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CLOTURE MOTION
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the Baldwin substitute amendment No. 6487 to Calendar No. 449, H.R. 8404, a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for other purposes.
Charles E. Schumer, Richard J. Durbin, Tammy Baldwin,
Kyrsten Sinema, John W. Hickenlooper, Tina Smith,
Sheldon Whitehouse, Benjamin L. Cardin, Maria Cantwell,
Amy Klobuchar, Jon Ossoff, Mark Kelly, Jacky Rosen,
Cory A. Booker, Brian Schatz, Mazie K. Hirono, Angus S.
King, Jr., Thomas R. Carper, Sherrod Brown, Tim Kaine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on amendment No. 6487 offered by the Senator from New York [Mr. Schumer] to H.R. 8404, a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Warnock) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 61, nays 35, as follows:
Yeas--61
Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Booker Brown Burr Cantwell Capito Cardin Carper Casey Collins Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Ernst Feinstein Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Leahy Lujan Lummis Manchin Markey Menendez Merkley Murkowski Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Portman Reed Romney Rosen Sanders Schatz Schumer Shaheen Sinema Smith Stabenow Sullivan Tester Tillis Van Hollen Warner Warren Whitehouse Wyden Young
NAYS--35
Blackburn Boozman Braun Cassidy Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Daines Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Hyde-Smith Inhofe Johnson Kennedy Lankford Lee Marshall McConnell Moran Paul Risch Rounds Rubio Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Shelby Thune Tuberville Wicker
NOT VOTING--4
Barrasso Sasse Toomey Warnock
(Mr. HEINRICH assumed the Chair.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Smith). On this vote, the yeas are 61, the nays are 35.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
Cloture having been invoked, the motion to refer and the amendments pending thereto fall.
The majority leader.
Order of Procedure
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to consider the following amendments to the substitute: Lee, No. 6482; Lankford, No. 6496; and Rubio, No. 6493; that at 3:45 p.m. on Tuesday, November 29, all postcloture time be considered expired, that if any of these amendments are offered, the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed, with 60 affirmative votes required for the adoption of the Lee amendment; that there be 2 minutes for debate equally divided prior to each vote; that any remaining amendments except Senate amendment No. 6487 be withdrawn; that the substitute amendment, as amended, if amended, be agreed to; that the cloture motion with respect to H.R. 8404 be withdrawn; that the bill be considered read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, with 60 affirmative votes required for passage, all without further intervening action or debate; finally, that the remaining cloture motions filed on November 17 ripen on disposition of H.R. 8404.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
And there is one more important item before I leave the floor.
Chris Van Hollen, our great Senator from Maryland, has been waiting a while to give tribute to Joan Kleinman, his State director. We want to thank her for her great work--did he say 17 years?--19 years. I don't want to cut this short.
And one of her other additional great features is that her family is from New York. So welcome and thank you for waiting.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Tribute to Joan Kleinman
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. As the majority leader said, I rise to honor the stellar public service of Joan Kleinman, a senior member of my office team, who retired in February after 19 years of working on behalf of the people of Maryland and the United States.
Today, I would like to share with the Senate the depth of her commitment to the people of Maryland and her extraordinary legacy of good works, and have her story inscribed in the pages of the Congressional Record so that it might be a source of wisdom and inspiration for all time.
I first met Joan Kleinman in 1990, when I started working at the Washington, DC, law firm of Arent Fox. Joan was also a fellow lawyer, who was in charge of managing the staffing of cases in the litigation department. For those of us who were litigation associates, that meant we had better be on Joan's good side.
While I was practicing law at Arent Fox, I was also serving 3 months a year in Maryland's part-time legislature. I knew Joan and her husband Sam were raising their family in Montgomery County, and that Joan had a keen interest in what was happening in our community.
At the time, I needed someone to be treasurer for my State senate campaign committee, somebody who was really well organized, someone who cared about our community, and somebody who I could trust completely. Joan fit the bill. But would she do it?
I will confess that I was a little scared to ask her. I finally mustered up the courage to knock on her office door, and luckily for me, Joan had no idea what she was getting into, and she said yes.
The rest is history.
In 2001, with Joan's encouragement, I launched my campaign for the House of Representatives. That campaign started at the kitchen table in our home in Kensington and with my wife Katherine and a small cadre of friends and dedicated volunteers, including Joan.
We knew it would be a tough fight, but we thought we had a shot. Our campaign grew quickly. It was powered by hundreds of volunteers and thousands of small contributions that kept coming in.
And, now, as treasurer of my congressional campaign, Joan would keep track of the flurry of small contributions that arrived every week. It was a ton of work. And Joan also worked on other aspects of the campaign at the same time. As another veteran member of that congressional campaign recently told me, ``for Joan, 3 a.m. was as much a part of the normal workday as 3 p.m.''
We won that campaign, and Joan was key to our success. So when the campaign ended, I had some very big decisions to make, including who would run our congressional district office? I wanted someone who was dedicated to our community, someone who could manage that important job, and, again, someone whom I could trust completely. The person who met all those requirements was Joan Kleinman.
I will admit--and we would all admit--that in those early days, we were flying by the seat of our pants, and Joan was charged with building out our constituent services program from the ground up. She had to do all of the big picture things, like building relationships with community stakeholders and forging bonds with Federal Agency officials. She also had to bring on our entire constituent service team and our community outreach team and develop an intake and tracking system for constituent cases to make sure nothing would fall through the cracks.
Joan built out our Maryland offices day after day, week after week, month after month, until we became the gold standard in constituent services. She instilled an ethic of persistence in our casework team to ensure that we did everything--and I mean everything--in our power to deliver results for our constituents.
I started receiving buckets of handwritten thank-you letters from folks across our congressional district. People would stop me in the street to thank me for our help. In fact, under Joan's leadership, our office became so well known for our top-notch constituent services that we started getting calls from people in all the other congressional districts in our State.
We solved that challenge when I ran for the U.S. Senate, and, after that campaign, Joan assumed responsibility for maintaining excellent constituent services and outreach for all Marylanders. And that she did.
The letters of appreciation we received from constituents are now kept in large binders that filled up whole bookshelves. And now people across our entire State stop me on a regular basis to acknowledge their appreciation for something that Joan and her team did to help them, which leaves me with one big question: How does that happen? How did we grow from that empty office space after my congressional election in 2002 into an operation that is renowned for delivering amazing services to people throughout our State? And the answer is Joan Kleinman.
Our story of success is the story of Joan Kleinman and the team that she built, and I would like to reflect on the qualities that made that happen. And there are many, but three big ones jump out.
No. 1, follow the golden rule. Joan established an ethic in the office that every constituent--every one--was to be treated the way we would want to be treated, with respect. She told our team that when someone calls our office, handle the case like it is your mom calling or your dad or your brother or sister. And it did not matter if the problem related to a Federal issue, a State issue, a county issue, or anything else. We were there to deliver results.
Joan knew how frustrating it could be to pick up the phone, call a government office asking for help, only to be told to call a different government office. So even if the issue fell in someone else's jurisdiction, we connected them to ensure they could get the help they needed.
Joan constantly reminded her team that if someone is calling us, it is because they need help, and they had likely tried and exhausted all other avenues to resolve the problem themselves.
Another of Joan's sterling qualities is real leadership. Now, leadership can mean different things to different people, but you know it when you see it. Joan is a strong leader and an excellent manager because she leads by example. Like a good general who leads their troops into battle from the front, Joan was always willing to take on any task, large or small, for the success of the team. She worked crazy hours. She read every letter. There was nothing that she would ask others to do that she would not do first.
Her exemplary leadership also flowed from her emphasis on detail and determination, a good combination. Good intentions about helping our constituents are great, but good intentions without implementation and accountability are empty promises. And good advocacy on behalf of constituents requires constant coaxing and constant followup.
So let's be clear. Joan's team has always been civil in pressing agencies and organizations to help our constituents, but her team has also been firm, polite, but always persistent.
And Joan's leadership powered a sense of common purpose and joint accomplishment. She would always highlight the achievements of members of her team who served our constituents, from helping our veterans and seniors obtain their benefits, to getting a passport approved so a constituent could visit a sick loved one, to getting student loans forgiven, to reuniting entire families, to helping folks avoid foreclosure, and hundreds and hundreds of other matters.
Joan ensured that the success of our office belonged to everyone on the team. She lifted everyone up. And on those days when this job can be frustrating and discouraging--and the Presiding Officer knows we face our share of those--on those days, reading the notes of appreciation that Joan would circulate from constituents thanking us for helping them in their greatest hour of need, or about how our work had changed their life for the better, reminded me and everyone on our team of the importance of public service and the good that we can do.
A third quality Joan has in abundance is compassion for those she worked with. Like the good Jewish mother she is, Joan brought that same sense of caring and nurturing to members of her family away from home, her office family. She was often the first to reach out to new staff, inviting them to lunch or coffee. She would circulate cartoons from the New Yorker that particularly resonated, which mostly got chuckles. She would laugh generously at other's jokes, even if they weren't all that funny. And she spent hours mentoring and coaching each member of our team. As a senior member of my staff remarked recently,
``Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself.''
Her good counsel helped guide staff members while they worked in our office and also served them well in their future endeavors. We are especially grateful that Joan helped groom one member of our staff who started as an intern under Joan's tutelage and then worked as a staff member in our office before going to practice law, as Joan had once done. This member of our team later returned to our office well prepared to take on Joan's job when Joan left the office in February.
And Joan wasn't just a mentor on professional matters. She was also there for staff members navigating the ups and downs of life. She has been a consoler-in-chief in times of loss and a cheerleader-in-chief in times of joy. Her warmth radiated in moments of hurt and of happiness.
And my office hasn't been the only beneficiary of Joan's love. It also extends to members of her wonderful family, who have joined Joan in the Senate Gallery this evening: her husband Sam, their daughter Molly, their son Ari, and their son Ben, with his wife Saryn. It is a joy to have them here for this special occasion.
I also want to give a shout-out to Joan's grandson, little Miles, who is at home. And I want to salute Joan's late father and her amazing mother Evelyn. Both of her parents helped raise her to be the woman she is today, and her mother, in particular, has always been very vocal about her thoughts about my cable TV appearances.
Thank you all for sharing Joan with us all those years.
And Joan's commitment also extends to her family of faith. Joan isn't just a good Jewish mother to everyone. She is also a devoted member of her synagogue. Her life has been driven by the spirit of ``tikkun olam,'' repairing the world. And this year, for Rosh Hashanah, Joan was invited by her congregation to speak from the pulpit and offer an interpretation of religious text.
In her remarks, Joan shared this reflection:
I know we all want to be remembered for the personal qualities that we value. But I think it's important that we also seek to be remembered for how we respond to the challenges of our times.
That isn't just a meditation on faith; that is a meditation on service. In Joan's eyes, each of us has a responsibility to match our strong words with even stronger deeds. We honor our values only through our action. It isn't enough to envision a more perfect world. We need to build it ourselves--brick by brick, hour by hour, good deed by good deed.
Joan has spent her life realizing the promise of that creed, and because of it, she leaves behind a legacy of good works that not only fill up bookshelves but also fill up the lives and hearts of countless people in our State of Maryland.
She has helped guide people in need. She has met the moment. She has changed lives for the better. She has done so much good for so many Marylanders for so many years that our State will always be better because of it.
So on behalf of me and my entire family, on behalf of our entire staff, past and present, on behalf of all the people in the State of Maryland, we thank you, Joan Kleinman. Your legacy of good works has left the world a much better place.
Joan, we love you.
Even though Joan has retired from our office, I will continue to seek her counsel and relish her friendship for years to come.
I yield the floor.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 182
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
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