i want to thank our colleagues for participating in this press conference. with that, we will conclude. thank you. closed doors,

republican and democratic leaders were chosen. they both spoke separately to reporters shortly after their incoming positions were made official.

>> i always try to start my meetings on time. the meeting this morning started at 9:00 a.m., and we just finished. it was a very productive, very constructive meeting. i was so impressed with every senator. i don't know how many spoke -- how many? >> 28. >> 28 senators spoke, and it was very, very good. what i wanted to announce today is that we are going to expand our leadership. we're going to do things a little differently, just a different approach. the one thing that came out of the conference without any second-guessing, is that we have to continue fighting for the middle class. speech after speech after speech. i would be hard-pressed to think

of three of the 28 that didn't talk about the middle class. the middle class is what is concerning to every one of my senators. they are not getting a fair shot. we're going to do everything we can in the 114 congress to make sure the middle class of this great country of ours has a fair shot. we're going to have a new dscc chair, jon tester of montana. john is a very plain man. he is a farmer who has run and won extremely difficult races in a swing state. amy klobuchar is part of the expanded leadership. i don't know anyone who tries harder to work across party lines than she does.

she is one of the top senators in any legislative body, whether you are in the house or senate, if you want to get something done on a bipartisan basis, talk to klobuchar. elizabeth warren, somebody asked me on the way in here, what do you expect her to do? i expect her to be elizabeth warren. we have to take a few questions. >> what message do you believe voters [indiscernible] >> i believe that if we look at voter patterns and what we saw in this incredibly difficult election is the people that should have voted that didn't vote, are people who needed a

reason to vote. we have to create an atmosphere where the middle class feels we are fighting for them. we had a number of brilliant statements in our caucus. a number who talked about how important it was that we do something to let those people out there know we work for them. >> some say some of your members didn't have much of a record to run on. looking back, do you think you should have managed the senate a little bit differently? >> we tried on many separate occasions to have a vote. the minority refused to let us have a vote. we try to have a vote, remember? energy efficiency, not once, but twice. the republicans said this is the time to do something. we haven't done anything in energy in a long time. first time, never ending

stalling, we had to take it off the floor. the second time, i had republicans who were part of that committee come to me with shaheen and say ok, we've got it this time. we have five amendments that make this bill so good, bring it to the floor, and the republicans told me, in the presence of jeanne shaheen and others, we will vote for cloture. just before that vote took place, they wanted to vote on keystone. they said no, we want an up or down vote. i said yes. they came back and said we will only want to vote if you

guarantee we can win it. the bill was so awful as far as time consuming, we got nothing done. example after example. we tried to have votes and the republicans made a decision after obama was first elected that they would oppose everything that he wanted, and that's what they have done. they couldn't stop us in the congress where we had 58, 59, 60 senators, but that is the story. >> [indiscernible] >> i will tell you why. there are women here with me. i came to the senate in a sweep when reagan got wiped out. eight of us came. i served at that time with one woman, barbara mikulski. i have seen this institution change, for a lot of reasons.

one reason has changed for the good is because of women. it has changed. women think differently than men, and i'm so impressed with the women i have in my caucus, that i wanted to reach out to them because they represent what america is all about. [indiscernible] >> i've said that many times since the election. this is not get even time. i do not intend to run the democratic caucus like the republican caucus has been run. i'm not going to do that. for example, i just told amy klobuchar, we have a lot of bills that are bipartisan bills. she is going to get me a list of those and we're going to sit down and see if we can get the

republicans to agree that they want to pass bipartisan bills. we want to legislate. we are not forestalling. we want to move on to the next congress with a record of accomplishment. >> can i ask why you wanted to be part of the democratic leadership, and what message you believe voters were sending? >> i believe in what the democrats are fighting for. wall street is doing very well. families all across the country are struggling. we have to make this government work for the american people. that's what we are here to fight for. i am grateful to the leader. i'm grateful to the caucus for giving me a chance to be part of that fight. that's what we are all going to be here doing every single day. that's what we are about. >> i see this as a tremendous opportunity for our country

right now. our economy has stabilized and we need to move forward. when we talk about those bills that are sitting around, many of which have now passed the house, we can get this done by the end of the year. the idea is to break through the gridlock, to start having votes again, and we will take them at their word, when they say they want to move with us and move this economy forward and get going. i think it's an opportunity and we need to seize it. [indiscernible] >> ok. >> first of all, it's going to be great to make the senate functional again. really to move the ball forward for the middle class. i think it is critically important. if there was one message the voters sent out, a lot of them by not voting, it was that we need to work together.

my role will be going out to find candidates that can lead, that can win, that can advocate for the middle class in their elections. i live forward to that challenge. i still have my duties as a u.s. senator which are very important for the state of montana. the bottom line is that we work hard before and we will work hard again. i think we will be successful passing good policies. >> i think we've done enough, everybody. thanks. >> good afternoon, everyone.

let me start by saying we have a new member of our senate leadership team, senator wicker, who has been elected chairman of the national senatorial

committee, and who will be speaking here in a few moments. i have been very disturbed about the way the president has proceeded in the wake of the election, whether it was his intervention on net neutrality, his apparent decision to move ahead on immigration with executive orders, the rather ridiculous agreement with the chinese under which they basically have to do nothing for the next 16 years while we are losing jobs in this country as a result of epa's overregulation. i had maybe naïvely hoped the president would look at the results of the election and decide to come to the center and do some business with us. i still hope he does at some point. but the early signs are not good. let me tell you who did get the message, and that was senate democrats. they got the message on the keystone pipeline, and that is why you have seen the current democratic majority of the senate have an epiphany and

decide to allow a vote they have been blocking for literally years. our leader on the keystone pipeline from the beginning to the present has been the senior senator from north dakota, john hoeven. i want to call on him to give you his thoughts about going forward on keystone pipeline, which it looks like we will be able to do in both the house first and then the senate next week. john? >> thank you, leader. appreciate it. i'd like to take a minute to talk about the game plane on the keystone xl pipeline. we have a bipartisan bill and have worked out a vote for the house which will also be tomorrow, friday, and we will vote on it in the senate on tuesday. this is a bill that is bipartisan, but it has all 45 senators onboard. this is an issue we have been

pushing for quite some time that we believe we have strong support for. it is about jobs, energy. it is about building the right kind of energy plan for this country, which is important for national security as well. the american public overwhelmingly supports it. we have been working to get a vote for some time on this bill. clearly, the house will pass it overwhelmingly tomorrow. then we will vote on a tuesday. we have all 45 republicans on board. all 45 republicans are cosponsors of this legislation. we need 15 democrats. we will see what happens on tuesday. we hope to have 60 votes. we will see. the point i want to make is all along we anticipated we will win on this issue because the american public wants keystone xl approved. in the new congress, if we do not get 60 votes on tuesday, in the new congress, we will have

60 votes. if you just go to the election results, not only did the people speak, that when you look at the candidates, we have 60 votes for the bill. then it is up to the president. you have seen his comments. one of his spokespeople that is traveling with him in asia said that he was not fond of the bill, and it sounds like he may veto it. if he vetoes it, then we will have the ability to bring it back, attach it to broader energy legislation or maybe an appropriations measure that we think he will not veto. this is about what is good for the american people. i think we have a good plan to pass keystone, and i want to thank not only our leaders, but our whole caucus for getting behind this important legislation. thanks, leader. >> we are very excited with the

new majority that will be sworn in in january to do important things on behalf of the american people and to get americans back to work again. and the keystone xl pipeline has been something the senator from north dakota has been working for and have been advocating for the last couple years. something that would add about 42,000 jobs, the kind of things we ought to have been doing years ago, but we are grateful to have the chance to vote for that on tuesday. given the opportunity we have in an emerging bipartisan consensus, that the american people are more interested in us getting to work again, solving problems on a bipartisan basis, that they have to live with day in and day out, i cannot think of anything more discouraging than the president doing, like what senator mcconnell mentioned, which mentions his executive amnesty order which disregards the law and the balance of powers and the

constitution. think about it. if you are someone who plays by the rules and immigrates to this country legally -- we naturalize almost one million people a year. we are a nation of legal immigrants. how unfair, how much more unfair could it be for the president to issue this order and it essentially bump all of these new folks ahead of those who have been waiting patiently and trying to play by the rules and doing it the right way? i hope the president will heed the request of people like senator angus king, who said he hopes he delays this. i hope he delays it permanently. at least i hope the president would give us the adequate time to be able to work together to try to begin to build a bipartisan consensus on repairing our broken immigration system, but if he does that, it will make it much harder, not easier. >> i want to s b