Kennedy on midterm elections: We need to put down our juices boxes & listen to the American people

Let me say a word about the elections and where we go from here. Our midterm elections are pretty much over. We're still counting votes in some places, in particular Mississippi and Alaska. Republicans lost. Democrats won. The American people have decided. This was not a normal midterm election. If you have concluded otherwise, congratulations, you're stupid. If you go back 50 years or so, it's fairly normal for the party opposing the party of the president in power to lose votes in Congress, even to lose the Congress, to lose one or both houses of Congress. That's fairly common. Two exceptions, 1998 and I think 2002. So to the extent that the Republicans have lost control of Congress, historically, that's not abnormal. It was the size of the loss. Normally, there's about a seven-vote swing. In this case, under normal circumstances, it would be a seven-vote swing in favor of the Democrats. In this election, there was a 13-vote, 13% swing. This was not a normal midterm election. People have a multitude of reasons for voting as they do, and a lot of people with big brains are going to be talking about the reasons people voted as they did. Let me say it again. People have a multitude of reasons for voting how they choose. In my opinion, for what it's worth, the Democrats won because they did a better job of acknowledging the economic pain Of the American people. They did a better job than Republicans. At a macro level, our economy's doing okay. Last quarter, we had about 3.5% GDP growth. But we're not doing okay at the micro level. If you go back 12 months, on a rolling 12 months through December, this doesn't include October numbers. Things got actually worse in October. But if you go back from September back for 12 months, We had inflation of 3.7% and we had wage growth of 3.1%. People who get up every day and go to work and pay their taxes and obey the law and try to do the right thing by their kids and try to save some money for retirement are falling behind. And they concluded that Washington was not listening and did not care. And the Republicans were in control of Washington. And I think that's what happened. Now, the question becomes for us now as Republicans in the waning 50-plus days of this congressional session, what do we do? What do we do? In January, the Democrats will take over, but Republicans are in power until then. The first thing we ought to do... As Republicans, still in charge, put down our juice boxes and listen, and listen to the American people. The second thing that we need to do is stop the bleeding, pick ourselves up, and fight. It's not unusual up here to have both victory and defeats. To some extent, victories and defeats in Washington are temporary. To some extent, they're distractions. Guys, could y'all give me a few minutes to finish my talk before we have this discussion down here? It's distracting me, okay? Thank you. Where was I, Mr. President? To some extent, whether you win or lose is a distraction. Winning is a lot more fun, but you learn a lot from losing, and Republicans need to learn from this loss. Let me say it again. We need to put down our juice boxes and listen very carefully to the American people. I have. And then we need to stop the bleeding and pick ourselves up and fight. It'll be easier for us to fight now while we're still in control. What do we do? Well, we had a long meeting yesterday among ourselves as Senate Republicans. And I think, obviously, we concluded that we have a lot of nominations, presidential appointments and judicial appointments that we have to address. For the remainder of this Congress, if we don't pass, if we don't confirm these people, my democratic friends will not, I can assure you. So we have to do that because of our rules that requires time. And my colleagues and I are committed to spending whatever time it takes between now and the end of the year, including Christmas day, including Christmas Eve and And including Thanksgiving. But in my opinion, that's not enough. That's not enough. Whatever we propose in terms of policy, my Democratic colleagues are not going to go along because they will be in charge in January, and so they can just wait us out. That means in order for Republicans who are still in charge to do something, we've got to approach it through reconciliation, which only requires a majority vote. While I concede that the confirmations should come first, I don't concede, unlike some of my colleagues, that attempting reconciliation would be a waste of time. I was reading something this morning that stuck with me, and I don't right now remember where I read it, but I think I read it in some notes I'd made on something I'd read in the past. But what I jotted down was, someone said this, a smart man washes his hands after he urinates. A wise man doesn't urinate on his hands. We need to stop urinating on our hands. And the only way we can actually do that in the remaining time we have left is through reconciliation with just Republican votes. If I were king for a day, I'm not. I don't aspire to be. I would follow the sound advice of Jim Justice, Senator Jim Justice. He said, keep it focused. He said, you can't put 10 things into a four-thing box. I would actually pick two things. First, I would do a reconciliation bill that provides at least $200 billion for our military. If we don't do it now, it's not going to get done. The future chair of the Appropriations Committee has already said that, in her opinion, A trillion dollar. A defense bill is is silly. It's not going to happen under her leadership and certainly Patty is entitled to her opinion. Actually a trillion dollars is not enough. Our democratic colleagues may agree to some defense spending in a new budget, but they will extract in return much more domestic spending. That we have a 6% budget deficit every year and $40 trillion in debt is not going to deter them. So if we're going to get money to our military, we need to do it now. And the only way to do that, the only way to stop urinating on our hands is to do it through reconciliation. Whether you agree with Iran or not, no one, no fair-minded person, wants to have an Afghanistan. And among other problems, our military is running out of bullets, and they need our support, and we should give it to them. The second thing I would do, and this is one person's opinion, and certainly, certainly open to other ideas. Senator Ernst has a bill to address rampant fraud throughout the federal government. I would take up that bill, and I would pass it and use the savings. From abolishing or at least undermining that fraud and use it to pay down our debt. Now, I'm certainly open to other ideas. I just left a long meeting of our Republican senators over lunch, learned a lot. It's clear to me that right now we don't have enough votes to pass reconciliation. And some of my colleagues say, well, we can't pass it, so we shouldn't try. And I think that's how we got beat. I think the American people want us to try. So I'm for spending the time, effort, and energy to put together a reconciliation bill. I would start with extra money for the military, and then I'm open to other ideas. And I would begin the process next week. And if we fail, we fail. But at least we will have tried. And I don't think we ought to wait on the House. Obviously, what the House thinks matters, and we certainly want to tell them what we're up to, and we certainly want to, and we certainly want them to be a part of it. We also ought to keep the White House informed, but I don't think we ought to wait on them. I think we ought to get started, and I think we ought to show the American people that we're serious about trying to address The concerns that they... that they raised. Let me end like I began, to all our veterans in America. Thank you.