On the recordDecember 16, 2010
I wish to say to my colleague from Texas, I am a little surprised to hear him be quite so harsh about the--I think he used the word ``irresponsible''--about why we are here in this predicament right now. I shouldn't have to remind him, but in this session of Congress there have been more filibusters by his party than at any time from World War I all the way through until the late 1970s. We have nominees waiting to be passed who have sat there for months who cannot get a vote. When we finally have a cloture vote to get 60 votes to get them out, they get 90, 95 votes in the Senate. They just delay and delay and delay. I am not going to stand here and listen to them come to the floor of the Senate asking why we are trying to do the important business of the country at the last minute because all they have to do is look in the mirror. That is all they have to do, and they will see why we are here. Then to say we can't do the important business of this treaty in the amount of time we have is totally contradicted by history of every treaty we have worked on. Earlier today we had a Senator say: Well, we can't do that. We have to--we can't dual-track. I pointed out that START I, which was a much more complicated treaty, took 4 rac{1}{2} days. On the day they passed it, they passed two or three other pieces of legislation. On the day we went to it, we passed a tax bill and an appropriations bill. We have reached a new stage in America where we just say something.…
