John Cornyn: “I understand why we find ourselves in this terrible posture today and why some people are calling this Congress the…”

“I understand why we find ourselves in this terrible posture today and why some people are calling this Congress the broken Congress, the dysfunctional Congress. If you look at the chart that was alluded to a moment ago about the last 31 days of the Senate, we have had 15 days of the last 31 days actually in session. We have had 10 rollcall votes. We have had 10 rollcall votes in the last 31 days. As a matter of fact, we should be having rollcall votes now on the farm bill, which is the bill I thought was before the Senate. But, instead, our colleagues from the other side of the aisle decided to put on this show for the American people to try to portray themselves as passing legislation, although they knew it could not be done in the manner in which they proposed--while we should be passing the farm bill. Let me talk for a moment about the opportunities that they have squandered by their mismanagement of the calendar over this last year. I asked the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, if he would agree to a unanimous consent request, and also the majority leader, to help fund our troops who are in harm's way during a time of war. They objected to that. As a matter of fact, Republicans attempted to call up the Veterans appropriations bill before the Veterans Day holiday, and the Democrats objected to bringing up that bill.”