United States Senate history, we pause to acknowledge that you are our light and salvation. You are the strength of our lives, enabling us to move confidently toward the future. Empower our lawmakers who are coming and going, sustaining them in all of their tomorrows. Bless also the many other laborers who will be leaving us, who faithfully served without fanfare. Lord, reward their fidelity with heavens commendation. As our senators seek to respond to the voices of the American People, may they make it their top priority to listen to your whisper. May pleasing you be their greatest desire. Let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray in your sovereign name. Amen. The president pro tempore 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 majority leader. Mr. Reid i now move to proceed to calendar number 467, marketplace fairness act. The president pro tempore the clerk will report. The clerk motion to proceed, s. 2609, a bill to restore state sovereign rights to enforce state and local sales and use taxes, and for other purposes. Mr. Reid mr. President , following my remarks and those of the republican leader, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 5 30 this evening. During that time, senators will be permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. At 5 30, the senate will vote cloture on nominations of moss and on martin may. One is from the district of columbia. The other is from the state of georgia. Mr. President , i have always believed it wise to follow will rogers admonition. Dont let yesterday use up too much of today. We have a lot of work to do and no time to linger on the past. With just a few weeks left in this congress, the 113th, there are a number of important legislative matters before this body that must be finished. I congratulate the republican leader who will soon become the new majority leader. The senior senator from kentucky and i have known one another for a very long period of time. We have been whips together. We have been he was minority leader, i was minority leader, majority leader, going back and forth, so we understand these jobs. I appreciate his devotion to the state of kentucky. To our country, to the united States Senate. He knows i hold him in the highest regard. I am ready, mr. President , to work with him in good faith to make this institution function again for the American People. I saw firsthand destruction wasg to our system. I have no desire to engage in that manner. I have been, as i have mentioned before, i mention again, minority leader. I have been able to strike compromise with my republican colleagues and im ready to do it again. Regardless of how you may interpret last weeks election results, its clear that the American People want us to join together to get things done for the middle class and all americans. We should be able to do that. After all, helping working families is not a partisan issue. Just last week, we saw four very red states alaska, arkansas, nebraska and south dakota, vote to increase their minimum wages. Clearly, mr. President , republicans outside this building dont object to giving American Workers a livable wage. The minimum wage is just one example. There are other issues like Student Debt Relief for borrowers, pay equity for women and a number of other issues that need to be addressed as well. There is absolutely no reason why we cant Work Together on these issues, all issues, democrats and republicans to lend americans a helping hand that they so desperately need. Although the desks in this Great Chamber may move around and change, our duty to help working American Families never will. Senate democrats are ready to work in the good faith of their republican counterparts, whether it is today, tomorrow, january, or whenever it is to help the middle class and when we do that, we help all of our citizenry. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President . The president pro tempore the republican leader. Mr. Mcconnell last week, the American People sent a strong message to washington. They voted for a new direction. They called for a change in the way we do things here in the senate. And they sent a new team to washington to carry their wishes forward. We plan to do just that. But several items remain for the Outgoing Congress to consider, and thats our immediate focus. In the weeks that remain in this congress, we should work to accomplish the essential task of funding the government and preventing retroactive tax increases. We must address the expiring authority that passed this session from the department of defense to train and equip a moderate vetted Syrian Opposition and we must continue to enforce the efforts to address the ebola crisis. All of this will require cooperation from both sides of the aisle, from both sides of the rotunda and from both ends of pennsylvania avenue. The actions of the next few weeks could help set a positive tone for the work of the next congress. Its a tone that will depend largely on the administrations willingness to respect a message sent last tuesday. Thats one of the things we discussed at the white house on friday. It was a productive meeting. There were a lot of a lot of of that both parties can accomplish together over the next couple of years. I hope that happens. In fact, im optimistic. But working together requires trust. I think president obama has the duty to help build the trust we all need to move forward together, not to double down on the old ways of doing business. Thats why i think moving forward with the unilateral action on immigration he has planned would be a big mistake. As was last nights announcement to essentially give china a free pass on emissions while hurting middleclass families and struggling miners here in our country. Last week, the American People said they would like to see more cooperation in washington. He said he thinks all of us have responsibility and himself in particular to try and make that happen. That is the kind of tone the American People are looking for. Now its on folks here in washington to calibrate their actions accordingly, so lets not do things to hurt the possibility of a cooperative partnership, but step back and focus on what could be accomplished together. Lets listen to the American People. Mr. Cornyn mr. President . The presiding officer the assistant republican leader. Mr. Cornyn mr. President , what happened on november 4 was the beginning of an opportunity, an opportunity we have working together to restore faith in our democratic institutions, to restore strong growth to our economy and to restore a sense of purpose and principle to u. S. Foreign policy. Starting with the incoming majority leader, my good friend, the senior senator from kentucky, republicans have been entrusted by our fellow citizens to lead this chamber next year. We understand that the American People sent a strong message on november 4 that they were enormously frustrated by what they saw as dysfunction in the state of affairs here in washington, d. C. , and we understand why they are eager for new leadership and a new direction. My party, the republican party, approaches this opportunity with humility and above all a cleareyed commitment to address the Top Priorities of the American People, and of course those priorities start with jobs and the economy. I know the Unemployment Rate has continued to tick down little by little, but its really fairly misleading when you consider the fact that were stuck for the 36 h year low in the Labor Participation rate. The percentage of people who are actually looking for work. Indeed, there are still more than seven Million People looking for fulltime work and working currently in parttime jobs. And we know that many people have just simply become so discouraged that they have given up and they have quit looking, and thats a tragedy. And then there is this problem. Americas Median Household Income is no higher in 2013 than it was nearly a quarter of a century ago in 1989. Thats been a silent tragedy, one that has been sustained by the middleclass in america thats seen no growth in their median household thk for about a quarter century. The Median Income was lower last year than it was the year president reagan left the wows. Thats simply astonishing. It has prushed the middle class. Addressing that should be one of our highest priorities in the new Congress Starting in january. Since 2011, our colleagues in the United States house of representatives have been passing legislation that they feel would boost job creation and increase wages. In the 113th congress alone, they have passed dozens of jobs bills. Unfortunately, as we know, those have not been taken up by the majority leader in the senate, and they have been effectively declared dead on arrival. And then we also know that this strategy of blocking amendments on pending legislation lest vulnerable incumbents be forced to cast tough votes has really backfired because many of our colleagues in the majority have not been able to point to a legislative record of effectiveness for their own constituents because of this flawed strategy of blocking the senate from considering amendments and voting on them. Its one thing to be in the minority and have have the amendments or suggestions that i am offering added, but its harder to explain to your own constituents if youre in the majority and youre being blocked out, too. So i hope were done with that. I know the incoming majority leader, senator mcconnell, believes strongly in returning the senate to its traditions as the worlds greatest deliberative body where anyone, regardless of who they are, which Political Party they are affiliated, can come to the senate floor and offer constructive suggestions and get a vote. Thats what we do. At least thats what we used to do, and thats what we can do again. And that doesnt mean just the Majority Party gets votes on their amendments. That means the Minority Party will get votes on your amendments. Hopefully slowly but surely we can begin to rebuild not only trust and confidence within ourselves and this institution but regain the lost trust of the American People by showing that we can effectively solve problems on a bipartisan basis to the challenges they face as members of the hardworking middle class. And then there is the basic job of governing. We will pass a budget next year, something our friends across the aisle have failed to do since 2009. Now, heres something that i dont think anybody will excuse or defend. How in the world can it be that when every small and Large Business in america has to pass a budget, when families have to have a budget so they can determine their priorities and how they can most effectively utilize their income, that they have to pass a budget but the United States congress does not . Thats frankly malpractice, in my view, and its got to end and it will end next year. Now, i know republicans and democrats will continue from have policy disagreements. Nobody is suggesting thats not going to happen but this is the place where those get debated, where they get voted on and judge majorities will pass legislation and send them to president obama. And those will be largely if not almost entirely bipartisan majorities. Of course, by definition. We know democrats by and large continue to support the Affordable Care act and republicans continue to believe that it was a mistake and should be replaced with patientcentered alternatives but we dont have to choose between complete paralysis and actually functioning. Dysfunction is not the only choice we have, and now that thats been rejected by the voters, resoundingly, we know a change is in order. The American People have demanded it and they deserve it. And and they will get it. So last weeks elections wont change some of the fundamental policy differences that we have between Political Parties on obamacare, on what we need to do to preserve and protect Social Security and medicare and the like, and it wont change peoples points of view on other hotbutton issues but it will give us a chance to make some steady incremental progress on issues where we do agree. You know, when i came to the senate teddy kennedy, the liberal lion from massachusetts had been here about 40 years and he was working on the health, education, labor and Pensions Committee with mike enzi, a conservative republican from wyoming. One day i went up to mike enzi and said how is it that you and senator kennedy with such diametrically opposing views of what the congress ought to do and how to solve these problems can work productively together . Senator enzi told me its easy. Its the 8020 rule. He said the 80 we cant agree can agree on, we do. The 20 we cant, we dont. We put off for another day. Strikes me as imminently eminently practical and a way for us to get back to work again. Now, when i talk about the easy stuff that we can do, im referring to the bipartisan majorities that support things like the keystone x. L. Pipeline authorization, increasing natural gas supports because it changes the geopolitics of the world where people like Vladimir Putin cant put a boot heel on the gas supply to europe or ukraine and use that for his own purposes. And then im confident that we can find commonsense safeguards from an overreaching federal bureaucracy. We can agree on things like improving Work Force Training programs and do things that make it much easier to launch new infrastructure and construction projects. We can do things like we should have done last year or this year like reforming our broken patent system to discourage abusive and costly lit nation. We actually had a bipartisan bill in the Judiciary Committee but it didnt come to the floor because the majority leader wouldnt bring it up because one of his constituents simply objected to it. No one should have a trump card when it comes to good, Bipartisan Legislation and they wont. Next year. We will votevote on patent reform vote on patent reform. There are things like mitigating some of the burdens of obamacare like restoring the 40hour workweek and repealing the medical device tax which has strong bipartisan basis for bipartisan support for revealing that tax which has driven medical Device Manufacturers and their jobs overseas. I have constituents, for example, in dallas in that business and they say theyre building their business in costa rica because of the impact of this medical device tax. And its negative impact on medical innovation and job creation here. And then i do know theres bipartisan support for abolishing the independent payment Advisory Board under medicare, this is 15 bureaucrats who basically get to guide decide who gets medical care and who does not with no real appeal or recourse. In the Judiciary Committee that i serve on weve had very impressive bipartisan support for things like Prison Reform and even sentencing reform. Those are important issues of substance that the united States Senate ought to be discussing, debating, and voting on and trying to find ways we can Work Together to achieve solutions. So each of the things that ive mentioned have bipartisan support. And if we can pass these measures with strong support on both sides of the aisle, and send them to the president for his signature, it will be much easier to establish the trust and cooperation necessary to do the harder stuff. So starting with the easy stuff that weve already identified that has bipartisan support, demonstrating we can actually do that, then i think we will have the confidence in ourselves and the American People will have the confidence in us and their government to begin to tackle some of the more challenging issues. Senator mcconnell, the republican leader, mentioned this but it bears repeating, that the president is still threatening to go around congress and use an executive order to implement a new, radical change in our federal governments immigration policy and i think its a terrible mistake. At this same luncheon the senator from kentucky mentioned, a number of us went down the line and said mr. President , please dont do this. Because if you do, it will make it even harder for us to take a stepbystep approach to Immigration Reform that enjoys bipartisan support. It will poison the well. Not to mention the fact that what the president is proposing to do is unlawful and it will also make it harder for us to do the other things that ive mentioned already that have bipartisan support. It will poison the well. Why in the world would the president want to do that at the start of a new congress in the last two years of his term in office . Dont you think he would want to have some legacy that he could point to, those last two years, saying,