The Democrat said that the U.S. Senate is no longer the world’s greatest deliberative body and lawmakers should stop claiming that.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., speaks during the Senate Democrats news conference on tax reform in the Capitol on Nov. 28, 2017.Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
In her farewell speech on the Senate floor, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri on Thursday blasted the body’s dysfunction, criticized her colleagues for being afraid to take tough votes, and said there are “too many embarrassing uncles in the United States Senate.”
“Peter Morgan, an author, wrote that no family is complete without an embarrassing uncle,” said McCaskill, who was seeking a third term but was defeated by Sen.-elect Josh Hawley, a Republican, last month. “We have too many embarrassing uncles in the United States Senate. Lots of embarrassing stuff.”
She said that if senators “don’t have the strength to look in the mirror and fix” the Senate, “the American people are going to grow more and more cynical, and they might do something crazy like elect a reality TV star president.”
Dec. 13, 201801:42
McCaskill added: “The United States Senate is no longer the world’s greatest deliberative body. And everybody needs to quit saying it until we recover from this period of polarization and the fear of the political consequences of tough votes.”
Earlier, retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona used his final address on the Senate floor to warn of threats to America’s democracy “from within and without.”
“We of course are testing the institutions of American liberty in ways that none of us likely ever imagined we would — and in ways that we never should again,” Flake said. “My colleagues, to say that our politics is not healthy is something of an understatement. I believe that we all know well that this is not a normal time, that the threats to our democracy from within and without are real, and…
