John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate the chairman and the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee pointing out that the actual underlying authorization language in this legislation has been public information since June 24--June 24. The only thing that is a little different about this underlying bill--it is not as if this were air-dropped out of heaven, and it showed up on people's desks--is that Senator Hatch, the chairman of the Committee on Finance, and other committee chairmen on the commerce committee, EPW, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have come up with a group of pay-fors to figure a way to pay for 3 years now of this underlying 6-year bill. So I think it is absolutely accurate to say that the good work being done by the Environment and Public Works Committee to pass a 6-year bill will be done when this bill is passed, but we have only been able to agree on 3 years of pay-fors. I wish we could have gone longer, but that is not bad considering our recent record with these temporary patches, which I agree is a terrible way to do business. So I congratulate the Senator from California and those who have worked to make this bill as good as it is, but I want to make another point. There are others who are arguing: Well, we shouldn't be doing this. We ought to be passing a temporary patch, and then we should be doing international tax reform and trying to come up with some additional revenue out of that process that will pay for a 6-year bill. Well, the fact of the matter is that nothing we will do with this bill precludes that good work from going forward. As a matter of fact, after 3 years of paying for this bill, at some point we are going to have to find a way to recharge the bill in order to complete the work that was first started in the underlying 6-year bill. So I don't want anybody to be under a misconception, because I think you might if you didn't know the context of thinking that all of a sudden this 1,000-page bill appeared on people's desks, and they do not know where it came from, and they do not know anything about its provenance or what it will actually do. The truth is very, very different. It is important, and I respect the fact, as the Senator from California has made the point, that people do need to get comfortable with the paperwork. But what we have tried to do is to come up with credible ways to pay for the bill that actually represents a consensus to pay for 3 years rather than this idea of a 6-month patch and hoping that somehow we will come up with the money in December for a 6-year bill. So while I regret this failed cloture vote, this bill does represent a significant step forward, and I am encouraged by what I have seen in terms of the bipartisan cooperation that allowed us to make progress on a number of contentious matters so far this year, and I thank the minority whip for his good work on this as well. We passed an education bill. We passed trade promotion authority. It was not universally popular on both sides, but this was a priority for the President and I think something that represents a step forward for our economy, opening markets for the things we raise and grow and the things we make in this country. We have done a number of important things that I hope begin to regain the public's trust and confidence that we are actually able to function and that even though we have very different ideas about how to get to a conclusion, we can actually find common ground and make some progress. In my State in particular--Texas being a large State--the Texas A&M Transportation Institute estimates that by the year 2020, 8.4 billion hours will be spent waiting in traffic--8.4 billion hours. Of course, that also means that 4 billion gallons of gas will be wasted in the process. Imagine the pollution, not to mention the heartburn associated with congestion on our highways and roadways. We are, thank goodness, a fast-growing State relative to the rest of the country. We are a big State. We need the transportation infrastructure to keep our economy moving and to create jobs and economic growth. So I am confident we can work in a bipartisan manner to address what I hope is just a temporary obstacle and avoid these patches that kick the can down the road and provide no predictability or planning ability so these long-term projects can be initiated and completed. I would just point out the fact that Texas has not waited on the Federal Government in order to deal with its transportation needs. Last November, by an overwhelming 4-to-1 margin, Texans approved a ballot initiative that provided an additional $1.7 billion to upgrade and maintain our transportation network. So I congratulate our leaders at the State level who have taken the initiative to begin to make that downpayment on upgrading and maintaining our transportation network, but estimates are we need as much as $5 billion in order to do that. So this represents just a downpayment. We need to pass the Federal highway bill in order to complete our work. As I pointed out, our State has currently about 27 million people. By 2040, it is estimated to reach as many as 45 million people. So we need this infrastructure, but we are not alone. We are not unique in that sense. Every State needs transportation infrastructure to keep people and goods moving in order to continue to grow our economy because a growing economy creates jobs and opportunity, and the one thing we need in this country is a growing economy. Last year, in 2014, the Texas economy grew at 5.2 percent. The U.S. economy grew at 2.2 percent. That is why, because of that 3-point differential, we have created more jobs in Texas--or seen jobs created by the private sector, I should say--than anywhere else in the country. If we fail to pass a multiyear transportation bill, if we somehow decide to shoot ourselves in the foot and fail in this important effort, we will have only ourselves to blame, and we will be contributing to the problem rather than contributing to the solution. The resources provided for in this legislation will help relieve urban congestion, upgrade rural routes, and improve the overall safety and efficiency of our highways. It is something our friends across the aisle just a few short weeks ago said they wanted. They said they were worried about this impending deadline coming up where we needed to do something, and they were predicting that perhaps we would just have another patch. They called for a longer term highway bill. So I would urge our colleagues to take yes for an answer. Thanks to the good work done by Chairman Hatch of the Committee on Finance and a lot of work on a bipartisan basis across the aisle, we have actually come up with enough money--enough legitimate pay-fors--to pass a 3-year transportation bill with the prospect, if we can come up with some additional funds through international tax reform, to backfill the final 3 years. So nothing here actually precludes that effort. Nothing cuts that off. This is, I think, part of doing our basic job as Members of the Congress. It is not particularly attractive or sexy or interesting, but it is about competence, it is about doing our job, and it is about putting the American people's interests first. So I hope by tomorrow our colleagues will have had a chance to satisfy themselves and understand the pay-fors in this bill, recognizing that most of this information has been out there in the public domain for a long, long time. I am not asking them to like it, I am not asking them to fall in love with the pay-fors, but I am asking them to let us go forward and to let the Senate be the Senate. Let people offer their ideas, hopefully get votes on constructive suggestions, eventually pass this legislation, and send it over to the House, where I predict, if it comes out of the Senate with a good strong vote, our friends in the House will take it up and pass it and send it to the President, and we will have fulfilled our responsibility. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

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

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

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday President Obama announced a deal with Iran, one that will send billions of dollars to a regime with a long history of violently opposing the United States and its allies. I come to the floor to express again my deep skepticism about how the Obama administration has approached these talks and my great concerns about what has been revealed about the deal so far--recognizing that we should all, perhaps, reserve our judgment for the process that will unfold over the next couple of months, by which we will actually be able to read the text of the deal and then to show to the American people what it contains and express our concerns publicly and debate those. That is going to unfold over the next couple of months. But I think we can all agree that bringing Iran to the negotiating table and securing an agreement that prohibits 100 percent of their ability to gain the capacity to create a nuclear weapon would be a tremendous legacy for any President to accomplish. Preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power would have been a legacy item for President Obama or any President. But these negotiations have been particularly concerning because, in spite of the fact that the Iranian regime has given us no reason to trust it, the President has been operating under the assumption that any deal is better than no deal. I am afraid the President has demonstrated the old adage that if you want a deal bad enough, that is exactly what you are going to get--a bad deal. In so doing, the President has abandoned longstanding U.S. policy. Our policy has always been to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Instead, the administration has said: Well, it is OK. We will allow you a plan forward, and--in the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu--pave the way toward your acquisition of nuclear weapons. This is an outcome that is irresponsible, unacceptable, and exceedingly dangerous. I found it interesting that during his announcement the President said U.S. engagement in Iran was built upon ``mutual interests and mutual respect.'' The theocratic Iranian regime is a government that just last week encouraged its citizens to shout slogans often heard on the streets of Tehran. ``Death to America,'' they say. ``Death to Israel.'' I don't see how the President can consider such actions a sign of ``mutual respect.'' It is just the opposite. But I should be fair to the President. He is of course not the only person who supports this deal. We hear that Russia's President Vladimir Putin has endorsed it. So has Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, who called the agreement a ``major turning point.'' Our enemies think this is a great deal, and they strongly support it. But I hope the administration is aware that the optimism they have surrounding Iran and this deal is not universal. Our staunchest ally in the Middle East, the nation of Israel, has stated its clear opposition yesterday. President Netanyahu, as he did in a joint session of Congress just a few short months ago, said in crystal clear language that this agreement represents a ``historic mistake'' for the world. That is likely because the Iranian regime has regularly--even throughout the ongoing negotiations--called for the destruction of Israel. So while our enemies such as Bashar al-Assad of Syria called the deal a major turning point, our greatest ally called it a ``historic mistake.'' That should give all of us pause. What other warning signs do we need? Can a deal that is wholeheartedly endorsed by our adversaries and simultaneously disdained by one of our closest allies possibly be in the best interest of the United States of America? I am interested in hearing the answer to that question during the course of our review and debates because that is the question we will have the chance to answer for ourselves at the end of this next 60-day period of time. Although I have seen several headlines talking about Republican opposition to the agreement, I would like to point out that there are a number of Democratic colleagues who have been quick to voice their concerns as well. This should not, and I pray will not, become a partisan disagreement. What we ought to be doing, in the best interest of the United States of America and our national security and those of our allies, is getting to the bottom of this agreement, raising concerns, and asking questions. Perhaps the President would like for this to become a partisan debate because then he wins, and in so doing America and our allies lose. Yesterday, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that ``there is no trust when it comes to Iran.'' That statement was made by the distinguished Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin. Similarly, another Democratic colleague, the senior Senator from New Jersey and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that ``the deal doesn't end Iran's nuclear program,'' but instead it ``preserves it.'' This deal cements many of the longstanding concerns that I and many of my colleagues have had. Instead of ridding the world of an Iranian nuclear weapon once and for all, this simply kicks the deal down the road--when, by the way, President Obama will no longer be in office-- but it completely preserves the nuclear infrastructure required to create a nuclear weapon in as little as 1 year. We can't afford to sit back, cross our fingers, and wait for the regime to resurrect its nuclear program after their main obligations under the deal have expired. Let me just be clear. The American people are not so desperate to cut this deal with the Iranian regime, and I think they will be even less supportive than they have been so far once the details of this deal gets vetted. I wholeheartedly reject the suggestion the President has made on numerous occasions that there are two alternatives: There is this deal or there is war. That is ridiculous. That is a false choice. What it should be is a choice between this deal and something better--something that actually denies Iran nuclear weapons and doesn't unleash billions of dollars for them to fight their proxy war against the United States and our allies. Again, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism is Iran, and we are going to unleash the sanctions on the oil that they will now be able to sell in global markets and reap windfall profits perhaps, along with released funds that have been sequestered in American banks and other institutions, so they can now prop up their economy and again pay for the war they are fighting against Israel and the United States and other allies. The bipartisan sanctions regime that Congress has put in place over decades should not and cannot be undone through an Executive agreement between President Obama and the head of the world's leader in state- sponsored terrorism. As elected representatives of the American people, we, all of us, in addition to the President, are committed to securing a good deal for the people who sent us here, and that means making sure Iran will never have the ability to build a nuclear weapon, protecting our interests and our allies against a threatening regional power and, first and foremost, ensuring that the American people are safer tomorrow than they were yesterday. Now that the White House has submitted the first 109 pages of this deal to Congress, we are in the process of reviewing it, but there is more to come--classified annexes and all. I look forward to reading this agreement word-for-word, understanding it better, and asking many of the similar-type questions which I posed here today, which need good and solid and reliability answers. We can't base this on a policy of hope or even trust in the rogue regime in Tehran. We need answers to these questions and, even more importantly, so do the American people. I yield the floor. 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. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).