John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the majority leader clarifying for us what this is all about, and actually I have to thank the Democratic leader for clarifying that this is really about the issue of illegal immigration. That is the reason there has been no agreement on spending caps, because our friends across the aisle don't want to agree on spending caps because they want to use everything else as leverage in order to get an outcome on this dispute over illegal immigration. As the majority leader pointed out, this isn't so much about what is in the bill as what they said should be in the bill because I presume our colleagues are for the 6-year reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which was voted almost unanimously out on a bipartisan basis in the Senate Finance Committee. The matter of veterans that the Democratic leader mentioned--well, veterans are going to be hurt by what they have done or will do tomorrow, I presume, in defeating this 1-month continuing resolution. I find it rather disingenuous to say we are against this short-term continuing resolution because we want another short-term continuing resolution, guaranteeing that there will yet again be another short- term resolution. Once the spending caps are agreed to, it is going to take a couple of weeks for the bill to be put together so we can actually vote on it. So our colleagues across the aisle who say they want another 3- or 4-day continuing resolution, that guarantees yet another continuing resolution, and all of this is really camouflage to hide their true intention--as the majority leader pointed out--trying to force a decision where there is yet not consensus and a willingness of the President to support it on the issue of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. That deadline for people who can no longer re-sign up is March 5. In the meantime, nobody is in any jeopardy, none of the 690,000 young people who were brought here as children are in any kind of jeopardy, and we are having discussions on a daily basis. We had one today with Senator Durbin. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip; the majority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy; and I again met with the White House and Department of Homeland Security to try to make some progress, and I think there was the beginning of some real progress toward a resolution. I find it disingenuous to try to claim that we are killing this 1- month CR, continuing resolution, because we don't want to hurt the military. This damages the military because it creates further chaos and uncertainty when it comes to a long-term spending deal because our military has been underfunded for way too long. Why? Because our Democratic colleagues will not agree to fund our national defense until we agree to raise spending on nondefense matters. So it strikes me as very odd that you would say you are voting against this continuing resolution because you are against continuing resolutions only to guarantee that we will have at least two more and then to claim it is about something else, when really it is about the matter of illegal immigration.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last week, the House voted to reauthorize for a period of 6 years section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--a vital tool in tracking foreign terrorists abroad. Last night, we had a very important vote in this Chamber, a cloture vote, which will allow us to proceed to a final vote on this legislation perhaps as early as tomorrow morning. Congress enacted section 702 in 2008 in direct response to the enduring threats to the country being posed by radical Islamic extremism and the ever-expanding use of the internet and social media by terrorists and foreign operatives. The law authorizes the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct surveillance on foreigners who are outside of the United States so that the U.S. Government can effectively acquire that intelligence information. As the Director of National Intelligence and many others have stated--former FBI Director James Comey is another one--section 702 is the crown jewel of our foreign intelligence collection and a critical weapon in the defense of our Nation. The law expires this Friday--that is right, just 2 days from now--so the clock is ticking. I am glad the Senate took the first step last evening, and I trust my colleagues will soon make sure the law is reauthorized so that the U.S. Government can continue to collect information that is vital to the protection of the Nation. Because the law requires targets of section 702 to be foreign citizens outside the United States, those targets are not covered by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Clearly, people who are inside the country, American citizens, are all protected by the Fourth Amendment, but not foreigners, under Supreme Court precedent. Because of that, the government isn't required to obtain a warrant before initiating surveillance. That is where the misconceptions and confusion start to arise, and I want to talk a little bit more about that. Despite the strong bipartisan vote in support of section 702 in the House of Representatives last week and the strong bipartisan support for the provision here in the Senate, some critics want to delay reauthorization and engage in a never-ending lamentation about the demise of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, of course, is a guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Again, that applies to American citizens, not to foreigners abroad. But these critics have mischaracterized the aims of the many Republican and Democratic proponents of this law, and frankly their concerns are misplaced. They ignore the enduring value and core protections in section 702 and the merits of various pro-privacy reforms in the House bill. As I said, it is truly a bipartisan bill. Critics have expressed three concerns, and I want to address each in turn. The first is that under 702, ``millions of bits of information are collected on Americans,'' not just foreigners, and that ``[w]e don't know the exact amount.'' What they are referring to, of course, is what the intelligence community calls ``incidental collection''--when intelligence officials monitor the communications of foreign terrorists and the information of any Americans who are in communication with those terrorists sometimes gets included in the mix. But, of course, if even an American is talking to a foreign terrorist, certainly the intelligence community would want to know that. There are additional protections for U.S. persons who are incidentally collected based on a target of a foreign national. All of this would be a legitimate worry were it not for the fact that there are safeguards built into the statute that ensure that no more American communications are collected than are necessary to safely monitor foreigners with suspected terrorist ties. For example, section 702 already explicitly prohibits the U.S. Government from intentionally targeting a foreign person ``if the [real] purpose . . . is to target a particular, known person . . . in the United States.'' That is illegal. There are also so-called ``minimization'' procedures that limit the dissemination and use of information acquired and scrupulous practices at our intelligence agencies--the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI--on how that information is dealt with in order to protect U.S. persons. Under the bill, several additional features should be acknowledged. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court must review the FBI's so- called ``querying'' procedures and certify that they are consistent with the Fourth Amendment. I know of no government program that has as much oversight and protection for the privacy rights of American citizens as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is actually supervised by all three branches of government--by the executive branch internally; by the judicial branch through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and other courts, which decided that there is no constitutional violation in any of the procedures laid down in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; and, of course, the oversight we conduct here in the Senate and in the House on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. To make sure all of this is scrupulously adhered to, a record must be kept of each U.S. person query term used. And far from ignoring Americans' privacy concerns related to incidental collection, the bill requires that the intelligence community hire and employ civil liberties officers--people whose explicit job is to look out for our privacy rights. In sum, those who would misleadingly paint the intelligence community as renegade--as deliberately surveilling millions of Americans with no checks in place--are simply wrong about the facts of this bill and the layered protections that have been put in place. Let me reiterate. The intelligence community is expressly prohibited from targeting Americans under section 702, directly or incidentally. In fact, the only Americans who might be worried about their communications being swept up under section 702 are those who are deliberately communicating with foreign terrorists. But all Americans will benefit from a host of additional protections under the law. The critics' second and related concern is that incidental collection can be used in domestic criminal prosecutions. They are concerned that the U.S. Government could collect information without ever having to obtain a warrant and then use it to investigate and punish Americans for crimes. Again, this fear is misplaced under this bill. It is mitigated by analysis done by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2014, who, after a comprehensive review, found no evidence of intentional abuse. Concerns of the critics are also mitigated by the FBI, which under this bill has to obtain a court order before it can access the contents of 702 communications in support of a purely criminal investigation, as opposed to an intelligence-gathering activity. It is also mitigated by the fact that section 702 intelligence can be used as evidence against Americans only in instances of the most serious crimes. Apart from obtaining a court order, it can only be used if the Attorney General determines that the criminal proceeding involves national security or other heinous crimes, such as murder, kidnapping, or crimes against children. The critics' preferred approach--and they introduced bills to this effect last year--would prohibit the government from using any 702 collection to investigate these dangerous, violent crimes, and therefore it would potentially protect dangerous criminals engaged in some of the most egregious behavior imaginable--something I think we would not want to do. That brings us to the skeptics' third problem, which deals with oversight. They fear that the reauthorization of this legislation could spell the end of congressional monitoring of the program. They have chastised this possibility as one that is ``callous in its disregard for our cherished Bill of Rights.'' They are entirely correct to insist, in light of recent events, that Congress should continue to engage in rigorous oversight of the intelligence community and make sure that our surveillance tools aren't used for political ends. But we already have oversight in spades, and under this bill, we will have even more. First of all, the House bill reauthorizes the program for only 6 years--not indefinitely. At the end of 2023, we will revisit section 702. In the meantime, existing and extensive oversight of section 702 will continue. As I mentioned, for example, there is judicial review. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court annually reviews section 702, and other courts have examined the use of section 702 in support of criminal cases. All agree that section 702 does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Even the Ninth Circuit, which is frequently out of line with other circuits and the Supreme Court, agrees that section 702 is constitutional. Courts, of course, are not the only oversight mechanism; there are ones within the executive branch, which I alluded to earlier, including routine reviews by the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Of course, congressional committees, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee, both of which I serve on, also receive regular reporting on the 702 program and hold open and closed hearings on the subject. Ultimately, the approaches that are preferred by the 702 critics would force the FBI to rebuild the wall between criminal and national security investigators that existed before the attacks in New York on 9/11 and would cause the FBI to stovepipe its section 702 collection, contrary to the recommendations of numerous commissions, including the 9/11 Commission and the Fort Hood Commission. We need to remember that the FBI protects our national security both as an intelligence agency and as a law enforcement agency. In other words, it wears two hats. So we can't wall off the FBI from the content of crucial communications, and we can't wall off the FBI from intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. That was the situation the FBI was in leading up to September 11, 2001. We can't forget the increasingly dangerous world we are living in and the diverse array of threats that confront us. FBI Director Chris Wray has summarized our threat landscape. It is one that includes not only large mass-casualty events like 9/11 in the United States and similar recent attacks in Europe but also more isolated and diffuse lone-wolf and homegrown violent extremist threats that give law enforcement and national security investigators much less time to detect and disrupt. Imposing additional obstacles to accessing this critical information could either delay us when time is of the essence or, worse, prevent us from being able to connect the dots of information that the U.S. Government has already lawfully collected. Real-world examples show how devastating this could be. A tip under 702 from the NSA, the National Security Agency, is what helped the FBI stop an attack on the New York City subway system in 2009. There is also Hajji Iman, who at one point was the second in command of ISIS. Section 702 helped us get him and take him off the battlefield. Then there is ISIS recruiter Shawn Parson--702 revealed his terrorist propaganda and identified members of his terrorist network. There are many, many more examples of instances where 702 helped us identify, disrupt, and prevent attacks against the homeland here in the United States and innocent civilians. Whether it is combatting terrorism, detecting and countering cyber threats, uncovering support to hostile powers, or acquiring intelligence on foreign adversary militaries, 702 is one of our most effective tools, and we simply can't afford to blunt the sharpness of its blade or dull the focus of its lens. In closing, I want to make one final point clear. I agree that, in the words of one critic, the Fourth Amendment is not a ``suggestion.'' It is a core constitutional protection of our sacred freedom. But reauthorizing section 702 would not suddenly relegate the Fourth Amendment to second-tier status. Every court that has considered the matter has said so, and frankly, it is obscene to ignore the balanced, pro-privacy reforms in the House-passed bill that would provide even greater protections for the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. The truth is that section 702 has never been systematically abused. It has helped stop terrorist attacks both at home and abroad. It has helped defend our troops on the battlefield. It has been critical to the Russian collusion probe and other counterintelligence work. As I said, every court--every single court--that has considered the program has found it to be lawful and constitutional; in other words, consistent with the Fourth Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights. So we can all rattle the saber of civil liberties to score political points, but large, misguided changes to 702 are not the way to go. The House-passed bill will provide greater transparency and procedural protections for the Fourth Amendment rights of innocent, law-abiding Americans, while at the same time allow us to remain vigilant in protecting the homeland and our troops abroad and our national security at large by making sure we have the information we need in order to connect the dots with the threats to our national security. 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 Arizona (Mr. McCain) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I admit I wasn't here during the entirety of the comments from our friend, and I saw his to-do list. The only thing missing from that to-do list was to fund our military--or at least I didn't see it on there. In all fairness, maybe he mentioned that in his comments. We now have 9 days to reach an agreement to keep the government funded, to keep the lights on, to keep paying the salaries of our government employees, and, of course, to fund our military, which ought to be our No. 1 priority. If we think about things that government must do, funding our national defense is the only thing that we can do and that government can do. There are a lot of other things that government does that are optional or maybe things we would like to do, but funding our military is the No. 1 priority--or should be. As the Senate majority leader mentioned earlier this week, our Democratic colleagues persist in the notion that we should only increase defense spending if we increase nondefense spending by the same amount. The parity that the minority leader and the other Democrats call for doesn't make any sense, though. It is apples and oranges. They act as though all government spending is exactly alike and enjoys or should enjoy the same priority, and that is just not true. We know that from our own family budgets or from a small business. There are things we must do, things we want to do, and things we will do if there is money left over. But our friends across the aisle, who are obstructing our ability to get to negotiated budget caps and fund our military, act as though all of that is the same, that must do, want to do, and what you will do if you have money left over--that those are all exactly the same, and that is just not the case. It is not the case in our family budgets, in our small business budgets, nor is it the case for the Federal budget. Not everything is a priority. But we do know that the No. 1 priority must be the safety and security of the American people by making sure our military is adequately funded. The Budget Control Act signed into law in 2011 was what I would call a necessary evil. The Budget Control Act provided that we would have a bipartisan, bicameral negotiation and try to come up with a grand bargain. That was what President Obama liked to talk about a lot--the grand bargain. But some people suggested that was kind of like a unicorn, something that people describe but no one has ever seen--a grand bargain. I wish it weren't true. The Budget Control Act said that in the absence of a grand bargain, we would have budget caps or sequestration imposed on discretionary spending above certain levels. It proposed separate budget caps for defense and nondefense, and if the budget caps are exceeded, there is an automatic enforcement mechanism called sequestration which imposes across-the-board cuts, which I mentioned a moment ago. The purpose of this sequestration--or these across-the-board cuts--is to do something in the absence of us doing what we should do; in other words, we should take it upon ourselves to figure out what the appropriate spending levels should be for defense and nondefense, and then we should act to appropriate that money. But this is basically a fail-safe mechanism, which operates as a result of our failure to deal with this in a proactive way, and it has hit our defense spending much, much harder than domestic spending. As we know, neither our defense spending nor tax cuts are the cause of our deficits and debt. It is the 70 percent of spending that happens in the Federal Government on autopilot. It is the entitlements that have been going up well in excess of 5 percent a year and are causing instability and unpredictability in those important programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, but at the same time racking up huge deficits and debt that future generations are going to have to pay back. Somebody is going to have to pay it back, and it won't be the present generation because we won't be around then. It is simply immoral to continue to see this happen without trying to deal with it. But back on the matter of the Pentagon, as one op-ed writer put it in the Washington Post last month--he said: The Pentagon and the welfare state have been locked in brutal combat for decades, and the Pentagon has gotten clobbered. . . . Welfare programs--Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other benefits--dwarf defense spending. In the 1950s and 1960s, defense spending was roughly 8 to 10 percent of our economy. In 2016, it was just 3 percent. That is a huge change. James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, said that in his 50 years in the intelligence community, he had never seen a more diverse array of threats confronting the United States around the world--never in his 50 years of experience. So we are simply asking our military and our national security personnel to do too much with too little. It is no surprise that Secretary of Defense James Mattis said last June that ``for all the heartache caused by the loss of our troops during [our] wars [abroad], no enemy in this field has done more to harm the readiness of our military than sequestration.'' More recently, General Mattis said that so far our continuing resolutions have not done even greater damage to our readiness thanks to certain additional or supplemental funding that we voted on. But at the same time, he soberly cautioned that there could be real impact-- and it won't be positive, it will be negative--if the problem persists and if the Department of Defense doesn't have a real budget sometime this month. His remarks echo that of practically every service chief. Together, their views mean we have to act. I don't know who else we would listen to if we are not going to listen to the Secretary of Defense and our service chiefs when it comes to national security because that is their job, and we ought to take their advice and heed their counsel. Cuts in defense spending have real consequences. Much less money is available for training and necessary maintenance, for example. The length of deployments for our troops grows, and our soldiers are stretched thin. Our military is forced to operate beyond its normal capabilities. The former Air Force Chief of Staff recently described the Air Force as the smallest, oldest equipped, and least ready force across the full spectrum of operations in our service history. Those are chilling remarks--or should be. More than half of all Marine Corps fixed and rotary-wing aircraft were unable to fly by the end of 2016. I have no doubt that we can turn that around very quickly if Congress were to step up to its responsibilities and adequately fund the military, but that is the status quo unless we act. The Navy fleet currently stands at 275 of the 350 ship requirement. Of our 58 Army brigade combat teams, only 3--3 out of 58--are ready for combat. Our enemies shouldn't take any comfort in these numbers because, as I said, the United States always pulls together and Congress always acts when they see a national emergency. But it shouldn't take an emergency for us to do our job and to make sure that our military is adequately funded and is ready to fight. As General Brooks in Seoul, South Korea, said, their motto is ``ready to fight tonight.'' That is the kind of world we live in. Last summer was the perfect example of why, when we draw attention to these numbers, we are not just blowing smoke. Operational accidents in the South Pacific exposed our readiness failures in a dramatic fashion and in a tragic fashion. Ten sailors died when the USS John S. McCain collided with a 600-foot merchant vessel off the coast of Singapore. Seven sailors died when the Fitzgerald collided with another vessel off the coast of Japan. And the USS Lake Champlain collided with a boat near Korea--although thankfully that time no lives were lost. This ought to be a wake-up call to all of us. Many have drawn credible correlations between these accidents that have taken the lives of our military servicemembers and our readiness failures, citing studies like the 2015 independent investigation by the Government Accountability Office. That study determined that the Navy's mandate to keep ships afloat in the Pacific was shortchanging crew training and degrading the condition of our ships--in other words, additional readiness failures. These accidents, by the way, are happening at the same time our national security threats are not going away, as General Clapper's comments would indicate. We have seen North Korea continue to improve its nuclear and long- range ballistic missile capabilities beyond the estimates of our intelligence community--much faster--and detonate what is widely considered to be a hydrogen bomb recently. We have seen large-scale protests in Iran--and I hope they continue-- exposing the instability of a regime that continues to use its proxies to advance its aims throughout the broader Middle East; in other words, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism--Iran. We ought to encourage the people of Iran to continue to rise up in protest and to change the regime there into one that does not prey on its neighbors in the region. We have seen a growing China--something that more and more people are realizing is a threat. I know that when we deal with countries like China, frequently we deal with them in the commercial context where we see a business that hires people and we see investments here in the United States. But what we need to recognize is that they don't do business the way the United States does business. Sitting at the top of every company in China, in the board room of every Chinese company, is the Communist Party. They operate on an all-of-government basis. And it is not just the government; it is also what we would consider the private sector. But, in truth, there is no private sector in China; it is all an arm of the government. It is posing a rising threat to American wages and labor as they erode our industrial base by stealing our technology. And because of loopholes in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--the so-called CFIUS process--they are now able to tailor financial arrangements through joint ventures and others in a way to capture our dual-purpose, cutting-edge technology. They then copy it in China and erode our defense industrial base here in the United States, along with the jobs that go with it. So it is a very real and present threat to American wages and workers. It is a threat to our intellectual property edge and the innovation that we are the best in the world at, but they are all too eager to steal it, copy it, and to harm the jobs and the investment in those businesses here in the United States. Of course, when it comes to China, there is the threat to human rights in nondemocratic nations like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, which China often has no qualms supporting. With this diverse array of dangers, we simply can't afford to straitjacket our military by arbitrarily cutting the amount of money we appropriate to fund it. But that is what is going to happen unless we act--and act quickly. The current continuing resolution expires on the 19th of this month. The truth is, even if we are able to come up with negotiated budget caps for defense and nondefense spending, we are probably going to have to have a short-term continuing resolution to give the Appropriations Committees time to put that into bill text. In other words, we can't just snap our fingers once the decision has been made. It is going to take some time to actually put it on paper. The bottom line is, if we want to return to having the strong military that we have always had, if we want to continue to lead in the world, if we want to continue to be a force for peace and stability, we have to maintain our military strength. That was the lesson we had to learn again during the last administration when we saw America retreat from its leadership in the world. There are countries, tyrants, bullies, and dictators all too willing to fill the void left by American retreat, and one way we retreat is when we don't fund the readiness of our military, when we are not ``ready to fight tonight,'' as General Brooks has said, and we need to start with ending this cycle of continuing resolutions and defense sequestration. So I come to the floor today to call on my colleagues from all across this Chamber, but specifically across the aisle, to quit holding our military hostage to other unrelated demands, and I urge this body to come together in agreement on new budget caps as soon as possible. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, just over 2 weeks ago, President Trump signed a historic tax reform bill into law. Some, not really knowing what was in the bill and people who were determined to find fault with it, were let's just say a little skeptical at first. They wondered what this whole thing was about and who would actually benefit. But now the verdict is starting to come in. Many folks are pleasantly surprised, for the first time in a while, knowing that Congress and Washington, DC, actually have produced something that will make their lives better. They are appreciative because they are seeing the immediate consequences. In response, more than 100 companies have announced they will give wage increases, they will increase their charitable contributions, and they will give bonuses to their employees. One million Americans are receiving money they previously didn't have, thanks to passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But it is not just about bonuses, of course. We expect that once the IRS updates its withholding tables, wages will rise, too, take-home pay will go up, and hopefully people will see that in their paychecks in February. As my colleague the junior Senator from Ohio wrote last week, ``With this tax reform, the proof will be in your paycheck.'' Families can spend that extra money any way they wish, of course. That is the point. They can spend it on projects long delayed. They can spend it on their kids. They can give it as an allowance or some modest compensation for chores performed or apply it to their kids' future education, or people may just figure out they want to save for a rainy day. The number is pretty shocking as far as how many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot sustain a $400 loss in income and make things work for them. So this will provide them, if they wish, a little bit of cushion for a rainy day. They can donate it to their house of worship. They can help a neighbor or a friend who has fallen on hard times. In some places, we are learning that families will enjoy lower utility rates based on what gas and electric companies are doing for their residential customers in light of their new tax savings. In places such as Michigan, Montana, Minnesota, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Arizona, the utility regulators in those States are looking at the tax reduction of those investor-owned utilities and how that will calculate into the rate of return that they are guaranteed under the law. But it looks to me as if it will be good news for consumers, that lower heating bills will be the result during the chilly times of the year and lower air-conditioning costs and other electricity costs when spring and summer come around. So it is encouraging to see this sort of perhaps unexpected consequence of tax reform but one that will directly benefit consumers. This is real, it is significant, and it is like priming our economic pump--a little push here and a pull there because of tax reform, and all of a sudden, the entire engine of the American economy is chugging along and will soon be running at full speed. In Texas, you can hear the economy humming along healthily, and we should listen. We should listen to the voices of the job creators like one in New Braunfels, which is between Austin and San Antonio. It is called Rush Enterprises. Rush Enterprises specializes in commercial vehicles. It reported last month that it planned to give each of its 6,600 employees a $1,000 bonus after President Trump signed the tax reform into law--$1,000 each to 6,600 employees. The chief financial officer of Rush Enterprises talked about the additional savings the company would incur as a result of the reduction in its tax rate, which fell from 35 percent to 21 percent. He said: You've got a choice. We could've kept it and stuffed it in the company bank account or coffers, or we can share it with the people. We chose to share it with the people because it's the right thing to do. Well, I couldn't be prouder of that demonstration of the great Texas spirit--employers paying it forward. This gentleman went on to say that his company believes tax reform will be beneficial not only for his office and his employees but also for his community and for overall economic growth. To him, it is about the bigger picture. New Braunfels, though, isn't the only place where companies are paying it forward. A telecom giant, AT&T, headquartered in Dallas, TX, and two prominent airlines--American Airlines and Southwest Airlines-- have responded in similar fashion, offering large bonuses to hundreds of thousands of their employees and promising to make significant capital investments in the future and update their fleet of aircraft-- all with the savings they will incur as a result of this Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Meanwhile, a restaurant company that owns a chain of popular steakhouses in Texas and elsewhere has announced it will use its savings from lower rates--about $70 million--to improve customer service and to provide additional benefits to its employees. The restaurants will be spending a significant amount of money to make sure the dining experience is more worthwhile, hopefully providing not only jobs to the people who prepare the food but those who serve it and the vendors who sell it. Not only will this legislation have the effect of improving a waiter's and waitress' salary, but I think this demonstrates once again how the impact of tax reform is far-reaching, perhaps in ways we really didn't necessarily think about. But this is what happens when people get to keep more of the money they earn. They spend it in a way that improves their quality of life and improves their economic security. In Texas, our economy hopefully will continue its steady ascent. In its annual economic freedom index, an organization called the Fraser Institute just ranked Texas as No. 2 in the country. I am not too happy about that. We don't like being No. 2 in anything. But we have been in the top five of this list for 11 straight years, and it has been because of our lower taxes, our fiscally conservative approach to spending, and our commonsense approach to regulation that makes it easier for investors and entrepreneurs to succeed. When they succeed, that means more jobs are created and people can do the work that provides them the means to support their family and improve their quality of life. We call that the Texas model. Although it is not particularly unique, you would think it would be common sense. But as they say, here in Washington, DC, common sense is not all that common. Nationally, the situation is looking up, too, in part because the Trump administration shares this Texas approach. The U.S. economy added 2 million jobs in 2017, and unemployment is at a 17-year low. Consumer confidence is at an alltime high since it was first recorded--I believe it was about 16 years ago. Over the last two quarters, the economy has grown by more than 3 percent. That is up from roughly 1.9 percent during the previous administration. People are excited to see the economy continue to improve in 2018 thanks to tax cuts and other regulatory reform and a government that is no longer hostile to private business and job creation. I am glad to hear how many positive steps have been taken over the past few weeks in response to tax reform, but it is early. As I pointed out, it has only been a couple of weeks. I look forward to hearing many more such stories in the days ahead. I intend to spend this next year, when I travel around the State of Texas, looking for the small businesses and individuals who benefit from this important piece of historic legislation. I look forward to coming back to the floor of the Senate to continue to share the stories of this success. Letting people keep more of what they earn, having more take- home pay, improving their standard of living, and making the United States more competitive in the global economy--rather than seeing businesses and investment move overseas, let's see that come back home, which I think we will see in droves, and the American people will be better off for it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

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, this last weekend I had the honor of going to Camp David with Members of both the House and the Senate to meet with the President and Vice President and members of his Cabinet to talk about the prospects for 2018. After a very successful 2017, we are now looking forward to what sort of legislation we can do on a bipartisan basis that will help us build on those successes of 2017. Many of these are domestic priorities, but, of course, others are national security in nature. Our internal strength, of course, affects our diplomacy and military effectiveness abroad, and where we were located, at Camp David, actually demonstrates that. It was, after all, the site for secret talks to negotiate the Camp David Accords, historic peace agreements signed by Israel and Egypt in 1978. What happened on American soil ultimately changed the global landscape, and it wasn't the only time. Over the years, Camp David has come to represent peace. It is a place where leaders put aside their differences to look to avoid conflict. Nonetheless, today we have to admit, given the global environment, that peace is imperiled. We have recently seen that in Iran, where the largest wave of protests in more than a decade have revealed widespread discontent not only with Iran's economy but also as a result of the actions taken by its military, which has supported Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations around the world. As a matter of fact, Iran is the No. 1 state-sponsor of international terrorism, which is one reason why many of us blanched at the idea of releasing money to Iran as part of the joint agreement on Iran's nuclear program--money that they could then plow back into their support for organizations like Hezbollah and their aggressive support for terrorist organizations generally. Last week the Trump administration imposed sanctions on five entities tied to Iran's ballistic missile program. Apparently, Tehran continues to care more about funding its terrorist proxies across the Middle East than supporting its own citizens, and frustrated Iranians rightfully have said: Enough already; we are not going to take it anymore. As Secretary Mnuchin said last week, here in the United States we shouldn't ``hesitate to call out the [Iranian] regime's economic mismanagement, and diversion of significant resources to fund threatening missile systems at the expense of its citizenry.'' The Secretary is exactly right. Meanwhile, the situation in North Korea remains precarious. That country--and I say this unequivocally--must denuclearize. That is why I recently introduced a resolution with many of my colleagues here in the Senate. The purpose of the resolution is to expressly declare that Congress is unified in its condemnation of the increasingly hostile and intransigent behavior of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Since Kim Jong Un took power 6 years ago, he has ordered at least four nuclear tests, including the September detonation of what his regime--and outside experts generally agree--said was a hydrogen bomb. Despite great efforts made by the United States, including a recent Executive order by the President, North Korea's history as a bad-faith negotiator continues unabated on the world stage. It obstinately violates diplomatic norms and human rights at will and was recently redesignated, itself, as a state sponsor of terrorism. The resolution I referred to a moment ago asserts that the United States, as well as the United Nations Security Council and our regional allies, should continue to implement the absolute strictest of sanction regimes in an effort to get the regime's attention and hopefully bring them to the table as part of this path forward toward denuclearization. We must continue to exhaust every reasonable diplomatic option necessary to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Our resolution also recognizes that the President has the constitutional responsibility to protect the United States and our allies, but it emphasizes that congressional authorization is necessary prior to committing U.S. forces to a sustained military operation on the Korean Peninsula. In other words, under the Constitution, the President has his responsibilities and duties, and Congress has its responsibilities and duties, and this resolution recognizes both. We look forward to working together closely with the President in a unified front this year to confront North Korea, as well as rogue actors elsewhere. President Trump, we know, does not take our national security threats lightly. He has a world-class national security team, with General Mattis, Secretary Tillerson, and Director Pompeo, just to name three. In an important speech last month, the President outlined the four pillars of his administration's national security strategy. He said the first pillar is to protect our homeland. We can't secure our Nation if we can't secure our own borders, and we can't secure our borders unless we confront, both at home and abroad, the threat of terrorism and ideologies bent on doing us great harm. Second, the President said that we need to promote American prosperity because the only way we are going to be strong militarily and at the homeland is if we have the resources and economy to pay for it. Economic growth at home is critical for our influence around the globe as well. We, of course, took a big step in this direction by passing tax reform last month, but a lot more needs to be done to continue to grow our economy and to return America to its historic prosperity--like updating and not scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade agreements, for example, and rebuilding our national infrastructure, which was also on the agenda at Camp David this weekend. The President's third pillar of the national security strategy is to preserve peace through strength. We usually attribute that concept to Ronald Reagan, but of course he is not the first or the last to recognize the joinder of peace and strength. President Trump said in his speech that ``weakness is the surest path to conflict, and unrivaled power is the most certain means of defense.'' I think he is exactly right--which means we have to end the defense sequester that started with the Budget Control Act of 2011. I supported our efforts to rein in discretionary spending, but the fact is, only about 30 percent of the money that the Federal Government spends is actually appropriated, and a little more than half of that is defense spending. I simply cannot in good conscience agree to continue those budget caps for defense spending without considering the increase in risks to our men and women in uniform and our country's national security generally. We have to continue to modernize our military, which we started last year by reauthorizing the Defense Authorization Act. Fourth, the President's strategy asserts that we have to advance American influence in the world through strong alliances and by championing our core values without apology. As the President said: A nation that does not protect prosperity at home cannot protect its interests abroad. A nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a war. A nation that is not proud of its history cannot be confident in its future. And a nation that is not certain of its values cannot summon the will to defend them. I couldn't have said it any better myself. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

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 have a request for one committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committee is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Monday, January 8, 2018, at 5:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Margaret Weichert, of Georgia, to be Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget, and Mark L. Greenblatt, of Maryland, to be Inspector General, Export-Import Bank.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know we are back, fresh from the holidays, at the start of a new year, and all of us are already thinking a lot and working hard on the tasks we have at hand. We have a lot to do, especially before the next continuing resolution expires on January 19. But I don't want to make the mistake of failing to recount the good work we were able to accomplish on behalf of the American people in 2017 because, sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of life, we fail to acknowledge those things that we have actually been able to do, for which we ought to be grateful, and that our constituents need to know about. I would like to take just a few minutes to do exactly that because, unfortunately, in the hyperpolitical and hyperpolarized political environment we live in today--especially with the advent of social media--there are always some naysayers and pundits who want to offer their comments. One of the things I have noticed most about many of those naysayers and pundits when they comment on what is happening here in Washington is how little they know about the facts. The facts matter, and I want to offer those for the public's consideration now. In January of last year, the Nation was quickly called to order following the inauguration of President Trump. One of his first actions was to nominate Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. I think most of us were astonished at the quality of this selection, many of us not being familiar with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on which Justice Gorsuch served in Denver, CO. Justice Gorsuch was quickly confirmed in April, and then we moved on to fill other judicial vacancies, which, of course, are the prerogative of the President to make that nomination and to then be confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate. We, like the President, have made filling these judicial vacancies a priority. The fact is, though, that the Senate is in the personnel business. In other words, our friends in the House of Representatives don't have to vote on confirmation of judges and other Presidential nominees, but we in the Senate have that responsibility. All told, we have confirmed 19 men and women to the Federal bench in 2017, setting a record for appellate judges confirmed during a President's first year in office. Two of them, Jim Ho and Don Willett, I am pleased to say, will serve from Texas on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that sits in New Orleans. These are exceptionally qualified nominees--and typical in that description of the types of people that President Trump has selected to serve in the Federal judiciary. But our work wasn't just confined to confirming the President's nominees. After 8 years of overreach, hundreds of burdensome rules passed during the previous administration--many in the waning hours of President Obama's Presidency--were rolled back or suspended. I am glad Congress did its part, using the Congressional Review Act to roll back 15 harmful regulations last year. As much as anything, I think that has contributed to the soaring stock market, the increase in consumer confidence, and the extraordinary rebound of our economy. As last summer began, we passed a bill funding Texas priorities. It funded things like the National Space Administration programs at Houston's Johnson Space Center, which will advance missions, hopefully back to the moon and eventually to Mars. We allowed through that funding to make sure that the Department of Homeland Security had what they needed to hire additional Border Patrol and agents at ports of entry to improve those checkpoints and to add immigration court judges too. I remember thinking about Hurricane Harvey. A friend of mine years ago asked the rhetorical question: Do you know what makes God laugh? Then he answered: When we make plans. Hurricane Harvey is perhaps an example of that, because we were making other plans when we got this natural disaster known as Hurricane Harvey. Texas was pummeled with the most extreme rain event in the history of the United States, devastating more than 28,000 square miles along the coast. I, along with the entire Texas congressional delegation, helped secure roughly $30 billion for recovery efforts, but the thing I am most proud of is the way ordinary Texans responded to their neighbors in need. They weren't waiting around for Washington to act first. They wanted to act to help their neighbors, their community, and their State. Recognizing we have the Presiding Officer from Louisiana, I just want to make special note of the Cajun Navy that came over from Louisiana to help rescue people off of their rooftops. That is part of what makes not only Texas and Louisiana great, but it is what makes America great, too, when people will come to the aid of their fellow Americans. As Texans tore out sheetrock and molded carpet in their living rooms, Federal resources helped piece together the lives disrupted. Now we have to make sure we complete the task by delivering additional relief not only to Texas but to Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, as well as to those States devastated by the wildfires out West. The House having passed a substantial disaster relief bill and sent it over to us, I am hopeful that is something we will take up and pass very soon, perhaps as soon as January 19. I spoke about natural disasters, but now let me turn to a manmade disaster. After the hurricane, Texas was dealt a second blow just 2 months later, when a man opened fire at a church in Sutherland Springs, TX. With multiple convictions for domestic violence, a felony conviction, and a history of mental illness, this individual should never have been able to legally purchase a firearm because, under existing law, those conditions disqualify you from being able to purchase a firearm, if you are a convicted felon, convicted of domestic violence, or have a history of mental illness. That is why, following this terrible disaster where 26 people were killed, I introduced the bipartisan Fix NICS Act--that is, Fix the National Instant Criminal Background Check System Act--to ensure existing laws are enforced and convicted felons don't exploit our background check system by lying and buying. I am going to continue to urge the passage of this important piece of legislation, which is, as I say, bipartisan, as it should be. The fall of 2017 gave way to winter and soon came the flurries of snow not only here in Washington but back home in Texas. The week before Christmas, we completed comprehensive tax reform--a historic overhaul of the Tax Code and the first in more than three decades. We said originally that our goals were threefold: One was to make the Tax Code simpler; the second was to make sure everybody in every tax bracket saw a decrease in their tax liability; and third was to make the American Tax Code competitive in the global economy. Until that point, we had the highest tax rate in the industrialized world, which caused companies to move or invest offshore and create jobs in other countries rather than the United States because we had the most burdensome tax in the industrialized world. As I said, this bill--now law--reduces taxes in all income brackets and boosts the standard deduction and child tax credit. This means that only 1 out of 10 taxpayers will likely choose to itemize because they will actually benefit more from the standard deduction along with the child tax credit. It will allow businesses to add jobs, raise wages, and reinvest in the United States from overseas. For example, a family of four making the median income will see their taxes drop by more than $2,000--a reduction of nearly 58 percent. Tax reform complements an economy that has already been truly unleashed under this administration. Just since January, the economy has added 1.7 million new jobs, and over the last two quarters, our economy has grown at more than 3 percent--as compared to an average of only 1.9 percent under the previous administration. While not historic in the sense that the tax bill was historic, there is other legislation we passed with little fanfare but significant impact that I would like to mention. One is a bill I championed called the PROTECT Our Children Act, which reauthorizes task forces to combat child exploitation online. The second I would like to mention is a bill that tackled elder abuse. A third, called the SAFER Act--which was signed today by the President-- reauthorizes rape kit audits and prioritizes the training of pediatric nurses handling sexual assault cases. I was shocked and chagrined a year or so ago to learn there could be as many as 400,000 untested rape kits either sitting in evidence lockers or in laboratories untested. Now, thanks to the Debbie Smith Act--named after a heroic woman who has championed the funding of Federal efforts to identify and test this backlog of rape kits--that number is far smaller today, but reauthorization of the SAFER Act is important to keep our commitment to victims of sexual assault that we will do everything in our power to help them identify their assailant and bring them to justice, and, at the same time, exonerate people who may be falsely accused because there is no DNA match. Finally, other legislation I filed and has now been signed into law assists police departments in hiring military veterans. We know our police departments are always in need of good, highly qualified applicants for those important first responder jobs. Once signed by the President, it will streamline the process that Active-Duty personnel and reservist members go through to apply for their commercial driver's license. We know it is a long and arduous process to apply for a commercial driver's license, so why not take our Active-Duty military who are soon to retire or our veterans and expedite their ability to qualify for a commercial driver's license when they leave the military? As I said, these bills don't grab big headlines, but they chip away at problems and were passed on a bipartisan basis--which I think puts the lie to the canard that nothing ever gets done in Washington. The job of men and women in Congress is to serve the people who elected us. This last year we made important strides, but our work is just beginning. As I said at the outset, there is much that lies ahead. Many Americans and many Texans are still knocking at the door of greater prosperity. I hope we will make it our New Year's resolution to open that door a little wider in 2018. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly today about the year we have had here in Washington, DC. At times along the way, it wasn't easy. There were more than one or two bumps in the road, and there were times when we got discouraged because we weren't able to accomplish everything we wanted to accomplish on the part of the American people. But looking back, I am proud of what we were able to get done. The first thing is to notice the speed with which President Trump was able to nominate and we were able to confirm Federal judges. Everyone remembers last January when President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. This was an excellent choice. He is an experienced Federal judge and accomplished scholar who understands the proper role of a judge under our Constitution. I think the weather and my sinuses are not cooperating here at this moment. I will be back later. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).