Today’s Agenda

Senator Lee travels back to Utah to meet with constituents.

From the Senator’s Desk

“In the United States Senate the minority is entitled to be heard. Not entitled to win, but entitled to be heard. That is the core problem here. I say to my friend the majority leader, nothing personal about it, we are fundamentally turning the Senate into the House. No amendments before cloture. No motions to suspend after cloture. The minority’s out of business. And it’s particularly bad on a bill that has the support of over 60 members, as this one did. If you’re not among those 60, you’re out of luck.

“Now look, this is a bad mistake. The way you get business done in the Senate is to be prepared to take bad votes, and at some point if 60 members of the Senate want a bill to pass, it will pass. If 60 members of the Senate don’t want a bill to pass, it won’t pass. And it is more time-consuming. And I assume that’s why a lot of people ran for the Senate instead of the House, because they wanted to be able to express themselves. This is a freewheeling body, and everybody is better off when we operate that way. Everybody is. Whether you’re in the majority or the minority, because today’s majority may be tomorrow’s minority. And the country is better off to have at least one place where there’s extended debate and where you have to reach a super-majority to do things.

“So I would say to my good friend, the majority leader, I understand his frustration, but you were going to win on this bill. You didn’t need to jam us. You shouldn’t jam us on any bill, but on this bill, you were going to win. Now some of us think we were wasting our time because as the senator from Tennessee said this wasn’t going to become law anyway. We’re sitting around here when we ought to be passing trade bills. The president asked us to vote on his jobs bill. I wanted to give him an opportunity to have a vote the other day. You guys didn’t want to vote on what the president was asking us to vote on without any changes. But you could prevent that, and you did.

“Look, let’s don’t change this place. America doesn’t need less debate. It needs more debate. And when 60 members of the United States Senate decide to pass something, it will pass. I think we made a big mistake tonight. And as soon as we all kind of cool off and think about it over the weekend, I hope we’ll undo what we did tonight because it’s not in the best interest of this institution or the American people.”

– Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responding to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s use of the “nuclear option” last night

On Twitter

SenMikeLee

Sen. Reid won’t bring American Jobs Act to vote, because he lacks clear support from Democrats: http://ow.ly/6OUnF

SenLeeComs

Ironic that the only real debate we’ve had all year is about whether or not Reid will allow debate

SenLeePressSec

@SenMikeLee’s blog from last week is relevant tonight: No Debate, No Amendments, and, now, No Votes? bit.ly/nsKaH0

SenLeeResearch

What Reid did last night is like one team in a baseball game voting to overrule the umpire on balls and strikes

Around the Water Cooler

Behind redistricting breakdown: Backlash fear, Congress hopes

Should lawmakers draw new congressional lines to favor rural candidates or urban ones? How many Republicans should they move from Davis County into Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson’s district? How do they avoid a citizen uprising — like one this year over late, secretive moves to rewrite Utah’s open records law — that could come over late, secretive changes in redistricting?

Fact check: Obama claims miss some evidence

In challenging Republicans to get behind his jobs bill Thursday, President Barack Obama argued Republicans have supported his proposals before, demanded that they explain themselves if they oppose him, and challenged others to come up with a plan of their own. The rhetoric in the president’s quick-moving press conference dodged some facts and left some evidence in the dust.

A Look Ahead

On Tuesday, Senator Lee will meet with R&R Partners and hold a Utah tele-press conference in the afternoon.