John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this week the Omnibus appropriations bill was released, along with the tax relief bill, that extends and makes permanent many important tax credits and lays the foundation for comprehensive tax reform, hopefully sometime soon. Members of this Chamber and the House have been reviewing the text of both pieces of legislation, and I am happy to report that the House of Representatives has now given a resounding bipartisan vote on the tax relief bill, with 318 Members of the House of Representatives voting to support it. The House, we are told, will move on the Omnibus appropriations bill tomorrow morning, and then we will take up both bills tomorrow morning in the Senate. I want to just remember and recall for anybody listening that the appropriations process did not have to end up this way. As a matter of fact, after having passed the first budget that Congress has had since 2009, that then authorized the Appropriations Committee to begin the process of considering and passing 12 separate appropriations bills. Once they are voted out of committee, we will bring them to the floor, where they are open for amendment and debate in a completely transparent process, where people can understand the details of the legislation. It didn't turn out that way because our Democratic colleagues filibustered these individual appropriations bills, thereby leaving us with no alternative but to consider this massive Omnibus appropriations bill. I am tempted to call this omnibus bill an ominous bill, but I am not sure that is pejorative enough. It is not the right way to do business. I am disappointed. I am disappointed in our colleagues across the aisle who forced us to do business this way with them, but I hope next year we can have a regular and open appropriations process, one that will serve the American people far better. I am by no means happy with the way this year-end funding bill has come together, after having been hijacked, held up, and effectively shut down, but if this sounds familiar, this looks a lot like the strategy they employed when they were in the majority preceding the election of just a year ago. Do you know what happened? Well, it didn't work very well because they ended up losing their majority. Needless to say, the American people actually want us to do our jobs, to look out for their interests, and to make sure we pass legislation that is thoroughly considered, transparent, and then we could be held accountable for the votes we have made. Unfortunately, this omnibus appropriation process undercuts those principles, and as I said a moment ago, it is not a good way--it is a terrible way--to have to do business. But I am happy and proud of the fact that in virtually every other area we have undertaken--following the budget, the multiyear highway bill, the trade promotion authority legislation, the Defense authorization bill that was led by our colleague from Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act that passed 99 to 0--as I was talking about with the Senator from Tennessee, it is clear we know how to work together on a bipartisan basis, disagreeing on some issues but finding common ground where we can, and the American people end up being the winner. Dysfunction and shutdowns do not work. That is not why most of us came here. Most of us came here to try to make this institution and the country and conditions for our constituents a little bit better, one step at a time. In this Omnibus appropriations bill there is an issue I want to highlight, and that is a clear win for progrowth and one that will foster, not hinder, job creation, and that is lifting the decades' old ban on exporting crude oil produced here in America. This month actually marks 40 years since the United States implemented a ban on the export of crude oil, a policy that was put into place as a precaution to protect the United States from disruption in the global oil supply. But as we all know, the world looks a lot different than it did back then. The shale revolution has helped the geopolitical energy landscape turn in favor of the United States, and we have an abundance of oil and natural gas available, not only for our use here domestically but to export to our friends and allies around the world. By doing away with this antiquated policy and allowing our domestic production to reach global markets, we can kick start the U.S. economy and provide a real opportunity for job creation in the country. Lifting the ban would not just be beneficial to people working in the domestic energy sector because the domestic energy production involves many different sectors--construction, shipping, technology. By allowing more export of our crude, we have the potential to create thousands of more jobs deep into the supply chain in a variety of sectors and across a multitude of States. In fact, one study estimated that for every new production job in the oil field it translates into three additional jobs in the supply chain and another six in the broader economy. So we are talking about a major opportunity for job creation throughout our country. Doing away with this outdated protectionist policy also gives the United States an opportunity to promote stronger relationships with our allies and partners around the world. Today many of our allies in Europe, including some of our NATO allies, rely on countries such as Iran and Russia for their energy needs. Our allies' dependence on our adversaries for basic needs such as heating, electricity, and fuel creates a real vulnerability that exists for the United States, as their ally and partner. By lifting the ban, the United States can help offer our friends a chance to diversify their energy supplies and enhance their energy security and avoid giving people such as Vladimir Putin the opportunity to use oil and gas and energy as a weapon. Lifting the crude oil export ban will strengthen our economy. It will actually save Americans on their gasoline prices at the pump by increasing supply, and it will help our friends and allies around the world. So it is a big win for the American people, whether or not you work directly in the industry. Finally, I would say--and I know the Senator from Arizona is waiting to speak, so I will be brief--that I am happy to see that the omnibus also includes several bipartisan priority items that will benefit my constituents in Texas. For example, for years I have worked alongside of Congressman Filemon Vela, a Democrat from South Texas, to put pressure on Mexico to fulfill its commitment to deliver water to South Texas as outlined and required in a 1944 treaty. Now this is incredibly important for a wide swath of folks whose access to water is not always assured. This bill includes language that reinforces that commitment and includes a measure that requires the State Department to assess the impact of Mexico's water debt on Texas and the rest of the United States. This bill also renews an innovative port of entry partnership program modeled after the Cross-Border Trade Enhancement Act. This, too, is bipartisan legislation in this case, which I have introduced along with Congressman Henry Cuellar, another South Texas Democrat, earlier this year. Specifically, it provides new opportunities for border communities and businesses to improve staffing levels and upgrade infrastructure at our international border crossings to help move people and goods across our border more safely and efficiently. Obviously, with 6 million jobs in the United States dependent on cross- border commercial traffic and trade between the United States and Mexico, this is really important. This omnibus legislation also includes a provision to fully repeal the country-of-origin labeling regulations known as COOL. This has been a real problem for our livestock producers in Texas and in the United States. By repealing these costly food labeling mandates, the United States will avoid a trade war with Canada and Mexico, two of our largest export and trading partners, and will help Texas farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers back home in my State and across the country. In terms of national priorities, the omnibus bill increases resources for our military, thanks to the leadership of people such as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This bill will increase resources for our Active-Duty military to make sure that those deployed around the world, as well as those serving stateside, have what they need to get the jobs done that they volunteered to do. This legislation also blocks overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency by providing no new or expanded funding for its programs--the lowest level of funding since 2008. Finally, this bill prioritizes our veterans and helps ensure they are better able to receive the care and benefits they deserve in a timely manner. This legislation also includes the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act, which includes the permanent extension of State and local sales tax deductions, something that amounts to more than $1 billion in annual tax relief for Texans. This will ensure that Texans are on a level playing field with those who deduct their State income tax, because we don't have an income tax and never will. That is something that I can say that Texas will never have. As I said, it never will. This also rolls back several of President Obama's ObamaCare taxes and can provide relief to folks all over the country being crushed by the President's failed, unpopular health care law. So while no legislation is perfect, and indeed this process is the antithesis of perfect--it is the wrong way to do business--this is the hand we have been dealt by the filibusters of the appropriations bills by our Democratic colleagues. So we are doing the best we can with the hand that we have been dealt. In the end, nothing passes Congress and gets signed into law by the President without some level of bipartisan cooperation in both Chambers of Congress and working together with the executive branch. This legislation does include several significant wins for the American people. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Now, Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about some of the things on which I don't think we are going to be able to find political consensus. That has to do with the President's moving up his list of priorities. Among all the other things that are going on in the world, he seems to be saying that climate change is the most urgent challenge facing the United States and the world. I worry a little bit any time I hear a politician--or anybody, for that matter-- making sort of messianic claims. The President characterized the agreement in Paris--and I will talk more about the nature of that agreement--``a turning point for the world.'' It strikes me that it takes quite a bit of hubris and really arrogance to be claiming that yes, this is going to be a turning point for the world. As a matter of fact, the Wall Street Journal said that it pays to be skeptical of a politician who claims to be saving the planet. I don't share the President's priorities when it comes to climate change because I think there are actually more urgent priorities, such as fighting terrorism both abroad and here at home. That would be a more urgent priority. Some of the other more prosaic work we do here is pretty important to the quality of lives of the American people and to the economy, our ability to create an environment where they can find work and provide for their families. I think those needs are more urgent. Nevertheless, the President seems to be once again exaggerating what his authority is under our Constitution. Of course, the President has no legal authority to bind his successor. What he seems to be saying is ``This is an agreement between me and the 140-some-odd nations,'' and it won't last beyond his Presidency. Last time I checked, the President will be leaving the White House sometime in January 2017. What he has purported to do is enter into an agreement that would somehow bind his successor and would somehow bind the Congress and the American people. But under our Constitution, this President--no President has any authority to do anything like that. So it is clear that this agreement has been crafted in a way that gives some of the countries that are parties to the agreement more leeway than others. Some major economies don't have to play by the same rules that the United States would. This agreement represents the President once again trying to claim authority he simply does not have. We don't have a king. In America, we made that decision a long time ago. I think it was 1787 when we decided we would not have a king, but the President seems to act like a monarch and claim authorities from some source other than the Constitution. It seems unbelievable that after the Obama administration has failed to find support for so many of the President's overreaching regulations here at home--not in the Congress, not in the State houses, not in the courts--his response was to sign on to an agreement with the United Nations that seeks to tax our use of energy. It is another attempt to do an end run around the Constitution and around the American people. What really frustrates me is the President's willingness to sacrifice our economy--job creation and the ability of people to find work and to provide for their family--to promote a cause that offers no guarantee of a more resilient climate or a clean environment. The President and some of his supporters frequently like to say: Well, people who don't regard climate change as a priority are anti- science. I actually think people who think agreements such as this are going to provide the answer are anti-science. First, if you start looking at some of the models that are used to predict temperatures decades and perhaps centuries out, this is not what you would call science, this is more like an economic projection or model, and we know how reliable they have been in the past. I couldn't help but think about growing up and a book that I remember reading called ``The Population Bomb,'' which was written by a Stanford professor named Paul R. Ehrlich. The thesis of ``The Population Bomb'' was that unless we did something to control population, millions of people were going to starve to death because we were going to outstrip our food supply. Well, obviously that didn't happen. One of the reasons it didn't happen is because of a man by the name of Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Prize winner, and now considered the father of the Green Revolution. By the way, he did spend a little bit of time at Texas A&M in Bryan College Station. But he was a very heroic figure who used science to help figure out how to increase production of the food supply in a way that made Paul Ehrlich's prediction a pipe dream. It just didn't happen. I think that by predicting all these dire consequences, it is the predictors--it is the people who are embracing this sort of climate change theology--who don't have any confidence in our ability to innovate our way out of these problems. I will use one more anecdote to try to make the point. At the start of the 20th century, horses in New York City were producing about 5 million pounds of manure a day. Can you imagine what an environmental hazard this would be with manure piled on vacant lots with rats? I will not go into all the details; it is pretty repulsive to think about. But there is a book called ``SuperFreakanomics,'' which uses this great example. They said: Well, what happened to that? Instead of some grandiose government policy or instead of some new tax or regulation that government issued, what happened to that and the environmental hazard that presented was the internal combustion engine. So not overnight, but apparently in short order, that manure was disposed of. Horses were replaced by cars. Again, it is just another example of how American innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism can take care of many of these problems that some of our friends worry so much about and think should be such an important priority for us. America's entrepreneurs have shown time and again that they are simply more adaptive and genius than government regulators and bureaucrats. By bypassing the American people and signing our country up for a bad international agreement that doesn't put our country first, we should instead focus on finding innovative solutions that fit the diverse needs of consumers, businesses, and a growing economy alike. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor and talk about what we have been able to accomplish this year because sometimes I think people, when they hear us talk, think we are somehow claiming credit where credit is not entirely due or whether we are trying to make this purely a partisan matter. It is not, but it does require good leadership. As the Presiding Officer knows, having been speaker of the house in North Carolina, the people who set the agenda--that is a pretty important power. All of the legislation that has passed this year would not have passed if it weren't for the majority leader, Senator McConnell, under the new majority scheduling it for a vote in the Senate and chairmen in the relevant committees processing that legislation at the committee level and making it available for floor consideration. It is not just the Republican majority. Time after time, we have seen Republicans and Democrats working together hand in glove to try to pass legislation that is good for the American people. We saw that on the Education reform bill, where Senator Murray and Senator Alexander worked so closely together. We saw it on the highway bill--the first multiyear highway bill in a decade--where the Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, working together with Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma and the majority leader, worked to really turn things around in the House of Representatives, to give them the space and time to pass a multiyear highway bill and to work with us to reconcile the differences and get it to the President. That is pretty important. I was on the phone earlier today talking with some of the folks at the Austin American-Statesman about the impact on the traffic situation we have on I-35. It is a veritable parking lot during many times of the day. People understand the importance of taking care of infrastructure and maintaining it but also expanding it so people can get from point A to point B, but more importantly, what that means in terms of the environment and their quality of life. So my simple point is that there is a big difference to the way this Chamber operated under the Democratic leader, when Senator Reid was majority leader, back when our friends across the aisle were in the majority. The statistic has been mentioned that there were 15 rollcall votes on amendments. We have had more than 200 so far this year alone. Frankly, I think our Democratic friends like the way the Senate has been operating under the current majority more than they did when they were in the majority because under the dysfunction of the previous majority, even Democrats in the majority weren't able to get votes on the amendments. When they stood before the voters, people asked ``What have you done?'' and they didn't have much to show except dysfunction. As the Presiding Officer knows, whether it is North Carolina or other places around the country, we got a number of new Senators as a result of that misguided dysfunction, which was calculated but I think proved to be a miscalculation. It is a good thing to see the Senate operating again in the interests of the American people. We have had a pretty busy session. I am not claiming it was perfect. Frustrations abound. It is in the nature of divided government. The legislative process was designed by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution to be hard because they actually saw the concentration of power as a threat to their freedom and their liberty, and they didn't want an efficient Federal Government. They wanted checks and balances. They wanted checks between the various branches, between the two branches of the legislature, and also checks and balances with regard to the allocation of power to the Federal Government relative to the States and individuals. All of that separation of power was designed to require deliberation and to require transparency and the building of consensus before legislation was passed that would have an impact on their lives. It has been a good thing to see the Senate working again, and I think all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, can be proud of some of the work we have done. One of the things I am most proud of this year is the fact that we were able to pass a bill called the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act by 99 to 0. This was the first legislation that actually provided a crime victims compensation fund to help provide grants to victims of human trafficking. As I have described before on this floor, the typical profile of a victim of human trafficking is a young girl between the ages of 12 and 14. We need to have resources available for people with big hearts in communities all across this country to help rescue these victims of trafficking and help them recover their lives and get on with their lives in a more productive and safe manner. This is one of the things we have done together.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I will be happy to.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there is another benefit that spreads evenly among Americans, and that is low gasoline prices. The single driver for low gasoline prices is the supply of oil. Because of the abundant supply of oil due to innovation and these techniques the Senator from North Dakota talked about, oil prices are lower than they have been in a long time. You can buy a gallon of gasoline in Texas for well under $2. I think I saw it as cheap as $1.80 or maybe lower than that in some places. That has a direct impact on the pocketbook of working families. That is another reason why this legislation needs to be passed on Friday of this week in the House and in the Senate. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for this brief discussion.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, while the Senator from North Dakota is still here, let me just say that he gave a speech that I wish I could have given. I couldn't say it any better than he did, but I will just make one point as he is preparing to leave the floor. Some people wonder why is it that the Texas economy is doing so well relative to the rest of the country. Last year, 2014, our economy grew at 5.2 percent. The U.S. economy grew at 2.2 percent. Now the fact that we are producing energy using the techniques the Senator from North Dakota talked about--fracking and horizontal drilling--fracking, by the way, has been around for 70 years or more--that has helped contribute to job creation and our economic growth. This is something we would like to see expand across the country. We have been blessed, as has the Senator from North Dakota, with abundant natural resources. What we are asking to be able to do is to sell those to willing buyers overseas. Many of them are some of our closest allies, who are being terrorized by thugs such as Vladimir Putin, who uses energy as a weapon. Think about how powerful this would be in our national security toolbox to be able to sell natural gas and crude oil to some of our closest allies so they don't have to rely on people like Mr. Putin. I congratulate the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Hoeven, for his leadership on this issue. We have all worked together on it, and it has been a team effort, and we are close to getting it done. The final point I want to make is that this is not just about energy- producing States, this is a net positive for the United States and for our allies abroad.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, just yesterday President Obama went to the Pentagon for a long overdue meeting with his national security advisers. During that meeting or shortly thereafter, he made this statement: ``We are hitting ISIL harder than ever.'' Unfortunately, the President failed to acknowledge the simple fact that his strategy against ISIL--or ISIS, as it is more frequently called--is simply not working. This is pretty hard to get right, but at least our leaders should have the humility to recognize reality, and when things aren't working out so well, reconsider and make some midcourse changes so they do work--not this President. I have said repeatedly that the President needs to tell Congress and the American people about his comprehensive strategy to defeat this terrorist enemy, and he has to do more to give our military the flexibility and resources they need to accomplish the mission. It is simply wrong to ask our military to accomplish something and not give them the freedom, flexibility, and resources they need in order to accomplish it. That is why when the President talks about airstrikes--I know of no military leader who believes that you can defeat this terrorist army in Syria and Iraq by airstrikes alone. Nobody. Yet that seems to be the only tactic this President is using. So the President needs to tell the American people the truth about the realities on the ground in Iraq and Syria. He needs to listen and take advice from the military leadership he has at the Pentagon and on his own staff. Above all, he needs to learn not to be ashamed of American leadership. It is absolutely true that America doesn't necessarily need to fight the wars for other countries in the region that ought to be engaged in the fight themselves, but the fact is there is no one else on the planet who can lead like the United States of America. We have to organize it, we have to lead it, and we have to support it if we expect other people to be the boots on the ground to fight those wars, but the action we are seeing currently from this administration does not match the very serious threat we face, and it is a threat that has gotten worse, not better, under the President. CIA Director John Brennan recently estimated that before President Obama prematurely pulled all U.S. troops out of Iraq, without any sort of transition at all, the predecessor of ISIS, known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, had ``maybe 700-or-so adherents left.'' This is the CIA Director, nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate. He said, before the President pulled the plug in Iraq, there were about 700 or so adherents left in Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS. If we fast forward that to today, according to the New York Times, just a few months ago, he said: ``Nearly 30,000 foreign recruits have now poured in to Syria, many to join the Islamic State, a doubling of volunteers in the last 12 months. . . .'' Nearly 30,000 foreign recruits, a doubling of volunteers in just the last 12 months, these are pretty amazing and concerning numbers but more often they demonstrate how out of touch the President's remarks are when he says ISIS has been contained or we are hitting them harder than we ever have before. It is simply not working. Clearly, we need the President to execute an effective military strategy that results in both the physical destruction of ISIS and the complete rejection of their bankrupt ideology--not just in the Middle East but around the world, including here at home. Frequently, when various pundits react when they hear people like me saying the President doesn't have an effective strategy, they say: OK. What is your strategy? First of all, I am not the Commander in Chief, but we did make some constructive suggestions to the President. Nine other Republican Senators joined me in a letter, where we recommended six specific military options that if brought to bear on ISIS, would go a long way toward achieving his stated goal of destroying this terrorist army. First, it would take the handcuffs off the U.S. military and let our troops do what they have trained to do and what they have volunteered to do. Increasingly, we need a strategy that doesn't just handle the fight over there. We need a strategy to handle the fight here at home because of the danger of foreign fighters, of fighters going from the United States to the fight in the Middle East and then returning or people going to Europe. In particular, one concern has been raised by many of our Democratic colleagues is the use of the visa waiver, where you don't actually need--the 38 countries where you can travel to the United States without actually getting a specific visa or having to be interviewed by a consular officer at one of our embassies. This is a potential vulnerability for the United States. The third area beyond the fight over there, beyond the danger of people exploiting the flaws in our screening system within immigration, whether it is fiance visas, whether it is a visa waiver or whether it is refugees--there is a third area the FBI Director talked about last week when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He talked about homegrown terrorists--people like the ones in San Bernardino who did actually travel to the Middle East and come back--but he also included people in the United States, American citizens. I must admit I appreciated the FBI Director's understanding of the threat that ISIS poses, including their attempts to inspire people in this country to become terrorists and commit acts of violence. This Senator was astonished that the Department of Homeland Security would have a policy preventing the United States from screening the social media use by foreign nationals who are attempting to use our immigration system to come to the United States. In the instance of the female shooter in San Bernardino, it was revealed that using social media, she had posted things that should have been an alert--if our immigration officers were doing their job--to the fact that she was likely to be a jihadist and be a threat here at home. Another threat we are going to have to deal with that Director Comey and the Deputy Attorney General raised is the use of encryption as a challenge that hinders the FBI's counterintelligence efforts against these ISIS-inspired extremists. Encryption applications are available on your cell phone, and some of the companies--Apple, for example-- market them because people want to keep their communications private. We all understand that, but an encrypted message--one that is incapable of being unlocked--is one that can't be used to respond to a court order when somebody in law enforcement goes to court and says: We have probable cause to believe a crime was committed, so we want to execute this search warrant. As Director Comey confirmed, increasingly using encryption is part of terrorist trade craft. I was shocked--because I hadn't heard it before--to hear Director Comey talk about how encryption impacted an investigation in my home State of Texas. He said many will remember that back in May, two men attempted to attack people at an event northeast of Dallas in Garland, TX. He said that fortunately the quick and effective response of law enforcement officials in the area stopped the men from making their way into the conference center, keeping them from inflicting more harm. We now know the attack was at least inspired by ISIS. In fact, according to media reports, ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. Shockingly, Director Comey said last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI had 109 encrypted messages with a terrorist overseas as part of this investigation of the Garland incident. According to the FBI Director, that is 109 messages the FBI still doesn't have access to because they are encrypted and they can't even crack it given a court order showing probable cause that it might lead to further evidence in this investigation. He pointed out that these sorts of encrypted communications are part of terrorist trade craft. In fact, there is reason to believe that within terror circles, they understand which of these devices and which of these apps are encrypted and thus make it less likely that they will be discovered when they are conspiring against Americans either here or abroad. It troubles me that the men and women charged with keeping us safe don't have all the information they need. I think that is a subject on which we need to have a more serious conversation. I think that is why Director Comey mentioned that last week, and that is why the Deputy Attorney General came to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to raise the concern, so we can have the kind of debate we always have in America when it is a balancing of privacy and security. I commend the Director for engaging Congress on this critical issue, but what it points out is that the President and this administration need to have a three-pronged strategy when dealing against a terrorist threat: As I mentioned, over in Syria and Iraq, unhandcuff our military and make sure they have a strategy that will actually work over and above just airstrikes; second, try to make sure we enhance our screening system for immigration for people who come into the United States so we don't inadvertently allow someone into our country who has the intention of doing us harm; and third, do more to come up with a plan to deal with people being radicalized right here in the United States, not the least of which, I would hope the Department of Homeland Security voluntarily reverses their policy of not screening social media communications which are in the public domain. I mean, there is no expectation of privacy on the part of people posting things in a public domain such as Twitter or Facebook, particularly things like Twitter. I know you can restrict access, but most people communicate with their friends, family, and anybody else who happens to want to have a conversation with them on social media. We can all agree that the threat of ISIS to the United States is broad and real. Sadly, we were reminded in San Bernardino and in Garland last May of this fact. Last week, both in a letter I sent to the President and here on the floor, we sought to make some constructive suggestions to begin to have that conversation, which was long overdue, about what an effective strategy to carry out the President's stated goal of degrading and destroying ISIS would actually look like. I hope the President listens. Unfortunately, so far experience has taught us he is not necessarily primed that way. But I hope he will reconsider in light of the increased public concern about terrorist activity in the United States. Certainly, public opinion polls have shown that is the No. 1 issue of concern to the American people, and as the leader of the U.S. Government and as Commander in Chief, I hope he will have the humility and the common sense to say that what we are doing now is not working the way it should. We can do better. We can do more. Certainly, if the President would work with us in a bipartisan and bicameral fashion, I know we would support a strategy that I think Members of Congress felt had a reasonably decent chance of working. But right now the President seems stuck on this same inadequate strategy of just bombing missions. These airstrikes are necessary but not sufficient to get the job done over there. It certainly is incomplete when you look at the threat in terms of exploiting our immigration system and in terms of homegrown radicalism. We haven't heard the kind of plan that we need to hear from the President of the United States that we are willing to work with him on. We need to hear from him what he is willing to do to help keep the American people safe and to fight and win this war against Islamic radicalism. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it is December 10, and Congress is working its way through some final items of business, including a giant spending bill called an omnibus--some might call it an ``ominous''-- bill because it is so big it takes all of the discretionary spending that Congress makes for the entire year and wraps it up into one big package. I have to say it did not have to be that way. It shouldn't have been that way. In the 114th Congress, under new leadership, we actually did something that hadn't been done in 6 years. We actually passed a budget. The purpose of the budget in part is to set caps on spending levels for the Appropriations Committee and for the 12 appropriations bills that should come out--and in fact did come out--of the Appropriations Committee. But the reason we find ourselves here at the end of the year with this ominous Omnibus appropriations process is that our Democratic colleagues filibustered all of those individual appropriations bills. It would have been so much better to take those up one at a time so the American people and Members of the Senate could read them and understand them. We could debate them, we could offer amendments to try to improve them, and then we could finally pass them and send them on to the President. But because of the desire to force the majority to agree to higher spending levels, our colleagues across the aisle filibustered those appropriations bills. So here we are, at the end of the year, with a few huge pieces of legislation left to consider. I think most people looking at Washington, DC, these days are tempted to want to look the other way because so much that happens here seems to be so contentious and, frankly, a reflection of our polarized politics in America. But despite all of the challenges we have--and I know the Democratic leader the other day actually claimed this was one of the most unproductive Senates in recent memory, only to be given three Pinocchios by the Fact Checker at The Washington Post. So I would like to remind the Democratic leader about some of the things we have actually done, working in a bipartisan fashion, to get legislation through the Senate, through the House, and to the President's desk. Sometimes I think we need a bit of a refresher course on what the Constitution provides in terms of the division of responsibilities in government. The Founders of our great Nation made it hard--not easy. They made it hard to pass laws, and appropriately so, because they viewed the concentration of power and the ability to push through legislation as a potential threat to their individual liberties. So not only did they divide the legislative power between the House and the Senate, but they also created a Presidency that has the ability to veto that legislation. Sometimes in their enthusiasm for certain policies, some of our own constituents get frustrated and they say: Why couldn't you pass this bill or that bill? Well, the truth is the only way this happens is when there is, first of all, some leadership on the part of the majority party because it is the majority leader and the Speaker, the majority leader in the House, who actually set the agenda. So that is pretty important. A lot of the legislation we considered this year would not have even come up if our Democratic friends had been in charge. But once we have the bill on the floor, it literally takes bipartisan consensus building in order to actually get something done. I would like to talk about a few of those things that we have been able to get done this year because I don't want them to get lost amidst all of the contentiousness that people read about and watch on their television. It is important that the people we work for understand we have actually been trying very hard to get some important things done. After the House of Representatives passed the Every Student Succeeds Act with a strong bipartisan vote last week, yesterday the Senate followed suit by passing that legislation with 85 votes. It obviously wasn't perfect because 15 of our colleagues did not vote for it, but that was about as strong a bipartisan vote as you get in the Senate these days. I think it is important to highlight the time and effort it took many Members of this body to create and ultimately pass this bill. Of course, it took the leadership of Chairman Alexander of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. But the fact is--and I know he would say this if he were standing here on the floor--he could not have done it if it weren't for the partnership of the senior Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, a member of the other political party. What they showed us is how working together in a bipartisan way can achieve real reform and positive change for the American people. That is the way the process is supposed to work. Sometimes, though, policies are so bad that the best response is simply to stop it. I don't think we should diminish or deprecate the merits of stopping bad legislation, but where there is an area of common interest, where consensus can be built on what the appropriate legislative response is, that is how it is done--the way Senator Alexander and Senator Murray did. Of course, we are in a political environment where people like to focus on the partisan bickering and gridlock. But passage of this bill serves as just one example of a Senate that has been back to work under new leadership since the last election about a year ago, and we appreciate the willingness of our friends on the other side of the aisle to work with us on a number of areas to try to make those accomplishments a reality. Another example is in the area of transportation funding. Last week, for the first time in more than a decade, Congress passed a multiyear transportation bill. I think it was more than 30 different times before that Congress had passed short-term patches to those spending bills for transportation, and you can imagine how difficult it was for States to actually plan and then to implement some of their construction projects to improve their transportation infrastructure. In that case, it was the hard work of the senior Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, as well as the junior Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, working together as a team; then, of course, Senator Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Wyden, the ranking member, a Democrat, working together to try to come up with some of the funding mechanisms. But as the majority leader said last week, it would not have been possible to pass this multiyear highway bill for the first time in a decade if it weren't for the bipartisan cooperation we saw and, particularly on the Democratic side, the leadership of Senator Boxer. Now, with this legislation, States like mine, Texas--growing States can plan and build projects that strengthen our Nation's infrastructure and make our transportation system safer. They can avoid some of that churning, uncertainty, and inefficiency that comes from temporary patches. President Obama signed that legislation last week, and now it is the law of the land. Like the education bill I mentioned a moment ago, the transportation funding bill, which was called the Fixing America's Surface Transportation, or FAST, Act, passed this Chamber with more than 80 votes--80 votes. With 54 Republicans and 46 affiliated with the Democrats, the minority, the Transportation bill got 80 votes. Obviously this was a strong bipartisan vote and a testament to the bipartisan spirit this year in a Senate that has allowed us to make some progress on long neglected and long overdue goals like transportation funding. Then I think about other topics we have worked together on, such as trade. When the President said he wanted us to pass the Trade Promotion Authority legislation, only 13 Democrats voted for it. So it was up to the majority--the Republicans, the other party--to provide the votes to pass Trade Promotion Authority. Not everybody thought it was a good idea, sure. But in my State, one reason our economy continues to do better than most of the rest of the country is that we are the No. 1 exporting State in the Nation. We believe it is good for our economy and for job creation to be able to sell things that we make, agricultural goods we grow, and livestock we raise to markets around the world. That is what Trade Promotion Authority will allow. It will help Texas farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers get the best deal possible out of pending trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is focused on 40 percent of the world's gross domestic product in Asia. It is very important that we stay engaged in Asia because the default is for China to fill that void and set the rules. The Trade Promotion Authority, which was an important priority for the President, happened to be something that Republicans by and large agreed with and his own party disagreed with. As I said, only 13 Democrats voted for it. The trade promotion authority legislation is really the first step to opening up the doors of opportunity to our country's businesses worldwide, but particularly in Asia. Like the other bills I mentioned, trade promotion authority was the result of the tireless effort of a bipartisan partnership. In this case, the senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee, and the ranking member of the Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, the Senator from Oregon, spent countless hours negotiating and renegotiating the legislation to bring it to the floor and ultimately to be signed into law by the President. Another example happened to be the way we pay physicians under the Medicare program that our seniors rely upon. Year after year, we would come up with short-term patches to the so-called doc fix. But this year we passed a permanent fix in a negotiation between Speaker Boehner and the Democratic leader in the House, Congresswoman Pelosi, that actually preserves seniors' access to care under the Medicare program--a noteworthy accomplishment. Another subject I am particularly proud of is that we passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, a bill this Chamber passed with 99 votes. This law will help victims of modern-day slavery recover and rebuild their lives and will make sure these survivors--some of whom are children--are not treated like criminals but given the help they need to heal and to get on with their lives. We have also passed critical bills to protect our country from cyber attacks--something we saw happen at the IRS, where 100,000 records of taxpayers was hacked in a cyber attack and stolen and compromised. We also saw millions of people's records compromised at the Office of Management and Budget. Congress has passed legislation, which is now being reconciled with a different House bill to be able to get that to the President, to provide that security that we all need when we are online. And as I said, we passed the first budget that has been passed in 6 years. The point I am trying to convey is that not everything up here is fighting like cats and dogs. It is not the shirts versus the skins. It is not like the Democrats and Republicans can never find anything that we agree on. Sure, there is there is a lot that we disagree on, and that is fine. It is fine to have policy differences. This is the forum where those policy differences are debated and where, if possible, if common ground can be found, we can find that common ground. I have told this story, and I am going to conclude here since I see our colleague from Georgia waiting to speak. When I came to the Senate, Ted Kennedy, from Massachusetts, the ``liberal lion of the Senate,'' who had been here for so long, was working with one of the most conservative Members of the Senate, the Senator from Wyoming, on the HELP Committee--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I asked Mr. Enzi, the Senator from Wyoming: How is it that you and Senator Kennedy, who are polar opposites, can find common ground and actually work productively on the HELP Committee? I have never forgotten it. Senator Enzi told me: It is simple; it is the 80-20 rule. We look for the 80 percent, if possible, that we can find common ground and agree on, and the 20 percent we can't agree on, we leave for another fight another day. That always stuck with me as a very constructive way to work in a highly polarized environment where many of us share completely different views about public policy. But we owe it to our constituents, to this institution, and to the American people to try to find common ground where we can and offer them constructive solutions, as we have done time and again this Congress. While there are some who want to distract or misconstrue or deny the fact, the fact is there has been bipartisan accomplishment this year. But it takes leadership, and it appeared to take a new majority and a new majority leader after this last election to get the Senate back on track. Even many of our Democratic friends who served in the majority previously couldn't even get votes on amendments, on legislation they wanted to offer, because the Senate was basically shut down. But now we are back to work, and the Senate is functioning the way it should. I wanted to say a few words to note these accomplishments but also to say thank you to those who have worked together to make it possible, who put the American people ahead of party to deliver real results in the Senate this year. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 10, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 10, 2015, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Independent South Sudan: A Failure of Leadership.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 10, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 10, 2015, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on December 10, 2015, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Implementing Solutions: The Importance of Following Through on GAO and OIG Recommendations.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to talk about the speech the President gave on the Islamic State, or ISIS. He spoke about this to the Nation last Sunday night. I read all the newsclips after having listened to what the President had to say, and I think the universal reaction was that the President did not come up with anything new. Basically, the message was that we are going to stay the course. Of course, this is the same President who called ISIS ``contained.'' I don't know of any other person--any other person with any knowledge of the subject matter--who would share the view the President expressed, that ISIS was somehow contained. Indeed, we have learned that the threat of ISIS is threefold: We have the battle raging in the country, what started out as a civil war in Syria. Now the borders between Iraq and Syria have essentially been erased, and ISIS is controlling large portions of those two countries. It is also about the foreign fighters who come from Europe and other places within the region and even from the United States. There have been examples of people who come from the United States over to the fight in Syria and Iraq in order to help ISIS. Then, as we sadly learned again, just as we learned in Paris recently, we have seen in San Bernardino, CA, the radicalization of people already in our country, using things such as social media and the Internet. It is troubling that the President did not choose to tell us what new strategy he was going to use in order to actually make sure we were able to accomplish his own stated objective of degrading and destroying ISIS. Instead, we heard that he had no interest in changing course. As I said a moment ago, this has dangerous and dramatic consequences right here at home too. In light of the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino-- one that killed 14 people and wounded more than 20--you would think that the President would reconsider whether the course we are on needs a midcourse correction. We saw that, for example, in Iraq. President Bush saw the war in Iraq going poorly, despite our best efforts--and then took a huge chance, upon advice of General Petraeus and other military leaders, to conduct a surge. It was a big risk, but it paid off. President Obama, on the other hand, does not seem to want to learn from his experience or his mistakes. This ``wait and see'' approach has served only to strengthen the stranglehold ISIS has on the Middle East, and it has enabled the recruitment of thousands of jihadists from all over the world. What we really need from the President is to listen to his military and national security leadership and to formulate a comprehensive strategy against ISIS and bring additional military means against them. The President likes to say this is a choice between what we are doing now and American boots on the ground. That is a false choice. That is not the choice. Those aren't all the options available to the President. But we need to bring means against ISIS that would inflict sizable losses, shatter their false narrative about their actually prevailing and making advances in their effort to reestablish or establish a Caliphate in the Middle East, and stop them from spreading their hateful ideology and their violence--not only in Syria, Iraq, and in that region, but around the world. In short, what we need is a dramatically different approach. This concern for our current trajectory in the fight against ISIS is not shared only by folks on this side of the aisle. A number of our colleagues across the aisle agree that the President's strategy isn't working, but some of their solutions are pretty puzzling. Just this week, the Democratic leader and some of the other senior leaders across the aisle said that the solution is for the President to appoint another czar--a czar that can eliminate ISIS. We don't need another appointed bureaucrat. We need a Commander in Chief who is willing to recognize the reality on the ground, one who will step up and lead, and one who will lay out for Congress and the American people a strategy that has a reasonable chance of success. Because of the President's refusal to change course and develop a serious and aggressive strategy to eradicate ISIS, several of my colleagues and I have sent a letter to the President with some hopefully constructive suggestions. We have urged him to take commonsense measures that are designed to accomplish his own stated goal of degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS. It is evident that any way forward must inflict significant territorial losses to ISIS. Right now we are engaged in bombing missions, which are necessary but not sufficient to actually hold any territory. That takes people on the ground. It takes military advisers. It takes the United States' leadership--not our U.S. military on the ground--but it takes somebody there to reclaim territory that Americans fought to secure just a few short years ago, such as in Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul. I said before that I think the President made a terrible mistake when he precipitously pulled the plug on the American presence in Iraq, because what happened is we simply squandered the lives and the treasure lost in securing cities such as Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul. It breaks my heart to think about the Gold Star Mothers and other people who lost family members in those fights only to see now that territory squandered. Think about our veterans who perhaps lost a limb from an IED, a roadside bomb. It is really a terrible thing. Now the President does have a chance to try to change his strategy in order to reclaim the territory from Iraq and, again, to undercut this false narrative of ISIS invincibility. First, in this letter that we wrote to the President we suggested that the United States should embed military advisers alongside of the Iraqi Security Forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and Sunni tribal forces to strengthen their hand on the battlefield. These are some of the people who can be the boots on the ground and not American soldiers and service men and women. This could include additional U.S. troops to serve as joint terminal attack controllers--or JTACs--who can help ensure that our airstrikes against ISIS are much more accurate, timely, more lethal, and avoid collateral damage to innocent civilians. We know the United States has the most powerful military in the world--equipped with the most advanced aircraft and the best trained pilots to fly them. But in order to leverage the advantage in the air, we need to work more closely with those on the ground. Again, this isn't going to happen without American leadership. By deploying additional close air support platforms--including Apache attack helicopters--for use in coordination with embedded JTACs, we can bring real support to those who find themselves in close contact with ISIS. Again, the President likes to say ``no American boots on the ground'' but the fact is there are about 3,500 or so U.S. service men and women in Iraq, and the President recently announced he was going to deploy a contingent of special operators to help do exactly what I described here. But he has not yet come up with a strategy that will actually help them accomplish their goal. The President also needs to understand the real need for a thorough review of the current approval process for coalition airstrikes. By making this review process less unwieldy, we can remove barriers that inhibit our pilots from striking strategically significant ISIS targets and doing it in a timely manner. On the battlefield, seconds matter. Our pilots who are engaging ISIS and putting their lives on the line should be allowed a shorter strike-approval timeline. Finally, the letter my colleagues and I sent to the President asks him to establish safe zones inside Syria to protect the Syrian refugees. I have had the occasion to travel to some of the refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, for example. Ever since the Syrian civil war occurred a couple of years ago, there have been massive dislocation of people from Syria into adjoining countries, further destabilizing those countries and, obviously, being a huge burden upon them. But what we need is a no-fly and no-drive zone so Syrians can stay in Syria rather than having to flee to adjacent countries or Europe or now come to the United States, for example. It would help safeguard innocent men, women, and children who are getting caught up in the crossfire. We can do this. We have done it before in Northern Iraq. It takes a plan, and it takes American leadership. We can help take a lot of pressure off of Europe and surrounding countries in the Middle East, as well as our own country, by people who understandably are fleeing the devastation and the danger in their own country. Of course, the President and the United States can't do it alone. That is why we also encourage the President to leverage our partnerships in the region and hopefully find ways to mobilize NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in the planning and implementation process. NATO is very much engaged in Afghanistan, for example, and there is no reason why NATO, with American leadership, can't make a big contribution to what is happening in Syria and Iraq. I hope President Obama reads our letter, and I hope he seriously considers how the United States can move forward with our partners in a much needed direction to accomplish the goal that he himself stated of degrading and destroying ISIS. Unfortunately, the current plan is not ever going to succeed. Just bombing, as I said earlier--airstrikes--is not sufficient. Unfortunately, the recent attack in San Bernardino reveals that the extremist ideology of ISIS is not contained in the Middle East, as I mentioned earlier--the radicalization of people already here in the United States. We saw that, for example, in 2009 with MAJ Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood, TX. We saw it earlier this year in Garland, TX. Unfortunately, we saw that in San Bernardino last week. By the way, this is another item on the President's and on our to-do list. The FBI Director this morning testified that before the attacks in Garland, TX, where two people traveled from Phoenix in full body armor and with automatic weapons and tried to attack an exhibit in Garland, TX, one of the attackers sent 109 encrypted messages overseas to a terrorist contact there. But because they are encrypted, even with a court order, the FBI has not been able to see the contents of those messages. The FBI Director and the Deputy Attorney General have said this is a big problem for the United States because many technology companies are marketing their ability to encrypt their messaging and, thus, keep it out of the eyes--away from the eyes--of law enforcement, even with a court order. Again, recently we voted to eliminate the bulk data collection at the National Security Agency. To remind everybody, this was about taking a known terrorist's phone number overseas and comparing that against call records here in the United States that don't reveal content but do reveal the domestic phone number so that the law enforcement authorities can go to a court and ask the court to allow them to look into the content of that communication. But, of course, this was misrepresented by some who claimed the privacy interests trumped national security interests. Certainly, we have to find the right balance between privacy and security. But this encryption technology, which, again, is being marketed by certain companies in order to increase their market share, is being used by terrorist organizations. In fact, the FBI Director said this has now become part of the terrorist tradecraft--that is the way he put it--to use these encrypted devices. My point is that whether it is the fight in Syria and Iraq or whether it is the foreign fighters traveling from the United States or Europe to Iraq and Syria and returning to the United States or whether it is radicalization of people already in place here in our own country, this is a war we cannot afford to lose. In a way, it seems like we are not using all of the resources available to us to fight a war against the terrorist threat when clearly they are using every resource they have available to fight a war against the United States and our freedom. I hope the President will reconsider his course of action dealing with ISIS. I am sorry to say that unless the President does, I think we are going to see other attacks--not just in Europe, not just people dying unnecessarily in Syria and Iraq, but further attacks here in the homeland. The President has some very talented military advisers. General Dunford and General Milley, the Army Chief of Staff, and others can provide him a strategy that actually will have a better chance of succeeding if he will listen and if he will reconsider. I know that sometimes when people like me have criticized the President for having no effective strategy, people have said: What is your strategy? Well, it is not our responsibility. It is the Commander in Chief's responsibility to come up with a strategy. But taking that challenge on, my colleagues and I have sent this letter where we list some options for the President that I hope he will consider. We need a more focused, a more effective, a more robust strategy--one that is undergirded with a political framework that can sustain a lasting rejection of the bankrupt ideology pedaled by ISIS. We don't have time to stick to a plan that has proven not to work. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier today the U.S. Senate added to its list of accomplishments this year by passing important education reform. The Democratic leader, our friend from Nevada, has called this Senate ``unproductive,'' but the Washington Post took a look at what he had to say and gave him three Pinocchios for that one. When we look at the accomplishments of this year, they are bipartisan, to be sure--as they must be. That is the nature of this institution. Even the minority can, and frequently does, stop us from doing things the majority would like to do. But what has been remarkable is where we have been able to find consensus and work together. Certainly, the education bill--the Every Student Succeeds Act--is an example of that, as is the leadership not only of Majority Leader McConnell, who scheduled the vote on this legislation, but also Chairman Alexander of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and Ranking Member Murray. Senator Murray has also been very important in working with us on important anti-human trafficking legislation that passed the Senate 99 to 0. She worked with us on the President's request for us to pass trade promotion authority that only 13 Democrats voted for. This is an important piece of economic legislation. Then, in recent days, we passed the first multiyear highway bill. That was due to the partnership of Senator Inhofe, chairman of an important committee, Chairman Hatch, chairman of the Finance Committee, and Senator Boxer on the Democratic side basically trying to take on her own leadership that didn't want us to pass a multiyear highway bill, at least at first, because they wanted to use the pay-fors in that bill to spend on other things. My point is that leadership is important not only at the Presidential level; it is important here at the level of Congress in terms of setting the agenda. But the hard work of legislation is actually trying to find areas of common ground and consensus so we can actually get things done. There are some times that stopping what the majority wants to get done is the right thing to do--when the legislation is misguided, when it is the wrong kind of policy. But we found places where we can work together in order to deliver results for the American people, and the Every Student Succeeds Act is an example of that. It replaced a law which was sorely in need of reform, and it stopped Washington from imposing common core mandates on our classrooms. It will ensure that power is devolved from Washington back to the local communities, to parents and teachers, where that power should exist. In the words of Chairman Alexander, it has eliminated the Department of Education as a national school board. Our country is simply too big and too diverse, and the needs of our students in local communities are so different that the power to innovate, the power to set the standard, and then to find the most creative and innovative way to achieve those standards I believe is best determined at the local level and not here in Washington, DC. This legislation does just that. I use as an example Laredo, TX, where I went to a ninth grade science class. Due to the proximity of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, they were teaching ninth graders the fundamentals of petroleum geology as a way to teach their science courses. So the students could see the future of a job in the oil and gas sector because of the proximity of the Eagle Ford Shale and the prosperity that has brought and a direct connection between the otherwise abstract lessons of science that they might be learning in class. Washington, DC, is not going to be able to come up with that kind of creative solution or way of making science relevant to students in Laredo, TX. So I use that as an example of why this legislation is so important to leave to the States and local school districts, parents, and teachers the ability to determine the curriculum and accountability measures they want to adopt. I am proud we have come together in true bipartisan fashion to strengthen the hands of parents, teachers, and local communities and to provide real education reform for our children.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am astonished by the proposition of our friend the Senator from Connecticut that you can be on a secret watch list by the Federal Government, and just by virtue of this secret listing of an individual on a government watch list, you can be denied some of your core constitutional rights without any necessity of the government establishing probable cause or producing any evidence that would justify the denial of a core constitutional right. I guess if it is good enough to take the government's word by this list without proof or showing of probable cause to deny a citizen their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment, then I guess that is good enough to deny a citizen's right to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and all of the other rights enumerated in the Constitution. It is an outrageous proposition. I would say to my friend, if these people on this government watch list are truly dangerous, why isn't the Obama administration and the Obama Justice Department indicting them, taking them to court, trying them, and convicting them of crimes? Instead, you have this secret watch list, without any proof, without any evidence. I would just say that the Senator has mischaracterized the amendment which I proposed last week and which I have now offered by unanimous consent. What would happen is, if an individual on the watch list goes in to purchase a gun, there would be the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which would then access the watch list. If the Department of Justice was worried, based on that notice, that somebody was attempting to buy a gun, they could intervene for 72 hours to stop the individual from purchasing the gun. If they were further worried about this individual, they could go to court and, before a Federal judge, produce evidence to justify the detention of that individual to take them off the street. This is a complete response to the concerns raised by our friends across the aisle. But I will tell you what is really motivating all of this. First of all, the Feinstein amendment which was offered last week was a complete substitute to the ObamaCare repeal bill that we voted on and passed last week. As such, this was a surreptitious means to try to defeat our ability to repeal the abomination known as ObamaCare, which has only a 37-percent approval rating, and our colleagues across the aisle knew that. Under the Senate procedures, a complete substitute to the reconciliation bill that we passed last week would have been accomplished if the Feinstein amendment had been agreed to. But they went even further and are trying to distract the American people from the fact that the President of the United States and Commander in Chief has absolutely no strategy to deal with the threat of ISIS here in the United States. I presume the immediate motivation was what happened in San Bernardino, the terrible tragedy, but our colleagues across the aisle are trying to capitalize on that particular tragedy in order to justify this unconstitutional attempt to deny American citizens their core constitutional rights without any proof and without any evidence. I would just add that if our friends across the aisle think this watch list is so perfect and so infallible, they ought to read an editorial that was produced by the New York Times in 2014 where the American Civil Liberties Union and others objected to the watch list as being a secret government list without any evidence or any proof. They cited a 2007 audit of the 71,000 people on the government watch list and noted that half of those 71,000 were erroneously included in the watch list. So we all understand what is going on here. This isn't about finding solutions to real problems; this is about trying to change the subject and to distract the American people from the fact that the President and this administration have absolutely no strategy to deal with the threat of ISIS and the President tells us merely to stay the course. So I understand what is going on. I also would say that the other main purpose of our friends across the aisle, other than to defeat our ability to repeal ObamaCare, which we successfully did in the Senate last week, is to create a ``gotcha'' moment for Senators and candidates who are running in 2016. Already, the Senator from Connecticut has appeared on national news shows, the President of the United States in his weekly speech to the Nation, and the Senate Democratic leader have already misrepresented what was in the Cornyn substitute to the Feinstein amendment last week to suggest that people who voted against the Feinstein amendment really, really wanted to make sure that terrorists got guns. That is an outrageous accusation, and it is as false as it is outrageous. So I think it is pretty obvious what is going on here. This is an effort to undermine our ability to repeal ObamaCare. It is an effort to distract from the fact that the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, has no strategy to defeat ISIS. In fact, the Democratic leader said yesterday that really what we need is an ISIS czar. An ISIS czar? I thought that is the job of the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States, to fight and win the Nation's wars and to keep us safe here at home. Give me a break. Then this foolish idea that we ought to simply take the Federal Government's word without any proof or any necessity of producing evidence in a court of law and meeting some basic minimal legal standard before we deny American citizens their core constitutional rights is just outrageous. So, Mr. President, I think it is pretty obvious what is going on here, and I am happy to have the American people render their judgment. For that reason, I object.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, would the Senator modify the request to include the Cornyn substitute amendment which is at the desk?

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday I spent a few minutes talking about the accomplishments of the 114th Congress, and what I have discovered is that if we don't talk about them, nobody else does. People have become so cynical about Washington and very distressed in so many ways--and I can certainly understand why--that it is important for us to point out a few of the simple facts. It is not that we have completely turned this battleship around, but we have made this incremental progress under the leadership the American people put in charge last November--the Republican leadership in the House and in the Senate, obviously, with a President of the opposite party. Under the Constitution, the President still has a vote, he has a veto pen, and he is not irrelevant. But notwithstanding the fact that we have some well-publicized differences with the President, and even among Republicans and Democrats, I think in fairness we have to acknowledge that we have had a pretty good run in the last 11 months or so. I don't want to make this a partisan issue because frankly you can't get anything done in the U.S. Senate or in the U.S. Congress or in the U.S. Government without bipartisan cooperation. So on the bill we are working on today, the fix for No Child Left Behind, there is the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Murray, who has worked hand-in- glove with the chairman, Senator Alexander. We also had the pleasure of working with Senator Murray on trade promotion authority and on the first human trafficking reform we have seen in about a quarter of a century. Those are all important pieces of legislation. I think about the Intelligence Committee and the work that has been done in this Congress on cyber attacks and cyber protection by Senator Feinstein from California, the ranking member, working hand-in-glove with the chairman, Senator Burr from North Carolina. On the first multiyear highway bill we have had in 10 years, that would not have happened without the leadership of Chairman Inhofe and Chairman Hatch on the Finance Committee but also, I would say, Barbara Boxer, the Senator from California, and Ron Wyden, the ranking member on the Finance Committee. We worked together on a number of other things that have not yet gone to the President's desk, such as criminal justice reform. I was invited to come to the White House, along with an ideological spectrum of Senators from the right to the left, to talk about criminal justice reform and how we can find consensus to deal with our criminal justice system and make our prison system no longer just a warehouse for human beings but, rather, a place where, if people want the chance, want the opportunity to turn their lives around, they can begin that by participating in programs that will help them learn a skill, perhaps deal with their drug or alcohol addiction or otherwise prepare them for reentry into civilized society. So while leadership is important, and this agenda of trade promotion authority, anti-human trafficking, cyber security, the highway bill, criminal justice reform, and now education reform--none of this would have necessarily been on the agenda if our friends across the aisle had been in charge. The fact is, leadership is important, and thanks to the majority leader and the leadership he has provided, he has set the agenda. But, again, nothing happens here in Washington on cyber security, on human trafficking, on trade promotion authority, on education, on highways or criminal justice reform without working together to find bipartisan consensus. So it is important that we acknowledge--and in fairness--what has been accomplished. That is not to say we are breaking our arm by patting ourselves on the back or that we think we have solved all the problems. Certainly many of the major differences that existed last year still exist, and we, frankly, have big disagreements with some of our friends across the aisle and with this President on things such as national security, on the effectiveness--or I should say ineffectiveness of the war to destroy ISIS and to deal with the terror threat both abroad and back home. But we also ought to pause and say that where we can find common ground, we are trying to do this on behalf of the American people. So tomorrow at about 10:45 a.m. we will be voting on an impressive piece of legislation that will bring effective education reform to help our Nation's children, their parents, and teachers. But it is not just about education; as we frequently like to say, it is about an investment in the future of our country because we are talking about equipping the next generation with what they need to succeed in an ever-changing and ever-challenging world. Back home in Texas, I have repeatedly seen how schools have created groundbreaking, innovative programs for their students to thrive and benefit everyone involved. I know I mentioned some of these programs before, like a camp for middle school students that focuses on science, technology, engineering, and math--what we frequently refer to as the STEM fields--and it included building robots. In other words, learning science can be fun too. I actually think that is what the best teachers do--they make learning fun. I saw a cutting-edge program at the United High School in Laredo, TX, which took advantage of the proximity of Laredo to the shale gas plays in South Texas. Actually, ninth grade students who were taking science courses were learning the basics of petroleum geology so they would be equipped after they graduated from high school to get jobs in that field, jobs that pay far more than minimum wage. They do that by starting their education and by exposing them to this field in high school and through internships and other training programs. These programs are good examples of how the local community and some of the differences in the local economy--for example, the proximity of Laredo to the Eagle Ford Shale--can shape education in a way that benefits students and the community, our States, and our country. The important thing to realize is that not all good ideas emanate from Washington, DC. In fact, the contrary is true. Louis Brandeis, in an often-quoted statement, once called the States the ``laboratories of democracy.'' The fact is, that is true. The States are the place where innovation can occur. You can succeed or fail, as the case may be, and from that we can learn as a nation what the best practices are in education and a whole raft of subjects. Actually, the work we are doing in criminal justice reform is based on successful reform done in places such as Texas and other States around the country. To my mind, that is the way we ought to legislate in Washington. We ought to try people's ideas out at the State and local level, and if they work, great. Then we may decide they may need to be scaled up and applied more broadly. What we have seen and the mistake we have seen in the current administration is to make experiments nationwide with a one-size-fits- all. We have seen that in ObamaCare, for example, where all of a sudden the majority and the administration decided to transform one-sixth of the American economy, of course making extravagant promises on what would work, only to find that it couldn't work and didn't work, and thus those promises and selling points ended up not being true. Again, on the topic of education, many of the things we realize do work have been created with the help of local teachers, leaders, and parents. These communities were able to create programs that flourished because they weren't operating under a Federal Government mandate. In fact, they were freed of Federal interference in developing that curriculum and coming up with something that works. The bottom line is that this local ingenuity and response to educational needs can often trump ideas coming out of Washington, DC. Frankly, the ideas emanating from here prove to be impractical or ideological in nature. The bureaucracy in Washington, despite even their best intentions, cannot meet the local educational needs of millions of children across a vast and diverse country such as ours. Our country is simply too big and too diverse to have a one-size- fits-all approach to anything, including education. That is why I am grateful to Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and everybody who has participated in producing this conference report to a bill that passed the Senate this summer with more than 80 votes. It is called the Every Student Succeeds Act and returns control of education decisions to States and local communities and to parents and to teachers. It does a pretty good job--not a perfect job but a pretty good job--of keeping the Federal Government out of the way. I would add parenthetically that I think it is important to make the points I am trying to make in these remarks today because I happen to have a social media habit on Twitter and elsewhere, and I see a lot of information being spread that simply is not true about this legislation and other things. That is why I think it is important to stick with the facts and explain to the American people and my constituents back home why I intend to enthusiastically support this legislation. First of all, this bill allows States to decide the academic standards and curriculum for their own children. This bill ends Federal test-based accountability. It kills the national school board. It keeps the opinions of the bureaucrats--even the well-meaning opinions that are misguided--out of our children's classrooms. Common core has proved to be a very controversial topic. This legislation ends common core and affirms that the States have the responsibility to decide what academic standards they want to adopt and how to measure success. By giving responsibility back to local communities and the States and parents and teachers, the Every Student Succeeds Act will allow each State and their school districts the flexibility they need to design and implement their own programs and systems according to the needs of their students and to innovate and to help us and the rest of the country learn from their experience. States such as Texas can decide how to use federally mandated test results to understand how a student performs. This not only relieves the phenomenon known as teaching to the test, but it gives States the added freedom to provide their students with the well-rounded education they need to compete in an increasingly competitive and globalized world. Put simply, with this legislation, States can decide for themselves what standards, what curriculum, and what accountability measures they want to adopt. I think we will see, as Justice Brandeis said, how those laboratories of democracy work. I daresay those States, school districts, and students who prosper and do well will raise the bar for everyone else because they will have demonstrated what is possible given the freedom and the flexibility to innovate. Another important element of this bill is that it rightfully limits the power of the Secretary of Education. With this legislation, a Secretary of Education cannot mandate, cannot direct, and cannot control a State or local education agency or require them to change what they teach in the classroom. That is up to the States and up to local school districts, parents, and teachers. This bill will replace a law in need of reform, it will stop Washington from imposing common core on our classrooms, and it will let those closest to our country's greatest asset--our children--decide how best to provide for their education. This bill passed the House of Representatives last week with a tremendous bipartisan vote. I hope to see a similar level of bipartisan enthusiasm here in the Senate as well when we vote to pass this conference report tomorrow morning, and I suspect we will. As I said, this is the product of a lot of hard work by the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee--better known as the HELP Committee--here in the Senate. Senator Alexander, the senior Senator from Tennessee, has been the navigator and leader in this legislation, working closely, as I said earlier, with Senator Murray from Washington in a bipartisan way to find consensus on an often contentious subject. I know he looks forward to passage of this legislation tomorrow, as I do too, and to having the President sign it shortly thereafter. As I said at the beginning, you can't do anything here in Congress or in Washington without bipartisan cooperation, but leadership does matter because leaders set the agenda, they set the tone, and they hold people accountable. I would say that under the leadership of Senator McConnell, the senior Senator from Kentucky, the Senate has been able to begin the process once again of solving real problems for the American people, from dealing with human trafficking, to our children's education. I look forward to continuing this progress for the rest of the week and for the rest of the year as well. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, we are on the downward trajectory of this year's Congress, the 114th Congress, and I thought it would be appropriate to take a few minutes to talk about what this Chamber has been able to accomplish since we convened in January. I know there is a lot of cynicism and indeed outright fear about the way the Federal Government has been operating, and unfortunately I think a lot of that is attributable to the fact that this President has shown a complete unwillingness to work with Congress in many areas; for example, such as immigration reform. So when people see the President acting unilaterally--thank goodness the courts have stopped it, but it causes them to lose confidence in the Federal Government's ability to address the problems they live with day in and day out and which they have a right to see us do our very best to address. I can't help but think about this time last year and how, with great anticipation and high expectations, the American people decided to give our side of the aisle, the Republican side, the opportunity to serve in the majority. Our task was a daunting one. The Senate had basically been ground to a halt, and I think Members on both sides of the aisle came back in January ready to change the way we do things around here. I think some of our friends across the aisle found that the do-nothing strategy didn't work for them either, even though they were in the majority, because a number of Senate incumbents--having to face the voters without anything to show--ended up being defeated in last November's election. It didn't work for the American people. So it didn't work for the American people, and it didn't work for those Senators. As I said, the American people deserve better. We tried to do better, and I think we have made some progress. We have been getting a few things done, delivering on promises made to the American people and working to find real solutions to the problems faced by those whom we are honored to represent. One of those areas that has been particularly important to me is doing something about an issue that plagues every State in our country; that is, human trafficking. At the beginning of last year, I was honored to lead a bipartisan effort to pass legislation designed to help victims of human trafficking get a helping hand and hopefully find a path to healing. The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which is now the law of the land, will help these victims, who are too often children, be treated like the victims they are instead of common criminals. After about a month on the floor of the Senate, that bill ultimately ended up passing, 99 to 0, and it was signed into law by the President. It points out that the Congress can work with the President on a bipartisan basis to fight some of the most tragic and troubling issues that face our Nation. There are other examples. In the fall we passed a major cyber security bill that will help protect the American people from cyber attacks. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act fosters information sharing to help address the growing cyber threats we face. Of course we read about them in the news, if we haven't experienced them in person ourselves. The need for this legislation couldn't have been more pressing because over the summer the administration confirmed that hackers had accessed sensitive background information of more than 21 million people on the computer systems of the Office of Personnel Management--21 million Americans. That followed a similar breach at the Internal Revenue Service in which the personal data of more than 100,000 taxpayers was stolen. So passage of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act was the right thing to do, and it was done on a bipartisan basis. We are now engaged in a conference discussion with the House to try to reconcile the differences between those bills before it goes to the President. That is the way we ought to be doing business around here--trying to find solutions that make America stronger and make our cyber infrastructure more resilient. Another example was from last week. Last week we passed a multiyear highway bill for the first time in more than a decade. My State is blessed to be a fast-growing State, and of course that has encouraged a lot of people to move there--voting with their feet, as I like to say, and coming from places where jobs aren't being produced because the economy is not growing. This bill helps Texas on the State and local level to prepare for those growing infrastructure needs that come with this increased growth. Just as significantly, it will help the rest of the country as well by creating jobs to build and maintain that infrastructure as well as the commerce that travels on that infrastructure and the environment which will be served by avoiding unnecessary congestion. This bill also specifically grants States like Texas the flexibility to invest in infrastructure projects--in our case, along the border. We have a 1,200-mile common border with Mexico. It is a unique part of our country. I like to kid my constituents back home. I say: What most of my colleagues in Washington know about the border they read in novels or saw in a movie somewhere. It is a unique and wonderful part of our State, but it is also one that deserves our undivided attention because of the security threats, drug trafficking, and other illegal activity. It is no small thing for the Nation's top exporting State, one that shares almost 1,200 miles with Mexico, to be able to direct some of these funds to help build and maintain that infrastructure. By the way, I know people frequently talk about Mexico and our relationship with Mexico in a negative way, but we also understand there are enormous benefits to our proximity to Mexico and our shared border. There are about 6 million jobs in America that depend on binational trade with Mexico. While Mexico has its problems--and they certainly have serious problems--we are working with them on their security and corruption issues and the like. It will take all of our efforts in order to address them. By promoting better border infrastructure, Texas can build on our strong trade record, which already includes the export of more than $100 billion in goods to Mexico each year and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs--6 million jobs nationwide. This multiyear highway bill will also give Texas and other States across the country more certainty. Before this we had been looking at temporary patches, which makes it impossible to plan, and it also makes the expenditure of those dollars enormously inefficient. This bill gives us greater certainty to make sure our States can deliver projects to facilitate greater volumes of trade and travel along interstates and other critical transportation corridors. An area where we have not yet achieved success but where I think there is great promise--there are other areas, such as criminal justice reform, where I believe we can in the months ahead register another success, again for the benefit of the people we represent. Last week, at the President's invitation, I joined a bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators to come to the White House to discuss a way forward for bringing substantive criminal justice reform to our country. For too long, in my State we learned that we treated prisons like warehouses, warehousing people and ignoring the fact--or perhaps just not recognizing the significance of the fact--that sooner or later most of them were going to get out of prison. So what we decided to do in Texas in 2007 was to get smart on crime, not just tough on crime. Nobody doubted how tough we were on crime. But what we realized is that some of the money we spent on corrections could be plowed back into educational programs that would help willing inmates actually learn job skills, deal with their drug and alcohol problems, if they had those, and, in short, better prepare for life on the outside so they didn't end up a frequent flyer or in that turnstile, going from prison to the outside and then back again. So we have been working on this issue for some time, based on the success we enjoyed in Texas and in other States. The product is a bill called the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee 15 to 5. I know Chairman Goodlatte in the House of Representatives is working on a bipartisan bill in that Chamber as well. So I think this is one of those pivotal moments where folks across the political spectrum see the advantage of working together in favor of bringing real progress that will benefit the American people by making our criminal justice system more effective and our communities safer. By the way, we can save money at the same time. On another matter where we have seen significant progress, this week we will be voting on the conference report that accompanies the Every Child Achieves Act. This is the bill that actually fixes No Child Left Behind. This legislation was passed here in the Senate by wide margins over the summer. Chairman Alexander and the conference committee and Ranking Member Murray were able to achieve an amazing thing in this divided, polarized political environment we are in, with, I believe, a 39-to-1 vote in the conference committee for a bill that combines both the House and the Senate product. This is really landmark education legislation that will help parents and local communities take control of their children's education instead of ceding to the Federal Government. Certainly, this bill is another win for the American people. Where I come from, people like the fact that we essentially have repealed the common core mandate, that we have eliminated the Federal Government as a national school board, and that we have sent the power back where it belongs, which is to parents and teachers and local school districts, and ceded more of that authority from here in Washington, DC, back to them. I could continue with this list of legislative accomplishments by noting that the Chamber has also passed legislation that replaced the flawed Medicare payment system for physicians. This is the notorious doc fix. This is another example where for years and years we passed temporary patches and never solved the underlying problem. But Congress did, and I think that is another thing we can be proud of, along with the first budget passed since 2009, and there is more I could add to the list. But my point is there is a difference in the new 114th Congress, and elections do make a difference. We have worked together on a bipartisan basis where we can to make progress to solve problems for the American people during this first year of the 114th Congress. A lot of this is due to the steady leadership of the majority leader, the Senator from Kentucky, and all the hard work our colleagues have put in to make this such a productive year. So we are on track to continue with this momentum into the new year, and with just another week or so of work to do before we break for the holidays, I think we can take some pride in these accomplishments but yet know that there is a lot more we have to do, not only for the remainder of this year but into next year as well. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last night the President addressed the Nation. It was one of the few times during his Presidency that he addressed the Nation from the Oval Office, signifying that this was going to be an important address by the Commander in Chief. Unfortunately, what the President communicated was that little, if any, change will be made in the current administration's approach on terrorism following the attack on San Bernardino last week. The President's approach to eradicating this terrorist threat has only resulted in a tactical stalemate that has kept the morale of ISIS high and their recruitment efforts robust, as we have seen. In the wake of the shootings last week, an event the President himself called an act of terrorism, the American people deserve a credible and aggressive strategy to combat this terror threat that clearly poses a danger not just over there but over here. A good start would be for the President to listen to his own military leadership as well as members of the intelligence community. If the reports are true--and they certainly haven't been denied--the President has turned a deaf ear to his own military leadership and leaders of the intelligence community on how to fight and defeat the ISIS threat. Despite the President's rhetoric on his so-called strategy against ISIS, one thing is clear: It is not working. So our country clearly needs to change course, and that should start with a real plan and real candor from the Commander in Chief on how he intends to defend our interests abroad and at home to keep our people safe. While I was eager to hear what the President might say about the bad results from his current strategy, unfortunately, we didn't hear it last night. However, what we did hear was this recent theme from some of our colleagues across the aisle--as we voted on the repeal-ObamaCare set of votes last week--as well as from the President himself during his weekly address, the Democratic leader, and some other Members of the Senate, that what they are basically trying to do is to change the subject. You will recall that one way they tried to do that was by offering an amendment that said people on watch lists would be denied their core constitutional rights under the Bill of Rights, and in this case it happened to be the Second Amendment; that is, you are presumed to be guilty without the necessity of having to go to court and actually prove what you are claiming is true. I was struck by the fact that the New York Times, back in 2014, noted in an editorial entitled ``Terror Watch Lists Run Amok'' that ``A 2007 audit found that more than half of the 71,000 names on the no-fly list were wrongly included.'' This is the New York Times making the case that basically I and others argued for, which is that there cannot be any presumption of guilt just because the government includes your name on a list, particularly when it comes to denying your core constitutional rights. If the Second Amendment isn't strong enough to withstand this so-called presumption, neither is the freedom to worship according to the dictates of your conscience, the First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of association. You get my drift. Rather than address the real problem, which flowed from another speech the President gave a few years ago out of the Oval Office where he announced the precipitous withdrawal of our troops in Iraq that created the vacuum that is now being filled by ISIS and Al Qaeda-- rather than talk about the lessons learned and how a new and different strategy was going to be employed after consultation with our military leadership and members of the intelligence community, the President and his supporters decided to try to change the subject and produce a red herring that has nothing to do with the fight to degrade and defeat ISIS. Of course the threat is not only about people traveling from abroad to our country, it is about Americans here and other people on visas, perhaps from visa waiver countries, traveling from the Middle East to the United States. Perhaps the most dangerous of all is the radicalization of people already in the United States. If the preliminary indications prove to be true, that seems to be the thread that connects so many of these attacks, whether it is in San Bernardino or Garland, TX, a short time back, or MAJ Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood back in 2009. What we need and what the American people deserve from their Commander in Chief is candor and the willingness to show a little humility and say: You know what. The way we have been handling things really isn't working very well. Instead, the President tries to play partisan politics, and he tries to distract the American people by suggesting that our Constitution is too generous when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms. For the sake of all Americans, I hope the President reconsiders his flawed strategy and produces a more effective one to eradicate ISIS soon because the safety of the American people is clearly at stake.