John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 11, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 11, 2015, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD- 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Oversight Hearing: Examining EPA's proposed carbon dioxide emissions rules from new, modified, and existing power plants.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a meeting during the session of the Senate on February 11, 2015, at 9:45 a.m., in room SR-253 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The Connected World: Examining the Internet of Things.''

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 February 11, 2015, at 9:30 a.m.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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 Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 10, 2015, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 10, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD- 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Reemergence of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases: Exploring the Public Health Successes and Challenges.''

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 February 10, 2015 at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Update on Iran Nuclear Negotiations.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 10, 2015, at 10:10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Getting to Yes on Tax Reform: What Lessons Can Congress Learn from the Tax Reform Act of 1986?''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 10, at 10 a.m., in room SR-253 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a subcommittee hearing entitled ``Keeping Goods Moving.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 10, 2015, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Regulatory Relief for Community Banks and Credit Unions.''

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 February 10, 2015, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as tempted as I am to respond to my good friend from Maryland about the ongoing Democratic filibuster of the Homeland Security funding, I want to spend just a few minutes talking about a topic where there is broad and growing consensus, where both parties have found common ground, and I am talking about the issue of reforming America's prison system. Pretty much everyone agrees that our prisons are dangerously overcrowded. I think there are roughly 215,000 inmates in Federal custody. And everyone pretty much agrees that by and large people who are in prison are someday going to get out of prison. That, of course, brings about the concern about repeat crimes or recidivism and the fact that it is way too high. I think in many instances it is because we have simply not done enough or maybe have even given up on helping transition people who actually want to transition to a more productive life and providing them with the tools they need to do so. The hard part about dealing with what I have just described is we have to come up with a solution that addresses these problems without jeopardizing public safety. That, obviously, is a given. It is a challenge, to be sure, but it makes it even more important to find bipartisan consensus and to actually accomplish what we can. It is in this vein that my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, and I have joined together to introduce a piece of legislation we call the Corrections Oversight, Recidivism Reduction, and Eliminating Costs for Taxpayers in Our National System Act--or CORRECTIONS Act--to reform our Federal prison system. That is quite an acronym. It is a mouthful to be sure. But the point is, this is real meaningful reform of our prison system at the Federal level. Before I describe the specifics of the CORRECTIONS Act, I am going to tell a brief story the Presiding Officer is very familiar with of the success in that laboratory of democracy known as the State of Texas. Not too long ago Texas lawmakers confronted a problem similar to what I have described here at the national level. We had not only growing budgets for prison construction, we had overcrowded prisons and a high rate of criminal recidivism. At some point the thought occurred to a group of people that just building more prisons wasn't necessarily the answer. It certainly wouldn't fix the problem on the back end that I described, of people who would eventually get out of prison not being prepared to reenter civil society. But we tried a different approach in Texas: scrapping prison construction plans and instead funding a series of recidivism reduction programs aimed at helping low-risk offenders turn their lives around and become productive members of society and, just as important, not become residents of our prison system once again. These programs are not all that novel. They are well known--things such as drug rehabilitation, educational classes, job training, faith-based initiatives, and something as simple as prison work programs. In Texas we gave qualified inmates the option of earning credits and completing a portion of their sentence in lower levels of custody--home confinement, halfway houses, community supervision--which is dramatically cheaper than the big-box prisons that are very expensive. The results speak for themselves. Between 2007 and 2012 our State's overall incarceration rate fell almost 10 percent--9.4 percent--our total crime rate dropped 16 percent, and taxpayers saved more than $2 billion. Again, the Presiding Officer knows as well, Texas has a certain reputation when it comes to crime. We are not soft on crime. We are tough on crime. We believe if you do the crime, you should do the time. But I think what we have come up with is a model that can be used at the national level. Senator Whitehouse this morning, in a press conference we did together, talked about how similar initiatives that took place in Rhode Island produced similar results. But I think one of the keys to this is the recidivism reduction programs because these have proven successful for medium-risk and low-risk inmates and delivered positive results. This bill would also make a number of other reforms. I guess perhaps the most important, and the first one I will mention, is a risk assessment program, regular risk assessments for inmates, to determine whether they are a low, medium or high risk of recidivism. Indeed, we would not allow high-risk inmates to participate in this program of earning good time credit toward less restrictive custody, but they could, if they were motivated enough to change their status from high risk to medium risk. They could then begin that. So the incentives are clearly there. These assessments would assign prisoners to appropriate programming to ensure the system is working efficiently and effectively. In other words, if someone has a mental health issue, obviously they would be directed in a particular way. If somebody doesn't have employable job skills, obviously that would call for some training program so they could acquire those kinds of skills. People who have drug and alcohol problems obviously could be directed toward something that could help them learn to free themselves from those challenges. To me, one of the great things about this particular approach is that it operates on incentives. As an incentive, lower risk offenders who successfully complete their programs would earn up to 25 percent of their remaining sentence in home confinement or a halfway house. To be clear, these earned time credits would be available only to inmates who have been vetted by the Bureau of Prisons and classified as low-risk offenders. The Nation's most violent offenders would be excluded from earning any credit under this legislation. During these budget-constrained times, it is important to point out that this bill would not involve any additional spending. Instead, it would rely on job programs and partnerships of faith-based groups and nonprofits, and the reinvestment potentially of the savings generated by transitioning lower risk offenders to less restrictive forms of custody. If it works as it has at the State level, it is going to save money because we will be building fewer prisons. Indeed, in Texas I believe we have actually shuttered three existing prison units because we simply don't need them because of this new approach. Make no mistake, though, the prisoners eligible for these program are all people who eventually will get out of prison anyway. What we are trying to do is make sure the very high risk of repeating and recidivism would go down by better preparing them to reenter society. Our goal would be to make it less likely that they would commit new crimes and wind up behind bars again. So the hope and expectation is this bill would go a long way toward improving public safety, it would save taxpayers money, and it would ease some of the burden on our Federal prisons just like we experienced in Texas. This bill, at a time when we seem to be very divided on a number of topics, is a consensus piece of legislation. It was voted out of the Judiciary Committee late last year by an overwhelming vote. I think those who expressed some reservations at the time just wanted more opportunity to talk about it and learn more about it, and perhaps they had other ideas they wanted to consider adding to it. In addition to Senator Whitehouse, there have been a number of colleagues who have been very interested in criminal justice reform, and this is just one place, one starting point, which I think enjoys perhaps the broadest consensus. But I don't think we ought to be afraid of the larger discussion that a number of our colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, have talked about--things such as mandatory minimums, sentencing reforms; the overcriminalization of our regulatory regime, where people who inadvertently violate some regulation find themselves actually accused of a crime. I think all of these are fair game, but I think the most important thing for us to do is to start--start somewhere--where there is a broad consensus. Let's get done what we can get done, and let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think if we can establish, both from the Judiciary Committee and then on the floor of the Senate, that we are capable of moving bipartisan legislation such as this forward and sending it to the President for his signature, hopefully we will start a growing trend of doing that, and this will be the beginning, and not the end, of our discussions and hopefully our productivity when it comes to criminal justice reform. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor. Recognition Of the Minority Leader

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to further proceedings.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I understand there is a bill at the desk that is due for a second reading.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I move to proceed to H.R. 240.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, for the second time in 2 days our friends across the aisle have killed important funding for the Department of Homeland Security, a bill worth about $40 billion that was passed by the House of Representatives and sent over for the Senate to consider. I continue to be amazed, watching Member after Member across the aisle come down here and vote to block this important piece of legislation, and then, in the same breath, accuse the majority of threatening to shut down the government. It strikes me as surreal. They are the ones filibustering the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and they are claiming we are trying to shut down the government. I know it is sometimes hard to explain what happens in the Halls of Congress and Washington, DC, but my folks back home can't understand how they can block something and then claim they are for it--and then the people who are actually advocating for the passage of this funding, claiming somehow we are going to shut down the government. It just doesn't make any sense, and it is the kind of double talk I think people have come to despise and associate with Washington, DC, and Congress. That is one reason voters so overwhelmingly repudiated the status quo on November 4 and said: We want new management, and we don't want business as usual in Washington, DC. Speaking of saying one thing and doing another, on this side of the aisle we pointed out some of the tough talk from some of our friends on the other side of the aisle, Senate Democrats, last fall when the President made clear he intended to follow through on a series of unilateral immigration actions that he, himself, on 22 different occasions had said he did not have the authority to take. Indeed, it is my view this is unconstitutional. He can't pass or make a new law without following the constitutional pathway, which requires Congress to consider it, vote on it--both Houses--and then send it to the President for signature. For the President just simply to make it up out of whole cloth is dangerous, to say the least. I guess if the President doesn't like any other aspect of our laws, this President--or any future President--might claim the sole authority to change it without following the procedures laid out in the U.S. Constitution. I know what the President did last fall in this Executive action on immigration makes a number of our colleagues across the aisle uncomfortable because they are quoted in the newspaper as saying so. But now somehow in this mind meld going on, on the minority side, they now are walking in lockstep, voting against proceeding to consider this Homeland Security appropriations bill, even though, by my count, at least seven Democrats expressed deep concern with the President's unconstitutional action. Here is what the Senator from West Virginia said, talking about the President: I wish he wouldn't do it. The junior Senator from Minnesota said: I have concerns about executive action. The same kind of concerns I have just expressed. The senior Senator from Missouri felt the same way, saying about the President's unilateral action: How this is coming about makes me uncomfortable, [and] I think it probably makes most Missourians uncomfortable. It made the President of the United States uncomfortable, so uncomfortable on 22 occasions he said he couldn't do it--and then he did it. It makes me extremely uncomfortable, too, and it certainly makes the vast majority of the people I represent back in Texas uncomfortable as well. We are a nation of laws. I know we say that all the time, but it is one of the things that distinguishes us from so much of the rest of the world where, no matter who you are--whether you are the President of the United States or the most humble person in the country--the rules apply to you equally. That is what it says over the top of the Supreme Court Building. Look at the front of the building. It says, ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' The idea that the President can--after 22 times saying he didn't have the authority--become a law unto himself and try to get away with it is just unprecedented and it is dangerous. Despite the fact that many of our colleagues on the Democratic side have said what the President did made them feel uncomfortable, they apparently lost their sense of discomfort when they voted in lockstep to block this funding bill. In order to justify their filibuster, a number of Senate Democrats have said: I don't like the bill the House sent over because it has some things in it that I don't like. I like the funding, but I don't like the spending restrictions. I know the Presiding Officer understands as well that we can't change a piece of legislation in the Senate unless we vote to get on the bill. It is the same thing as saying you can't finish a journey until you start it, and our friends across the aisle are unwilling to even start that journey. To state the obvious, if our friends in the minority would like to change the Department of Homeland Security funding bill, they ought to stop blocking it from being debated and amend it. If they have ideas, let's bring them to the floor. One of the things that has distinguished this 114th Congress from the way things ran last year is we have actually had an open amendment process. Indeed, we found out in the first month of this year and this new Congress that we had more votes than all of last year combined. So there is going to be an opportunity for anybody with a better idea to come down and get a vote. But this whole idea of saying, I am not even going to participate in the process and--worse than that--I am going to block a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security because I don't like what is in it is just--well, it is just impossible to explain. We know some of our colleagues on the other side are using this to play games because they basically have admitted it. Just yesterday in the Huffington Post, the senior Senator from New York, a member of the leadership of his own party, said that ``it is really fun to be in the minority.'' That strikes me as extraordinarily cynical because we were not sent to play games, particularly with matters as important as homeland security. That is not what the American people sent us to do, and that is certainly not what they ratified or what they voted for on November 4. They rejected business as usual in Washington, DC, and they said: Let's do something different, and we may not necessarily endorse everything that Republicans stand for, but, boy, we are sure going to give them a chance to show that they can do better than the management in the 113th Congress. I think we began to make some positive steps in the right direction, particularly with passing important legislation. We passed three important pieces of legislation in the 114th Congress: the veterans suicide bill that we voted on earlier this week, we have passed the terrorism risk insurance bill, and we passed, as the Presiding Officer knows, a very important piece of legislation to our economy and job creation and energy security known as the Keystone XL Pipeline. That is not bad. That is not bad. We would like to do what I think falls in the category of governance 101, something that is pretty basic. We have to pay to keep the government functioning and particularly the Department of Homeland Security. I know our friends on the other side of the aisle say: We don't like the bill the way it is, and we don't like the tools that are being used by the majority party to rein in the President's Executive action. Well, I am not going to make any apology for that because what the President did was unconstitutional. It was illegal. He has no authority to do that on his own. Again, it is not just me saying that. It is not just my opinion. It is his opinion. How cynical. How cynical. I guess he figures he is going to get away with it, and our friends on the other side of the aisle are going to be the enablers, to enable the President to get away with something he said he didn't have the authority to do on 22 times. I sure wouldn't want the folks back home to see me in that same light. I would have a hard time explaining to my constituents back home, saying, yes, I am helping the President do something that he said was illegal and he didn't have the authority to do, and we are going to play games by blocking important funding for the Department of Homeland Security in order to facilitate him getting away with it. That is a cynical game and it is dangerous, particularly in the threat environment we are living in. So I come to the floor for the third time this week to ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--especially those who have boldly stood up to their own President, a member of their own party, the leader of their own party, a few short months ago--to ask them to stand up again and to tell the President and to tell their own leadership that we want to have a Senate that actually works, where the minority and the majority get to participate through an open amendment process. But we are going to respect the Constitution, we are going to respect this institution and, yes, we are going to respect the role of the Presidency under our Constitution enough to rein in this President's overreach, and we are not going to jeopardize funding for the Department of Homeland Security and allow that to be held hostage to the President's unconstitutional act. Mr. President, I yield the floor. 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. Mr. President, yesterday our friends across the aisle blocked--filibustered, really--a $40 billion funding bill that would have paid the funds necessary to keep the Department of Homeland Security running through the rest of this fiscal year. I understand they had some differences over the content of the legislation the House passed, but it is undeniable that the House acted responsibly by passing this appropriations bill, particularly at a time of heightened security concerns not only here at home but around the world. Of course, the part that I guess confused me the most is our Democratic friends said: Well, we don't want to debate the bill, but what we want is a clean DHS appropriations bill. So they wanted to get to the end of the process without even starting the process, which strikes me as odd. As I pointed out last week during the Senate debate on the Keystone XL Pipeline, Senator Durbin from Illinois, the assistant minority leader, spoke very sincerely in support of a process surrounding that bill. We didn't all agree that the Keystone Pipeline should be passed, but we did at least have an open amendment process that allowed everyone to express their point of view and to get votes on amendments, up or down, before concluding that piece of legislation. I think the most notable part of that was that we actually had more votes in the Senate during the 3 weeks we were on the Keystone XL Pipeline than we had all of last year under the previous management. So it was amazing to me to see that the Democratic leadership--the Senate minority--worked so hard to marshal their caucus together to block debate on this $40 billion appropriations bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, especially considering the promise of the Senator from Illinois to continue to work with us to foster an open debate process and an open opportunity on both sides of the aisle to offer good ideas and to put them up for a vote on how to improve legislation. It was also amazing to see this outcome considering what so many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said last fall when the President made his Executive action on immigration. As I said yesterday--and I want to repeat it again--we are not upset with people who are seeking a better life in the United States. All we are asking for is a legal process. We are very upset with the President violating his oath of office and purporting to make unconstitutional Executive orders. That is the problem. That is what the House is focused on like a laser. In fact, this President's actions were a stunning display of Executive overreach. You don't have to take my word for it; take his word for it--at least the first 22 times he talked about it. He said he didn't have the authority to do it 22 different times. Then there is the view of some of our colleagues in the minority. For example, the senior Senator from West Virginia put it simply last November when he expressed, I think, the feeling of a lot of Democrats when he said, ``I wish he wouldn't do it.'' This was echoed also in a very straightforward manner by the very junior Senator from Minnesota, who said, ``I have concerns about executive action.'' Of course, it is easy to understand why because this is a uniquely legislative responsibility. The President doesn't have authority to make laws on his own--at least that used to be his position. Then the senior Senator from Missouri said of the President's unilateral action: ``How this is coming about makes me uncomfortable, [and] I think it probably makes most Missourians uncomfortable.'' Well, the public opinion polls I have seen bear that comment out, that while many people think we do need to fix our broken immigration system, the majority of people in the public opinion polls I have seen disagree with the way the President has tried to act by doing this unilaterally--or purporting to do it unilaterally. Well, I have good news for Senator McCaskill, Senator Franken, and Senator Manchin. The House of Representatives has actually passed a piece of legislation that addresses their concerns and should give them some comfort. The legislation on which we are trying to open debate fully funds, as I said, the Department of Homeland Security while reining in the President's unconstitutional actions. This is one of the tools available to Congress--using these legislative riders on appropriations to in effect express disapproval and defund certain acts by the Executive. That is one of the tools we have available to us. I will renew my request from yesterday to Senator Reid, the Democratic leader, and ask the assistant minority leader to honor his commitment that he made when we were debating the Keystone XL Pipeline. Please work with us to achieve at least debate on the floor, if not some significant legislation. But to just throw a fit and say ``We refuse to even start debate on the legislation'' strikes me as more of a political move than a legislative solution. So I would ask my friends on the other side of the aisle, who so boldly stood up to express their concerns with the President's Executive actions only a few short months ago, to again stand up--this time to their own leadership--and to join us in reining in the President's Executive overreach and to not hold hostage the $40 billion the House has appropriated to help fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of the fiscal year, through September 31. If there are parts of the House bill you don't like--and there are parts of the House bill that I have concerns over and that I hope we have a chance to vote on, but that is the way the House and the Senate are supposed to relate to one another. The House passes legislation, the Senate passes legislation, and if they are different, then they get reconciled in a conference committee or through a ping-pong back-and- forth before they go to the President. But to throw a fit and say ``We refuse to do our job of legislating'' just because they don't like where we are starting is extraordinarily counterproductive and is an unfortunate return to the dysfunction I believe the voters repudiated in their vote on November 4. So we will see whether there is a different point of view. I know the majority leader, Senator McConnell, will come back to the floor and ask to reconsider the vote from yesterday, and so there will be another opportunity for our friends across the aisle to reconsider their vote blocking even beginning considering this legislation. I hope they will reconsider and join us and try to come up with a consensus solution. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 4, 2015, in room SD-562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Broken Trust: Combating Financial Exploitation of Vulnerable Seniors.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 4, 2015, at 2:00 p.m.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 4, 2015, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:30 p.m.