Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) on the Marriage Protection Amendment

From The Congressional Record:

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to add my voice to the rising chorus of people both here in the Senate and back in my home State of Iowa who are fed up with the misplaced priorities of the Republican leadership in this Congress. Our country faces mounting challenges: High energy prices, skyrocketing health care costs, tens of millions of Americans without health insurance, the cost of college tuition going through the roof, individuals with minimum wage jobs going nearly a decade without a raise. So how does the leadership here respond to these challenges? By squandering a week of the Senate's time debating a constitutional marriage amendment that has already been soundly rejected by the Senate and by debating repeal of the estate tax which would benefit only about 3 out of every 1,000 people in America at the most and would add $1 trillion to the deficit in the coming years, so that the superrich can get yet another tax break, a tax break that won't build one additional school, would not provide one new additional job, while working families get absolutely nothing.

Again, the great majority of American people are getting madder and madder about this. All you have to do is look at the polls of Congress. The only thing lower than President Bush's polls is the standing of Congress. You wonder why? Look at what we are debating while all of these issues go by the wayside. What about the real needs and concerns of working Americans and their families.

Let me give one case in point. The majority leader cannot find time to bring H.R. 810 to the floor. It is pending at the desk.

It was passed by a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives--a bill to lift restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Evidently, we don't have time. No time? Well, the majority party found plenty of time this week for these two dubious, devisive measures. But when it comes to the No. 1 research priority of the American people--embryonic stem cell research--the majority leader refuses to bring it to the floor; we don't have the time.

This is outrageous. No wonder the American people say Congress is not doing anything. We are not doing anything to address the real needs of our people.

Two weeks ago, on May 24, we reached the 1-year anniversary of the House passage of H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. This bill is supported by the majority of Senators on a bipartisan basis. It enjoys the support of large majorities in every public opinion poll. Yet we cannot bring it up. Removing the straitjacket on embryonic stem cell research is a matter of life and death for millions of Americans. As the Senate squanders yet another week, people we love are dying from Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease and juvenile diabetes. People are unable to walk due to spinal cord injuries. These Americans are desperate for progress on embryonic stem cell research, which is being blocked by the majority leader's failure to allow H.R. 810 to come to the floor for debate and a vote. No time. Yet we have time to debate this constitutional amendment on marriage, which has been soundly rejected already by the Senate, and which everybody knows will be soundly rejected again, or we will have time to bring up for a vote the repeal of the estate tax, benefiting only the richest of the rich in our country. We have time for that, but we don't have time to bring up a bill to open the doors of medical research that hold such promise for people with incurable diseases. [Emphasis added.]

There are also other urgent priorities being sidetracked. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance. The majority leader says there is no time to debate this. There is no time to consider a measure that would make it possible for small companies to offer employees a health care plan similar to the one we have in Congress. Indeed, we Democrats were prevented from getting an up-or-down vote on this during the so-called Health Care Week last month.

In the Midwest, we have a bill that is very important not only for the Midwest but for the rest of the country, which is the Water Resources Development Act. We have 81 signatures on a letter, Republicans and Democrats, to the majority leader supporting this bill, asking that it be brought up. That is not only more than it takes to break a filibuster, if this was one--and I don't think there is one pending on it or to override a veto--that is more than two-thirds. Yet no action on it. I guess we don't have time.

The majority leader says we have time this week to consider a mammoth tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, but we don't have any time to consider a bill to raise the minimum wage for Americans at the bottom. The minimum wage has been stuck at the low level of $5.15 for more than 9 years. During those 9 years, Members of this Senate have voted seven times to raise their salaries. Yet for those at the bottom, we don't have the time to bring a minimum wage increase bill to the floor of the Senate.

If we can keep this up, the approval of Congress will go into the negatives. At least it is in the positives now. It is maybe 10 or 12 percent. If that happens, it will be the first time in history that it will be in the negatives. I don't blame the American people for having that opinion of Congress.

Last month, we learned that some 26 million Americans--most veterans--had personal information stolen, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers. This puts every one of these veterans in jeopardy of identity theft and fraud. Why are we not this week bringing to the floor the urgently needed Veterans Identity Protection Act? This bill would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide 1 year of credit monitoring to each affected person and one additional free credit report each year for the following 2 years. This bill would make a real difference for millions of veterans. Why is it being ignored? It seems to have bipartisan support. Why is it not being hotlined, as they say around here, for immediate consideration on the floor? We should bring it up this week. We should be debating that today. I guess we don't have time for that.

One other matter. I don't think we have a higher priority right now in terms of our national economy and our national well-being than ending our addiction to foreign oil. Senator Lugar, a Republican, and I have a bill that would dramatically ramp up ethanol and biodiesel production. It would make these home-grown fuels available and usable at the pump and in communities all across the United States. Our national security is at stake. Why isn't this bill being brought to the floor on an expedited basis this week?

The answer, Mr. President, is that we are not addressing the real concerns and priorities of the American people because the majority leader--and I assume his party--are putting their own narrow special interest priorities first. Apparently, it is more important to cater to a narrow vocal base of the Republican Party than to listen to the broad majority of the American people.

It boggles the mind that the Republicans have once again brought the so-called Federal marriage amendment to the floor. It will fail this week for the same reason it failed the last time. It is because deep down inside we all know it is wrong. It is just basically wrong.

Yesterday, the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, said this amendment is "a solution in search of a problem." He is exactly right. For more than two centuries, our States have done an excellent job of making their own laws governing marriage without Federal interference. The last time the Senate debated this amendment, the cloture vote on the motion to proceed garnered only 48 votes--12 votes short of the 60 needed to invoke cloture, and far short of the 67 votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment. You have to have 67 votes. There isn't one person here who thinks they are even close to that. They cannot even get a majority. It is not surprising.

The amendment tramples on the authority of each State to regulate the civil laws of marriage within its borders--authority, by the way, I point out, that the Congress strengthened by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents any State from being forced or required to recognize a same-sex marriage in another State. Wait a
minute. The Congress passed a law saying that we, the Federal Government, cannot require a State to recognize a contractual agreement in another State dealing with same-sex marriage. Well, guess what. No State has been forced to recognize a same-sex marriage or civil union joined in another State.

Yet now the Republicans would have us force upon each State a constitutional amendment that would take away the right of those States to enact their own contractual laws. It seems to me that what is happening is we are going down a road rapidly of more and more power to the President of the United States, less and less power to the Congress and the courts, more and more power to the Federal Government under a President.

The last time I looked, that could have been called something like a monarchy. Come to think of it, that is what we overthrew a couple hundred years ago. Most people tend to forget that when we declared our independence from Great Britain and fought the Revolutionary War and established our Constitution, England had a Parliament. But guess what. The King reigned supreme. It was King George at that time. So we recognized that. We recognized the inherent inability of the Parliament in England to go up against the King. So when we devised our Constitution, that is why we had the separation of powers--the courts, the Congress, and the President, all separate and equal. Then we reserved to the States certain powers not enumerated in the Constitution. One of the powers is the right to set contractual laws. Now this Republican Congress wants to take that away. It is almost like we are going full circle back to the monarchy of Great Britain--a Congress that lays prone before the President--a President that is able to tap your phones, read your e-mails under some guise of a power that, since we are at war, he can do whatever he wants, taking away our civil rights and liberties. What does Congress do? Nothing. We sit back and let it go on. Now we are going to take another step to take away power from the States.

Well, again, this is something that is inherently wrong. It is wrong to take away this power from the States, take away the authority to set up their own contractual framework. As Senator Kennedy said, I think eloquently, a few moments ago, it should be the right of every religion, under the freedom of religion, to decide the sacramental laws of marriage as defined by that religion. But when it comes to the contractual right, the civil right, that is determined by the State. That is why when you go to get married, you do two things--find a minister, a rabbi, a priest, whatever, but then you have to go to the courthouse of your State and get a license. Why? Because you are entering a contractual relationship. That is what this amendment would take away. Again, I would defend to the death the right of a religion to determine its own sacramental laws of what it determines a marriage to be, but also defend the right of a State to set up its own contractual laws within and under the umbrella of equal rights for all and nondiscrimination under the Constitution of the United States.

Senator Kennedy referred to it, and I will refer to it again. It wasn't too long ago where people of different races could not get married in this country. States had laws that said a Black person could not marry a White American, or an Oriental could not marry a Black or a White. You could not marry someone of another race. It is not too long ago in my own lifetime, but that was true.

Discrimination is what it was. The courts struck it down. Would these same Republicans who keep coming here saying the courts should not be interfering in this say the courts should not have interfered there, too; that we should have left those discriminatory laws intact under the Constitution of the United States?

I keep hearing all this stuff about protecting the American family. I submit to my friends on the other side, if they really want to do that, how about raising the minimum wage? [Emphasis added.]

That would do more to protect the American family than anything they are talking about here.

How about addressing the skyrocketing health care costs? How about the high cost of gasoline? If they want to defend the American family, how about giving access to health insurance to 45 million people a day who can't afford it? If they want to defend the American family, how about doing something about the rising cost of college tuition in this country and helping low and moderate families meet those costs of college education? In other words, if Majority Leader Frist and his party want to protect the American family, why don't they deal with the real challenges confronting families instead of wasting the Senate's time on this cynical, trumped-up issue of same-sex marriage ? Why can't we make bipartisan progress on issues such as providing access to health insurance and raising the minimum wage?

I close by making one point very clear: If the Democrats were in charge of the Senate, if we were setting the agenda, we would be charting a different course for our Nation. We would not be wasting the Senate's time on divisive, partisan constitutional amendments which seek to divide our people, pit families one against another, pit Americans one against another by dividing us. We would not be passing yet another mammoth tax cut for the wealthiest in our society called the estate tax, a tax we can't afford for people who don't need it.

If we could set the agenda, we would have the minimum wage issue out here. We would have a health care issue out here. We would have issues out here that provide for families getting a college education for their kids. We would have bills on the floor addressing the addiction to oil and moving us to more energy independence.

Every day it is becoming clearer and clearer to the American people that they face a choice: We can stay the current course--more divisiveness, more deficits, more debt, more drift--or a new direction for our country. If the majority party wants to continue to squander our time and taxpayers' money, as they are doing this week, well, that is their choice. But the American people get to choose, too. The American people are eager to cut out this divisiveness, to move on to the real agenda that confronts our country, to move in a very different direction, and I say it is time to do that.