WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we all know in the Senate and in the
House of Representatives about the low grades Congress receives in
public opinion polling. Everybody knows what the public reports:
Congress is partisan. Congress is divided. Congress is dysfunctional.
One recent survey that got a lot of media attention reported that
Congress is less popular than a root canal. Across the country, people
are fed up with Congress. Indeed, Members of Congress are fed up with
Congress.
Americans want a Congress that can take on the tough challenges of
today. But another recent poll by USA Today and Gallup showed that 77
percent of Americans feel ``the way politics works in Washington these
days is causing serious harm to the United States.''
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Americans think Congress has a problem. Indeed, Americans think
Congress is a problem. Well, if we want to fix a problem, we ought to
be specific about it. A doctor wouldn't try to fix a patient without a
precise understanding of the patient's problem. An engineer wouldn't
try to fix a system without a precise understanding of the system's
problem. A mechanic wouldn't try to fix your car without a precise
understanding of your car's problem. So if we are going to fix what is
wrong with Congress, we better have a precise understanding of what
Congress' problem is.
Let's start with the Senate. We do have our share of dysfunction in
the Senate, I will confess. Undoubtedly, the filibuster is being
abused. Certainly, nominees awaiting confirmation are unjustifiably
delayed. Indeed, they are held hostage. So everything is not all roses
in the Senate.
But we did pass a highway bill, a bipartisan highway bill, that
passed the Senate with 74 votes. We did pass a farm bill, a bipartisan
farm bill. Although I did not support that particular measure, it was a
bipartisan measure that passed the Senate with 64 votes.
We passed the Hurricane Sandy emergency relief bill, also in
bipartisan fashion, with 62 votes. We had open debate, we had
discussions, we had amendments, and we passed legislation.
Particularly, we passed, by a powerful bipartisan vote of 89 to 8, a
bill that avoided tax increases for 99 percent of Americans and
extended emergency unemployment benefits for another year and protected
us from the fiscal cliff. When it comes to legislating, the Senate
actually has a pretty strong bipartisan record.
How did those Senate bills do on the House side? Well, the House
couldn't pass its own highway bill. Congress has been doing highway
bills since the Eisenhower years. This isn't rocket science. The House
couldn't do one. The best the House of Representatives could do was to
pass a short-term extension that allowed some of their Members to get
to conference on the Senate bill, but they took no bill into conference
because they couldn't pass one. Even then, they delayed the conference
negotiations, putting thousands of jobs in jeopardy before they finally
came around and passed an amended version of the Senate bipartisan
highway bill. So their record on the highway bill is nothing to be
proud of.
The House also couldn't pass a farm bill. Farm bills are pretty
ordinary legislative business too. We do them all the time, but the
House has passed no farm bill. We passed a strong bipartisan Senate
farm bill. They can't even agree to call up the bipartisan Senate farm
bill and pass it. With 80 percent of the agricultural land of the
country in drought, there is no farm bill. It is trapped in the
sinkhole of the House.
The House almost couldn't pass a disaster bill. If you go back to
Hurricane Katrina, when Katrina hit back in 2005, the House of
Representatives then had emergency aid on its way to the 850,000
damaged or destroyed homes of the gulf coast in 11 days. In 11 days aid
was on its way. This time, with this House of Representatives, the
House balked at the bipartisan Senate disaster bill and, finally, it
took them 78 days after the landfall of Hurricane Sandy to send help to
the half million homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by that
storm.
The condemnation of the House of Republicans was bipartisan. The
Republican Governor of New Jersey blamed, and I quote, ``the toxic
internal politics,'' the toxic internal politics, of the House
Republicans for this fiasco. ``This,'' he said, and I will quote again,
``is why the American people hate Congress.''
Is there a problem over in the House? You bet there is, to the point
where one departing House Republican Member compared the Speaker of the
House to the manager of an asylum and the Speaker's House Republican
colleagues to the asylum inmates. That is pretty strong criticism from
within the Republican Party.
The reason I give this speech is to try to be precise about what the
problem is that has driven Congress's approval into the cellar, and
what exactly is that problem? Well, I think the House votes on the so-
called fiscal cliff bill and on the emergency Hurricane Sandy aid
illustrate what the problem is. Those bills passed the House for one
reason and one reason only: The Speaker of the House of Representatives
waived what is called the Hastert rule.
What is the Hastert rule? The Hastert rule is probably the most
significant contributor to dysfunction in Washington right now. It is
not even really a rule, it is a policy, a political policy of
Republican Speakers. It began under former Republican Speaker Hastert,
hence its common name as the Hastert rule. The rule is that the Speaker
will bring no bill to the floor of the House of Representatives without
a majority of his own party supporting the bill. It doesn't matter
about a majority of Congress; Democratic votes don't count. It is only
when the Speaker has a majority of Republican votes supporting it that
the Speaker will allow legislation to come to the floor.
It has actually gotten a little bit harder under Speaker Boehner, who
has said, I don't feel comfortable scheduling any controversial
legislation unless I know we have the votes on our side first, which
sounds like he is saying he has to be able to produce a majority of the
House out of just the Republican caucus before bringing a bill. But
whether it is the original Hastert rule requiring a majority of the
majority before they will even bring a bill to the floor or what
appears to be the Boehner rule, that they have to have the votes on
``our side first,'' it is a rule of obstruction.
There are somewhere between 50 and 60 Members of the House Republican
tea party caucus and a whole bunch more House Republicans who are
scared of the tea party and scared of what might happen to them if they
get a tea party primary challenger. So getting a majority of his party
together for anything reasonable is a challenge for Speaker Boehner.
House Republicans could not get a majority of their conference to
support a highway bill. So the Hastert rule kicked in and there was no
House highway bill, none--they couldn't do one at all because they
couldn't get it through their conference under the Hastert rule. That
is why there was no highway bill.
The House Republicans could not get a majority of their conference to
support a farm bill, so under the Hastert rule there is no House farm
bill. The Speaker won't bring up the stalled bipartisan Senate farm
bill, because under the Hastert rule he can't get a majority of his
party to support even the bipartisan Senate farm bill.
We were headed for the exact same result on the fiscal cliff--we were
headed for the exact same result on the fiscal cliff. Speaker Boehner
could not get his party to support protecting America from the fiscal
cliff. So, with literally minutes left to spare, and with the House
Republican Conference ready, willing, and about to pitch the country
off the fiscal cliff, Speaker Boehner did what? He ignored the Hastert
rule. He ignored the Hastert rule, and he let the fiscal cliff bill
come to the floor of the House without having the votes on ``our side
first,'' to use the Speaker's language. Two-thirds of House Republicans
actually voted to roll America off the fiscal cliff. Here is the vote
count. Republican ``yes'' votes on the fiscal cliff legislation were
only 85. Republican ``no'' votes on the fiscal cliff legislation were
151. He wasn't even close to making the Hastert rule.
That fiscal cliff bill passed the House 257 to 167 because the
Democrats came out and voted for it, 172 to 16; 172 Democratic ``yes''
votes, 16 Democratic ``no'' votes. Two-thirds of the ``yes'' votes that
put the fiscal cliff bill across and saved America from a 100-percent
tax increase and protected our economy from the fiscal cliff--two-
thirds of those votes came from Democrats. If the Speaker had enforced
the Hastert rule, we would be over the fiscal cliff today.
What happened on Sandy? After nearly 3 months of stalling, while my
State, while the Presiding Officer's State of New York, while the
States of New York and New Jersey, struck by Sandy, were waiting
urgently for the relief that we got to the coast within 11 days, they
stalled and they stalled because they could not get a majority of the
Republican caucus to support Federal relief for our hurricane-ravaged
States. Under the Hastert rule, they
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couldn't get that bill to the floor. So Speaker Boehner once again
decided to forgo the Hastert rule. That is how they got the Sandy
emergency aid bill passed. Look again at the votes. Republican ``yes''
votes for the disaster bill, 49; Republican ``no'' votes for that bill,
179. That bill was dead on arrival under the Hastert rule. The
Republican caucus couldn't support it, wouldn't support it, and we
would be without any help now if they had followed the Hastert rule.
On the Democratic side, what was the vote on the Hurricane Sandy
bill--192 ``yes'' votes to 1 ``no'' vote. The final count was 241 ayes,
180 nays. The bill passed, but about three-quarters of the support came
from Democratic votes.
If the Speaker had imposed the Hastert rule, not only would we be off
the fiscal cliff, but we would have failed at providing disaster relief
for Hurricane Sandy. The only reason these critical pieces of
legislation avoided the fate of the highway bill and of the farm bill
is that the Speaker didn't follow the Hastert rule. He couldn't follow
the Hastert rule because he wouldn't have been able to pass
legislation. If his tea party caucus had forced America off the fiscal
cliff, he knew there would have been hell to pay, so he waived the
Hastert rule.
Now, of course, House Republicans are all in a fuss about having
waived the Hastert rule. One tea party lawmaker admitted that the New
Year's Day tax vote left a lot of his fellow Republicans with a very
bad taste in their mouth. So it is probably back to Hastert rule
business as usual on the House side, with death by tea party to any
major bipartisan Senate legislation.
The tea party over on the House side wanted to vote for extreme
things, such as voting to repeal or defund ObamaCare over 30 times--
over 30 times--or voting to turn Medicare into a voucher program. If it
is extreme enough, then they will vote for it. But those are actions
which are not supported by the American people, and they can't pass the
Senate.
For the regular business of government, for the regular business of
passing Senate bipartisan legislation, the tea party-Hastert rule
combination is deadly.
So back to where I began. If you are concerned about dysfunction in
Congress, if you are wondering why we are less popular than a root
canal, if you are wondering why 77 percent of Americans look at
Congress and think we are actually doing more harm than good, and if
you want an explanation of the dysfunction, take a look at the Hastert
rule. If you look at this problem the way a doctor would look at a
patient, the way an engineer would look at a system, the way a car
mechanic would look at an automobile, and you look for what is broken,
be specific; it is the application by the Speaker of the Hastert rule
that prevents strong, bipartisan Senate legislation from going forward.
When something moves, it is because the Hastert rule has been waived.
So if you want to see what is wrong, that quest takes you straight to
the House of Representatives, and there it leads you straight to the
House Republican conference, and there it leads you to that toxic
combination of the tea party and the Hastert rule.
When you understand the problem, the cure is obvious: The House
should ditch the Hastert rule. Call things up for a vote. Let
everybody's vote count. Don't refuse to proceed unless only your own
party will let you. It is the obvious and only solution. The fiscal
cliff bill and the Sandy bill and the votes on those bills prove it.
With those tea party extremists dominating the House Republican
conference and ready to pitch the country over the fiscal cliff and
leave hurricane victims high and dry, the Speaker had to ditch the
Hastert rule. The only way the House can do bipartisan business on
major issues is to ditch the Hastert rule.
As we saw, the Senate has its problems, but we are actually doing OK,
just as our legislative record shows. Over and over, we pass real,
significant, bipartisan legislation after a real process on the floor
of argument and amendment. As the House's legislative record shows, the
problem is over there. More precisely, the problem is within the House
Republican conference. Still more precisely, again, the problem is that
toxic combination of the tea party and the Hastert rule.
If we want Congress to function effectively, if we want to succeed at
doing the work of the American people, such as the fiscal cliff bill
and the hurricane relief bill, and if we don't want to see more
important legislation, such as highway bills and farm bills, fail in
the House, unable to pass in the House, blocked in the House, the
solution for the problem is clear: We have to ditch the Hastert rule
and let the House as a body work its will, just as the American people
elected it to do.
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