Heidi Alexander: “for the last few weeks, I have been listening to the Republican leader ask the majority leader not to turn the Senate…”

“for the last few weeks, I have been listening to the Republican leader ask the majority leader not to turn the Senate into a place where a majority of 51 can do anything it wants. I am on the Senate floor today to suggest three reasons why I believe the majority leader will not do that: No. 1, he said he would not. Senators keep their word. No. 2, in 2007, the majority leader said to do so would be the end of the Senate. There have not been many majority leaders in the history of the Senate. I know none of them want to have written on their tombstone: He presided over ``the end of the Senate.'' No. 3, the majority leader is an able and experienced legislator. He knows if Democrats find a way to use 51 votes to do anything they want to do, it will not be very long until Republicans find a way, if we are in the majority, to use 51 votes to do whatever we want to do. So let me take these three reasons one by one. First, the majority leader has given his word. The Republican leader mentioned that. At the beginning of the last two Congresses, at the request of the Republican leader, I worked with several Democrats and Republicans to change the rules of the Senate to make it work better. We succeeded in that. We talked about it, negotiated, and we voted those changes through. We eliminated the secret hold. We abolished 169 Senate-confirmed positions. We expedited 273 more. We reduced the time to confirm district judges. We made it easier to go to conference.…”