the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call: the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent the call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, all postcloture time on the pillard nomination be considered expired and the senate vote to proceed on confirmation of the pillard nomination. that upon disposition of the pillard nomination, the mandatory quorum required under rule 22 be waived. with respect to the cloture motion on the feldblum anonymous and the senate proceed to vote on the nomination to invoke

cloture on the feldblum nomination. if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and the senate proceed to vet on the confirms of the feldblum nomination. finally, that president obama be immediately notified of the senate's action. the presiding officer: is there objection? the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i object, and i'd like to state the reason i object. the presiding officer: the objection's heard. the senator's time has expired. mr. reid: mr. president, i would ask consent that the senator be allowed to speak for whatever time he feels appropriate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: the reason i object for the majority -- or for the minority is to moving these votes. i think that we should follow what regular order we have left on nominations, especially after the way that the majority changed the rules on nominations two weeks ago. i yield the floor. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: my friend, the distinguished senior senator from iowa, is what we're talking

about here. the face of obstruction. not him but the republican caucus. stalling for no reason other than to stall for time. no wonder the rules were changed. no wonder the american people look at the senate as a dysfunctional body. a couple weeks ago, we voted to make it a functional body so that nominations can be confirmed for any president. the president is -- deserves to have his team. we have been wasting days, weeks and months on nominations. we have scores of people, positions that need to be filled. we're only dealing here with a handful. but -- so people understand the rules. we have changed a few of the rules the last couple of congresses. very little, but we have changed them. but under -- if you have a supreme court justice or you have a cabinet officer or

someone of that level, they get 30 hours of time following the cloture vote. now, what are they supposed to do during that 30 hours? come and explain their position, why they oppose a person. now, mr. president, for virtually every one of these nominations, there hasn't been a single, single complaint about any of them. now, this culminated by virtue of the republicans in the senate making a decision that people who serve in the prestigious d.c. circuit court of appeals were entitled to have a full court. there is eight there now. they said that's enough. that is, some say, the most important court in america. some say more important than the supreme court. and the republicans arbitrarily have said we're not going to fill those spots. not because of the qualifications, not because of their education, their experience, their integrity. just because they don't want them filled.

now, that's a new low. now, mr. president, i'm disappointed to have to inform the presiding officer and all senators tonight that because of this -- that is, because the republicans are wasting time, all this staff around here, police officers, all this staff and, you know, mr. president, some of them are getting paid overtime. why? because the republicans are wanting to waste more of this body's time, this country's time. i repeat, no wonder the american people feel about the senate as they do, because of the obstruction that is taking place unprecedented for five years. so we're going to continue to work tonight, remain in session as long as we need to. republicans are forcing us to waste a week on nominees, this week. they know will be confirmed.

every one of them will be confirmed. there are no objections to the qualifications of these nominees, with rare exception, and there are only little squeaks here and there about what could be wrong with them. and the outcome of each and every vote that we will take over the next few days is a foregone conclusion. yet, republicans insist on wasting time simply for the sake of wasting time. there is no reason these votes couldn't take place right now or in the morning, and we could move to some important things. mr. president, i have senators come to me all the time. the chairman of the veterans affairs committee was here a few minutes ago, the distinguished junior senator from vermont. he has some important things that he wants to move on this floor. they passed some things in the house. that doesn't happen very often, but they passed something over there. they sent it over here dealing with veterans. he wants to bring that to the

floor, have a debate on it, offer an amendment or two on it. can't do that because we are wasting time here on this senselessness. the junior senator from the state of delaware is here. he has spent weeks and weeks on manufacturing, which which has n some promise here in america in the last few years. jobs are being created. he working on a bipartisan basis with other senators, they have legislation they want to bring to this floor to talk about ways of improving manufacturing capabilities and capacity in the united states. we can't do that. we are here postcloture looking at each other, doing basically nothing as we have done for vast amounts of time because of republicans' obstructionism. the senator is -- yes, she is here. the senator from -- the chairman of the environmental protection agency. i had a meeting with her and the

junior senator from the state of delaware -- i mean rhode island just a few minutes ago. mr. president, in the world today, we have something called climate change. it's here. climate is changing all over the world. we have global warming. are we doing anything legislatively to address that? no, nothing. she has a portfolio of legislation that she would like to take care of, and there is going to be zero done because we are sitting here under these lights complaining about -- again about wasting time -- the republicans wasting time. we could finish these votes now. we're going to work into the weekend. now, we had a break for thanksgiving. it was very -- very pleasant for

me. i got to be home for two weeks. unfortunately, i had a death in the family that put a little cloud over things, and that's an understatement. christmas is coming. everyone should know that we are going to work until we finish the stuff we have before us this week. i'm going to file on a number of other nominees as soon as i get a chance, and we're going to finish those. if we have to work the weekend before christmas, we're going to do that. if we have to work monday before christmas, we're going to do that. if we have to work through christmas, we're going to do that. because i know the game they're playing. they have done it before. a lot of these nominations will have to be sent -- not have to be, but they will ask that they be sent back to the administration and we'll have to start all over on those again, but some of them we're not going to start all over again. we need a director of the internal revenue service i.r.s. -- of the internal revenue service. i think that's a pretty good idea. we need to fill chairman

bernanke's spot. i think that would be important for us. we're going to do that before we leave. and if it takes -- if we have to work right through christmas, we will work right through christmas. and even if we are standing around most of the time as we have done a lot during the last five years, because of their obstructionism, looking at the lights, and that's about all we have to look at because we're not looking at substantive legislation as we should be. the only impediment to holding votes without delay and at reasonable hours is blatant partisan republican obstructionism. it's difficult to imagine a more pointless exercise than spending an entire week wasting and waiting for a vote. this is a foregone conclusion what's going to happen on every one of these votes. this is exactly the kind of blatant obstructionism and delay that has ground the senate to a halt and prevented congress from doing the work of the people over the last five years. i remind members that without cooperation, there will be roll call votes until perhaps after midnight tonight and as early as

5:30 in the morning. with just a little cooperation, the senate could stop wasting time and resources. the only way the senate can stop wasting time is if we get some reasonableness and clarity from the republicans. if there were ever an example of why the rules had to be changed here and how we tried doing to -- during two successive congresses to be reasonable, remember, remember we exercised, judges would only be opposed under extraordinary circumstances. there isn't a single judge that this man, the president of the united states, has nominated that have problems that are extraordinary. so i think it's a shame, mr. president, what is going on here. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. coons: mr. president, i came to the floor today to speak to a bipartisan bill, which i hope to

take a few minutes to talk to, but first i have to comment on what's going on here or not going on here on the floor and the comments of the majority leader. i have just been a senator for only three years. as you know well, as the presiding officer, we were sworn in as a group of those elected in the class of 2010, and i just came from an inspiring event with the vice president who previously held this seat on behalf of delaware gave an award to the former majority leader, a real patriot, a veteran, former senator bob dole, and they talked about how compromise, printed compromise made it possible for senator mcgovern and senator dole, folks from opposite ends of the political spectrum to work together in the interest of hungry children here in the united states. and frankly, what i have seen in the three years that i have been here in the senate, the three years that we have served together on the judiciary committee has been a slow walk. there are minority rights in this body but there are also

minority responsibilities. there are majority rights but also majority responsibilities. and i just wanted to add to the comments of the majority leader that the nominees to serve on the d.c. circuit, the nominees to many, many district court seats whose confirmations i have either presided over or attended were not objected to on substantive grounds, and i have real trouble with the idea that the three empty seats on the d.c. circuit do not need to be filled. i have listened to at great length the arguments about caseload and about workload, and as the chair of the court subcommittee of the judiciary, i presided over the presentation of the judicial conference's report on where we need additional judgeships and where we don't, and i will just note briefly and in passing that judge timtovich who presented this report did not suggest there was some need to reduce the d.c. circuit by eliminating these currently vacant spots. we could go through this chapter and verse. this has been debated to death

here on this floor, but in my view, we have three excellent, qualified candidates. i regret that we have spent so much time burning the clock and that we have had to make changes that ultimately will make it possible for qualified nominees to be confirmed. it is to me a subject of some deep concern that we cannot work better together republican and democrat to move things forward, and if i might, i'd like to move in a moment to an example of exactly the sort of bipartisan bill that we should be able to move to here. that if there weren't this endless obstruction, if we weren't running out the clock on nothing, we might be able to get done together. an example of the sort of reaching across the aisle that used to dominate this body, when giants like dole and mcgovern served here and are no longer the case. they are no longer the daily diet of this body. we are no longer reaching across

the aisle and finding ways to make our country more competitive, to create more manufacturing jobs in partnership with the private sector to responsibly reduce our deficit. i was encouraged as a member of the budget conference committee that we seem to be moving towards enacting a significant small in scale but significant in its precedence a deal for the budget committee that could allow us to go back to regular order for appropriations. but here as we waste hour after hour burning out the clock to confirm nominees, i wonder, i wonder, mr. president, whether we're going to be able to take up, consider, and pass substantive legislation. if i might for a few minutes, i came to the floor today initially to talk about the power of children o'advocacy centers. children's advocacy centers exist around the country in large because this congress

passed in 1990 the victims of child abuse act, a bill that for the first time authorized funding for an important nationwide network of what are called children's advocacy centers. these centers help deliver justice. they help heal victims of violence and abuse, and we must act to continue empowering their service to our nation. today is a time we could work together to reauthorize that bill from 1990 and rededicate ourselves on a bipartisan basis to something that i think is one of our most sacred obligations: protecting our children, protecting the vic teufpls child abuse -- victims of child abuse and delivering justice for them. that is what this bipartisan bill does that was introduced today along with my colleagues senators blunt, sessions and hirono, a great example of being able to work together across the aisle. mr. president, as parents, as neighbors, as leaders of our nation, we have no more sacred

obligation than protecting our children. in most of our cases, we dedicate everything we have as parents to ensuring our children's safety, to providing for their future. and that's what this bill is all about, about that responsibility. tragically too often, despite our best efforts, too many of our children fall victim to abuse. and we cannot guarantee their safety. but what we can do is ensure that when children in this country are harmed, that we can deliver justice without further harming them. thankfully children's advocacy centers for which this bill reauthorizes funding are critical and effective resources in our communities that help us perform this awesome and terrible responsibility. through this bill, we can continue to prevent future tragedies and deliver justice in ways that are effective and less costly than communities can deliver alone. this bill helps prevents child abuse proactively.

just last year its programs trained more than 500,000 americans mostly in school settings in how to spot and prevent child sexual abuse. second, in my view most importantly, this bill delivers justice. children's advocacy centers increase prosecutions of the monsters who perpetrate child abuse. one study showed a 94% conviction rated for cases that carry forward to trial. and third, in many ways equally importantly, this bill helps to heal. child victims of abuse who receive services at a child advocacy center are four times more likely to receive the medical exams and mental health treatment they desperately need compared to children who are served by noncenter supported communities. no parent would ever want to have to go to one of these places or have to bring their child to one of these places. but those parents who have, under these tragic

circumstances, nearly 100% of them say that they would recommend seeking help to other parents. so how do these advocacy centers achieve these different results of prevention, of justice and of healing? they're unique because they bring together under one roof everybody who needs to be present to help deal with the tragedy of child abuse, law enforcement, prosecutors, mental health and child service professionals, all focused on what is in the best interest of the child. through a trained forensic interview, they interview the child to find out exactly what happened. they ask difficult, detailed questions, and they structure the conversation in a trained and nonleading way so that the testimony can be used later in court. preventing what otherwise is retraumatickization -- retraumatizeation, making it possible for child victims to testify in a way that will lead to justice but without forcing

those children to take a stand and to repeat over and over what they testified to once. prosecutors take the information obtained in the interview and they take it all the way through the court system while doctors and other child service professionals ensure the child is getting the help he or she badly needs and to begin the process of healing. one place, one interview. all the resources a victim would need to move forward to secure justice and to heal. in my home state of delaware, we have three children's advocacy centers, one in each of our counties. in the last year i visited the centers in wilmington and in dover and saw firsthand the extraordinary work that the professionals there do. these are places haunted by the tragedies that are described and recorded there. but the staff are welcoming, nurturing professionals, and the law enforcement and mental health and child service professionals who are there are deeply dedicated to making sure that they achieve justice and they promote healing.

it was striking on my tours, my visits to see how strategically and thoughtfully each of these centers has been put together, how they have worked through every possible detail to enable obtaining the testimony needed to secure justice while enabling healing of child victims. this is critical in order to avoid retraumatizeation, a threat that is real for victims and for their long-term healing process. the centers in weuplg tone and -- weplg ton and dover in my home state show how these centers create the sort of nurturing but effective space to ensure we meet the needs of victims and secure justice. mr. president, as i know you know, in my home state of delaware, just a few years ago we saw exactly the kind of evil we most dread in this world. when a pediatrician, a man named earl bradley, who many, many delawareans trusted with their children's health and safety, was found to have sexually

assaulted more than 100 of our children. delaware is a state of neighbors, and his horrific crimes against our children, our families and our communities affected all of us, and our attorney general, beau biden and his team, effectively led the investigation and prosecution of this monster. thankfully children's advocacy centers were able to play a key role in ensuring that the interviews and the assistance provided to the victims and their families were effective and that ultimately justice was rendered. as randy williams, the executive director of delaware's children's advocacy center in dover wrote to me, our multidisciplinary team work tirelessly and seamlessly in forensic interviews, assessments, medical evaluations and mental health services for every child referred to our centers. randy went on to say, i feel confident that our team's outstanding collaborative response was a direct result of the financial and technical

assistance and training resources made possible over many years through the federal victims of child abuse act. in the end, dr. bradley was convicted on multiple accounts. over 100 victims were involved and he is now serving 14 life sentences plus 164 years in prison. mr. president, as a nation, in my view, we have no greater responsibility than to keep our children safe. as a father, there is nothing that keeps me up at night more than concerns about the safety and security and health of my own children. we must do everything we can to prevent sexual abuse of those most vulnerable and those most precious members of our society, our children. and when that tragedy strikes, we need to be prepared with the best services we have to foster healing and deliver justice. this specific bill is about upholding our responsibility to our children, to our families, and to this nation's future.

it is at the very core of why we serve and of what we believe. i am grateful that this is a bipartisan bill, that this is a bill that can demonstrate the best of what this senate, this congress and this country is capable of. it represents the best of our federal commitment to targeted, effective and essential assistance, to state and local law enforcement, to our communities, and to our children. mr. president, i urge my colleagues to join with us because in the end no child should fall prey to physical or sexual abuse. no mother or father should have the haunting experience of finding an adult they trusted took advantage of that trust and horribly hurt their child and no country should tolerate these crimes when there are things we can do now, today on a bipartisan basis to protect and to heal our children and to ensure that justice is secure. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the

senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i came to the floor to talk about several other things, but after hearing the majority leader and my colleague from delaware, i think the revisionist history needs to stop. you know, this place ran till 1917 under a process where any one senator could stop anything. and that was changed by a two-thirds majority of those present voting to a number less than that. and then through a period of time. the point i'm getting to is we're in this process because the rules weren't good enough to 0 accomplish what the majority wanted to accomplish. and the majority leader wanted to accomplish. the majority leader byrd didn't have any trouble when he had the

same vote, number. majority leader daschle didn't have any trouble. frist, dole, none of them had any trouble. as a matter of fact, we've seen what has happened is the lack of effective leadership in building bipartisanship. the senate wasn't designed to be the house, as you all have recently made it. the senate was designed to protect absolutely minority rights. and what happened the week before we went on thanksgiving break actually hurt you more than it hurt the minority. because you now lost the ability to hold your own administration accountable. the majority leader said reasonableness and clarity. reasonable is compromise. reasonableness is allowing to have amendments on major bills. clarity is the ability of senators to offer their

viewpoint on $600 billion bills. reasonableness would be to say that every member of this body ought to be able to contribute important ideas to the defense authorization bill. or to the farm bill, or to any other major piece of legislation. so we've gone down a road. it can be stopped. all this can be stopped. but it cannot be stopped without the recognition of the damage done to this body by the very frivolous act. the revisionist history i'm talking about is with the d.c. court. there's no difference in what the president is doing on the d.c. court than what roosevelt decided to do or attempted to do. everybody knows that the workload there is enormously small compared to all the rest of the courts. everybody knows there's also judicial vacancies that are much

more important than those. what's the reason? is so that we can continue to have executive orders and bureaucratic rules and regs come through that are going to get challenged because they're not within the consent and the vision of the laws that are passed so that in fact they can be enforced by a stacked court. you can't claim anything other than that. we know that's what's going on. you know that's what's going on. and that's going to be there forever. that's a legacy of the obama administration. and it's a planned legacy. so it's not about what is claimed to be republican obstructionism. it's about changing the very nature of our country. it's about changing the rule of law. it's about whether or not the president will be an emperor or be the president. and my worry is we're moving

fast and quickly towards an executive branch that has decided and has been stated so very proudly that if the congress won't do it, we're going to do it anyway. where's that fit with the rule of law? and we've heard that three times from the president. and, in fact, they're doing it. ignoring law. and so now the very court where those laws get challenged, we're going to stack it with his nominees. we refuse to admit that the very same point was made by senior members of the judiciary committee when the republicans were in charge. you can't deny that history. it's out there. senator schumer did it as well as others. knowing that the, that court should not be filled. we know it's going to get

filled. we understand what's up. what's at risk is the future of our country and whether or not we'll really have balance between the powers of the judiciary, the executive, and the legislative branches in this country. and what we're seeing is a reshaping of that. and it's a dangerous trend. it was something our founders worried about. we have seen executive orders and executive privilege taken to new heights that have never been seen in this country before by this administration. so let's be clear what we're talking about. this isn't about obstructionism. this isn't about limited rights. you also very well limited your own rights in the ability to exextract information. you just heard senator grassley spend an hour on the floor talking about the lack of response from this

administration. there's no tool for you to get answers anymore. there's no tool for any of us to get answers anymore because we can no longer hold any nominations, because they will go through. so there is no power -- we have given up one significant power to hold the executive branch accountable. not only that is we have diminished the minority rights that are part of what the founders created to force compromise. to force us to compromise, to bring us together. there is not ill will. there's damaged hearts in this institution today. we understand the strong beliefs on the other side, but we also don't understand the lack of moral fiber that's associated with avoiding and violating what has always been the tradition of the senate, which is you change

rules with two-thirds votes of those duly elected and present vote. rule 22 still stands. it just has a precedent in front of it. so for the first time in our history, in this body, one group, because they couldn't achieve compromise and wouldn't compromise, have forced a changing of the rules, not through two-thirds of duly elected and sworn members, but by fiat by a simple majority. what's next? are we going to make it the house? that's what's next. that's coming. i know that's coming. and so consequently, what's going to happen in our country is you're not going to have significant deliberation. we're going to have laws changed at the public whim rather than long-term thinking and an

embracing of what the constitution says. the whole purpose for this body was to be a counter to the house in terms of response to political and public demand, to give reasoned thought and forced compromise so that what came out of here was a blend of both what the public wanted but also what the public might have lost sight of in terms of a short-term view versus a long-term view. you're putting that at risk. it's coming at risk. the very country, the soul of the country can unwind right here in the united states senate. so what remaining powers do we have? as feinstein members? and you may get to find that out someday, is to use the rules that are there to our benefit. you know, in the past,

nominations were agreed upon between the majority leader and minority leader and they were ferreted out and moved. most of these nominated. we have had 21 nominations come through the homeland security. i voted positively for 19 of them, against one, and voted present on one today. i'd say that's about 90%. i'm in agreement of moving the nominations. we actually force compromise on our committee. we actually work to compromise on our committee. but that's because of the leadership of senator carper, to create an atmosphere where you can have compromise and you can have back and forth. we don't have that leadership in the senate as a whole. the senate's never seen these problems, but it's not about the rules. it's about the leadership and

who is running the place. so we can blame it. most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle haven't been here for a long period of time. they have never seen it in the majority. they have never seen it work. 77 times the majority leader over the last seven years has filled the tree and barred amendments. that's more than all the rest of them combined in the entire history of the senate. is that about us or is that about him not wanting to allow the place to work? he's a good man, but the problem is is leadership matters. this place is not functioning. my time -- the time for my colleague to come is here and i will yield the floor, but i will just make one other statement that i think needs to be said. i believe that climate does change. i believe the climate is changing all the time. global warming has been disputed

now. it's undeniable. it's not global warming. we're now into a global cooling period. and that's okay. you can have cooling, but the fact is is the science is still nebulous on all the claims that are being made. i have said before on this floor, i'm not a climate change denier, but i'm a global warming denier because the facts don't back it up now. and so we heard what the majority leader had to say about the importance of getting things through on climate change. there may be important things to do, but we ought to be doing them together rather than in opposition. and if that was the attitude that we would work together, if we would have an open amendment process, a truly open amendment process with the majority leader in picking our amendments,

deciding what we can offer, pretty soon you're going to tell us what we can say on the floor, you're going to determine what i can say on the floor. that's the first step in this process. that's the ultimate gnat conclusion to this process that you have started. so it's about leadership. it's either there or it isn't. right now it's not there. i yield the floor to my colleague. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. mr. johanns: thank you, mr. president. i appreciate the comments of the senator from oklahoma, and i would like to use his comments maybe as a springboard for some thoughts i have, not only on this nomination but the terrible mess that we find ourselves in today here in the united states senate. i'm a fairly new member to the senate. i came here just five years ago.

i thought a lot about re-election and announced some months ago that i would not seek a second term in the united states senate. so you might say i don't really have a -- a fighter in this -- in this ring. i'm here for a limited period of time. i have already decided that. my interest is in seeing the senate chait that will be in the best interests of our country that will fulfill the vision that our founders had, a country where there would be freedom, where the minority would be able to voice their view as well as the majority. the process by which the house of representatives and the united states senate was put together was a very, very thoughtful process. they are founders -- our

founders looked at our country and its future, and they decided that there needed to be a body where the population would be represented based upon numbers, based upon the population, and that became the house of representatives. now, for a state like nebraska, 200-some years later, that doesn't work very well. it's pretty obvious that our three house members can be consistently, routinely outvoted by a whole bunch of other states. california, new york, pennsylvania, florida, texas. i could go on and on. we have three members in the house. it's obvious that we're going to be on the loosing end of that. the other piece of that is that it's a majority-based body, so if you're in the majority with the rules committee, you pretty well set the rules. it just works that the majority,

as long as they can keep their members together, they are going to win. that's just the way it works. and so about the only way you can change that is to change the majority. and so when our founders looked at that, they said we've got to have a different approach in the united states senate, and that led to the great compromise. now, mr. president, what we ended up with is just a remarkable system, if you think about it. if you think about it, nebraska in the united states senate is as powerful as california. nebraska is as powerful as pennsylvania because we each get two members. we are equally represented. but they also recognize that the pendulum would swing. sometimes one party would be in control, sometimes another party would be in control.

and originally when the united states senate was set up, any one member of the body could come to the senate floor and object. or just debate something to death, and that pretty well was how it operated, and it operated for decades and decades that way. then came world war i and senators began to recognize that funding the war was going to be a very serious problem. there was a tremendous amount of affinity between senators and people back in the country where their ancestors came from, germany, and so they had to find a way to end debate. and so they finally after discussing this and debating it decided that the best way of doing that was to put something in place where you could literally take a vote, and i

think back then if my memory serves me correctly, if two-thirds of the senators voted, they could -- they could end debate. and that's -- that was quite a change for the senate. the whole idea that a single senator wasn't going to be able to literally force issues in the senate was a very, very difficult issue. but that change was made and it operated that way for many decades following that. then in the 1970's, the decision was made that it would take 60 votes to end debate. it would pull the number down to 60. but it was always recognized that the rules could only be changed by a two-thirds majority. that was until just a few weeks ago. and something happened here in the united states senate that literally shakes the foundation

of this country, and it shakes the foundation of this body. i guess if you're in the majority at the moment, you're probably saying gee, mike, it seems to work out pretty well. well, it won't work out very well for the history of this body, for this institution or its members and most importantly for the citizens of the united states, because it was the method chosen to change the rules that is the frightening piece of this. think about this. we came down here a few weeks ago. a ruling was made by the chair. and the majority leader said i will appeal that ruling. now, we all know if we have read the senate rules -- and i hope to goodness we have all read the senate rules -- that appealing the ruling of the chair, you can

overrule the chair by a majority vote. well, let me repeat that. we bypass the rule that says it takes two-thirds to change the rules of the senate, and the majority said that we will appeal the ruling, and if we get a majority, we will overturn the ruling. and that's what happened, and that's where we find ourselves tonight. now, this isn't inconsequential and we're not trying to be arbitrary and capricious. but we're trying to make the point that this is a huge issue for the future of our country. let me point out what this now means for the united states senate. what this means is that if the majority leader, whoever that is, republican or democrat, does

not like the way things are going, it can appeal the ruling of the chair. and overturn that ruling by majority vote because now the precedent is set. it's in our history. it's in our rules. now, some look at this and say, well, you need not panic. this only applies to circuit court nominees, district court nominees and executive appointments. so let's think about that a second, mr. president. let's say that we have a supreme court of the united states where there are four members that are pretty consistent in ruling one way. some might call it the liberal way. and you have four members that are pretty consistent in ruling another way. some might call it the conservative way.

and there's one member of the united states supreme court that kind of moves back and forth. between the four over here and the four over here, between the four liberal members, between the four conservative members and whatever you want to call it. and that's pretty unpredictable vote. let's say something happens. maybe there's a health issue. maybe there's a decision by that member there in the middle to retire. i don't know. could be a whole host of things. that's the human condition. things happen to us. let's say we're in the last 18 months of an administration. the president is due to go up, the campaign has already started. you've got people showing up in iowa, new hampshire and south carolina and wherever else. they're raising money. they got the presidential races. they're organizing. they're doing all the things they need to do.

and you've got republicans thinking, by golly, it's our time. we either keep the white house or we win the white house. you got democrats thinking the same thing. and you've got a president that all of a sudden has a supreme court appointment in smack dab in the middle of four members on one side and four members on the other side. and let's say that the majority, the majority has the ability to put somebody of their own elk into that position. whether it's republican or democrat or liberal or conservative. and they look at this and they say, you know, we could lose the white house. or we might not get the white house. and these are appointments for life. so it's not like we're appointing somebody for four years.

these are appointments for life. and you know, we've kind of come to the conclusion as we've talked about it on our side of the aisle that by golly, it's in the best interest of this country if we can make this appointment. and you know what? we don't have 60 votes to get it done. we've counted the votes. looks like this is going to come out of the judiciary committee on a straight party line vote. what are we going to do now? mr. president, i know what will happen. you know what will happen. every member of the united states senate knows what will happen. i don't care if you're a republican or a democrat or a conservative or a liberal or a socialist or whatever you want to call yourself, we know what will happen. there will be a ruling by the

chair. there will be an appeal by the majority leader and all of a sudden we'll have a rule where you can make a supreme court nomination. you can make a supreme court nomination, a nomination, a job for life based upon a majority vote. does anybody think for a minute that that isn't going to happen? does anybody think for a minute that the circumstances surrounding that won't occur? now, i guess if you're on the republican side of the aisle and it's a real strong conservative, that's going to the supreme court, maybe you'll look at that and say thank goodness, we saved the country. maybe if you're a democrat and

it's a good, strong liberal that's going on to the supreme court, you say, thank goodness, we saved the country. and it was worth it. but you see, mr. president, here's the dilemma we find ourselves in. the dilemma we find ourselves in is that the majority of this body has now set the precedent, and you can't pull it back. there isn't any way now that you can unwind the clock and turn back the clock. now let me offer another thought. let's say we're a few years down the road, and you've got a piece of legislation, and your side of the aisle has decided that that piece of legislation is absolutely critical for the future of this country.

maybe it's cap and trade. maybe it's another health care bill. whatever. and all of a sudden somebody says we've got to get this done. we're in the last 12 months of this administration. we're looking at the numbers. we're not going to win the white house again the way it's looking. the precedent is there. appeal the ruling of the chair. you see, mr. president, the point i'm making here is this. it's not that the rules were changed. the rules have been changed in the senate a number of times by the way the senate rules contemplate, with a supermajority voting to change those rules. now we have torn that up because

now we have established a precedent. you know, i am in the process of reading senator byrd's "history of the senate." remarkable man. got to know him a little bit. he was still here when i came to the senate, before he passed. happened to be on the other side of the aisle, but i came to respect him so much. he would have never stood for this. he just never would have tolerated that this institution would be so mistreated by anybody, republican or democrat. boy, in his heyday, he would have been at his seat screaming at the top of his lungs about what we were doing to the senate with this vote, what the majority was going to do to the future of this great body. you know, in his "history of the

senate," he talks about how important it is that there is this body where a minority view of the world can be represented. you see, if i were the majority leader, i guess i would like this to run efficiently and well oiled and smoothly and i was a governor, i was a mayor. days when i got my way were much better than days when i didn't get my way. i didn't like being frustrated by the legislature. i didn't like the city council telling me i couldn't get my way. i couldn't understand some days why they couldn't figure out that i was right. and one day i was sitting down with a state senator. he had been there a lot of years. i was complaining about the way that the legislature was treating me. i couldn't understand why the

legislature wouldn't follow everything that the governor wanted done. he listened very, very patiently, and he looked at me and he said, you know, mike, nobody elected you king. and i think that's what bob byrd would have said. nobody elected any of us king. you see, our founders set this system up with the whole idea that we wouldn't have kings anymore. that there would be check and balance and that we would be forced to deal with each other sometimes more artfully than at other times, but that we would be forced to deal with each other. now the majority leader came down here and he said i don't understand this, and talks about this process. this process got started because he filed cloture on ten nominations. why aren't we working on this? if you look at the history of the senate over the last

years -- i've been here, i've watched it, i turn on my tv in the office to see what's going on on the senate floor. you know what i see, mr. president? exactly what you see, what all of us see. we sit hour after hour after hour in cloture call -- or in quorum call hour after hour, when amendments are pending. i thought, i had this mistaken impression that every senator could file an amendment, that if i had a better idea on something, i could file an amendment. i'd get a hearing on the amendment. i'd be able to come down here and try to argue to my colleagues, pass my amendment. we haven't seen that kind of process for years under this majority. i didn't think it was possible to mishandle the united states senate when i came here. i looked at the books of rules

and interpretations and volumes, chapter after chapter written about the rules of the senate, and i said to myself there's no way you could mismanage this body because these rules are as intricate as they could be. boy, was i proven wrong. you can mismanage this body. we've seen it. and that's where we find ourselves today. and at the end of the day, why did it happen? why did it happen? why are we putting ourselves in this position? you know, a former united states senator from nebraska who had been here, i think he was here three terms, he had a wonderful saying. when his party wasn't in power, he would say at speeches, ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you, the worm will turn. and it was his way of saying, you know what?

i've been in the skwrofrt -- in the majority and i've been in the minority. and it will change because the people will send a message into this chamber just like they did on the health care bill. they will send a message that this is not the kind of country that they want. we somehow have to figure out how to put this back in the box. this nuclear option needs to be sealed up, hidden away and never used again. i don't care if the republicans are in the majority or the democrats are in the majority, this basically means today that all of those rules, all of those chapters written about those

rules have no meaning whatsoever because there are no rules. if i don't like what's going on here and i am in the majority, all i have to do is appeal -- appeal -- the ruling of the chair and get my team to stand together, and we've changed the way the united states senate operates. and it is as simple as that. you know, i think at times in our history, we would like to think that we're the smartest people in the world, that we've thought of something that no other person has thought of in the history of this country. not true. if you read what senator byrd wrote about the history of the united states senate, many times united states senators,

dissatisfied, hraougs personally -- losing personally because of a losing -- a ruling when the chair had an opportunity to appeal that ruling and then realized that was the wrong course of action because they would set a precedent that you could change the rules by breaking the rules. and that's exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. that's exactly what happened. it isn't the fact that the rule has changed, although i disagree with where we ended up. it is the method by which the majority, democrats, have changed those rules. because that method now is precedent. it is now available to republicans and democrats, and it's wide open. i guarantee you in our lifetime we will see a supreme court

nominee put on the supreme court by this method. i guarantee you that we will see whether it's in our lifetime or at some point after, we will see that you will have a situation where legislation is now done by a majority. and what does that mean for the country? well, let me give you a good example. the great compromise protected states like nevada. it protected states like nebraska and iowa. we all get two senators. we all get to come to the floor and fight for what we believe in. i will say what i would imagine every united states senator will say. i come from a beautiful state, the state of nebraska, where conservative people by nature --

we're conservative people by nature. i don't think you live in nebraska unless you have a pioneer spirit and you're conservative by nature. that's who we are. we signed -- kind of essentially believe that less good is a good idea. you know, when i was governor, people didn't want me running their schools. they had a school board. they thought they could make thoughtful, intelligent decisions about running their schools. i thought they could, too. that's the nature of who we are. do you realize that now on executive appointments, on executive appointments, district court judges and circuit court judges, that basically we get dealt out of this? let's say that i have a problem hueneme and i want to put a hold on that nominee until they come to my office and deal with me.

everybody on both sides of the aisle gets the opportunity to use that. well, guess what? you just voted that away a few weeks ago. why would a republican administration deal with anyone in the majority, today's majority? why would they care? it doesn't make any difference. i went through that process. i was a member of the president's cabinet. you know, i would hope i would have the decency that if anybody asked me a question, i would answer the question or try to solve their problem or try to work with them, but quite honestly, why do they need to? how can you force that issue now? they don't need your vote. they can get through the process if their party is a majority of the united states senate. this body was never intended to operate that way.

i want to spend a few minutes of my time talking about what i really think this is about. and this makes it an even more tragic story. the majority leader was here a few minutes ago, and he said, well, you know, if you're going to be like this, then we'll work on christmas. we'll work the weekend before. we'll work the day before. and i'm sitting there thinking well, what's new about that? what's even threatening about that? i mean, that's the way business is done. we sit in hours and hours and hours of quorum call, and all of a sudden ten nominees, you file cloture on two weeks before the break? i mean, it's kind of obvious to

me. is it obvious to anybody else what's going on here? we're trying to force the issue. why didn't we start working on this weeks ago? why don't you run the senate 24/7 to move amendments, to give us an opportunity to vote on amendments? why sit hour after hour in a quorum call? but i think, mr. president, what this is really all about is this. you see, we had reached an agreement. remember that evening when we all walked down the hall, republicans, democrats, independents? we went in the old senate chamber, we shut the doors. no media in there. no staff in there. just us. talking about the senate. now, i'm not going to share a lot about what was talked about in there, but i thought it was a pretty good meeting.

we've done that a couple of times. we did that on the start treaty and we did it on that evening a few months ago. it wasn't very pleasant. but, you know, over the next day or so, we shook hands, we said to each other okay, we get it. we don't want to get in the business of breaking the rules to change the rules. we understand the precedent that that is setting. once we put that on the books, like i said, you can't unwind the clock. so okay, here is what we're going to do. i must admit, i didn't like it very much. i thought we were giving up too much, but having said that, the alternative wasn't very attractive. and we shook hands like gentlemen do and we called a truce, and those were the rules we would operate under.

everybody said well, we dodged a bullet on that one, and the senate will continue to function like it's functioned the last 225 years, as a place where the minority, whoever that might be at any given time, has a voice. the only body in the world that operates like that. like i said, i must disit i had qualms about it. i talked to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle about my qualms and at the end of the day, i -- i reached the conclusion that it was better than the nuclear option. so why did this come up again? if we had reached a deal, if we shook hands like gentlemen and women do, why did this come up again? i thought this was behind us. i thought we would make our way

through nominations and work long hours and, you know, most of these are very noncontroversial, and i just thought that we had reached an agreement. but we had reached an agreement. we all know we had reached an agreement. so why did the majority -- why did democrats feel that all of a sudden we needed to revisit this? well, mr. president, the argument i want to make couldn't is this. i'm going to draw on a little bit of history. when i first came here, i sat in a chair over there. i will never forget. christmas eve day when we were brought in here to vote on a piece of legislation.

now, christmas eve votes are pretty unusual around here. we all sat at our desk, we don't usually enforce that rule, but we all sat at our desk, and for people like me, i left this chamber very, very sad and discouraged on a pure party-line vote, a monumental piece of legislation that practically no one had read and was poorly understood. in fact, the speaker said well, we have to pass this to understand what's in it. no truer words were ever spoken. passed. not a single republican in the house or the senate voted yes on that legislation. you see, i kind of had the idea when i came here that there would be give and take, that i

would get my idea, you would get your idea and at the end of the day, the senate was a body that would force compromise or the bill wouldn't pass. but something unusual had happened. the president was with a democrat. the senate had 60 democrats so debate could end. and the majority in the house was overwhelmingly democrat. it became very, very clear to me that my view of the world didn't matter, and it wasn't going to matter, because as long as they could sweeten this thing up and do deals and whatever else, my state was impacted by it. we all remember the cornhusker kickback. but at the end of the day, it passed.

i could never figure out how that bill would work. it just didn't make any sense to me. i had been a governor. i had seen how failed medicaid was. 40% of the docs wouldn't take medicaid. i couldn't imagine how adding millions to that system was going to help poor people. it looked to me like it was going to hurt them. kind of like giving them the bus ticket and then saying after they have got the ticket, well, we're only running one bus in washington, d.c., these days. well, probably not going to be very successful. i looked at what was happening in the rest of the bill, and it just didn't make any sense to me. well, i think i know why we revisited this rule. because when the rollout occurred right about that time,

all heck broke loose, because finally the american people realized how bad this bill was. in fact, there is one state out there, the state of oregon, they didn't sign up anybody because their system melted down. the exchange was a mess. people found out all of these promises. remember this one. if you like your plan, you can keep it, period. if you like your plan, you get to keep it, period. not only was that used on the campaign trail, we all get a little -- you know, we all get out on the campaign trail and hyperventilate here and there, but it was used by somebody in real authority, the president of the united states of america.

went to the american people and said if you like your plan, you can keep it. now, i said how is that -- how does that possibly work, because the whole idea is you've got to force people off their plan to a different plan, but if you like their plan, you get to keep it. well, in 2010, the administration's own rule on this subject showed that as many as 80% of small business plans and 69% of all business plans would lose their grandfathered status. a very, very thoughtful united states senator, a guy by the name of mike enzi, put in a resolution of disapproval of which would have canceled that regulation. back then, he was able to get it

to a vote. now, you would think that if you want to support the president of your party in his promise -- his pledge to the american people, if you like your plan, you're going to get to keep it, period, you'd vote with your president. you would think that would be 100-0. i don't know how republicans could be against that. i don't know how democrats could be against that. after all, that's what this person in authority promised the american people. if you like your plan, you get to keep it, period, he said, over and over and over again. it was like a broken record. you know how that vote went here? let me remind us. it failed on a party-line vote. democrats voted no on the

resolution, if you like your plan, you get to keep it. my goodness, is that an embarrassment or what? what was the message that day? were they trying to say no, if you like your plan, you don't get to keep it? the president isn't being truthful with you? was that the message that day? what was going on? i mean, i was stunned by that vote. how could you be against the president's own promise? that was back in 2010. that information was available to the president and his people. back in 2010, and yet they kept saying it, if you like your plan, you get to keep your plan. one other estimate by the congressional budget office was i think generally we all respect they do good work for us, they do our scoring.

said up to 20 million employees could lose their employer-sponsored insurance. wait a second. that information was available, too. so how is -- how is this promise worked out? this fall more than 4.7 million cancellation letters went out in 32 different states. now i've read the articles. i imagine everybody in the chamber read the articles. 4.7 million people got cancellation letters in 32 different states. the cancellation letter basically said, well, sorry, this big law got passed on a party-line vote, and you don't get to keep your plan, just like was predicted by the c.b.o. and

the administration's own people. this should not be stunning to anybody in this body, but it was stunning to the american people. well, the president said oh my goodness, i think this is a problem. and so he said to insurance companies, you've got to fix this. you've got to get people their plan. if they like their plan, they get to keep their plan. and it didn't matter whether it was democrats or republicans in given states, they said, mr. president, you can't unwind that clock. and what i would say to that is wait a second here, i don't like this law, but it passed. i was sitting there the day it passed. it passed on a completely

party-line vote. and people literally were caught in a situation, millions of them, where they realize they wouldn't get their plan. so, could the president solve that problem? no. it wasn't a policy fix. it was a political fix. that's what he was doing. he was literally trying to solve a political problem for the majority that passed the darned bill. i mean, it's unbelievable. many weighed in. the american academy of actuaries said this. changing the a.c.a. provisions could alter the dynamics of the insurance market. trading two parallel markets operating under different rules, thereby threatening the viability of insurance markets

operating under the new rules. now, i'm as competitive as anybody. i've run a lot of elections. i understand the importance of being in the majority in this body. i especially understand that after what the majority did the last few weeks. you know, we went 225 years as a country and it was only in the last couple weeks that the majority said, look, we're tired of dealing with you, minority. we're going to get our own way. it reminded me of that day that obamacare was passed. it reminded me it was identical. it was identical. it was like johanns, get lost. we don't care what you think about this. we've got 60 votes. sit down, shut up. is that the way the united states senate is to operate?

i don't think so. i don't think that was what was envisioned when this body was put together. and it's been forever changed. it happened because obamacare is out of control. it's not the web site. the web site was a mess. it just proved to us that the white house couldn't manage this. that's what it proved to us. but you can fix a web site. you can get smart people, they can go in and figure it out. that wouldn't be me, but many people in the united states who could be brought to bear to solve this problem, to deal with the web site. it's not the web site. although it's a huge embarrassment. it was a huge embarrassment for the white house. it was a huge embarrassment for the president of the united states. it was a huge embarrassment for kathleen sebelius. it was a huge embarrassment for the democrats who voted for this. but at the end of the day you

can fix it. and i would guess they would fix it. i kept saying to people back home i think it will get fixed. how tough is that? how tough would it be to do it the right way the first time? but they didn't. it just proves they're not very competent. but what is happening here is that the wheels are coming off this policy because the policy never made any sense. when the president made this announcement, insurance companies, you fix it, america's health insurance plans said premiums have already been set for the next year. based on the assumption of when consumers will transition into the new marketplace. now who decided when they would transition into the new marketplace? the insurance companies did. the majority did. the white house did. health and human services d. they go on in their statement if

fewer younger and healthier people refuse to purchase in the exchange premiums will increase and there will be fewer prices for consumers. let me say something that is obvious to everybody in this chamber. your premiums are going up. why? because young people are so turned off. young people are so turned off by what's happening here. i had a young person show up at a town hall. this was a year and a half ago. they said, you know, mike, here's kind of the deal. it's just my wife and i. we don't have children. we're both working. we're trying to get ahead. we don't make a lot of money. and we decided that the best plan for us was kind of a catastrophic plan. we'll deal with our day-to-day health care needs which incidentally aren't much because we're young and fortunately we're healthy.

we've got a high deductible. i'm listening to that, and i said you know what? god bless them. this is america. they can make that choice. that was the best choice for them. they thought about it. they decided that the money that they were making might be better allocated someplace else. what a great country that you can decide that. well, what happened with this health care bill, mr. president? that decision was taken away from that young couple. they were ordered by the federal government under penalty to buy a given plan. i've not caught up with that young couple, but i'll bet they're mad as wet hens. i'll bet that they're looking at what happened to them and

they're saying why. and we all know the little secret here. young people are paying more for coverage that they don't need to finance me in my 60's. does that make any sense? mr. president, i could go on and on about what is happening here with this health care bill. but it's not a sheer coincidence that gentlemen and gentlewomen in the senate reached an agreement months ago on the rules. we shook hands on it. we put that behind us. and all of a sudden right about the time that obamacare rolled out, all of a sudden that

agreement wasn't valid anymore. and we got set up on a manufactured crisis to force a vote. and the method chosen to change the rules forever changes how the senate operates. in our history, many senators had the opportunity, many senators had the opportunity to change these rules. thought better of it. because they so respected and admired this institution that they believe there was a place for a minority, whether that senator was in the minority or the majority at the time. that's what happened here.

and i will take another step. all of us know what this is really about. this is about control of this body. and all of a sudden, because of obamacare and the truth coming out about what a terrible piece of policy this is, it became evident that members over here wr-s in deep, deep -- members over here were in deep, deep trouble and were going to lose their elections if their elections were held now. and the majority had to change the conversation. so the agreement that we reached after that night we spent in the old senate chamber hashing through this, debating and

discussing it basically got torn up and tossed out the window, and the majority forever changed how this body will operate and what this body is going to be about in the future. so, mr. president, what i say to you tonight is this, i am not planning on being here much longer. i've made that decision. you could say i don't have a boxer in the ring. you know, a year from now i'll be doing something else. some will be here. some won't be here. but at the end of the day what i'll remember about this time in the united states senate is that a precedent has set, been set that is vastly different than the way this senate operated for

225 years. a precedent was set that allows the majority to take control of executive branch appointments, circuit court appointments, district court appointments. it is a precedent that would allow a majority to take control of a supreme court appointment, and it is a precedent that will allow a majority, when it chooses to -- not if. i believe it's a question of when. that will allow a majority to take control of the policy making. so it is true when we say if you were attempting to change the conversation, majority members of the united states senate,

away from obamacare to this, all you have done is reminded the american people that what you are really doing is abusing this institution in a way that, quite honestly, is going to be very, very hard to turn around. my thought is this. i felt very, very strongly that we can reverse what has occurred here. but we can't do it as a minority. we need the majority to back off. we need the majority to recognize that this body has existed through difficult times.

it has existed through wars. it has existed through attacks on our country, and it found a way to operate. we need the majority to recognize that we reached an agreement. many months ago after an evening spent together in the old senate chambers, where we debated these things, and like gentlemen and women, we shook hands and put this behind us for this session. we can do the work of the united states senate. we can do the work for the american people. i have no doubt about that whatsoever. i'm very concerned, though, that we have put the united states senate senate in a position

where it is a very, very vulnerable body now. any majority can now use this precedent to turn this into something that is entirely different than what anybody who founded this country believed it should be when the majority decided that it would bypass the requirement that rules would be changed by a two-thirds vote and do it by appealing the ruling of the chair, they put the united states senate? senate -- united states senate in a position where there are no rules. there are no rules. all you need is 51 members -- 50 if you have the vice president in the chair -- who decide to stick together and make that supreme court appointment. they can get it done. all you need is 50 members, if

you have a vice president in the chair, who decides they stick together and they would do a legislative process by a majority vote. many, many times the nuclear option was discussed, it was debated, and senators much wiser than myself looked at the history of this great country and its history -- the history of this great country and its future and decided it was a step that should never be taken. that was until a couple of weeba couple of weeks ago, all driven by the fact that this piece of legislation called obamacare has turned out to be such a train wreck and that there was a need to change the discussion and change the topic and try to draw

the people's attention away from that legislation. and that's how this rule got adopted. it's a sad time in our nation's history. it is a sad time in terms of what's going on. and what i would offer, mr. president, is my hope is that wise people will realize the problems that they have created for this country in the fighter, realize that the precedent -- country in the future, realize that the precedent they have set forever changes the way we operate and back away from what occurred. let's start doing the work of the senate. that means w means we work throh christmas? good. i'm here. if that means we work on weekends, if that means we work around the clock, fine with me. i'm good. i'll do it. i'll be happy to do it. but to try to streamline this

process in a way that silences the minority is not right and it's not what this country should be about. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut is recognized. mr. murphy: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that after i finish speaking, that senator blumenthal be allowed to speak. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blumenthal: thank you very much, mr. president. -- mr. murphy: thank you very much, mr. president. this saturday we're going to mark the one-year anniversary of the shooting in sandy hook, connecticut, in which 20 little six- and seven-year-old boys and girls lost their lives as well as six adults who worked in that

school who were charged with protecting them. and senator blumenthal and i have come down to the floor today to offer some thoughts as we reflect on 365 days passed since the most horrific mass shooting that most of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. and i think back a lot on that day, being in the sandy hook firehouse as the parents realized that their sons and daughters weren't coming back from that school, and one of the things that i remember, mr. president, about that day is getting an awful lot of phone calls from my colleagues from all around the country, senators and congressmen who represented places like columbine and aurora and virginia tech and tucson. and they all called because they had been through this before and they wanted just to offer their condolences and a little bit of

advice on how a community can try to get through these just awful, tragic, shattering incidents. and i sort of thought that day how awful it was that there were that many colleagues, that many representatives from across the country who could call and give me advice. what a tragedy it is that we are amassing this bank of expertise across the nation on how to respond to mass shootings. and it speaks to how far and wide the carnage and the devastation is from these mass shootings that are occurring. now it seems almost on a weekly or monthly basis somewhere around the country. it's not getting better, it's getting worse. you know, in 1949, i guy by the name of howard unra went through the streets of his town of east camden, new jersey, firing shots indiscriminately such that he

killed 13 people. it was the nation's first mass shooting. now, we have unfortunately had a lot of mass shootings since that first one in 1949. but here's what's stunning. of all of the mass shootings that have taken place since 19 1949, half of them took place from 1949 to 2007. and the other half have taken place in the last six years. something has gone wrong. something has changed. the problem is, it's not this place. we're approaching the one-year mark of the school shooting in sandy hook and it will be a week of mourning. but here in the united states senate, it should also be a week of embarrassment. it should be a week of shame. that after one year passing since 20 little boys and girls were gunned down in a

five-minute hail of furious bullets, that the united states senate and the house of representatives has done nothing to try to prevent these kind of mass atrocities in the future. so, mr. president, i want to come down here today not just to challenge this place to act but to tell you a little bit about what i've learned in the last year. i've learned a lot but i just wanted to distill it down to two pretty simple things that i've learned. i didn't work on the issue of gun violence when i was a member of the house of representatives. in part because my corner of connecticut didn't have tremendously high levels of gun deaths. now it is central to my mission as a united states senator. and what i've learned over the last year is that despite all the rhetoric that we hear from the gun lobby, when you change gun laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to take dangerous military-style weapons and ammunition off of the

streets, guess what happens? communities become safer. and the data tells us this. since 1998, the national instant criminal background check system has blocked more than 2 million gun sales from prohibited purchasers. that's up to 2 million crimina criminals, people with criminal histories that should not have bought a gun that were prohibited from buying a gun. the background check system works but for the fact that only about 60% of gun purchases actually go through the system because more and more guns are being bought in on-line sales, more and more guns are being bought on-line, more and more guns are being bought at gun shows. we know that background checks work because we've stopped 2 million people who would be prohibited from owning guns because they have a history of domestic abuse or serious

felonies or mental illness. 2 million times we've stopped those people from getting guns. second, we can compare what happens in states with near universal background check systems versus states that have looser laws. i'll give you one statistic, for instance. in states that require a background check for every handgun sale, there is a 38% reduction in the number of women who are shot to death by intimate partners. deaths from domestic violence are almost 40% less in states that have near universal background checks. the same data exists for assault weapons as well. in 1994, we passed the assault weapons ban, and over the next nine years, crimes committed with assault weapons declined by two-thirds. now, there are legitimate arguments that there are other factors that contributed to that decline, but certainly a portion

of that decline is connected to the restriction on assault weapons. 37% of police departments reported a noticeable increase in criminals' use of assault weapons since the 1994 federal ban expired. and, mr. president, when it comes to these high-capacity magazine clips, we don't need the data that's out there because common sense just tells us that if somebody decides to do mass damage with a high-powered weapon, they're going to do less damage if they only have 10 bullets in a clip rather than 30. adaaddadam lanza at sandy hook elementary school got off 24 bullets, killed 20 children and five adults in less than five minutes. in tucson, a 70-year-old retired army colonel and a 61-year-old women were able to subdue the shooter when he went to change

cartridges. in aurora, the rampage essentially stopped when james holmes went to switch cartridg cartridges. when you have to reload multiple times, there are multiple opportunities for these mass shootings to stop. now, we should do things to make sure that the shootings never begin in the first place, but the carnage is much worse when these madmen are working in to shopping plazas, movie theaters and schools with 30-round clips and 100-round drums. but here's the second thing i've learned. mr. president, i've -- i've learned this as well over the last year. i've learned about the amazing ability of good to triumph over evil even when this place doesn't act to change the laws. i've learned that despite the evil of those five minutes in sandy hook, the community of newtown has amazingly found a way over and over and over again to bring so much beauty and

goodness to essentially cover up and drowned out that horror. i've seen these kids' memories become the inspiration for literally thousands of acts of generosity and kindness. daniel barden was just a genetically compassionate little kid. he was that kid that always sat with the kid in school who didn't have anybody sitting next to them on the bus or in the classroom. when his parents would take him to the supermarket, they'd be all the way to their car with their groceries, they'd look back and daniel was still at the door holding open the grocery store door for people that were leaving. his parents started up a facebook page that just challenged people to engage in little, small acts of kindness in daniel's memory. it had about 40,000 likes at the last time that i had checked, and the stories are endless on

there. a woman who bought coffee and doughnuts for a firehouse in new york state. a missouri woman who helped restock a food pantry in daniel's honor. a woman in illinois who paid for a stranger's meal and just wrote "love from daniel barden" on the bill. jack pinto was a really active 6-year-old boy. he enjoyed playing sports of all kinds. he was buried in his new york giants jersey. his parents, dean and tricia pinto, have raised money and put some of their own money in to pay for hundreds of children all around the country to have access to the same kind of opportunity to play sports that jack did, despite the fact that their families might not have the resources that the pintos do. jessica rico loved animals. she loved whales and horses mo most. and so her parents started up a foundation, the jessica ricos foundation, and they have provided yearlong scholarships for horseback riding lessons for students who wouldn't otherwise

have the resources to be able to have the opportunity to enjoy horses in the same way that jessica did. and this week, an effort is underway in newtown and across the nation to inspire people to every day do a different act of kindness as a way to pay tribute to the one-year anniversary. these charities that have sprung up in the wake of newtown, they're doing amazing work to change people's lives. just the small acts of kindness that maybe we all do in trying to pay tribute to the memory of those kids and those adults. that makes a difference. but, mr. president, charitable acts and changes in behavior, they are just necessary, though insufficient, responses to the scourge of gun violence that plagues our nation. this place has to change the laws, do something. because you don't want to be next. you don't want to be sitting on a train station platform, as i was on december 14, when you get a call that 10 or 20 or 30 or 40

kids or adults have been gunned down in your state. and you certainly don't want to get that call when you had a chance that you didn't take to do something to prevent it. i got calls that day from my colleagues all across the country because there aren't many corners of the nation that haven't been touched by gun violence. 11,000 people have been killed by guns just since december 14 of last year. and when one person is killed, psychologists tell us that there are at least 10 other people who sustain life-altering trauma as a result of that shooting. so just imagine when 26 kids and adults die in a small community. so i want to leave you, not with my words, but with the words of a mother from sandy hook who represents the scope of the trauma that has been the reality for sandy hook for the last 365

days. sandy hook is recovering but very slowly. the charities and the acts of kindness, they make a difference, but there is a lot of head shaking in that community as to why this place hasn't risen to the occasion, shown the same type of courage that those families have and done something to change the reality of everyday and exceptional mass violence across this country. here assess what this mother writes. heartthese are here words, in an letter -- "in addition to the tragic loss of her playmates, friends and teachers, my first grader suffers from ptsd. she was in the first room by the entrance to the school. her teacher was able to gather the children into the tiny bathroom inside the classroom. there she stood with 14 of her classmates and her teacher, all of them crying. you see, she heard what was happening on the other side of

the wall. she heard everything. she was sure that she was going to die that day, and she didn't want to die at christmas. imagine what that must have been like. she struggles nightly with nightmares, difficulty falling asleep, being afraid to go anywhere on her own. at school she becomes withdrawn, she cries daily, she covers her ears when it gets too loud, waits for it to happen again. she is 6. and we are furious. we're furious that 26 families must suffer with grief so deep and so wide that it's unimaginable. we're furious that the innocence and safety of my children's lives have been taken. furious that someone had access to the type of weapon used in this massacre. furious that gun makers make ammunition with such high rounds and our government does nothing to stop them. furious that the ban on assault weapons was carelessly left to expire, furious that lawmakers let the gun lobbyists have so

much control. furious that somehow someone's right to own a gun is more important than my children's rights to life. furious that lawmakers are too scared to take a stand. she finishes by writing this. i ask you to think about your choices. look at the pictures of the 26 innocent lives taken so needlessly and wastefully, using a weapon that never should have been in the hands of civilians. really thick. changing the laws may inconvenience some gun owners, but it may also save a life, perhaps a life that is dear to me or you. are you really willing to risk it? there must not be another sandy hook. you had a responsibility and an obligation to act now and to change the laws. i hope and pray that you do not fail." i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you,

mr. president. many words have been spoken since newtown, including the very powerful words of my colleague just now, but the plain, simple fact is no words can capture what i feel about that day. no words ever will capture that day or the days and weeks and months afterward when we have grieved and healed and resolved that we will do everything within our power to make sure that that kind of massacre never happens again. but equally important that the deaths by gunfire are reduced or prevented. those 26 senseless, unspeakable deaths of 20 beautiful children

and six great educators, but also the 194 children who have been killed by gunfire since new town. among the 10,000 or more deaths caused by gunfire person by person. a tragic river of senseless deaths that we had the power to prevent, the power in this body and the power in this nation. as much as we should be shamed and embarrassed by the failure of the act, we also must have hope and resolve that we will act. history is on our side. and the example of courage and strength provided by those families ought to give us the resolve and the determination to act, and likewise the examples

of courage and resolve by father bob weiss who had a service in saint rose of lima on the evening of december 14, one of the most moving public experiences i will ever have, and as i said then, the world is watching newtown, the world has watched newtown. it has watched first selectman pat lodra who has led newtown with her own courage and strength and determination, including coming here as my guest on the night of the state of the union to be an example for all of us about what a public official can do by her own example, leading by her own example. we will mark this saturday morning at saint rose of lima the one-year anniversary, a

service that senator murphy and i will attend. i have warned since virtually that day a -- worn since virtually that day a bracelet, and i wear it now. it says "we are newtown. we choose love." if there is a message for all of us in this chamber, it is that we continue to choose love, and we are all newtown. our town is newtown. all of our towns are newtown. and i see this bracelet literally from the day, the time i wake in the morning to when i go to bed, and it will always be an inspiration for me. inescapably our hearts and minds go back to that moment when we

first learned about this horrific, unspeakable tragedy. of course, i went to the newtown firehouse that day, and the sights and sounds of grief and pain are seared in my memory, and they will be with me forever. so will be the stories of the children whom we lost. allison mcdonald and grace wyatt who loved to draw pictures for their families and planned to be artists. chase kowalski, a cub scout who loved playing baseball with his father. jessica rikos who wanted to research orca whales and become a cowgirl. and we will never forget the heroism and the bravery of the educators like vicki soto and ann marie murphy.

vicki soto is in this picture, and her brother carlos came to a service today here in washington. he has continued and so have his sisters to come to events that provide impetus and movement and momentum to the effort to stop gun violence. vicki soto and ann marie murphy literally shielded their students, sought to save them with their own body. dawn hocksburn and mary scherlock ran unhesitatingly toward the danger in their school and perished doing so. there are heroes in this story. it is not only about bad people who use guns improperly and illegally. it is not only about evil. it is also about good, and the good includes the first

responders and police who stopped the shooting when they came to the school and ran toward danger and toward the gunfire and thereby ended it when the shooter took his own life. it is also about anna marquez greene, a beautiful girl who loved music and flowers, loved to wear a flower in her hair. and she was described by bishop leroy bailey as a beautiful, adoring child. that picture evokes the stories of all those children, beautiful, adoring. a future and a life ahead of them. and for all those stories and the tears and the teddy bears

and tributes that were outside the firehouse, newtown has refused to be defined simply by tragedy, refused to be locked in its past. it has moved forward because newtown is not just a moment. it is a movement. it is not just a moment in history defined by tragedy. it is a movement to make the world better. it is a movement to make america safer. and that is the movement that we have articulated and sought to advance. those families, including neil heslen, who has come here numerous times for his son jesse, have been an example of courage. indeed, they have been profiles in courage. when neil heslen dropped jesse

off at school on the morning of december 14, jesse gave him a hug, and he said -- quote -- "it's going to be all right. everything's going to be okay, dad," because jesse was that kind of kid, neil told the united states senate judiciary committee in his testimony. and his pride in jesse as well as his grief brought tears to all of our eyes. jesse was just that kind of kid. he never wanted to leave a baby crying. he never wanted to leave anybody feeling hurt. and jesse and neil used to talk about coming to washington, about meeting with the president. neil met with the president, but jesse was not there.

at least physically he was not there. he was with all of us as we worked with neil to make america safer and make sure that newtown is not a moment but a movement toward a better, safer america. and i want to thank my colleague for the outpouring of feeling and support on the eve of that tragedy. it was a rare moment of bipartisan unison in feeling as well as words, and for a meeting with many of those -- for meeting with many of those families, i want to thank them as well because they demonstrated a graciousness and generosity. regardless of their views on any of the issues relating to gun violence and any of the bills on the floor, that graciousness and generosity i hope will prevail on this issue and again move us

forward. and the acts of kindness and generosity that followed have been inspiring as well. the college students and firefighters who have come together to build playgrounds in honor of the sandy hook victims, bill lavin of new jersey on behalf of the firefighters has done yeoman work. there are now new playgrounds in their memberrary in norwalk, new london, fairfield, ansonia and westport and separateford. -- and separateford. they are distinct, reflecting the character of those children like ana marquez-greene. the newtown high school football team took time away from celebrating a perfect winning season to devote their efforts to the children and educators that we've lost, and the sandy hook run for families not only raised more than $450,000 for

the sandy hook support fund, but it also broke the world record for attendance. in millions of actions large and small in connecticut, all around the country, the people of newtown and connecticut and the country showed what compassion and giving and kindness really mean in action. they chose to honor them by action. and often the compassion and kindness unleashed by the newtown tragedy took many other forms that were unheralded and unreported and unspoken, acts of kindness that were not in the newspapers or in the public view but simply acts that meant something to the recipient and