Heidi Alexander: “I listened with great interest to the Senator from California. I thank her for her hard work on the Transportation bill…”

“I listened with great interest to the Senator from California. I thank her for her hard work on the Transportation bill and her work with Senator Inhofe. I listened especially to her comments that it would be good for us to work well together. It reminds me of our new Speaker of the House of Representatives in Tennessee, Beth Harwell. She does a pretty good job, and she often reminds her colleagues in the Tennessee Legislature that the first lesson they all learned in kindergarten is to work well together. That is a good lesson for us as well. I will take 4 or 5 minutes to simply talk about a development I think interferes with that. I came to the Senate floor with a group of Republicans and Democrats not long ago. We praised the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, for their working together to try to bring the appropriations bills to the floor. We said we are going to work together to help them do that because a majority leader cannot lead if we don't follow. We complimented them for the work on the Transportation bill, which hasn't been easy, but we are having a lot of votes today. We will offer our ideas and make votes. It was disappointing to me yesterday to see the majority leader announce that he had filed 17 cloture motions on district judges. I am here simply as one Senator to say respectfully to the majority leader that I hope he will reconsider and not do that. That is an unprecedented action.…”