Mice Lee Wnited States Senate SENATE STEERING COMMITTEE October 28, 2015 Dear Colleague: ‘The Senate is broken. It’s been that way for a long time. And it looks like it may never be fixed, at least as long as we remain on our current trajectory. Admittedly, things have improved since the beginning of the 114" Congress. Our new majority has put the committees back to work, passed a budget, and taken important steps to restore the rules and traditions of the Senate that give every member the right to debate and offer amendments on the floor. We have done much to reverse the dysfunction that characterized the institution for the last seven years. Yet much more needs to be done Regrettably, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 serves as a reminder that the most important and controversial legislation is still drafted in secret, behind closed doors, by a handful of senators with little or no input by the rest of the chamber. Most senators are unaware of what's happening until the secret agreement is dropped on the Senate floor and rushed through to final passage with limited debate and zero amendments. Instead of deliberation, senators are allowed only a simple choice: yes or no; take it or leave it. This is not how it is supposed to be. And it isn’t how we promised we would run the Senate just last year. We promised then that major legislation would go through committee instead of being drafted in secret and placed on the floor by leadership at the last minute. We promised that bills would be thoroughly debated once they were brought to the floor and that senators would be allowed to offer amendments. And we promised that we would put in a full week" work from time to time, recognizing that an open and deliberative process isn’t possible if members aren’t around to offer amendments and debate legislation in the first place. We promised to do these things because they reflect the core values of our party and they represent how the Senate ought to operate. It isn’t a mystery. Following the regular order is how consensus is reached and important legislation is passed. And injecting deliberation and consensus into our political system is precisely the reason for which the Framers created the Senate in 1787. Unfortunately, this is not how the process that produced the debt deal worked. It was crafted in secret without the involvement of the vast majority of our Conference. It was unveiled at the last minute shortly before midnight just one week before we are set to hit the debt ceiling. Furthermore, no amendments will be allowed and cloture will be filed immediately after the bill is placed on the floor in order to force the bill through the Senate as quickly as possible, Perhaps most troubling, any senator who criticizes this,process is caricatured by our own side as calling for a government shutdown or debt default, even though such accusations are patently false. Everyone is quick to acknowledge that the situation in which we find ourselves is not ideal. But we are told that itis the best that we can expect given the circumstances. We are told that we have run out of time, even though we've seen this coming for months now. Put simply, we are told that we can’t do better. But we have done better. Just four years ago we forced the president and Senate Democrats to agree to the Budget Control ‘Act of 2011 in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. That legislation increased the amount of we can borrow in exchange for $2.1 trillion in spending cuts. We were able to ‘win this concession from the other side despite having only 45 members in the Senate and a much smaller majority in the House. Today, we have a 54-seat majority in the Senate and the largest House majority since 1930, but somehow we have no choice but to roll back these spending cuts and to increase the debt ceiling without any offsets. We ‘cannot expect things to be any different in the future unless we make a conscious decision to change the way we do business here in the Senate. To that end, we ask that our colleagues join us in opposing this deal and the non- transparent process used to produce it, and calling on our leadership to run the Senate as wwe promised the American people we would by allowing a fulsome debate and open amendment process. Sincerely, Michael 8. Lee _ FE