00:00Let me say a word about the elections and where we go from here.
00:08Our midterm elections are pretty much over. We're still counting votes in some places,
00:15in particular Mississippi and Alaska. Republicans lost. Democrats won.
00:27The American people have decided.
00:36This was not a normal midterm election.
00:43If you have concluded otherwise, congratulations, you're stupid.
00:52If you go back 50 years or so, it's fairly normal for the party opposing the party of the president
01:03in power
01:04to lose votes in Congress, even to lose the Congress or lose one or both houses of Congress.
01:12That's fairly common. Two exceptions, 1998 and I think 2002.
01:23So to the extent that the Republicans have lost control of Congress, historically that's not abnormal.
01:33It was the size of the loss.
01:43Normally, there's about a seven-vote swing.
01:47In this case, under normal circumstances, it would be a seven-vote swing in favor of the Democrats.
01:55In this election, there was a 13-vote, 13% swing.
02:03This was not a normal midterm election.
02:12People have a multitude of reasons for voting as they do.
02:19And a lot of people with big brains are going to be talking about the reasons people voted as they
02:27did.
02:28Let me say it again, people have a multitude of reasons for voting how they choose.
02:33In my opinion, for what it's worth, the Democrats won because they did a better job of acknowledging
02:46the economic pain of the American people.
03:01At a macro level, our economy is doing okay.
03:07Last quarter, we had about 3.5% GDP growth.
03:11But we're not doing okay at the macro level.
03:17If you go back 12 months on a rolling 12 months through December, this doesn't include October numbers.
03:27Things got actually worse in October.
03:31But if you go back from September back for 12 months, we had inflation of 3.7%.
03:40And we had wage growth of 3.1%.
03:46People who get up every day and go to work and pay their taxes and obey the law and try
03:52to do the right thing by their kids
03:54and try to save some money for retirement are falling behind.
04:01And they concluded that Washington was not listening and did not care.
04:13And the Republicans were in control of Washington.
04:17And I think that's what happened.
04:22Now, the question becomes for us now, as Republicans, in the waning 50-plus days of this Congressional session,
04:37what do we do?
04:39What do we do?
04:41What do we do?
04:41In January, the Democrats will take over.
04:45But Republicans are in power until then.
04:53The first thing we ought to do is put down our, as Republicans still in charge,
05:00is put down our juice boxes and listen.
05:05And listen to the American people.
05:09The second thing that we need to do is stop the bleeding, pick ourselves up, and fight.
05:24It's not unusual up here to have both victory and defeats.
05:34To some extent, victories and defeats are, in Washington, are temporary.
05:41To some extent, they're distractions.
05:47Guys, could y'all give me a few minutes to finish my talk before we have this discussion down here?
05:53It's distracting me.
05:54Okay?
05:58Where was I, Mr. President?
06:01To some extent, whether you win or lose is a distraction.
06:09Winning is a lot more fun.
06:12But you learn a lot from losing.
06:16And Republicans need to learn from this loss.
06:20Let me say it again.
06:22We need to put down our juice boxes and listen very carefully to the American people.
06:29I have.
06:31And then we need to stop the bleeding and pick ourselves up.
06:37And fight.
06:40It will be easier for us to fight now while we're still in control.
06:48What do we do?
06:49Well, we had a long meeting yesterday among ourselves as Senate Republicans.
06:56And I think, obviously, we concluded that we have a lot of nominations, presidential appointments and judicial appointments that we
07:08have to address for the remainder of this Congress.
07:12If we don't pass, if we don't confirm these people, my Democratic friends will not, I can assure you.
07:19So we have to do that.
07:21Because of our rules, that requires time.
07:25And my colleagues and I are committed to spending whatever time it takes between now and the end of the
07:32year, including Christmas Day, including Christmas Eve, and including Thanksgiving.
07:39But in my opinion, that's not enough.
07:43That's not enough.
07:49Whatever we propose in terms of policy, my Democratic colleagues are not going to go along.
08:00Because they will be in charge in January, and so they can just wait us out.
08:06That means in order for Republicans who are still in charge to do something, we've got to approach it through
08:15reconciliation, which only requires a majority vote.
08:24While I concede that the confirmations should come first, I don't concede, unlike some of my colleagues, that attempting reconciliation
08:37would be a waste of time.
08:40I was reading something this morning that stuck with me, and I don't right now remember where I read it,
08:50but I think I read it in some notes I'd made on something I'd read in the past.
08:56But what I jotted down was, someone said this, a smart man washes his hands after he urinates.
09:09A wise man doesn't urinate on his hands.
09:18We need to stop urinating on our hands.
09:25And the only way we can actually do that in the remaining time we have left is through reconciliation.
09:35With just Republican votes.
09:38If I were king for a day, I'm not.
09:41I don't aspire to be.
09:44I would follow the sound advice of Jim Justice, Senator Jim Justice.
09:50He said, keep it focused.
09:53He said, you can't put ten things into a four-thing box.
10:00I would actually pick two things.
10:05First, I would do a reconciliation bill that provides at least $200 billion for our military.
10:18If we don't do it now, it's not going to get done.
10:23The future chair of the Appropriations Committee has already said that, in her opinion, a trillion-dollar defense bill is
10:36silly.
10:37It's not going to happen under her leadership.
10:39And certainly, Patty is entitled to her opinion.
10:43Actually, a trillion dollars is not enough.
10:46Our Democratic colleagues may agree to some defense spending in a new budget.
10:51But they will extract in return much more domestic spending.
11:00That we have a 6% budget deficit every year and $40 trillion in debt is not going to deter
11:09them.
11:10So if we're going to get money to our military, we need to do it now.
11:15And the only way to do that, the only way to stop urinating on our hands, is to do it
11:23through reconciliation.
11:25Whether you agree with Iran or not, no one, no fair-minded person, wants to have an Afghanistan.
11:37And among other problems, our military is running out of bullets.
11:43And they need our support.
11:45And we should give it to them.
11:48The second thing I would do, and this is one person's opinion.
11:52I'm certainly, certainly open to other ideas.
11:56Senator Ernst has a bill to address rampant fraud throughout the federal government.
12:04I would take up that bill.
12:09And I would pass it and use the savings from abolishing or at least undermining that fraud and use it
12:20to pay down our debt.
12:22Now, I'm certainly open to other ideas.
12:26I just left a long meeting of our Republican senators over lunch.
12:32Learned a lot.
12:34But it's clear to me that right now we don't have enough votes to pass reconciliation.
12:42And some of my colleagues say, well, we can't pass it, so we shouldn't try.
12:47And I think that's how we got beat.
12:51I think the American people want us to try.
12:54So I'm for spending the time, effort, and energy to put together a reconciliation bill.
13:03I would start with extra money for the military.
13:06And then I'm open to other ideas.
13:10And I would begin the process next week.
13:16And if we fail, we fail.
13:21But at least we will have tried.
13:24And I don't think we ought to wait on the House.
13:28Obviously, what the House thinks matters.
13:30And we certainly want to tell them what we're up to.
13:33And we certainly want to, and we certainly want them to be a part of it.
13:46We also ought to keep the White House informed.
13:52But I don't think we ought to wait on them.
13:55I think we ought to get started.
13:58And I think we ought to show the American people that we're serious about trying to address the concerns that
14:07they raised.
14:11Let me end like I begin.
14:18To all our veterans in America, thank you.
