On the recordMarch 11, 2015
I would like to follow up on something that the Senator from Pennsylvania just said on the process--not on the substance of these amendments. We are in a situation where we have a bill before the Senate that has broad bipartisan support, and it came out of the committee I chaired, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a unanimous vote. Now we are stalled on proceedings, and I would like to emphasize what is different and why this bill should be moving forward in the year 2015 as opposed to the last few years when the other political party controlled the Senate. In the U.S. political system, elections are supposed to have consequences, and as a consequence of the last election, there is a new majority in the Senate. That new majority results from campaign positions taken in the last election that if we had a new majority, the Senate was going to be run in the way that James Madison implied that it ought to run--as a deliberative body, as a body where every Member could participate, where you would reach consensus, and where you give very serious thought to legislation that comes before this body--and do it in a way differently than the House of Representatives was meant to do business and has done business for the 230 years under our Constitution. So we ran on a platform that we would have the Senate debate and be open for amendments, and the leader announced that when this bill was going to come up, it would be an open amendment process. Everybody could participate.…
