On the recordOctober 12, 2013
I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, we are here on Saturday, and we just had a very significant vote in the Senate. The vote was on whether we would move to a bill, fully debatable, to raise the debt ceiling without any strings attached. The Republicans, en bloc, voted against that. As a result--since we need 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor--the vote was 53 to 45. There should be no mistake in anyone's mind. This was a very clear vote, simply to move to a bill, fully debatable, amendable even, but the Republicans would not even vote to go to that bill today. Quite frankly, I must admit that when I was driving in to the Senate, I was thinking about this. I thought what we will do is that we will get on the bill. Obviously they will vote for cloture to proceed to the bill, and then we will get on the bill. I was wondering to myself how long we will have to be on the bill, what kinds of amendments would be offered, and then would we have to file cloture on that bill also. I was quite surprised to see every Republican vote against even going to the bill. It begs credulity. I am incredulous at this, especially with the markets opening in Asia later tomorrow, on Sunday. How are they going to read this? I think if we had voted to at least move to the bill and debated it, they would have stabilized somewhat because they would say at least they are willing to talk about it. Now they can look at the bill and say simply, Republicans are not going to discuss this.…
