Alex Padilla: “I, first of all, thank my colleague from the State of Rhode Island and echo his sentiment and his message that Senate…”

“I, first of all, thank my colleague from the State of Rhode Island and echo his sentiment and his message that Senate Republicans have crossed the line this evening. They have chosen to overrule the Parliamentarian, thrown out some rules, rewritten some rules, established new precedents for how this body operates, despite claiming that that was something they were not going to do, despite the majority leader warning earlier this year that this would be akin to killing the filibuster. But now we have seen it. It is on the record. They have overruled the Parliamentarian not just once but twice. And the Parliamentarian's determination as to whether or not the action taken this evening was in conformance with the rules that we have or not were buttressed by--again, as my colleague from Rhode Island has explained--the analysis and the findings of the GAO, which we charge with this input. And so I want to take a moment to just read some excerpts from the GAO, as written to the Senate. And I will submit the entire letter for the Record, but the key excerpts are important to highlight. From the GAO: As background to these issues, we issued a legal decision concluding that a Clean Air Act preemption waiver was not a rule subject to CRA but was instead an adjudicatory order. It couldn't be more clear than that.…”