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[Pages S5795-S5796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, 2 days ago, the Democratic leader
threatened that if the Senate majority dares to play by the rules and
behave like a majority, it would mean ``the end of this supposedly
great deliberative body''--``the end of this supposedly great
deliberative body.''
Yesterday, we learned what he meant. We saw important Senate business
hurt by what amounted to a temper tantrum. For some reason, the
Democratic leader decided to vent his frustration by blocking the
Intelligence Committee--listen to this--from holding a bipartisan
counterintelligence hearing--by blocking the Intelligence Committee
from holding a bipartisan counterintelligence hearing.
The committee was set to hear from Bill Evanina, the Director of the
National Counterintelligence and Security Center. This is the Nation's
top counterintelligence official. Among other things, he works directly
on protecting our elections and our politics from foreign interference.
That is his job. They were going to hear from him.
This is the same Democratic leader who declared a few weeks ago that
if the Intelligence Committee did not stay close to Congress on
election security, it would be ``an abdication of [their] duty . . . to
protect our democracy.'' Just last week, he wrote me a letter saying
election security had to be ``above partisan politics.'' But now the
Democratic leader's temper is more important. He denied Chairman Rubio
routine permission for the bipartisan committee to meet. He said:
``[W]e won't have business as usual here in the Senate.''
Today, both the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services
Committee are scheduled to meet. They are set to speak with top
intelligence and military officials about election security. I guess we
will find out whether the Democratic leader's embarrassing theatrics
were just a 1-day matinee or whether he means to make this a series.
Our bipartisan committees have a great deal of work to do to
safeguard
[[Page S5796]]
our Nation and, in particular, to protect our elections, so I hope our
colleague from New York gets out of the way.
But the Democratic leader didn't stop there. A few minutes later, he
decided to cheapen a solemn and unifying moment and turned a draft
unanimous resolution honoring Justice Ginsburg into one more depressing
stunt for the TV cameras.
Over the weekend, I wrote a resolution honoring the late Justice's
amazing life. Normally, such measures are adopted with unanimous,
bipartisan support. That is exactly what we did after Justice Scalia
passed. Every Senator recognized that our collective eulogy was no
place to debate political questions--oh, but not this time. This time,
the Democratic leader copy-pasted the tribute I had written, put his
name on top, and added two divisive references to our debate over what
to do next. He didn't devote any time or attention to the language
praising Justice Ginsburg's life and career. He did not suggest a
single change to any of that. His sole focus was on turning a solemn
routine and unanimous moment for Justice Ginsburg into a platform for
himself.
Justice Ginsburg could not be more deserving of the honor of a formal
Senate tribute. I hope our colleague from New York will let us pass one
sometime soon.
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