[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 196 (Wednesday, November 18, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7050-S7052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Cloture Motion
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair
lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will
state.
The legislative clerk read as follows
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination
of Stephen A. Vaden, of Tennessee, to be a Judge of the
United States Court of International Trade.
Mitch McConnell, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Thom Tillis, John
Thune, Mike Crapo, Mike Rounds, Steve Daines, Kevin
Cramer, Richard Burr, John Cornyn, Shelley Moore
Capito, Todd Young, John Boozman, David Perdue, James
E. Risch, Lindsey Graham, Roger F. Wicker.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. By unanimous consent, the mandatory
quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
nomination of Stephen A. Vaden, of Tennessee, to be a Judge of the
United States Court of International Trade, shall be brought to a
close?
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The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Colorado (Mr.
Gardner), the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Grassley), and the Senator from
Florida (Mr. Scott).
Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr.
Alexander) would have voted ``yea,'' the Senator from Iowa (Mr.
Grassley) would have voted ``yea,'' and the Senator from Florida (Mr.
Scott) would have voted ''yea.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs.
Feinstein), the Senator from California (Ms. Harris), and the Senator
from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote or change their vote?
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 49, nays 44, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 236 Ex.]
YEAS--49
Barrasso
Blackburn
Blunt
Boozman
Braun
Burr
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Hawley
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Inhofe
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Loeffler
McConnell
McSally
Moran
Murkowski
Paul
Perdue
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Romney
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott (SC)
Shelby
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Wicker
Young
NAYS--44
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hirono
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Leahy
Manchin
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Udall
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--7
Alexander
Feinstein
Gardner
Grassley
Harris
Sanders
Scott (FL
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 49, the nays are
44.
The motion is agreed to.
The Senator from Wyoming.
2020 Elections
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about what
the voters of America told the elected representatives in Washington
about the election earlier this month. There has been a lot of analysis
about what happened this year in the elections--who got what right, who
got what wrong. The pollsters, the prognosticators, and the pundits--
well, they are already taking a beating for their many wrong
predictions.
The American people in States all across this country and, certainly,
in Wyoming, rejected this far-left agenda. They saw what the Democrats
were offering, and they said: No, thank you. Voters looked at the
violent leftwing protests that have wrecked large cities and small
cities across the country. People saw the death, injuries, and
destruction of property, and Americans went to the polls and said: No,
thank you. They rejected the Democrats' calls to defund the police;
rebuffed the Democrats' threats to pack the Supreme Court; and said no
to one-size-fits-all, government-run healthcare. They snubbed the
Democrats' embrace of the Green New Deal and rejected this far-left
plan to end American energy production. Basically, Americans said no.
Many Democrats ran on this far-left agenda. They lost despite
spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convince Americans
otherwise. The Democrats must be asking themselves: What did we get
wrong?
No matter how much the Democrat Party pushes and their candidates
push, America is not a far-left country. Americans don't want to blow
up the Senate or the Supreme Court. They don't want to add more States
to the Union or more Justices to the Court. They don't want to kill our
energy economy and the good jobs it provides. People do not want to pay
$10 a gallon for gasoline when they fill up under the Green New Deal.
They don't want more government meddling in their personal healthcare
decisions.
I know what the people of Wyoming want, and Members ought to know
this. Americans want jobs and security. They want to get back to work
in a free enterprise economy, not a socialist one. They want their kids
back in school safely to make sure they don't fall further behind.
People are smart enough to know that the free stuff for everyone means
the American taxpayer will be left footing the bill.
Between now and the end of the year, we have very important things to
do for the Nation in this body, the U.S. Senate. We need to fund the
government. We need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. We
need to confirm well-qualified nominees to the Federal judiciary.
Senate Republicans are ready to get that work done. There is also work
to be done in our fight against the coronavirus.
The Democrat House has played politics with American lives and
livelihoods for months now. With the election behind us, I hope it will
take a more sensible approach to this Nation's most pressing problem
right now. For months, Senate Republicans put forward targeted
proposals--first in September, again in October--that provided
comprehensive coronavirus relief, that focused on the coronavirus.
There were 52 Republicans who came to the floor of this Senate and
voted in favor of the proposal. Not a single Democrat voted for it. It
is our plan to get people back to work, to get kids back to school
safely, and to put the disease behind us.
Just last week, Pfizer announced a vaccine that could be 90 percent
effective in the fight against the coronavirus. This morning, it found
out, with more testing and more time, that it will be, actually, 94\1/
2\ percent effective. Now Moderna and the National Institutes of Health
have developed a vaccine that is almost 95 percent effective. There are
four other vaccines in the trials, and one of the Members of this body,
the Senator from Ohio, is part of the trial of one of those. I believe
additional vaccines will be coming down the pipeline as well.
It was a front-page story yesterday in every major paper in America--
the good news about vaccines and that the light at the end of the
tunnel of the coronavirus is upon us.
Today there was an announcement of an at-home test for coronavirus--
very, very promising.
But when we think about the vaccine and why this all happened,
Congress wisely invested $18 billion for vaccine treatment and for
research, and it is paying off.
The Governor of New York, astonishingly, called this bad news. He
said this is bad news. It had to do with the fact that this is coming
out now, and he wanted it to wait for a couple of months, after a
Presidential inauguration.
Why is it bad news that, through innovation and the work of the Cures
Act, which came out of this body under the Republican majority and was
then accepted by unanimous consent in the House--why is it bad news
that we may be able to save millions, if not tens of millions, of lives
all around the world? Why is it bad news, as the Governor of New York
calls it? Why is it bad news that American invention and innovation and
an investment by this body has brought about such a tremendous--what I
would call as a doctor--modern medical miracle?
Now, we still need to provide additional funding for vaccine
distribution, and there is going to be a briefing tomorrow for all the
Senators on both sides of the aisle with Operation Warp Speed to talk
with the heads of research and distribution about how to make sure we
can continue on this path to success--a path that the New York Times
yesterday described as one that could lead to 20 million people being
vaccinated before the end of this year. Bad news, says the Governor of
New York, because it came this year rather than after January 20.
It is distressing that an elected official would behave that way, in
such a callous manner toward the lives, as well as the livelihood, of
so many Americans.
We still have work to do. At every turn, Democrats have blocked our
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path. They are keeping us stuck and America stuck in this coronavirus
crisis by demanding funding for things unrelated to coronavirus, per
the Speaker of the House. You say: Oh, no, she wanted this $3 trillion
for all sorts of things unrelated to coronavirus. She has more money in
that bill to send direct paychecks to illegal immigrants--people in
this country illegally--than she does for coronavirus vaccines.
That is the kind of opposition and leftist thinking that we have been
running into here in this body and that the American people rejected on
election day and said: No, we want a path forward. We want to continue
the great American comeback. We want our jobs. We want our kids. We
want that path forward.
There is still more work to be done, and we are ready to do it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from Oregon.