'Not Serious Legislating': John Cornyn Rips Chuck Schumer For Bringing 'Show Votes' To Floor

4 months ago

During Senate floor remarks on Wednesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) slammed Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) legislative priorities.

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Transcript

00:00Yesterday the Senate notched a major bipartisan victory by processing a

00:05package of bills to keep kids safe online. Members of both sides of the aisle

00:11celebrated the return to good old-fashioned legislating, but

00:16unfortunately that was short-lived. We know the majority leader has teed up

00:23another yet designed-to-fail vote tomorrow before gaveling out for the

00:29month of August. In other words, we have maybe two days or maybe one day at the

00:35most that will actually be in session until September sometime. And then we're

00:42only scheduled to be in session about three weeks out of that month, out all of

00:46October. So even though we have almost a hundred days to the election, we have

00:50just a handful of days which the majority leader has scheduled us to be

00:55in session. Why he would decide after six months to put a tax bill on the

01:02floor knowing we would be leaving the next day is beyond me. It does not strike

01:09me as a serious effort to legislate. In addition, as the presiding officer knows,

01:15the House Ways and Means Committee had a chance to weigh in on this. The Senate

01:19Finance Committee, on which we both serve, has not had an opportunity to even

01:24shape this piece of legislation at all. The chairman of the Finance Committee's

01:31declined to have a markup of the bill in the Finance Committee, which I think

01:36would have enhanced the chances that we ultimately would get a bill approved by

01:42both chambers and on the president's desk. But these designed-to-fail votes are

01:49show votes, as you might call them, have become a familiar exercise in the

01:53chamber. In the last few months, the majority leader has scheduled show votes

01:57on bills that were guaranteed to fail, but maybe provided a talking point or

02:02two on the campaign trail. The Senate has held show votes, and by that I mean votes

02:09that are not designed to pass legislation that has not been processed

02:14through the committees to try to build consensus to see if we can get a

02:20majority or supermajority of the Senate behind them. The majority leader has

02:25scheduled these show votes on bills relating to the border, to contraception,

02:31to abortion, to in vitro fertilization, and now tax policy. All designed-to-fail

02:40show votes, not serious legislating. At the beginning of this year, the House

02:47passed the bill I referred to a moment ago that made significant changes to the

02:52America's tax system. It was negotiated by the chairman of the Senate Finance

02:58Committee, our Democratic colleague Ron Wyden, and the head of the House Ways and

03:04Means Committee, Jason Smith, a Republican. They released a framework of this

03:09agreement in mid-January. The Ways and Means Committee immediately scheduled

03:13hearings and a markup, and by the end of the January, this bill was passed, and

03:19passed with broad bipartisan support, admittedly. Given the partisanship that

03:26often grips Congress, advancing a bipartisan tax bill is no small feat, but

03:31they only got it half of the way there. They cleared the House, but we are the

03:38Senate, and we have our ability, and frankly the need, if you're going to

03:44build bipartisan consensus, to be able to shape that legislation here in this body,

03:49starting on the Finance Committee. The Senate is not a rubber stamp. It was

03:57never intended to be, and it isn't today. Members of both chambers have a

04:04responsibility to evaluate and shape legislation before it goes to the

04:09president's desk, but you don't put a major tax bill on the floor after

04:13waiting six months, the day before we're supposed to break for August, and with

04:20very little time left before now and the election, between now and the election.

04:26Republicans and Democrats alike would like to see some changes to this bill,

04:30but of course, if we were to get on the bill, I'm confident the majority leader,

04:35because there isn't much time, would simply prohibit any real debate and

04:41amendment process, and then try to jam this bill through the Senate. There are

04:47a number of things I would like to see addressed in the bill. I voiced my

04:52concerns about the watered-down work requirement for the child tax credit,

04:56which would allow parents with zero earnings for a year to be eligible for a

05:02refundable tax credit. In other words, able-bodied individuals should be

05:10working and contributing to the welfare of their family, and should not receive

05:14means-tested benefits, when in fact, the reason why they have no income is

05:19because they chose not to work. We cannot provide monetary incentives for

05:26able-bodied workers to stay out of the job market. Some of our Democratic

05:32colleagues have announced their opposition to this bill because of the

05:35pro-jobs tax reforms, but the bottom line is this. Members of both sides of the

05:41aisle oppose this bill for various reasons, and there's one easy way to

05:47address those concerns. Move the bill through the committee process, where we

05:54can shape the bill in both chambers, and then bring it to the floor and allow for

06:00debate and an open amendment process. We know how to do this. That's the way the

06:06Senate should operate, and it's the way it used to operate. The Wyden Smith

06:11tax bill passed the House in late January, so why did the Majority Leader

06:15wait until August 1st to bring the bill to the floor, knowing we would be

06:22breaking for the rest of the summer the next day? Right after the House passed

06:29this legislation, I asked Senator Wyden, the chairman of the Finance Committee, to

06:33schedule a markup, but he refused. He showed no interest in giving senators a

06:40voice in this legislation. Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I

06:45didn't come to the Senate to be a spectator while this legislation moved

06:51across the Senate floor. I expect to represent the 30 million people that I

06:56have the honor of representing on each and every piece of legislation that

07:00comes across the floor of the Senate or through the committees of jurisdiction.

07:06At any time in the last six months, the chairman of the Finance Committee could

07:11have scheduled a Finance Committee markup to allow members to try to

07:17improve the bill, but he simply refused. And the Majority Leader could have made

07:22this a priority for floor consideration by scheduling a vote in February or

07:28March or maybe April or maybe May or June, but he didn't. When did he schedule

07:36the vote? For tomorrow, August the 1st. He knows that's not adequate time for us to

07:44do what we would need to do in order to represent our constituents in the way

07:49that they have come to expect in the way they deserve. He could have carved out a

07:55little bit of floor time that otherwise has been used to vote on on some of the

08:02nominations, but he didn't. Over and over again, he's refused to move this

08:08legislation through the regular order of the Senate and then sat on the bill

08:14intentionally for six months and waited into the final hour before a five-week

08:18recess to bring it to the floor. That's why we call this a show vote. It's not

08:24for real, but in light of the run-up to the election, this will be, I assume, a

08:30campaign talking point that Democrats will try to use to bludgeon their

08:35Republican opponents. In case there's any confusion, the rushed vote on the

08:43Wyden-Smith tax bill was, is not an honest attempt to pass legislation. Well,

08:51all this boils down to the fact that Democrats are offering two options on a

08:57bill that's not even been the subject of a hearing or markup here in the Senate.

09:02Take it or leave it. Those are the options that were presented. I, Madam

09:11President, will vote to leave it. Leave it to next year when we know, as President

09:17Biden has said, he wants all of these tax provisions that expire next year to

09:22expire, which will be a three trillion dollar tax increase on the American

09:27people. 62% of taxpayers will see a tax increase. So we will revisit all of these

09:33matters next year, and we believe we can come up with a better product, one which

09:40will better serve American families and better help jumpstart our economy once

09:47again. Given the fact that the Senate needs to complete things like paying the

09:53bills, appropriations, the defense authorization bill, the farm bill, all of

09:59which need to be done before the end of this year, I don't see any window for

10:05wide-ranging debate on this topic, and it doesn't deserve a short shrift. So I

10:11hope we will next year revisit this topic, and I can guarantee that we will

10:17have the kind of debate I'm talking about if Senator Crapo becomes the

10:21chairman of the Finance Committee, and we have a new majority come January.

10:26Madam President, I yield the floor.

'Not Serious Legislating': John Cornyn Rips Chuck Schumer For Bringing 'Show Votes' To Floor

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