Source on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word, from the Nations Capital to wherever you are, because the opinion that matters the most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. Work on judicial and executive nominations continues in the senate today. Three vote series are planned on President Bidens nominees, including confirmation of the assistant secretary of state for european and Eurasian Affairs and senators are expected to recess for party launches. Were live on the senate floor on cspan2. The chaplain dr. Barry black will lead the senate in prayer. The chaplain let us pray. Eternal god, rule and reign in our lives. Lord, we are gratefully aware that you are the give of every good and perfect gift. We are further aware of our own unworthiness as our senators labor today, make them extensions of your power in our world. May they arrange their priorities according to your will and view their challenges from an ethical and moral perspective. Help them to walk in your way, that you may prolong their days and prosper their work. Lord, sustain them in moments of stress and tension by renewing their faith in you. We pray in your merciful name. Amen. The presiding officer please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The presiding officer the clerk will read a communication to the senate. The clerk washington d. C. , october 4, 2023. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable john w. Hickenlooper, a senator from the state of colorado, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed patty murray, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. Morning business is closed. Under the previous order, the senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the following nomination which the clerk will report. The clerk nomination, department of state, james c. Obrien of nebraska to be an assistant secretary, european and Eurasian Affairs. Giving us your time. Guest thanks radley kremlin to pose a series of questions i pose and down the line to you. The first one is who is in charge of the house now . So i think reporters and how staff alike were scrambling yesterday to be able to respond to this unprecedented historic voted to get who is in charge of the house. Patrick mchenry of North Carolina was named speaker pro tem immediately after mccarthy was removed from the speakership here we were all wondering what powers does he have . How long can he served . That kind of what we look at right there. Host what exactly is his role Going Forward . Guest its very, because this is unprecedented it is very unclear how much power, how long he stay in office. But as of right net seems he has come to his house rules called the appropriate and necessary powers to be able to continue during this interim period until the House Republican leadership decide to the want to nominate for the next speaker. Host so hes in charge of shepherding the process. To this point do we know what manes had emerge as next speaker and how interested all those people in the job . Guest there is a few people have propped up and they were kind of always in the background if you paid attention in january. They are very similar names and no one is going to be a huge surprise to anybody. Steve scalise whose majority leader, tom emmer who is the whip, and some other folks like jim jordan, chairman House Judiciary Committee and kevin heron, the chair of the republican study committee. Is ananda came up in january are now being taken and a much more serious consideration. Host the house conference met yesterday before deciding to adjourn to next week. Do we know the major discussions and if anything emerged from that . Guest mostly it was the Kevin Mccarthy to say that this is his last time and he isnt going to be running for speaker again. There was an opportunity for many people to take that seriously hurt after the vote many people are planning on the nominating him and voting for him again and again until he went back to speakership. He is the only person who is been able to gain the majority of the republican conference is vote procedure. Now they have to start from square one. So it was an opportunity for the folks who wanted or interested in to raise their hands and for them to plan the candidate for them next week. Host we saw several other support matt gaetz and yesterdays effort but what do House Republicans come whats of the sentiment of House Republicans overall towards matt gaetz today . Guest i think we all woke up monday not knowing how this week would go but after last night i many, many republicans and especially moderates who believe that matt gaetz is not a representative of the conservative party. You would mccarthy said several times last night, that is not a conservative, that he is voted against conservative ideals so he is under ethics review. There is this sense for many moderates and maybe more than moderates that they do want to expel him or punish him in some way for what he puts into last night. Host is that a reality or is this come to believe it is just talk . Guest i think at this point it is just talk. With the taking timeline of the government funding dilemma that they are facing and also now they have to nominate a new speaker and move on in this post mccarthy era. I dont think punishing matt gaetz is the number one priority for everyone right now, but it is something for us to keep an eye on. Host lets fastforward to next week. What is expected when they come back . Do republicans expect this to be a drawnout process for a quick process of choosing the next speaker . Guest its a bit unclear. In the because no one including any of the names that i mentioned before has the kind of support that mccarthy had in january, right . We all talk about how took him 15 rounds but in every single one of those 15 rounds he had 90 of the Republican Caucus backing him. It is unclear whether any of those candidates even someone like Steve Scalise has that kind of support. I also should mention that Steve Scalise is undergoing some intense Health Issues right now and that is something that many republicans are concerned about, about his ability to do the job. And then theres the fundraising aspect, right . Mccarthy fundraiser for all of these guys and he mentioned it last night he was a reason many of the people the photo to oust him even came into office. These are all huge factors that the conference as a whole has to have, has to debate and has to see through the candidate form on tuesday was the best person to lead them forward. Host at the time the when negotiations about Appropriations Bills taking place. Theres the pending government deadline, lobstering supper set for capitol hill including those impeachment inquiry hearings. To all this, to stop until speaker is chosen . Guest so that is, according to house rules, in january when congress starts, how to set works. You cannot move forward with any legislative business until you have speaker of the house. The way this is now tricky most of us are trying to figure out what happens is everyone has been sworn in, congress has bn in office for eight months, and so what they can continue on with their hearings, continue on with any impeachment investigation will be halted but he do bleed in order to have any sort of floor business theyre going to want to have speaker in the dais before the move forward. Host Farnoush Amiri reports for the Associated Press covering congress. You can see her work at ap news. Com. Thanks for giving us the latest concerning yesterdays events. Guest thanks for having me. Test mr. Schumer mr. President. The presiding officer le majority leader. Mr. Schumer i ask unanimous consent that no, okay. Mr. President , today, the United States senate will close in observance of the memorial of our late friend and colleague, senator Dianne Feinstein. It will be my honor, a sad, tearful, but great honor to speak tomorrow at my friend, diannes memorial. I thank all my colleagues who will be in attendance. I know it would mean the world to her for her colleagues to join in this last one goodbye. Ill have more to say tomorrow, but over the past few days ive been coming back to the same thought again and again Dianne Feinstein was a Public Servant of uncommon integrity. Many of us here try our best to pursue the common good, but dianne was on another level. When she thought something was right, when she had a cause she believed in, she pursued it until the end, until her cause endured. I got to see it for myself when she championed the assault weapons ban. The nra launched horrible, vitriolic, arguably chauvinistic attacks. She remained undeterred, knew her cause was just, and persisted. In the end, her cause won the day. It will be a long time until the senate sees someone as consequential as doo dye as consequential as Dianne Feinstein again. On a different note, across the way, yesterday, a small band of maga extremists plunged congress into pandemonium. For the first time in american history, a speaker of the house of representatives has been removed from his position, at the hands of radicals that he empowered from day one. What happened yesterday is a failure entirely of the House Republicans own doing. A disaster in the making, to the great detriment of congress and to the detriment of the American People. Speaker boehner, speaker ryan, and now Speaker Mccarthy have all learned the same hard lesson you cannot allow the hard right to run the house or the country, and all three of them were chased out by the maga right. You cannot allow a small band of maga extremists, which represent just a very small percentage of the views of the country, to tell the overwhelming majority of americans what to do. But republican problems with maga extremism seep far deeper than any single leader. Maga extremism is a poison that the house gop has refused to confront for years, and until the mainstream House Republicans deal with this issue the chaos will continue. I thought House Republicans would have finally realized the dangers of maga extremism after what happened last fall, but year after year they end up making the same mistake, and it always leads to disaster. By now, i hope its obvious, maga extremism isnt good for the House Republican leadership, it is not good for the gop, it is not good for congress, and maga extremism is disastrous for the country. If maga republicans had their way, theyd take our countries back all the way to the 19th century. Theyd turn the clock back radically on womens choice, on voting rights, on workplace protections, on education, on corporate greed, on the environment. They would disfigure our precious democracy, all for a handful of greedy, very wealthy people who just want to not have anything to do with the rest of us. The maga agenda is a dark and dangerous vision of america, one most people overwhelmingly reject. Even so, they are the ones running the show right now in the house gop. We find ourselves in a dangerous situation, with about 40 days to go before the government shuts down, the house has ground completely to a halt. Until republicans stop their infighting, the house can vote on no bills, no appropriations work can get done. If, god forbid, some National Crisis were to occur that demands immediate action, the house would be unable unable to quickly respond. So let me say this to the next speaker of the house, whomever that may be think carefully about what happened to your predecessors before trying to coddle the hard right. Each of your predecessors got burnt each time. I urge the next speaker not to make the same mistake, not just for their own future but for the countrys. Whoever the house elects as speaker will not be able to ignore the realities of divided government, no matter what the hard right demands. The need for bipartisanship will not change. Well need bipartisanship to keep the government open. We will need it to finish the appropriations process. We will need it to make life better for the American People. For the good of the country, i urge my republican colleagues in the house to, once and for all, accept that reality. If not, it is my fear, deep fear, that the chaos from yesterday is just the beginning. Now, on our codel to china, mr. President , next week i will lead a bipartisan delegation of senators on a visit to china, japan, and korea. This will be my second time leading a congressional delegation as majority leader, after our first visit, which went to india, pakistan, israel, and germany. Let me first thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for joining me on this visit senator crapo, the Ranking Member of the finance committee, senators cassidy, hassan, kennedy, and ossoff. Bipartisan is our watch word in the senate, and you can see that this delegation is no exception. Three democrats, three republicans. Our trip will be a visit to the most consequential region in the world, focusing on the issues of economic competition and security, on American National security and on Global Leadership and advanced technology. Unlike recent delegations to china, im proud that we will go as elected representatives of the American People, underscoring how serious congress is about maintaining americas Global Leadership in the 21st century. Well meet with government and Business Leaders from each country, with american ambassadors and diplomats, with American Companies to hear from them what they need best to succeed in asia. Our message to china will be clear but fair the Chinese Government must work with us to ensure a level police playing field, so u. S. Workers and businesses have the opportunity to compete fairly in decades to come. Well focus on the need for reciprocity in china for u. S. Businesses and well focus on advancing americas National Security interests and leadership in critical technologies. I also look forward to having a direct, candid, and respectful conversation with chinese leadership on the need to combat the distribution of fentanyl, on chinas human rights record, Regional Security and stability and the need for cooperation where possible. I thank all my colleagues for joining me on this bipartisan delegation to asia, and i look forward to a constructive trip where we can Work Together to advance americas interests and leadership on the world stage. I yield the floor. I note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. The clerk ms. Baldwin. Quorum call quorum call the joining us to talk about that and other issues related to the function of government representative ami bera democrat from california member of Foreign Affairs committee serves the sixth district. Thanks for joining us. Guest thanks for having me come at how did you vote yesterday concerning speak mccarthy and why . Guest i voted with all the other democrats. Frankly yesterday was a sad day. Weve never been in this place in our nations history vacating the speakership and that we dont have a speaker of the house. At the end of the it was up to speak mccarthy to come to democrats to say hey, im goig to need some help. In his own words he said he was going to work with democrats. I dont know what to say. Host it shouldve couldve would have an speculative event but what could it said to democrats to maybe gain some support . Guest i think you saw what happened saturday to avoid a Government Shutdown when democrats and republicans came together, where the speaker put a bill on the floor that we could all support. I honestly thought after saturdays vote to avert the shutdown the speaker would reach out because all of us expected matt gaetz to bring this motion to vacate. Also suspected he didnt have enough support in his own caucus. I wouldve expected he would reach out to leader Hakeem Jeffries on our side and say hey, whats the deal we can get to keep government moving forward, to keep the house with a speaker . My understanding is while they did talk and communicate, the speaker never asked for support, mr. Mcconnell i begin today with a few words about my house counterpart, speaker Kevin Mccarthy. Shepherding an institution like the house of representatives, every bit as stubborn and diverse as the nation it represents, is a tall order. Getting a slim majority pointed in the same direction at any one time can seem like nothing short of a miracle. Ive said before that, in reference to my own position, that being leader of your party in the senate is much like being a groundskeeper at a cemetery. Everybody is under you, but no one is listening. Of course, i doubt that Kevin Mccarthy has ever seen himself as above anyone else not the son of a firefighter, not the grandson of immigrants. He stood up his own Small Business and worked his way through school. From the