previous Presidents with his nominees is just not true.\u00a0 The filibuster has not been used to deny him nominees, except in two cases for subcabinet members; and in the case of circuit judges, no more than with President Bush.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The majority leader has not used the rules he had before him to easily confirm the people on the Executive Calendar.\u00a0 Those on the Executive Calendar for the most part have only been there for a few weeks.\u00a0 So why then did the majority feel the need to take this extraordinary action?\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That takes us back to where we started.\u00a0 This is, very simply, another partisan political power grab to permit the majority to do whatever it wants to any time it wants to do it.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The American people -- millions of them -- are filling out their insurance forms.\u00a0 They are trying to make the Web site work.\u00a0 They are terrified by the fact that they may not have insurance by January 1.\u00a0 That is totally the result of a partisan political power grab in the middle of the night three years ago that put Obamacare into place.\u00a0 This is another example of that.\u00a0 The only cure for that is a referendum next November.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I deeply regret the action the Democratic majority took today.\u00a0 It is the most dangerous and the most consequential change in the rules of the Senate since Thomas Jefferson wrote those rules at the founding of our country.\u00a0\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Madam President, I would refer my colleagues to the letter I had included in the record yesterday, the letter from the Senate Democrats in 2006 arguing that the DC Circuit should have no more judges until we consider the proper number and also a one-page list of the total number of subcabinet members who have ever been denied their seat by a failed cloture vote -- and that number is seventeen in the history of the Senate; 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