John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 442, introduced earlier today.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, today is February 16, 2017. President Trump was sworn in on January 20, 2017. For the past several weeks now, we have come to the floor and talked about the slow pace at which the Senate has considered and voted on the President's nominees for his Cabinet. Well, there is good reason for that because one of our roles is to consider and vote on advisers selected by the President, regardless of political party, and to help this new administration lead the country. President Obama, to his credit, after the election, sat down with President-Elect Trump and said he was committed to a peaceful transition of power from his administration to the Trump administration. But, apparently, some of our colleagues didn't get the memo. We continue to slog along at the slowest pace since George Washington to vote on nominees to the President's Cabinet. The reason it has gone on so slowly is clear by now. It is because our friends across the aisle are still upset and have not yet reconciled themselves with the results of the election on November 8. They just kind of can't get over it. Yes, they are being encouraged by the radical elements of their party who don't want us to fulfill our responsibilities, who don't want a new President to have the Cabinet that he needs in order to govern the country. Yes, there are some who want to halt our work in this Chamber and perpetuate dysfunction. They don't want us to focus on legislating because they want to keep us tied up in the confirmation process. I will just interject right here, as I have said before, that we know these nominees will be confirmed because, thanks to the nuclear option under Senator Reid, the previous Democratic leader, all it takes is 51 votes to confirm a nominee to a Cabinet post. But the fact is, the country needs a functioning Senate. We need a functioning executive branch. So I hope our colleagues across the aisle will understand soon that if they want to be effective--if they want to actually move the needle and help those who have entrusted them with the future of this country--then we need to turn from gridlock to action. Last Congress, even under President Obama in the White House, we did not let partisan dysfunction keep us from working together. There is a difference between elections and governing. But, for some reason, too many people want to keep relitigating the election and not allow us to actually govern. Of course, during the Obama administration, Republicans had many points of departure from the Obama administration, and we used the tools available to us to provide the oversight and ask the critical questions that the American people demanded. But our friends across the aisle are now being tempted to shut down the government, to run away from policy debates, and point fingers. Why? Because it is always easier to throw stones than it is to actually accomplish something-- roll up your sleeves, focus on the task, and turn to legislating. Yes, it may be easier just to criticize and to obstruct, but it is not the right thing for the American people. Our colleagues across the aisle know that, but, as I said earlier, they are being unduly influenced by some of the radical elements in their political base who will not let them do it or who say that if you do cooperate on a bipartisan basis and actually do your job, then we are going to recruit people to run against you in a primary. Well, that is part of the risk we all take. We didn't come here to appease a portion of our political base and neglect our most basic duties as Members of the U.S. Senate. Again, I would point to last Congress and the work we did together on a bipartisan basis, I might add, as evidence of what you can accomplish when you try to do that. The 114th Congress, after the 2014 election, saw a new majority, a new Republican leadership, and we did our best to help restore order to this Chamber and get it working again after years of dysfunction. Under the previous regime, Members of both the majority and minority parties were actually prevented from coming to the floor and offering legislative ideas in the form of amendments and getting votes on them, but that backfired when some of our colleagues who were running for reelection in 2014 realized that they had very little to show the voters by way of accomplishment--even those in the majority party, the Democratic Party, at that time. So one would have thought that there would be some lessons learned there. In the last Congress--in the 114th Congress that began 2 years ago-- we voted on legislative ideas from both sides of the aisle with more than 250 rollcall votes. That represented a sea change from the previous administration and the way Senator Reid ran things. We were able to get the Senate functioning as the Founders intended, and that led to big results for the American people. We took care of big, intractable problems that had trouble getting anywhere during the previous Congresses. For example, we passed a transportation bill--the highway bill--to help Americans deal with safety on the roadway, to deal with concerns about pollution due to congestion and people in gridlock, and we helped our economy in the process. That was a big, important bill. That was the first time we had been able to pass a long-term highway bill in about 30 different, separate attempts where we had patched the funding mechanism for 6 months or a year, which made it nearly impossible for our highway departments across the country to actually plan. It actually ended up being more expensive and less effective than it would be with a multiyear highway bill, which we passed. So that was a big bipartisan accomplishment. We also made great progress in reforming our public education system by passing, again, on a bipartisan basis, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which went a long way to devolving power from here in Washington, DC, back to the States, back to local school districts, back to parents and teachers--something that, fortunately, we were able to agree upon on a bipartisan basis. That change was applauded by my constituents back home, and, I believe, people around the country. We also made great headway in making our country safer and our government more just by taking up and passing legislation to support victims of abuse and violence and to craft laws to better equip our law enforcement to handle growing threats. For example, we passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act 99 to 0. Some people say that nothing ever gets done in Washington; well, 99 to 0--it is hard to beat that, except by maybe 100 to 0, but we will take it. That law was signed into law by President Obama 2 years ago, and it is helping victims of human trafficking get the healing and recovery they need, while also providing help to law enforcement to help root out the people who patronize modern day slavery, which is what human trafficking amounts to. We also, on a bipartisan basis, reauthorized the Justice for All Act to strengthen victims' rights in court and increase access to restitution and services that can help them recover. It helps reduce the national backlog in untested rape kits, forensic evidence collected after a sexual assault that is necessary to identify the assailant through the use of DNA testing. That was really important, after we heard the horror stories of as many as 400,000 untested rape kits in laboratories or evidence lockers--evidence which was critical to identifying the assailant; many times they were serial assailants. In other words, they didn't just attack one time, they attacked multiple times over the years--and to get them off the streets. That type of evidence is also very important in exonerating the innocent because if we can exclude someone from one of these terrible assaults, that means a person who is innocent of the crime will be free. We also passed a bill called the POLICE Act, signed into law last summer, so our first responders and law enforcement officers can learn the latest techniques to deal with violence so they are ready to face the unimaginable or previously unimaginable threats in our communities. I could go on and on, but I will just mention a few more. We passed bipartisan legislation to combat opioid abuse and heroin addiction, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. We passed laws to make our government more transparent so it is more accountable to the public and to voters. We helped capitalize on our God-given natural resources by lifting the crude oil export ban, for example--something important not only to domestic producers and job creation here but also to our friends and allies around the world who frequently depend on a single source for their energy. Unfortunately, people like Vladimir Putin in Russia have discovered you can use that sole source of energy as a weapon by threatening to cut it off. The reason I mention some of these accomplishments is to make the point that nothing happens in Congress, nothing happens in the Federal Government, unless it is bipartisan. It is one thing to fight hard in an election and try to win the election so you can gain the privilege of actually being in the majority or having the White House, but after the election is over, our responsibilities shift to governing. Right now, our friends across the aisle are continuing to obstruct and drag their feet and make it impossible for the President to get the Cabinet he needs in order to get the government up and running. We need to return to the pattern we established in the last Congress, to work together, to build consensus, to help make America stronger, our citizens safer, and our laws a better service to all the people. I would plead with our colleagues across the aisle to stop the dysfunction, stop wanting to relitigate the outcome of the election. You can't. It is over. We know what the outcome was. They need to move on, and we need to move on--not just for the political parties we are members of, not just for the benefit of those elected here in Washington but for the benefit of 320-some-odd million people whom we have the responsibility of representing. Instead of foot-dragging, obstruction, and dysfunction, let us fight, as we always have, for those people we represent and work together to find common ground where we can to put forward legislation that serves them well. I hope our colleagues across the aisle would remember those lessons they learned in the 2014 election; that dysfunction is bad politics. It does not help their political cause. I understand the temptation of wanting to yield to the most radical elements in a political party, but we are elected to the Senate for 6-year terms to be that cooling saucer, to try to have debate and deliberation, to try to work out the hard problems. That is our responsibility, and just to blindly obstruct when you know you can't change the outcome--particularly when it comes to the President getting the Cabinet he has chosen and he deserves-- makes no sense whatsoever. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 55.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 67, submitted earlier today.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have one request for a committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following commtitee is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on agriculture, nutrition, and forestry The Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Friday, February 17, 2017, at 12:30 p.m., in room S-216.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 7 p.m. on Monday, February 27, all postcloture time be considered expired and the Senate vote on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 3, Wilbur Ross to be Secretary of Commerce.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, there will be two votes at approximately 7 p.m. on Monday, February 27-- confirmation of Wilbur Ross to be Secretary of Commerce, followed by cloture on the nomination of Ryan Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I yield back all time.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier today the Senate moved forward with the President's nominee to head up the Office of Management and Budget, Congressman Mulvaney. Congressman Mulvaney spent years representing the people of South Carolina and has been thoroughly engaged on budget issues during his time in the House of Representatives. He has highlighted the fact that the Federal Government is on an unsustainable fiscal path if nothing changes in Washington, DC, and that it is reckless to keep running up the Nation's credit card with trillions in more debt and unfunded liabilities, not to mention the immorality of passing down to the next generation the obligation of actually paying that money back. So Congressman Mulvaney is actually, I think, a very good choice for this critical role, and I look forward to voting on his confirmation soon.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I agree with my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania. If the Social Security Administration were to amend the rule to include the front-end due process and a finding of dangerous mental illness, that would be a fundamentally different rule that is not substantially similar. Under the current rule, merely filing for a disability benefit on the grounds of a condition, for example, like anxiety can trigger a permanent deprivation of constitutional rights without any physician or adjudicative body finding the person is dangerously mentally ill. I certainly agree with the concerns raised by my friend and our colleague from Pennsylvania that the rule he is describing would not be substantially similar to the rule currently in effect and that would be no bar to the Social Security Administration writing a substitute rule in accordance with the views he has expressed. There may still be a few differences between us in terms of what exactly the rule would be, but there is no distance between us in terms of the conclusion that a replacement rule that provides for due process would not be substantially similar and would not be barred under the Congressional Review Act.

Mr. CORNYN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, for the last several weeks, we have been doing all we can to take up and consider the President's nominations for his Cabinet, even though we have had little or no cooperation from the other side of the aisle. Last night, we confirmed the President's top economic adviser-- something you would think people would think was pretty important--the Secretary of the Treasury, and we did confirm the President's Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Ironically, the vote for the Secretary of Veterans Affairs was 100 to 0. So maybe somebody can explain to me what was the necessity of delaying the confirmation of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for 3 weeks, leaving that important agency without a designated and Senate-confirmed head? Earlier today, we considered the nomination of Linda McMahon to serve as the next head of the Small Business Administration, to help our country's job creators reach their potential. Again, we had an overwhelming vote for Linda McMahon for the SBA. So, again, my question is, What purpose is served by delaying, by foot-dragging, and by obstructing the President's choice of his Cabinet members? We are glad we finally confirmed them, but to be honest, it is not much to celebrate. By carrying out this unprecedented obstruction of qualified nominees, our friends across the aisle are simply precluding the Senate from considering other acts of legislation that would actually be helpful to the American people. From my vantage point, it is pretty clear. While they are headed down this self-destructive path, our friends continue to listen and, sadly, cater to radical elements of their own party that simply haven't gotten over the election and have decided to obstruct the President and his agenda at all cost. But we know for a fact, from our private conversations, that our Democrat friends are not--well, they are fractured. Some of them remembered what happened in 2014, when, under the leadership of then- Majority Leader Reid, essentially everybody was frozen out of offering legislation or amendments to legislation on the floor, including Members of the majority party--then, Democrats, at the time. That strategy really backfired, resulting in a huge Republican class of outstanding Senators in 2014. People don't like that across the country. They think we are sent here to solve problems, and we work together and make progress on behalf of the American people. This sort of mindless obstruction or foot-dragging for foot-dragging's sake doesn't make any sense to them, and it doesn't make any sense to me either. Now, I realize the minority leader--the Democratic leader--probably has the toughest job in Washington, DC--to try to keep the far left fringes of his party happy, while trying to do the work of the American people who sent us here to legislate. I do know that there are Members of the Democratic caucus who are very interested in trying to demonstrate their effectiveness by working on bipartisan legislation. Some of them happen to be running for election in 2018 in States carried by President Trump. You would think they would be incentivized to tell the leadership of their own party--or the far left of their party, which wants to do nothing but resist the Trump agenda and our bipartisan agenda in the Senate--to stand down or that they are not going to participate in that sort of mindless obstruction, because I think their enlightened self-interest tells them that not only is this what the American people sent us to do--to be productive on a bipartisan basis--but it is also in their electoral self-interest, as well. As long as the Democratic leader caters to the fringe of his own party and resists any sort of cooperation, I think they can expect the same sort of results after Senator Reid led his party down that path in 2014. We are now headed into the fourth week of the new administration, and we have only confirmed a handful of this President's Cabinet picks. That is bad news not just for us but for the American people, as well. Surely, after the election of November 8, when President Obama said he wanted to make sure he participated in a peaceful transition of power to the next administration, he was appealing to the better angels of all of those who perhaps were disappointed by the outcome of the election. But that is what we do as Americans. We pull together in the best interest of the entire country. We get together and we fight, perhaps, and we take opposing parties in elections. But once the election is over, after the ballots are counted, we work together in the best interest of the American people. But that is not happening, and that is really not just bad for the Senate. That is bad for the country. Our job in the Senate is to consider these nominees and to move on them so that the President of the United States can be surrounded by the people he has chosen to help him lead the country. I will tell you that I have been incredibly impressed by the quality of people he has selected. So as we begin to consider the remaining nominees put forward by President Trump, I hope our friends on the other side will start to realize the ramifications of their quest to stop the Senate or to drag out these deliberations and preclude us from doing other constructive work. One thing I can promise you is that, thanks to the efforts of Senator Reid in the last Congress, all of these nominees will be confirmed. Our colleagues face the same choice they have had all along. They can either work with us to help get these advisers vetted and then confirmed, or they can make it painful for all of us for no good reason and reveal to the country just how ineffective they truly are when it comes to trying to obstruct this confirmation process. My hope is that they will decide to course-correct and determine for the good of the entire country that the right thing to do is to move forward on these nominees. We were able to take up the VA Secretary and the Administrator of the SBA, basically by consent, by agreement, without having to grind through this lengthy process that we are having to do on the Mulvaney and the Pruitt nominations, just to get those done before Saturday. It is not necessary, and it is not going to change the outcome. Mr. President, we are also going to take up an important congressional resolution of disapproval. The rule in question allows the Social Security Administration to report folks who may need help managing their money to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, also known as NICS. This is just another chapter in the same story that we heard last year when we successfully pushed back on the Veterans' Administration for trying to do the same thing--bureaucrats unilaterally taking away people's constitutional rights without even notifying them of the reason, much less without giving them an opportunity for a due process hearing. Well, this isn't a small matter. We have to make sure that the bureaucracies can't continue to infringe on fundamental rights guaranteed to all Americans. Now we have a chance to repeal this unconstitutional rule and to protect those just trying to receive the Social Security benefits they have earned. I look forward to doing away with this particularly noxious rule soon, this week. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate, as always, the courtesy of our colleagues. Earlier this week, we confirmed Mrs. Betsy DeVos as the next Education Secretary, and last night--finally, at long last--we confirmed Senator Jeff Sessions to be the Attorney General of the United States. That represents the eighth nominee to the President's Cabinet who has been confirmed. At this point in the Obama administration, there were 24 Cabinet members confirmed. So, obviously, we are way behind in terms of giving the President the team he needs in place in order to start his administration and advance the country's policies. We will move after today to the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Tom Price, and then to the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Mnuchin. The handwriting of course is on the wall. We all know each of these nominees will be confirmed. How do we know that? Because, thanks to the former Democratic leader, who invoked the nuclear option changing the Senate rules, only 51 votes are necessary to confirm a nominee since there is no filibuster, strictly speaking, no 60-vote requirement for nominees. So my question is this: What purpose is to be served by dragging all of this out? Unfortunately, what this does is it uses floor time, which is a valuable and limited resource here in the Senate. It prevents us from turning to bipartisan legislation that would actually help the American people. That is a real shame. Of course, beyond our political parties, beyond our differences in philosophy and opinions on various policy matters, we are here to work for the American people. That is the job we were sent here to do. In fact, I think, more than anything, the election on November 8 was a mandate for change. I think the American people had become pretty--well, I think we had used up all their patience in both political parties in our inability to actually get things done. So just slowing down the confirmation process for the purpose of delay I think ignores the mandate we received on November 8 from the American people when they voted for change. Looking back through recent history, we will see that bipartisanship has characterized a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next. President Obama, to his credit, did believe in a peaceful transition of power and worked with the incoming Trump administration to make that possible. But it takes more than one President working with the next President. It takes Congress working together on a cooperative basis to make sure that, yes, questions have to be answered and, yes, nominees have to be vetted. But after all the questions have been asked and all the vetting has taken place, I think just delay for delay's sake serves no useful purpose and undermines the tradition that we have had in this country--that once the election is over, we then move, not to an election mode, but to a governing mode. Then, of course, we gear up for the next election in 2018. But now is the time for governing, not a time for electioneering. The American people need to accept the results of the election, and I think the American people by and large have. Now, activists clearly have not. But I don't think dragging this out in order to increase the level of separation and polarization in the country by not coming together and providing the President's Cabinet serves the public interest. Maybe it serves the interests of some narrow part of a political base, but certainly not the American people. Many have pointed out that since President Carter, who had eight of his nominees confirmed on his first day in office, the nominations process has been fairly uneventful. President Reagan, for example, had a dozen confirmed in his first 2 days of office. President Clinton had 13 within 24 hours. President Obama had seven confirmed on day 1, and so did George W. Bush, when he was President. The obstruction and slow-walking of the President's Cabinet choices is unprecedented. In fact, this is the longest it has taken to confirm a majority of a new President's Cabinet since George Washington in 1789. This goes back to the origins of the country. That is pretty shocking. For our colleagues to keep the President from his advisers is not only a rejection of the verdict of the American people on November 8 but to this institution and to the stability of the government and that peaceful transition of power that President Obama said he believed in and I think demonstrated by his actions. We need adults to stand up and say we are not going to cater to the extremes in either political party, but we are going to seek common ground for the common good of our country. That is a position many of our Democratic colleagues have agreed with until today. The day before the election last November, the Democratic leader indicated a willingness to work with his Republican counterparts to reach across the aisle in order to do so for what was right for the American people. Senator Schumer, our colleague from New York, said on November 16: We have a moral obligation, even beyond the economy and politics, to avoid gridlock and get the country to work again. . . . We have to get things done. I bet at the time Senator Schumer said that, he expected Hillary Clinton to be President. But now President Trump has won the election, and I think the same obligation applies to a Trump Presidency that he felt should apply to a Clinton presidency. Now, the Democratic leader is singing a different tune, and we know what the results are. I actually don't envy our friend from New York, the Democratic leader. He has perhaps one of the toughest jobs in Washington, DC. He has allowed a narrow political base full of people who want him to block, stall, and obstruct this President at every turn. But I have worked with the Senator from New York before. He and I see the world through a different lens, but we have found ways to come together and work in practical ways that benefit our constituents and the country. But I can tell he is being pulled in directions that he is not particularly comfortable with. But what he is doing is allowing that loud narrow base of his political party to lead his conference and his party. I think he knows what is good for the country and for the people we all work for, and that would be to resist the urge to feed the radical elements and to work together for the interests of the American people. Just last week, President Trump announced the nomination of an incredibly well-qualified judge for the next Supreme Court Justice. As of today, several Senate Democrats have indicated they want an up-or- down vote on that nomination. I think that is positive. I hope those are representative of the cooler heads that will prevail on the other side of the aisle when it comes to taking up the nomination of this incredibly qualified judge for the U.S. Supreme Court. People on the right and on the left alike have acknowledged that Judge Gorsuch is an incredibly qualified nominee, a mainstream candidate, and widely recognized as such by liberals and conservatives alike. Some of our friends on the other side are grasping at straws, searching for ways to call his background or qualifications into question, basically using the nomination as a way to continue to contest and deny our new President the mandate he received from his election on November 8. The Democratic leader even suggested that because Judge Gorsuch would not answer all of his questions in a private meeting, he was somehow hiding something. Well, our friend across the aisle knows--he is a smart Senator. He is a good lawyer, and he understands. Judges are not supposed to answer before they get on the bench how they would decide cases once they are on the bench. Judges are not politicians, wearing black robes, unelected, life-time tenured super legislators. So it would be completely inappropriate for any nominee for the Court to come, either in a private meeting or in a public setting, and say: Well, if I am elected, I will decide this case or this issue in this way. That is completely contrary to the responsibility of a judge, and I think mistakes the important distinction between how judges and legislators ought to act. Judges are not politicians. We don't want them as politicians. We want them as an independent judiciary that can interpret the Constitution and laws as written. This is an important difference between some of our friends on the left and those of us who believe in a traditional judiciary. I believe that because judges are life-tenured and they are unelected, they are ill-suited to become policymakers for our country. Indeed, as to Justice Scalia, I thought this was one of his life's work. He said: A judge's job is to interpret the written word, either the Constitution or the statutes written by the elected representatives of the people. It is not to pursue a separate and independent policy agenda or personal agenda just because you have the power to do so as a lifetime tenured judge. So the fact that Judge Gorsuch does not answer questions about how he would decide cases once confirmed, I think, means he is being true to his responsibilities as a judge. If someone were willing to make those sort of campaign promises before they were confirmed, I think they would be disqualified from serving. Take the example of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her confirmation hearings in 1993. She said she did not want to give any hints or previews about how she might vote on an issue before her. So she politely declined to answer those questions. Nominees have since followed her example so much that it has now become known as the Ginsburg rule. So I hope our friends across the aisle don't now take the position that Judge Gorsuch would be disqualified because he invokes the Ginsburg rule, which all responsible judges or nominees to the Supreme Court should invoke. It has been a consistent theme throughout. So let's drop the excuses, and let's get to work. I hope that at some point the fever will break and our friends across the aisle will decide to quit the foot dragging, quit the slow walking for delay's sake alone. I don't know who benefits from that--certainly, not the American people. When it comes to nominees like Judge Gorsuch, I hope our colleagues will apply the same standard that was applied when a Democratic President nominated somebody for the Supreme Court like Justice Ginsburg. I hope they will not have a double standard but will agree that the standard should be the Ginsburg rule and give this good judge, an outstanding nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, the up-or-down vote he deserves. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I just want the Record to be abundantly clear. The language that resulted in the vote that we had invoking rule XIX was related to a quotation from Senator Ted Kennedy that called the nominee ``a disgrace to the Justice Department, and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.'' That was the quote. Our colleagues want to try to make this all about Coretta Scott King and it is not. I think the complete context should be part of the Record.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Sessions).