Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I want to talk about the bill we are looking at now, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. Certainly there is nothing more hideous, nothing more morally offensive than the sexual exploitation of a human being. Take that exploitation today at a level that happens over and over again with children and with adults. This is modern-day slavery. It exists right here in our country and all over the world. Slavery officially ended in the United States 150 years ago. Worldwide there may be more people involved in enslaved activity and labor or in sex trafficking than at any other time. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, at least 100,000 American children each year are victims of commercial child prostitution, child trafficking, other children brought to this country. Certainly this is not a tragedy that is isolated in the United States. In fact, it is worse than other places, but it is unacceptable in all places. Women and children, especially young girls, are advertised online where buyers purchase them with ease, generally with anonymity, and usually with impunity. We are told this happens in most cities in our country and in every State in our country. But this fight against sex trafficking and labor trafficking isn't just a law enforcement issue, it is a human rights issue, and we should take it as seriously as we possibly can take anything. That is why I was pleased to join Senator Cornyn and Senator Ayotte and others in cosponsoring and supporting the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. This act would provide law enforcement, the courts, and antitrafficking task forces with the necessary tools to help them track down traffickers; and it would also help victims restore their lives. Last year we were able to pass the continuation of the Victims of Child Abuse Act, of which in our State we have 22 centers. We have hundreds of centers in the country where the beginning of restoration comes with that first interview, that first determination. We are putting this behind us and moving forward. That same thing needs to happen with victims of exploitation. This bill helps victims of trafficking who are often invisible, often underserved, often unknown by anybody in the community where they have been taken except a person who somehow has seized control of them and the people with whom that person deals. This bill would create grants for State and local governments to develop comprehensive systems to address these crimes and to provide services for the victims of these crimes. This legislation would allow wiretaps obtained through State courts to be used to stop child sex trafficking. This would train Federal prosecutors and judges on the importance of requesting and ordering restitution. In the last few days we passed a law that hopefully will wind up on the President's desk so there could be some compensation for victims of child pornography. We need to have that same kind of restitution and seizing of assets of these criminals who use people in this way, and this bill allows some of those things to happen. It trains law enforcement on the physical and mental services that are immediately necessary, and necessary in a longer term, for victims of trafficking. The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act has been endorsed by 200 advocacy groups. Those would include the NAACP, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Rights4Girls, the National Association to Protect Children, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National Conference of State Legislators. We need to get this done. The elimination of sex trafficking has to be also focused on the demand side. Without the buyers and facilitators, sex trafficking wouldn't happen. Labor trafficking wouldn't happen unless there were buyers of that unwilling labor. Neither of these things should be allowed to continue. This bill deals with this topic in our country. I know the Foreign Relations Committee is looking at what we can do to encourage the elimination of this travesty and tragedy all over the world. We have to take a stand against this modern-day slavery. This is a problem that I hope we see Senators on both sides of the aisle step up to in the next few days and hopefully this week and figure out how to serve. Remembering Tom Schweich Madam President, this is the first chance I have had to be on the floor since I attended a memorial service a week ago yesterday in our State memorializing the life of our State auditor, Tom Schweich. Tom Schweich was very smart. He was very capable. He was very good at his job. He had a wonderful family. He had established such a record as State auditor that at the end of his first term, Tom Schweich, a Republican, wasn't even opposed by a Democrat. I think it was the first time in our State since the 1880s that the Democrats had not offered a candidate for any State office. Sometimes people with great capacity and great opportunity can face challenges that others do not see. Tom's family is missing him. His friends are missing him. Missouri will miss him but certainly benefited from his good work. I am thinking today, as I have every day since I heard the news of his death, about the service he provided, the lost opportunity of not having him with us any longer, and I am thinking about his family. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to honor Dr. Kenneth W. Dobbins on the occasion of his retirement. Dr. Dobbins has served as the president of Southeast Missouri State University for more than 15 years. The people of Missouri are grateful for Dr. Dobbins' contributions and commitment to Southeast Missouri State University and the Redhawk community. Dr. Dobbins became the seventeenth president of Southeast Missouri State University in 1999 after serving as the university's vice president of finance and administration and executive vice president. Prior to his time with Southeast Missouri State University, he held several positions in the higher education administration at Kent State University in Ohio. Growing up in Ohio, he earned his bachelor of science degree in accounting from the University of Akron in 1971. He then served his country as a commissioned officer and civilian executive in the U.S. Air Force for almost 10 years and was named the 1978 Air Force Audit Agency Outstanding Civilian Auditor of the Year. In 1979, he received his master's degree in business administration from Old Dominion University and later his Ph.D. in higher education administration from Kent State University. His commitment to leadership was recognized in the form of the 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award from Old Dominion University and the 2011 Alumni Leadership Award for the College of Education, Health and Human Services Annual Hall of Fame Awards from Kent State University. As president at Southeast Missouri State University, academic programs have flourished and expanded, including the establishment of the College of Science, Technology, and Agriculture and the Earl and Margie Holland School of Visual and Performing Arts. In addition, Dr. Dobbins increased access to higher education in the university's 25- county service region through the development of new regional campuses in Sikeston and Kennett to serve place-bound students in rural communities. More than $400 million in capital construction and building improvement projects have enhanced the university during Dr. Dobbins' presidency. Dr. Dobbins' knowledge and leadership have been valued by his peers in higher education. He has served on the board of directors of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and as chairman of the Finance Committee of the American Leadership Institute. On behalf of the grateful constituents of Missouri, I congratulate Dr. Ken Dobbins on his well-deserved retirement. We congratulate him on his remarkable career and extend a huge thank-you for all the wonderful contributions he has made to our Bootheel communities and our State. I wish the very best to Dr. Dobbins and his wife Jeanine, along with his son and daughter-in-law, Paul and Stacey Dobbins, and his two grandsons, Lincoln Kenneth Dobbins and Brady Larson Dobbins.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish today to honor Bob Hufford, an icon in the Missouri food industry for the past 63 years. He announced his retirement from the Associated Wholesale Grocers, AWG, board of directors after four decades of service with the last 11 years having served as its chairman. AWG is a retailer-owned cooperative serving over 2,300 retail member stores with a complete assortment of grocery, fresh meat, fresh produce, specialty foods, health care, and general merchandise items. During Bob's tenure as chairman, AWG sales grew from $4.5 billion in 2004 to almost $9 billion in 2014, while patronage paid to members grew by 155 percent. Bob helped direct the addition of the Fort Worth division in 2007, the replacement of the Oklahoma City distribution center in the same year, and the addition of the gulf coast division in 2013. During the same period, Bob grew his own company, Town and Country, in Fredericktown, MO, to be one of the largest employers in southeast Missouri with over 10,000 employees. Bob's passion for the food business was sparked early in his life by his father's work for a meatpacking company. Bob's first job was working in a local supermarket, while going through high school and later college. He became a sales representative for the National Biscuit Company, otherwise known as Nabisco, in 1958. While working for Nabisco, Bob called on two grocers, Max Penner and Wayne Gott, who recognized his leadership skills and work ethic. In 1970 they invited him to become a third partner in a new 5,000-square-foot store in Fredericktown, which Bob accepted. From that modest beginning Bob grew his business to 44 stores currently operating. Recently, Bob converted his company into an employee-owned company, allowing his employees to share in the store's profits. Today Bob serves as the CEO of the company, which operates stores in Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. He and his wife Marsha have a wonderful family of five children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Many of his family members have worked in the business next to Bob. Bob was named Missouri grocer of the year and inducted into the Missouri Grocers Association Hall of Fame, along with his good friend and former partner Wayne Gott. I ask that all my colleagues join me in congratulating Bob Hufford on his decades of success. I wish him the best in his well-deserved retirement.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, last week I was glad to see that a Federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction against the President's Executive order on immigration. This ruling, if upheld--and I believe it will be--reaffirms that President Obama was right when he said at least 22 times that he didn't have the authority to take the action he now has taken on immigration. In December of last year I joined in an amicus brief with Senator Cruz and Senator Cornyn and, I believe, the attorneys general from 26 States--not the State of Missouri but 26 States. I was glad that my joining allowed Missouri to be represented in support of this lawsuit brought by the State of Texas against President Obama's illegal decision to allow amnesty to be established. The brief states the Obama administration exceeded its constitutional authority and disrupted the delicate balance of power between the Congress, whose job it is to pass the law, and the President, whose job it is to carry out the law. Executive means just that. The job of the Executive is to execute the law. It is not to pass the law. There is no constitutional provision anyone has been able to show me or that I have ever been able to find that says if the Congress doesn't do something, the President can decide it needs to be done and the President just does it on his own. There is certainly no law that suggests the President can just willfully ignore the law. The brief we joined asserts that the Obama administration exceeded the bounds of its so-called prosecutorial discretion. The idea that they can have some discretion about how vigorously they enforce certain laws is, both in this case and in the court ruling, held up to the standard it really should be allowed to meet. The idea that the President can say that there is too much law here to enforce and we can't afford to enforce the law--but then by not enforcing the law, it creates substantially more economic burden on the States and the Federal Government than enforcing the law would have created--by any standard makes no sense. This is not a determination that at some level there are just too many violations of some law that is not very significant that you could have some prosecutorial discretion. This is the law that impacts whether people can come into the country or not and whether they can stay in the country not being legally here. The bill that Leader McConnell introduced this week will put every Senator on record on this topic. I look forward to a chance to vote on that bill and to see my colleagues vote on this bill. Who will stand with the President's clear power grab on immigration, and who will stand by the rule of law? At least half a dozen Democrats and perhaps more have said they disagree with what the President did with this November action. A vote on Senator McConnell's bill will give them a chance to show whether they really disagree or not. It is specific to the November action. It is specific to the action the Federal judge in Texas said puts undue burdens on the State and exceeded the President's authority. As I have said a number of times, I would like to see our friends on the other side of the aisle be willing to debate this issue. I have also admitted a number of times that if I were them and if the President of the United States had said 22 times he couldn't do something, I would have some reluctance--I suppose as they clearly do-- to come to the floor and defend why now those 22 statements don't matter. If the Democrats would simply allow the Senate to begin debating the bill, Members on both side of the aisle could offer amendments, and we could actually be doing the job we are expected to do as legislators. Unfortunately, they decided to repeatedly say: No, we don't want to debate this bill. No, we are not going to go forward. No, we are not going to let the normal process work. No, we are not going to deal with the bill sent over by the co-equal branch of the Congress, the House of Representatives. Hopefully, we will see what happens as this debate moves forward and the President's activities are held not only now to a standard of law but also to his own standard. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of the 22 times the President has said he didn't have the authority to do what he has now done.

Mr. BLUNT. Let me mention a few of those, but I will submit all 22 for the Record. As early as March of 2008, the President said: I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we are facing right now are things that don't go through Congress at all. In November of 2010 the President said: I am the President, not a king. I can't do these things just by myself. I have to have partners to do it. In January of 2013, the President, again, still believes he is not a king, because he says: I am not a king. He says that at two different events on that day. He says: We can't simply ignore the law. The truth is, in November of 2014 the President does decide we can simply ignore the law. The 22 times the President said we couldn't ignore the law I agree with him. For those who believe I don't find enough opportunities to agree with the President, here are 22 times I agree with the President's view that he cannot do these kinds of things on his own and by himself. On February 14, 2013--2 years ago--the President said: The problem is that I am the President of the United States. I could actually quit right there and maybe that would say all I need to say, but of course he said: The problem is that you know I'm the president of the United States. I'm not the emperor of the United States . . . we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place. It goes on. I get to that point, and I don't know quite how to explain--as I am sure the President doesn't know how to explain--what he has said and what he has now done. On September 2013: ``My job in the executive branch is supposed to be to carry out the laws that are passed,'' still in full agreement with what the President said his job is. As late as August of this last year, the President said: There are some things we can't do. Congress has the power of the purse, for example. Congress has to pass a budget and authorize spending. So I don't have a green light. He goes on to suggest to do whatever the President might like to do. That is basically what this debate is about right now. It is not about whether the Department of Homeland Security would continue to function. In fact, what I wish to see is the President engaged as the principal officer responsible for the administration of the government. I think something like that is what President Kennedy said after the Bay of Pigs, when he said: I am responsible here because I am the principal officer responsible for the administration of the government. The President created this problem. He created this funding problem for States, he created this funding problem for the Federal Government, and he created this problem of exceeding his authority as President of the United States. But the President, once again, is missing from the discussion of how to solve the problem. That could very well be, as is often the case, the person who would know how to solve the problem is the person who created it. But we are not hearing anything from that person because clearly people at the White House believe it is to their temporary political advantage to act as though the people in the Congress don't want the government to function, rather than to act as though people in the Congress believe the President was right the 22 times he said he couldn't do what he has now done. I have heard several of my colleagues in the last few days--in fact, even one or two this morning on early news shows--say: We need a way for Congress to settle these kinds of disputes outside of the appropriations process. One way to do that would be to pass a law I filed in the last Congress that the House of Representatives passed in a bipartisan way-- the Senate was not allowed to vote on it and I would like to see us vote on it in this Congress--which is the ENFORCE the Law Act, which simply does allow the Congress, if a majority of the Members of the House or Senate believes the President is not enforcing the law as written, to go to a judge and seek an early determination, rather than wait for some aggrieved citizen who disagrees with a rule or regulation to have to hire their own lawyer after the rule is in effect, and in the 2 years or so it might take to get that case to the Supreme Court, other individuals impacted by the rule or regulation are trying to comply with it, only to find out later, as the Court ruled a handful of times during the recent years of this Presidency that, no, the President doesn't have the authority to do that. They said: No, you don't have the authority to appoint people to the National Labor Relations Board when the Senate is in session just because you have decided somehow the Senate is not in session. You don't get to decide whether the Senate is in session, Mr. President, if they have met all the requirements to be in session. You particularly don't get to decide whether the Senate is in session if that same session of the Senate approves some things that you thought needed to be done and that was good enough for you. Then they said: Mr. President, by the way, when you appoint these people illegally, whatever rules and regulations they put forward aren't legal either. So the couple of years of businesses trying to comply with the National Labor Relations Act rules and regulations, all of that is to the wayside. Those rules are all gone, but that doesn't restore the time, effort, money, and needless compliance that happens when the President exceeds his authority or when the President's agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, decide they could do something they would like to do without ever arguing before the Congress that we would like the authority to do this. So passing the ENFORCE the Law Act would be a way to seek an earlier or quicker remedy. It does appear to me that the Federal judges are likely to decide pretty quickly--Federal judges, the court of appeals level and then the circuit level--that, no, Mr. President; you have gone beyond where you were in fact. You were right the first 22 times, not the November 2014 time that you decided if you don't like the law, you don't have to enforce the law. I think we should move forward with that ability that the Congress currently doesn't have, but also I think we should continue to express our desire for this process to work the way it is supposed to work. The House of Representatives, which is supposed to initiate spending bills, has done that. It is the job of the Senate to debate those spending bills. It is the job of Senators to offer amendments if they don't like them, and so far our friends on the other side have insisted they don't want to do that part of this job. Maybe we all should understand why they don't want to defend what the President has done because of all the times he said he couldn't do it.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now stand in recess until 2 p.m. today.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to follow on the comments of my good friend and neighbor from Arkansas, Senator Boozman. He was talking about what the President is now asking the Congress to do. I think there are many questions that need to be asked about this authorization for activity against ISIS and what that might mean before the Congress can move forward. The principal question, however, will continue to be: Do we have a strategy? And if we have a strategy, which has not yet been explained, is there a commitment to that strategy to move forward? Is this just another redline that means nothing or is this a document that is designed to meet some objectives that really are not the objectives of fighting people who clearly perceive freedom and America and the values we stand for as anathema to what they would hope to see? There are so many questions. Is the 3-year timeframe enough? Why would you have a 3-year timeframe? That puts this authorization of force 1 year into the next Presidency. What kind of legacy is that to leave the next President? The minute that person becomes President, suddenly you have a clock that is ticking. If we take that approach, not only are we telling our adversaries when we plan to quit, we are telling the next President, no matter what the situation is, when we will quit. We have not been presented with a 3-year plan on how to degrade and destroy ISIS. We understand that is what the goal is, but nobody suggested a 3-year plan. In fact, if you look back over the last 6 months, you will find the President's ability to project his foreign policy seems to defy all projections. A few months ago, he talked about Yemen as an example of how well our policy is working. This week we abandoned the Embassy and abandoned our efforts in that country. The specific focus on ISIS and/or associated persons or forces--what does that mean? Does that mean another terrorist group that is struggling against ISIS is not covered by this? Does that mean Al Qaeda or al-Nusra or some other group that is equally focused on the United States and our friends is not covered by this? The President has the authority to go after terrorist organizations. As far as 2001, 2002--he says he wants at least one of those authorities left on the books. By the way, it is sufficient to do anything we want to do now, so why add this to it? This debate may take a while, but during the debate, I think we need to listen closely to our military leaders and question them again about how we can accomplish what we need to accomplish here, what we can do to help our friends as they work to accomplish what needs to be accomplished here, what we do to encourage people from the neighborhood to put their boots on the ground, and what do we need to do to be helpful. Last weekend I traveled with a few other members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to Jordan and Turkey to discuss the ISIS threat and what was happening in Iraq and Syria. It was especially interesting to be in Jordan just after the brutal murder of the Jordanian pilot. I don't know that we know for sure exactly when that happened, but I think there are many reasons to believe this group was negotiating to save the life of the pilot long after the pilot's life had been taken in one of the most barbarous of possible ways. It got the attention of the neighborhood, and certainly Jordan and the UAE and others are beginning to line up with a new determination to go after ISIS, hitting targets on the ground, we are told, that we have known were targets for a long time but we didn't seem to be able to have the willingness to hit them. Certainly we had the capacity to hit them. Certainly we had the information to hit them. But why weren't we doing that? What is the commitment to do this? The President asked the Congress of the United States to make this commitment of use of force, but there is absolutely no reason for us to make that commitment unless he intends to use the force and unless we understand how he intends to use the force. Not only can we not define our policy here; those people around the world who would like to know what our policy is don't hear it defined either. Then we have events happen such as the botched interview of last weekend the Senator from Arkansas was speaking about where the President was asked if ``the media sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos, as opposed to a longer-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease.'' The President's response was ``Absolutely.'' Absolutely, a long-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease somehow calculates into the discussion of whether we are in imminent danger of these terrorist groups and whether that is real? He went on to say in that interview: ``If it bleeds, it leads, right?'' This is the President talking. He went on to say, ``You show crime stories and you show fires, because that's what folks watch, and it's all about ratings.'' I don't know what that means. I wouldn't want to suppose the President is saying that coverage of terrorism is about ratings. I, frankly, don't know what it means, but I do know that if I don't know what it means, a lot of people all over the world don't know what it means. This is not climate change. It is not what we need to be doing at the CDC. The President is not asking for authorized use of force to do something about the CDC. When that was happening, the Congress stepped up and said: OK, here is money that will help meet that immediate need. That is not the same kind of discussion at all. The President also raised eyebrows by suggesting that the shooting at a kosher deli, kosher market in Paris was ``random.'' I think his exact quote was, ``It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.'' I could speak quite a bit about the President's unwillingness to call this bunch of violent, vicious zealots what they are. They are Islamic extremists. The Prime Minister of Great Britain can say that. Other leaders all over the world can say that. We can't say that. The other comment I thought was particularly interesting was ``randomly'' shoot people in a deli in Paris. It was a kosher deli in Paris. There was no ``random'' about that. Most of the customers would be and the victims were Jews. There was no ``random'' about that. Let's accept this for what it is. Let's not go back, as the President did at the National Prayer Breakfast a few days ago, and decide to equate something--crusades, almost 800 years ago, 600 years ago, various crusades--equate the crusades with what is happening now and somehow suggest that these people are just temporarily misguided. These people are not temporarily misguided; these people are about an evil purpose. They killed fellow members of their religion because they believed those people didn't perfectly reflect their own religion. This is an issue we need to be concerned about. We have to have a strategy. We need clarity. We need commitment. If we are going to destroy this threat, we really have to be committed to destroy this terrorist threat. I plan to press the administration, as many others will, on that question of, What is your plan? The President's nominee for Secretary of Defense couldn't explain the plan. That is a vote we are going to have later today. I don't intend to vote for that nominee today. We have already had three Secretaries of Defense in this Presidency who have been incredibly frustrated, obviously and visibly frustrated and willing to talk about their frustrations--at least the two Secretaries who have already left--of not knowing how to deal with a White House that wants to run the military in the most specific ways rather than saying: Here is our goal. What is the best way to meet that goal? We have had that already. We don't need another Secretary of Defense who doesn't understand what the plan is and can't communicate that plan to either the Congress or the country or our friends around the world. The Congress doesn't understand what the President is trying to do. The administration can't explain what the President is trying to do. Our enemies are emboldened by the fact that we can't explain what we are trying to do, and our friends wonder what we are trying to do. In so many cases--I remember the great speech by the President of Ukraine at a joint session of Congress last year where basically he said: Thank you for the food. Thank you for the blankets. But we can't fight the Russians with blankets. We can't fight the terrorists without a strategy. We can't fight the terrorists without a commitment to the goal. The document the President sent to us this week was carefully worded to meet all kinds of political constituencies. It is not carefully worded in a way that meets the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. The Jordanians understand this. People in the neighborhood understand this. People in Europe seem to have a better understanding of it than we do. They all want to see some level of commitment by the United States of America, and I would like to hear what that commitment is. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I heard the remarks earlier today about how we need to move forward with the Department of Homeland Security funding bill without any reaction to the President's Executive actions of last year. One way to see if that would really meet the test of the Senate is to move forward, to have the debate. Our friends on the other side are unwilling to debate this. Why would that be? Many of them disagree with the actions of the President of last November. Enough of them certainly disagreed to have 60 votes on the Senate floor that would pass a bill to reverse those actions. Maybe not everybody agrees with everything, but we had more amendment votes on the Senate floor 2 weeks ago on 2 different days--each of 2 different days--than we had all of last year. The majority leader has shown a commitment to let Senators be heard. If they want to improve what the House sent over, let's debate it. If they want to improve what the House sent over, let's hear what those improvements are. Later today I am joining my colleagues from the Senate Steering Committee and the Republican Study Committee to discuss why Senate Democrats continue their efforts to filibuster this funding bill, to not have a debate on this funding bill. In the last Congress we were often accused of not being willing to end debate; seldom were we accused of not being willing to have the debate. Our argument was, how can we end debate when we have had no amendments? We have not been able to be heard on how we would like to change this bill. Why would we end that debate? Seldom were we accused of not wanting to go to debate. Several times that was the case when it was clear that nothing was going to happen and the debate was all about politics. This is a debate about funding part of the government that is so essential that if funding is not there, almost all of the employees show up anyway. They are considered essential. They need a paycheck, just as families all over America do. We are going to see to it that that happens. These are essential employees. This is not a situation where we can just decide we don't need to have the debate. Our friends on the other side can't continue to think that the debate only happens and amendments only happen in the Senate if there are provisions with which they agree. Maybe they just don't want to explain why the President said 22 times he couldn't take the action he took in November. That is a lot of times, even by political standards. Twenty-two times saying he can't do something and then figuring out a way he can do it is a pretty extraordinary event. So we need to have this debate. Frankly, unless we engage in the debate, we won't really ever know what is going to happen with the debate. I think it is time to move forward. I hope Senate Democrats will work with us. If they want to offer amendments, I am more than happy to vote on their amendments. I think the bill the House sent over is work product we should be pursuing. We should be moving forward with it. Seldom is there legislation that can't possibly be improved, but it can't be improved if we won't talk about it. This is not an option. This is an issue we eventually have to deal with. Let's have the debate on why it now doesn't matter that the President said 22 times he wasn't going to take an action and then took it. If there are provisions in the House bill our friends on the other side don't like, let's hear what they are and vote on those issues and see what happens then. We need to continue our efforts to move to this funding bill. I hope we will still engage in this debate before the end of the month and give this the attention it deserves. We should not assume that any legislation that comes to the floor is so perfect, it can't be improved. In fact, the tradition for appropriations bills of the Senate and the House has always been that any Member could challenge anything--until about 7 years ago when suddenly no Member could challenge anything. Let's get back to the way this work is supposed to be done. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to honor Coach Gene Bess of Three Rivers College in Poplar Bluff, MO. As a coach for Three Rivers College, Gene has had an amazing career that has spanned four decades. During that time, he has maintained a winning percentage of 78 percent with an average of 27 wins per year. He has not had a losing season since becoming Three Rivers College's head coach in 1971. Coach Bess has led the Three Rivers College Raiders to 17 tournament appearances in the National Junior College Athletic Association, NJCAA tournament, where his career record is 41-19. The Raiders have reached the Final Four of the NJCAA tournament nine times, while winning national championships in 1979 and 1992. Gene has been recognized as the NJCAA Coach of the Year twice, the Regional Coach of the Year on 18 occasions, and the Midwest Community College Athletic Conference Coach of the Year 19 times. He is a member of the Poplar Bluff Sports Hall of Fame, the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, and the NJCAA Hall of Fame. Coach Bess is one of the best basketball coaches to ever blow a whistle in college basketball, and this month, he became the first college basketball coach ever to reach 1,200 victories. This is a tremendous feat for a coach in any sport, at any level. Prior to his record-setting career at Three Rivers College, Coach Bess had a very successful record at the high school level when coaching at Lesterville, Anniston, and Oran. Over a 12-year period, these Bess-era teams won over 250 games, ending in appropriate fashion with his Oran team playing for the Missouri Class M State Championship. Oran lost that game 76-74, yet the Bess legacy was only beginning. The leadership and dedication that Gene Bess demonstrates as a basketball coach, does not stop on the court. Instead, it translates into his personal and public life. He has been married for nearly 54 years and is a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Poplar Bluff. He and his wife Nelda have two children, Janell Hartmann and Brian, one of the Raiders' assistant coaches, and four grandchildren. Faith and family always come before his work, and this is just one secret to his success. I ask that all of my colleagues join me in congratulating Coach Bess and the Three Rivers Raiders on this rare milestone of 1,200 victories, a record that is unsurpassed at any level.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I wish to follow up on what the majority whip has been talking about. Clearly the country is and should be concerned by the President's unilateral Executive action on immigration. He announced this action on November 20 of last year. The majority whip has already gone down that list of a number of our colleagues on the other side who said this is the wrong way to do this. The House happens to agree. In fact, the House of Representatives has passed legislation that agrees that this is the wrong way to do it and try to come up with a remedy. Frankly, there is a better remedy. We are not going to find that better remedy if we don't have a debate. We are not going to find that better remedy if we don't come to the floor and say: Here is how we think that bill should be changed. The action taken last November by the President was clearly Executive overreach. It was an affront, I believe, to the rule of law, and it was an affront to the Constitution. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the President ``shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' That is the end of the quote right out of the Constitution. It couldn't be clearer--``shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' That is why we call the President the Executive. The President's job is not to make the law. The President's job is not to rule as a court would on the law. The President's job is to execute the law. The question here is: Does the law matter or not? The question here is: What do we do when the House of Representatives has passed a spending bill that would allow the funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year--between now and September 30--which does try to stop President Obama's Executive amnesty plan? It appears, if you can believe what you read that people have said, that a substantial majority of the Senate agrees the President shouldn't have done what he did. So what is our obligation to try to undo that? The House has done their part by sending a bill over that does that. The President himself said 22 times that he didn't have the authority to do what he eventually did. I guess this is one case where I agree with the President 22 times. So if anybody is thinking I don't agree with the President, here are 22 times I agree with the President--the 22 times he said he couldn't do what he eventually decided to do. And what was that? The President said he can't unilaterally change the country's immigration laws. The President didn't have that authority the 22 times he said he didn't have that authority. He didn't have that authority on November 20, 2014, when he took actions that clearly were designed not to enforce the law, and he doesn't have that authority now. So the House sent a bill over that tries to clarify that the President doesn't have that authority; that the legislative branch of the Federal Government is the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States. It is not whoever gets to act last. Occasionally, the President will say: I am going to take Executive action if the Congress doesn't do its job. Well, the key point there is that it is the job of the Congress to pass laws, not the job of the President. If the President wants to repeal the law, if the President wants to change the law, nobody is in a better position than the President of the United States to encourage the Congress and the country to do that. But that doesn't mean the President has the default option, if the Congress doesn't act by some certain date, to just do it himself. That is not in the Constitution. The President is not going to find it there. I continue to believe the House-passed Department of Homeland Security funding bill is the way to send a message to the President that he can't act unilaterally; that there is a constitutional way to do this. I have not given up on winning over six Democrats in the Senate. Everybody understands the importance of 60 votes in the Senate. There are 54 Republicans, not 60, but there are more than six Democrats who have said they didn't agree with what the President did. I think in all cases they have said they agree with the funding levels or they would vote for the funding levels for the Department of Homeland Security. It seems to me those two things come together pretty nicely here. They get a chance, by debating this bill, to undo what the President did and to fund the Department of Homeland Security. So there are at least six Democrats who have said those are two different things they are for, and this is a case where we get to do that. We need to pass this House measure that ensures spending at an important time with critical needs of homeland security, but it also would stop the President's illegal amnesty. We should not let that stand. We don't know where these legislative fights will wind up until we have them. Maybe that is why no Democrat yesterday was willing to have this debate, because maybe they do not know what happens if attention is called to the past positions they have had or the need to fund the Department of Homeland Security. But we don't know how these legislative battles work out if we don't have them. I think we need to have this one. Leader McConnell said our first choice is to try to pass the House bill. If the law shouldn't be followed, then advocate that it be repealed, advocate that it be changed, but don't advocate that it be ignored. The ignore clause of the Constitution doesn't exist. There is no ability of the Executive to do that. The United States is a nation founded on the rule of law. With every trade agreement we enter into, with all our relationships with other countries, and with people who come here, we talk about this being a country where you can look at the law and rely on the law itself--no matter what your status. The President is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Yet President Obama repeatedly has found ways to circumvent the Congress by picking and choosing which laws he wants to enforce. Take the case of the overwhelmingly complicated health care law, where the President is picking and choosing what dates the law is to be complied with, even though the law often has very clear other dates. The President said: Well, I think there is a better date. This is a bill of which the President was a major advocate. He had a chance to put the dates in there and didn't. I recently reintroduced the ENFORCE the Law Act to ensure the President can't just continue to blatantly not do what the law says has to be done. This is a bill I introduced in the last Congress, where it passed the House with a bipartisan vote, but we weren't allowed to vote on it in the Senate. Apparently, there are a number of my colleagues who think that not only are we no longer allowed to vote on bills, but now it is even a bad idea if we debate a bill. That is what the vote was yesterday--to debate the bill. It wasn't approving anything except to debate the bill. That is what we should be moving towards now so we can fund this part of the government. The President complicated the funding of this agency with his action last November. The ENFORCE the Law Act permits the Congress, if the Congress believes the President isn't enforcing the law, to go to court--not to wait months and years for an aggrieved citizen to go to court with their own money and say he or she does not believe the government has the authority to do something. This allows the Congress to go to court and to go early and let a judge decide if the law is being enforced as written or not. The ENFORCE the Law Act would reestablish the proper limits of the executive branch. It would restore checks and balances. It would also provide a defender of citizens who, in their own capacity, don't have to defend or fight the government by themselves if the Congress itself believes the President has taken authority that he doesn't have or is enforcing the law in a way that wasn't intended. I think we have to stand up for the rule of law. I have joined in a court case supporting the State of Texas. Texas is suing the administration over what they believe are all kinds of added expenses put on them by the President's power grab in deciding on his own which immigration laws would be enforced and which won't be. Senator Cornyn, Senator Cruz, and I were signatories to this brief filed in December, and 24 House Members joined us, including the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, saying we agree with these States and that many responsibilities have been placed on them because the President of the United States chose not to enforce the law as written. Twenty-six States have now joined that lawsuit filed by the State of Texas, and I look forward to the conclusion of that suit because I think the judge is likely to decide that, no, there isn't the selectivity of which laws you enforce that the President has applied here, and there are great costs created for States as a result of that. Every Senator in this Chamber has a constitutional obligation to curb the unilateral Executive overreach. We have a chance to do that with the bill that could be before us. We have a chance to do that with the bill the House has sent over. This whole issue goes to the very heart of the system of checks and balances in our country and reiterates the importance of the Constitution and following the Constitution--adhering to the rule of law. I would like to see us have a chance to do that, as this Department of Homeland Security funding bill should--and eventually, I am confident, will--come to the floor. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, the Committee on Rules and Administration has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 114th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Schumer, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise to support this amendment, cosponsored by Senator Inhofe, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee; by Senator Capito, the new chair of the Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety. This amendment simply says the United States should not be bound by commitments where we are the only party that has a commitment made in the agreement with China. We agree to reduce emissions by 27 percent between now and a point in the future; the Chinese agree to increase emissions between now and 2030. The amendment also says the President should have these kinds of agreements approved by the Senate. It also says the United States should not enter any international agreements that are disproportionately a disadvantage to us. I urge support of the amendment.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for 10 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thought last night, as the majority whip just mentioned, that the President once again showed his sense of why the majority in the Congress and the majority of people in the country support the Keystone XL Pipeline. It is not just about the pipeline, even though he doesn't quite seem ever to get that. It is about whether we are going to truly take advantage of more American energy. Clearly, the President suggested that was one of the great accomplishments of his administration. I think we could make the argument--and make it effectively--that his administration hasn't done much to implement the great steps we have made forward. In fact, on public lands and other measures that we were in the process of considering when he became President, they have backed away from that rather than stepped forward. We seem to be unwilling to step forward and embrace this great opportunity that is so much more than the jobs for just the pipeline itself. I filed two amendments today on the pipeline bill--the topic we are talking about, the topic my good friend from North Dakota has done so much to bring attention to since the day he arrived in the Senate. It was 4 years ago, when the Keystone XL Pipeline application was only 2 years old at the time. Now 6 years later, we are continuing to miss an opportunity. It seems that on this topic, as once was said about seeking a solution to the Middle East, we can't seem to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But the two amendments I have filed deal with a couple of critical issues that relate to our energy future and our infrastructure future. One would be a community affordability amendment where we would have to have a study to look at the impact that all of these EPA regulations have on communities. These are EPA's unfunded mandates on communities, where they tell communities they have to do things but really don't give the community any idea how to pay for it. The Presiding Officer and I are from two States that have many small communities. Those small communities often have a water system, a sewer system, and a storm water system, and the EPA comes in and says: Here is what we want you to do--maybe not with one of those, maybe with all of those--the air quality, the water quality. I know the EPA has one regulation on water where the solution can't cost more than 2 percent of the median income over a specific period of time. Now, 2 percent of your income, if you haven't been paying it for your water bill, your sewer bill or your whatever bill--2 percent of your income is taken right off the top of your income. It makes a difference to most families, but at least there is a cap there. But you can have that 2 percent on increasing the cost of the water system and another 2 or 4 or 5 percent on increasing the storm water system, and somebody has to pay those bills. What this amendment does is suggest that we figure out who is paying those bills, what is a reasonable way to pay those bills, and how those bills can be paid. We know on the Senate floor, and the President knows, and the EAP knows who pays those bills and the people who have access to those services. There is no mythical payee here. The person who pays your utility bill is you, and if there is increased cost to the utility system, that comes to you. The person who pays your water bill is you. So I believe we need to have a coordinated effort to see how those projects impact communities, impact families, and understand how this works. So this amendment that I filed today directs the EPA to collaborate with the National Academy of Public Administration to review existing studies of costs associated with major EPA regulations. The amendment also directs the administration to determine how different localities can effectively fund these projects. The end result would be to come up with a working definition of a phrase they use a lot--individual and community affordability--but I can't find any evidence that this phrase--individual and community affordability--really means anything. The amendment I filed today has already been endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and the chamber of commerce in my hometown, Springfield, MO. The other amendment I am filing, submitted as a sense of the Senate, is that the President's U.S.-China greenhouse gas amendment would be looked at in a different way. This amendment is cosponsored by my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe. It talks about the agreement negotiated between the President and the People's Republic of China and, in fact, says this agreement really has no force and effect because frankly, Mr. President, it already has no force and effect in China. Of the two parties the President says have agreed to this, we are the only one who would have to do anything. We think this is a bad idea--Senator Inhofe and I--and I think others will join us. It is a bad deal for our country, it is economically unfair, it is environmentally irresponsible, and once again it produces exactly the opposite result of what we would want. First of all, I think the Constitution is pretty clear on agreements negotiated between countries. There is a Senate role to be played. It requires the advice and consent of the Senate. The Senate should insist we do that job. Whether it is here or on any other agreements with other countries, those agreements need to be consented to by the Senate. It happens to say that in the Constitution. These agreements, under this amendment, also would have to be accompanied by actions that may be necessary to implement the agreement, including what it costs to implement. The amendment says the United States should not sign bilateral or other international agreements on greenhouse gases that will cause serious economic harm to the United States. It also says the United States should not agree to any bilateral or international agreement imposing unequal greenhouse gas commitments on the United States. The reason I filed this amendment is simple. The agreement the President unilaterally negotiated with China and announced last November is a bad deal for workers and a bad deal for families, whether those workers are in Missouri or Arkansas or anywhere else in the country today. The agreement requires the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 levels by 2025. It allows the Chinese to increase their emissions until 2030. So last night the President said in his State of the Union Address that the United States will double the pace at which we cut carbon pollution and China committed for the first time to limiting their emissions. Well, let's be very frank about that. The President is actually right. He has agreed that we would double the pace, somewhere around 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 levels in the near term, but the Chinese have agreed actually to be allowed to increase their emissions for another 15 years and then they would consider--they would consider--reducing emissions after that. What this does is drive jobs and opportunity to China and other countries that care a lot less about what comes out of the smokestack than we do. We lose the jobs we otherwise would have had. We try to solve a global problem on our own even though we have made great strides already, some of which were cost-effective, but they get less cost-effective all the time. I am grateful my colleagues allowed me to have a few extra minutes. I have filed these amendments, and we will be talking more about them and the Keystone XL Pipeline issue over the next few days. I look forward to having a vote on these amendments and the vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, first of all, this is the first opportunity I have had to follow our new President pro tempore of the Senate on the floor. He was just elected yesterday. I have spoken on the floor at times when he has been in other leadership roles. He is a solid Member of this Senate whom we rally around in so many ways. The comments he just made about the leader of our friends on the other side and the importance of family to Senator Reid--that is also important to Senator Hatch. People are important to Senator Hatch. I believe he is going to be a tremendous President pro tempore of the Senate, chairman of the Finance Committee, and a critical leader at a critical time. The comments he made on the floor today about Senators being willing to take tough votes, to take positions on issues, to let the American people know where we stand--that is not only where the Senate ought to be but in so many ways it is where Senator Hatch has always been as a Member of the Senate and now as the highest elected official in the Senate, the President pro tempore of the Senate. I look forward to seeing him do that job, seeking his advice, and watching his leadership as he leads us now in multiple ways in the Senate.

Mr. BLUNT. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for his leadership and his comments. The Presiding Officer and I are looking at legislation we looked at last year where the Senate would simply have to stand up on rules and regulations that have an impact on the economy and say ``Yes, we are going to improve those'' or ``No, we are not going to do those.'' That would be a role for the Senate where the regulators for the first time have an obstacle and an opportunity to come to the people who have to go to the voters and say: What do you think about this rule? What do you think about this regulation? I look forward to seeing the REINS Act again that would put some more controls over regulators, which both the Presiding Officer and I have worked on. Today I will talk for a few moments about the work we will hopefully get to quickly. The first numbered bill in this new Senate is the bill to authorize the Keystone Pipeline. In the 6 years that Canada has been waiting to try to sell us a product that we need, I have spoken about this--as many of us have--many times. It is hard to actually think about what I might say today that hasn't been said before in that 6-year period of trying to do what I believe and what most Americans believe is the logical thing for us to do. Our best trading partner, Canada--more North American energy is one of the critical keys to our economic future. As I over and over again think of the list of opportunities in front of us, that has to be near the top. What happens when we have more American energy? What happens when we are more self-sufficient with our two closest neighbors for the energy we use, the energy we need? What happens when we are less dependent on economies that we don't do as much business with or places that aren't as friendly to us as our neighbors to the north and our neighbors to the south? More American energy has an impact on utility bills, it has an impact on transportation, and it has an impact on whether we are going to make more things. An economy that grows things and makes things is stronger than an economy where we just trade services with each other. We should be looking for those things which create that competitive incentive for us to get back into manufacturing. In the last session of Congress, we were able to pass a bill I cosponsored with Senator Brown from Ohio on advanced manufacturing, and I think it is going to have an impact on doing things in different ways, but I don't suggest that it would have a greater impact than a utility bill that somebody thinking about building a factory understood that they had a great likelihood of being able to pay for a long time and in a competitive way or a delivery system that works. Those are the kinds of things that will create more American jobs. The Keystone Pipeline clearly creates some jobs in and of itself. I think 20,000 jobs or so is the estimate just to build the pipeline and another 20,000 for all of the support of material and things that go into that pipeline. I think the President's own State Department has a number of 42,000 jobs that would be created if we go to this shovel-ready project. We had a lot of discussion in the country when the President became President about the importance of finding shovel-ready projects. This is a project where people have had the shovels in hand for a long time. They have a product we need. We are their best trading partner. It is logical that they would want to sell it to us. It is equally logical that we should want to buy it from them. The State Department says over and over again--and this is the State Department where the Secretary of State was put in place by the President, who yesterday said he would veto this bill--the State Department says over and over again that there is no environmental impact we should be concerned about. For people who say: Well, the Canadians should be concerned about the impact of taking that oil out of the ground, that is really going to happen. The oil sands are going to be heated up. The oil is coming out of the ground. It is going to be sold to somebody. The question is, Do we take advantage of that logical opportunity or do we give that opportunity to somebody else? When we get into this debate next week, somebody will say: Well, maybe there are 40,000 jobs to build the pipeline, but there are only three or four dozen jobs to run the pipeline. Well, of course--it is a pipeline. It is not complicated to do, but it is the logical and easiest way to move fuel that we need, oil that we need, oil that would become part of our commerce and other commerce. But anybody who thinks that those are the only jobs that would be created when we grasp the idea of more American energy just isn't thinking about what this means to our economy. There are many jobs to be created. That is why this has become such an important issue and such an important vote--not just for the pipeline itself but for the message it sends to the American workforce, the message it sends to people who are thinking about making things in America, and the message it sends about our future economy. This is one of many things that are just waiting for us to take advantage of them so that we can grow our economy in new and positive ways. Among the things that will be said that I will disagree with on this in the next few days: Well, this is only 35 permanent jobs. Anybody who believes that embracing more American energy is only 35 American jobs is either kidding themselves or just trying to kid the American people. We need to take advantage of this opportunity. There is no government funding involved. It is just government approval. This is a $7 billion project, 42,000 jobs. The government just has to say yes. Six years and several months ago ago--I think about 2 months ago now we passed the 6-year anniversary of the Canadians having the application and asking us to let them do this. Why do they even have to do that? Because they cross an international border. We build pipelines in the country all the time with very little Federal involvement. This is revenue for the States, communities, and counties this pipeline goes through. There is a revenue stream there. You pay for the permanent ability to have that infrastructure available to you. It is a $7 billion project, revenue for State and local government, but most importantly, it is a sign from the people of the United States of America through their government that we are going to take advantage of this great opportunity of more American energy that is in front of us. Since he came to the Senate the same day I did 4 years ago, Senator Hoeven has been a leading advocate as a North Dakotan. He understands what energy can do for the economy. He also understands the importance of being able to transport that energy product around in the right way. It frees train cars for manufactured goods, agriculture, and other things. It does so in the best way. Senator Manchin, joining with Senator Hoeven as the principal sponsors of the bill, is a leader on these energy issues. He understands energy issues. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of this bill. I believe there are 60 of us who have cosponsored the bill--clearly enough to send the bill to the President's desk. It would be nice if the President would look at the opportunity and decide to sign this bill. This is an important part of the future of the country. It is time for the Senate, the Congress, and the Government of the United States to wrap its arms around what this means to the people of the United States. It means good jobs. It means a different future than if we don't have it. One other topic I wish to mention while on the floor is--speaking of good jobs--jobs for veterans. A bill I filed in the last Congress in the Senate has passed the House again last night, the Hire More Heroes Act. I hope we can get to it quickly. Last year it passed in the House 406 to 1, but the Senate wouldn't take up the bill that passed the House 406 to 1. How do we hire more heroes under this act? We give people who already have veterans health benefits--TRICARE or other VA benefits--a little bit of an exception as an employee. Employers don't have to count them toward the 50 employees that trigger a law that many employers are trying to avoid being affected by, the so-called Affordable Care Act. We have a chance to go to those who served us and say: Look, we are going to create one additional opportunity. We are not going to count the fact that you already have health care against you; we are actually going to let it work in favor of your opportunity to get a job and to move forward with that job. Whether it is more American energy or hiring our heroes for jobs they need to have--the veteran unemployment numbers are unacceptable. Veterans who have served since 9/11 at one time last year had an unemployment rate right at the 9 percent number. Any number is unacceptable. We need to take those veterans' skills and put them to work. I hope we do that by quickly following our colleagues on the other side of the building--who now have passed this bill twice--and getting this bill on the President's desk as well. Hiring our heroes, creating jobs, looking at more American energy--I am hopeful these are the kinds of things this Congress will quickly send a message to the President and the country--these are the kinds of things we want to see happen for more opportunity for young Americans and for all Americans. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about regulation today. We end this Congress failing once again for the Congress to take more responsibility for regulation. Items such as the REINS Act, which I have sponsored with Senator Paul and others and which would require Members of Congress to vote on regulations that had significant economic impact did not get done. A bill that I introduced with Senator King from Maine that would create a regulatory review process that got great reviews in every economic and many other papers and magazines did not get done. But what I am seeing in Missouri and around the country is more and more concern that begins to focus on the Congress not doing what it needs to do to keep the regulators under control--legislation that would routinely put an end date on every regulation so that regulation has to be reviewed and regulation has to come up again and be looked at. Frankly, if you combined that with the requirement for the Senate and the House to vote on that regulation, it would be very unlikely that regulations that no longer made sense would be presented another time--having to look at this in a way that makes sense for our economy. One of the generally used estimates is that $2 trillion is spent every year in the United States complying with regulations. Well, let's assume that maybe as much as half of that--it could be more--is either duplicative or simply unnecessary. What would happen in our economy if we had $1 trillion chasing the future rather than trying to needlessly comply with things that no longer make sense. We have to take more responsibility for that because frankly there is no other way to get our hands on the regulators. The regulators are often out of control and almost always unaccountable. Frankly, they are more unaccountable in the second term of a President than they are in the first term because nobody in the chain of command ever has to go back and answer to the people we work for about the cost of these regulations. I know in my State of Missouri, people are really concerned about a couple of regulations out there now that are dealing with energy policy and water policy, regulations the EPA has imposed that really do not make sense when you look at the cost of those regulations versus what would be gained by the regulations if they were even possible to comply with. I think a clear message was sent in November to the next Congress that people want the government to be more responsive, that people want the government to--when you have a cost-benefit analysis of something the government has done, make it a realistic analysis, make it an analysis that would stand the straight-face test, when you say, oh, this is not the emotional cost of worrying about some societal problem that you really cannot quite define, this is what it really costs American families in terms of, for instance, their utility bill. We look at these regulations that frankly go beyond the capacity of the regulators. I am not suggesting that the Congress is the right place to draft most regulations. I would say that the process of passing a law and saying that we want this agency to figure out how to implement the law is, in fact, the right way to do that. But I would also suggest that then that agency has to come back to the Congress and say: Here is the regulation that we think is the proper implementation. Now you have to vote yes or no. This regulation is the way to go forward with this law. I think often the regulators now are well beyond what the law allows them to do. There is a case in point I am going to talk about in a minute, the water rule that is out there, where a navigable water was used as a definition of where the EPA had some jurisdiction. Well, I think their view right now is well beyond ``navigable.'' So what would we do about that? There is the ENFORCE the Law Act that I introduced in the Senate and that the House passed months ago with a bipartisan vote, where the Congress would have standing in court to be able to go to court if either House of the Congress thought the President was not enforcing the law as intended, so that the Congress--which now cannot go to court and say that we want a third party to step in right now and define this principle--could go to court and say that we want to know right now what ``navigable'' meant in 1972 when it was put into law, in the early 1970s, what it meant in 1899 when it was used for the first time, and what it means today. There is no reason to have a couple of years of trying to comply with a regulation when eventually the Supreme Court will say, as they did a handful of times last year, that the Federal Government does not have jurisdiction to do this or that people were appointed illegally to a board or commission and that all of the actions they took had to be set aside. This is not a hypothetical case. This is what the Court decided just last year. The ENFORCE the Law Act would give us the capacity not to require a citizen to have to bear the burden of looking at a regulation that is outside the law or does not make sense and would allow the Congress to actually participate in that process at a much earlier time. So I hope in the next Congress we will do in the Senate what the House did and pass something like the ENFORCE the Law Act. I certainly intend to introduce that legislation again, put it on the President's desk, and have that discussion. The administration recently took the opportunity to roll out a new rule on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This was an estimate of-- this was a rule on air matter, ozone. A new ozone rule came out the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Believe me, if you have a rule that you think people are going to like, you do not put it out the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. This is like the--we always watch late Friday afternoon what comes out because that is what whoever is announcing it did not want to announce on Monday. Even a bigger day is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We have an air rule now that we have not achieved. We have made great strides in the right direction, but looking at where we are now on this rule and mercury in the air and the quality of the air, we would have to have at least 75- to 85-percent attainment in counties all over America before you could then raise the bar one more time. This would take the 75-percent standard, or the 75 standard that we have now for particulate matter--the so-called MACT Standards--and reduce it even further. We are not in attainment with the first rule yet. In fact, the EPA just recently, years after the rule, put out the guidelines you would need that were helpful to try to achieve the rule. But as soon as you get the guidelines for the last rule, the EPA wants to say: Oh, here we want to talk about the next rule, even though we just now told you how to begin to think about complying with the last rule. Even though there are nonattainment areas all over the country, we want to move right beyond that and go to the next rule. That is the kind of thing that should not be allowed to happen. People are still looking for good-paying jobs. They are still looking at a utility bill they want to make sense of. I hope the Congress can be a part of that. The EPA has another rule they have been asking for comment on, the so-called clean powerplant. Well now, who is opposed to that? Nobody. There is nobody who does not want clean power. In fact, the standards for utility powerplants have moved in a very positive direction in the last 10 years. We have made great gains. The question is, are the next gains worth the economic cost, if the next gains are worth people having utility bills they cannot pay or if the next gains are worth people not having jobs they would otherwise have. That is a discussion we need to have. You know, the wrong utility policies produce an absolute lose-lose. A utility bill goes up, we lose jobs that we otherwise would have, and they go to places that care a whole lot less about what comes out of the smokestack than we do. So the problem gets better, we lose jobs, and the country that has made the most positive strides in recent years is the country that pays the price for rules that no longer make sense. The rule that is out now--our State is largely coal dependent. We are the fifth most coal- dependent State. We are about 82-percent coal dependent. Of the 1 million comments that have been made on the rule, 305,000 of them came from Missouri families. There are 1 million comments of people talking about why this rule does not make sense for them. We need to be sure that we do the things that not only meet the legal standard but also meet the commonsense standard as we move forward. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an op-ed--an opinion editorial piece--by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, who happened to be one of President Obama's law school professors and who is more often a witness for the left side of an argument than for the right side of an argument. He joined the world's largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, to criticize the executive overreach in what the EPA is proposing as they propose to regulate carbon emissions from existing powerplants. There is a big difference if you have a rule that talks about what you do in the future for the utility companies than regulating what people have previously decided to do under the old rules. There is a bill out there that I am a cosponsor of that really tries to use the great resource we have through coal in a most effective way. We do not produce any coal in Missouri any more, but we used to. We do not have any coal mines left in our State. But we have coal-fueled power plants. It is not really a war on coal as far as Missourians are concerned; it is a war on coal-fired plants. If you built a plant under the old rules and, in fact, it has better air quality than any powerplant has ever had up until this time, as all of our recent plants have had, and you still have life in that plant, but the EPA comes in and says that now you have to meet a new standard with the plant you just built or you built 5 years ago, somebody has to pay that bill. There is this mythical view that well, it is big industry or it is manufacturing. The most laughable of all is that somehow the utility companies are going to pay the bill. The utility companies do not pay the bill. People that get a utility bill pay the bill. The people that are most impacted by that are the people who are having a hard time paying their utility bill now. These are bad policies. I am committed that as a Congress we should do more than we have been doing to accept responsibility for these agencies we fund, for some overall law, that no matter how much they are abusing it by stretching it beyond what the Congress intended, the Congress would have passed--nobody is out there issuing a rule and saying: By the way, we do not have any legal authority to do this. So defining that authority, being sure the rules make sense is important. On the power rule, on December 2 I filed comments urging that this rule be withdrawn and we think more carefully about the impact it has on jobs that have good take-home pay and about families who have a hard time paying their utility bill now--our retired individuals, our single moms or others who have a hard time paying their utility bill now. We need to continue to look at that. One other rule I want to talk about, as my time comes to a conclusion here, is the so-called waters of the United States rule. The EPA was given the authority under the Clean Water Act, as I said earlier, to have some authority over navigable waters. Navigable water, beginning in the 1890s, was used in Federal law as a constitutional explanation of why the Federal Government would be involved in water policy, because the Federal Government under the Constitution is involved in commerce. Navigable and commerce come together. Navigable actually means you can navigate with some sort of vessel that can carry a commercial load. Well, the EPA has now decided, or is in the process of proposing, at least, that navigable waters means any water that can run into any water that could run into any water that can be navigable. I am confident that is not what the Congress intended. Now, if they want to propose that, that is fine. Through the President and the administration, the EPA can come to Congress and say: We think we ought to control all the water everywhere; let's have a debate about that. And the Congress would not give the EPA that authority. I hope the next Congress sets as a priority taking responsibility for what the Federal Government does, taking responsibility for these regulators and regulations, being sure we have regulations where we need them that make sense, and that we push back and don't have regulations where all they do is hurt families, hurt jobs, and don't solve the bigger problem. I hope we see that happen, and I hope the next Congress will be more focused on doing that job than this Congress was. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it is good to be here. I was disappointed yesterday to see that we weren't able to move forward on the Keystone Pipeline. It has become symbolic in many ways of whether we are willing to embrace the opportunities of more American energy. The American people clearly have a sense that it is to their advantage for us to take advantage of those opportunities, for us to deal with not only our own economy, with the energy we can produce but even with our next-door neighbors. Canada is our greatest trading partner, and Mexico continues to play a bigger and bigger role as a trading partner--I think now No. 4 and No. 5 of all the countries in the world we have economic exchanges with--but friendly neighbors in North America that can produce energy in ways that meet every logical standard. I heard some discussions about the pipeline, that once this is built, even though it may create tens of thousands of jobs in building the pipeline, it will only take three dozen or so people to run the pipeline. Of course that is right; it is a pipeline. It is an efficient, safe way to transport the energy we need. But I think it is important to understand that just the jobs to run the pipeline have nothing to do in many ways with the job potential that is created when we embrace the energy potential we have. If we ask about that energy potential, the American people say yes. If we ask about lower utility bills or dependably payable utility bills, the American people say yes. If we ask about price at the pump, the American people say yes. But beyond that, if somebody is thinking about a manufacturing job or any other job as a job creator, if they have that utility bill they can pay, if they have the delivery system they can rely on, the country is much more likely to make things again, the country is much more likely to compete, and the American people understand that. Even if we ask specifically about this one small part of that puzzle--the Keystone Pipeline--the American people say yes. Six years is enough. The State Department has evaluated this over and over again under two different Secretaries of State. Both times they have said there is no problem moving forward with this. I was disappointed that we didn't. Even the White House suggesting they would veto that if it was sent to them seems to continue to indicate to me that nobody is listening to what the people we all work for are saying. The President said he wasn't on the ballot but his policies were. If his policies were on the ballot, as he said they were, those policies were widely rejected--not just to change next year in the body we get to serve in here, but also two-thirds of the legislative Houses in the country are no longer run by the President's party, and 60 percent-plus of the Governors are no longer run by the President's party. People are trying to send a message. It would be a good idea if the White House would get on the receive and begin to figure out what that message is and what is wrong with those policies that the American people don't like. I don't think it is because they don't understand them. I know there would be one sense probably most closely held at the White House: If they just understood what we were trying to do, they would be for what we are trying to do. I think it is not that way, even though the President might like to think it would be. In fact, the clear message is that people are concerned about costly energy policies, they are concerned about the President's recent overreach on a topic we wouldn't even think people would have engaged on, but they have: net neutrality, where even the Chairman of the FCC, nominated by the President and confirmed by this Senate--even the Chairman of the FCC said: I think the President is headed in the wrong direction there, and we need to do something different than that. The SBA recently called on the EPA to withdraw one of their proposals and try again because it had too much negative impact on the economy. I can't think of a similar situation ever, where an administration finds itself so often in conflict even with itself, even having the administration challenged. When the SBA thinks the EPA is off target, and that was empaneled sometime before a rule was laid down--a proposed regulation was laid down--we wonder, why not? Why wouldn't we be managing this discussion in a better way? Why wouldn't we be moving the country forward in a better way? Ignoring the voters is an incredible tragedy in a democracy. Ignoring the law is an even more incredible tragedy in a constitutional democracy. According to reports, the President is considering two requirements deciding on the 11 million people who are here without documents who either came illegally or stayed illegally and what to do about that. The President is looking at the length of time as a qualifier. Nowhere in the law is that a qualifier. The President is looking at the ties people might have to others in the country. These requirements, depending on how broadly they are drawn, could wind up with the President's announcement as early as Friday, leaving another 5 million people in the country in a status I don't quite understand and they will not either. When someone is here based on an Executive order, that is totally dependent on one thing: Who is the Executive? When someone is here based on the law, that is very dependent on everything having to come together that changes the law before their status will change. Why would we put people in that kind of jeopardy? Why would we send that kind of mixed message? After legislation overhauling the immigration process died in the Congress, the President said he is going to act on his own. I can't find that part of the Constitution which allows that to happen. In fact, in statements made more than one time, he couldn't find it either--statements made more than one time where the President said: I can't do this on my own. We are a nation of laws. That is his observation about who we are, not my observation about who we are. I know there will be people on this side of the Capitol Building who will say: We sent something over there, I didn't vote for it, but it doesn't mean I am not aware that it was sent to the House. But the House sent a bill over here too. Apparently both the House and the Senate are so far from where the other side is that neither is willing to take up the other bill. But that is the Constitution. The Constitution is designed so that when we change law, we do that in a fairly cumbersome way, but that has served our country pretty well for a long time, and it is not up to the President to decide that can be suspended on a topic he thinks is important and a topic he in fact has previously said he couldn't do on his own. As he was talking about this the last several months, not just Republicans but Republicans and Democrats--and I will admit particularly Democrats in close races around the country-- said the President was overstepping his authority; the President is putting people in jeopardy of not knowing whether they are here on some kind of basis that nobody has quite defined or quite understands even after he acts. Recently, a union representing thousands of Federal immigration officers raised an alarm that the U.S. Government had ordered supplies to create millions of blank work permits and green cards. According to reports following that union report, the new Federal contract proposal for Homeland Security would allow the government to buy enough supplies to make as many as 34 million immigrant work permits and residency cards over the next 5 years. We issue immigrant work permits all the time but not at the level that is being talked about here. Nobody has contended, by the way, that we just got a particularly good opportunity to buy a lot of card stock. I haven't heard that given as the reason. So these people who work with that every day are saying: What is going on here? The President of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council--the union representing 12,000 immigration service agents--called reports about planned Executive action dangerous, people who deal with this every day--his words--said it would increase exponentially the health risks, the threats to national security, and expense to taxpayers that he said are on the rise because of lax enforcement of immigration laws already. Article II, section 3 of the Constitution declares that the President ``shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'' Simply put, these constitutional requirements are just that. They are requirements the President shall take care that the laws are faithfully executed, to execute the acts of the Congress, to enforce the law as written. Signed into law by some President and never changed by the current President would indicate that is what the law is and the President is supposed to enforce the law. Yet President Obama continues to refuse in this and other areas to show a willingness to try to convince the Congress to change the law rather than assume: If the Congress doesn't do this, I will. As I said earlier, and will say again, I am still trying to find that phrase in the Constitution that says: If the Congress doesn't do this, the President can. Whether it is issuing waivers to States from the work requirements contained in the bipartisan Welfare Reform Act of 1996 or announcing another change in the President's health care law-- and I have lost count of how many changes on his own the President has had the administration do--they continue to look for ways to circumvent what the law says: a nation of laws, respect for the laws. Americans are appropriately concerned the government is just too willing to overreach and at the same time unbelievably dysfunctional, whether it is kids at the border or a Secret Service that can't keep people out of the White House or how we deal with Ebola. We have a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and when we have a disease control problem we have to put somebody else in charge. What is wrong with that? That is why I introduced the ENFORCE the Law Act in March, a bill that would allow Congress to authorize a legal case to be brought against a President if he fails to uphold the law as written. This bill would restore the system of checks and balances reiterated in the Constitution. The ENFORCE the Law Act removes the procedural barriers and then would allow the House or Senate or both together to jointly adopt the resolution that just says we don't believe the law is being enforced. There is a set of regulations out now on the Clean Water Act which did authorize the Federal Government, the EPA, to monitor and have some authority over the navigable waters of the United States. I don't have any doubt that in the 1970s when that happened, people thought navigable waters meant the same thing they thought navigable waters meant when it was first put into Federal law in the 1880s. Suddenly, navigable waters in the new rule means any water anywhere that could ever become part of water that could become part of water that could become navigable. This is a case that can easily be litigated sooner rather than later, long before people try to comply with an area where the Federal Government will turn out not to have control, as they did in a number of areas this year. So I hope we will look at that again. The House has passed it in a bipartisan manner. The Congress should be concerned about enforcing the law as written. As the Constitution says, both the Members of the Congress and the President of the United States should be concerned about enforcing the law as written. I thank the Presiding Officer for the time and yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a school that is celebrating its 150th year of service to students in Springfield, MO. Sunshine Elementary School began serving young people during the Civil War. The wooden one-room country school house was originally located at what is now the major intersection of Campbell Road and Sunshine Lane. During the Civil War, students often witnessed the movement of troops along the road known at the time as the Old Wire Road. Later, the adjacent Sunshine Drive took its name from the school. According to ``So That All May Learn,'' a history of the Springfield Public School system published in 1995, Sunshine Elementary School was annexed into the Springfield School District in the mid-1920s, and the one-room school was relocated and replaced with a larger structure at its current location. The original school site, close to what is now the headquarters of Bass Pro Shops, was sold by the district in 1930. In the boom years following World War II, student growth surged with the start of the baby boomer generation. In the late 1940s, student enrollment at Sunshine Elementary School grew by 430 kids in a single year, creating an overcrowding issue. The solution involved moving students in grades five and six to the nearby Phelps School. The first major addition to the Sunshine School came in 1950 when six new classrooms were built, along with a multipurpose room. Forty years later, new restrooms, two classrooms, and a library were added. More recently, Sunshine Elementary School became the last traditional school building equipped with air conditioning. In October, students, faculty, parents and community leaders observed the 150th year of educating children at Sunshine Elementary School. October 24 was designated as Sunshine Elementary School Day in Springfield, which included Civil War reenactors, games, the planting of a commemorative tree, food and other fun activities. Current and former Sunshine Elementary School students joined together for a sesquicentennial celebration at the school. Sunshine Elementary School principal David Martin encouraged students, families, faculty, and alumni to participate in the sesquicentennial by providing oral histories and historical artifacts, including photographs, report cards, yearbooks, and newspaper articles. Today, more than 200 students attend Sunshine Elementary School. Student to teacher ratios are 12 to 1, which is the second best among the 36 elementary schools in the Springfield district. In 2014, Sunshine Elementary School academically ranks higher than 65.3 percent of elementary schools in Missouri and 11th among those in the Springfield district. I congratulate Sunshine Elementary School and its many alumni and supporters for its decades of continued service and success. Happy 150th birthday Sunshine Elementary School.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that K.C. Courtland, who has been a military fellow in our office, be granted the privileges of the floor for today's session of the Senate.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, it is a good day for Major Courtland to be here because another thing I want to talk about today is the Air Force itself and to pay tribute to those in the Air Force. This is the anniversary of the 67 years of service and sacrifice for our Nation-- clearly the greatest air power in the history of the world, the first place we turn when we want to make an immediate difference in a chaotic situation in the world. We are talking this week, again, about how the Air Force can make a difference, whether it is those based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri or those based all over the world. The Air Force continues, in so many ways, to project our strength and our commitment to a more peaceful world by using the power that we do have in a way that ensures that in some cases the playing field is more fair because we keep people on the ground rather than let despotic governments get their weapons in the air. In some places we are able to intervene, as we did recently in conjunction with the Peshmerga, to allow the recapture of the dam in Iraq that is essential, and even beyond that, could have itself been used as a great weapon if that dam would have been allowed to be breached and then the flood that would have occurred because of that. The Air Force was created in 1947 under President Harry Truman's leadership. Prior to that it was called the U.S. Army Air Corps. I am proud to stand today at one of the desks that Senator Truman used on the Senate floor--a desk later used by other Missourians, by Senator Eagleton, by Senator Danforth, by Senator Bond--but a desk used by President Truman as he served in what he said were the best years of his working life--his time as a Senator. But he faced lots of hard challenges as President. One was how we moved forward in a new and different world after World War II and how we used our technology in different ways. One of those was to recognize that the U.S. Army Air Corps had risen to a place that it really deserved to be recognized for what it was--the Air Force. The first Secretary of the Air Force, another Missourian, was Senator Stuart Symington, who then would later serve in this body as a Senator. Certainly, we have benefited in our office from having Kelly Courtland, Maj. K.C. Courtland, who has been helping us this year in my responsibilities on both the Armed Services Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. This is actually her anniversary as well as a member of the Air Force. She now completes 24 years of Air Force service on exactly the same day that the Air Force was established 67 years ago. Twenty-four years ago Major Courtland enlisted in the Air Force. For the last year she has helped us fulfill the responsibilities in our office that we have and the No. 1 responsibility of the Federal Government--the one thing almost no one would argue we could do for ourselves; that is the responsibility of defending the country. We are hoping we see Major Courtland stationed in Missouri one of these days. She is from Ludington, MI. She will be running her 85th marathon this weekend--the Air Force Marathon. She values her military training. She served from enlisted to now her role as a major and has been unbelievably helpful to us at this time. As we think about Major Courtland and all of the others who serve, we want to be very mindful of their service, their willingness to step forward to defend our freedom, to be willing to defend our freedom at a time when, once again, we are talking about this week those who would threaten our freedom and what we will do about that and how we are looking to be sure that the strategy we have and the resolve we have is a resolve that allows us to convince our enemies that a peaceful world--a world where people can pursue their own values, where they are able to pursue their own right of conscience, where they are able to look within themselves and determine their own religious convictions rather than have someone tell them what those convictions are and demand that everybody follow exactly the same path in the way they view religion and the way they consequently would be required, because of that one view, to view society and how people should live together-- hopefully those who defend us will get the kind of support and the kind of thoughtful consideration and determination they need from the people in the Senate and the House, from people in the Defense Department and the administration, from people in the White House, from the Office of the President himself on down who are going to be making decisions that will put others in harm's way as we try to prevent greater numbers of Americans, frankly, from being in harm's way. I clearly count myself among those who believe this is a real danger to us--the location of this ISIS threat, the understanding from the Secretary of Defense that somewhere between 1 and 200 Americans are there fighting alongside this genocidal group, and many times that from Europe fighting alongside this group--people with passports that allow them to come to the United States, to not worry about coming over the border and just worrying about buying a plane ticket and coming in that way. Of course there are those who say--and I agree: If we know who they are, we should take their passports away. That is easy if you know who they are to invalidate the passport. It is pretty hard if you do not know who they are to invalidate that passport. In fact, it just cannot be done. There are not only Americans coming back, but others from visa waiver countries who just simply have a passport from their country and they buy a plane ticket. Suddenly those who have become steeped in this wrong-headed view of the world--who have become conditioned to the idea that a life, if it does not agree with you, does not matter--they would be able to come into this country and into European countries in ways that we have not seen before and still have access--as terrorist groups have had before to many other countries--to poison the minds of people who are looking for an answer. I can assure you that this is not the right answer. So I wish my colleagues well as we make these important decisions. We are going to be looking at whatever we decide to do in the next couple of days and over the next 75 days or so. We will have a chance to revisit that decision as we look at how force is being applied and how our hopes are being met. We will see if what the President thinks will happen as a response to what we are doing here is actually what appears to be happening later this year.