John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know the paperwork is being finalized, but I for one--and I guess I am not the only one; I am sure there is broad appreciation for the fact that our Democratic colleagues who voted to close the government have now changed their minds and now will vote on final passage, having just voted on cloture, to reopen the Federal Government. This was a strategy that lacked an endgame and was never going to work. The safety, health, and livelihoods of Americans across the country didn't deserve to be held hostage, and the American people have had enough of these kinds of games. I think, basically, the verdict of the American people is ``A pox on both your houses.'' I don't think anybody comes out of this looking very good. But surely, this calculated stunt that put funding for our government, military, and the Children's Health Insurance Program at risk, all because our colleagues wanted to accelerate consideration of the DACA issue--the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--was a mistake by any measure. They, of course, had planned this strategy for months. Many of them had signaled their intention to vote against any spending bills unless the DACA issue was resolved, despite the fact that a majority of Americans in recent polls said that avoiding a shutdown was more important to them than other priorities. If we just think about it, trying to deal with the concerns--and they are legitimate; I am sympathetic with them--of the 690,000 DACA recipients versus 320 million Americans who were hurt by this shutdown, it just seems disproportionate and unnecessary. For most of the last 3 days, negotiations led to nowhere. The majority leader in particular took the conciliatory gesture of--instead of pursuing the 4-week extension--saying: OK. We will do it for 3 weeks. That is ultimately what our colleagues across the aisle voted on, but what did they have to show for that? To my mind, they got nothing to show for that. Sure, they got a commitment from Senator McConnell, the majority leader, to take up the issue of immigration in February. He was going to do that anyway. We know the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program expires on March 5. So logic would tell us that, yes, we are going to have to take it up in February. But it just seemed so unnecessary and so harmful to try to shut down the government to force something that was going to happen anyway. So I said: That doesn't make much sense to me. I am glad our colleagues decided to take this step to reopen the government while we resume our work to find a solution on this immigration issue. But we have a lot of other important issues. First of all, the Children's Health Insurance Program will be reauthorized as part of this vote here shortly. But we have other issues. We have to agree on spending caps for this fiscal year so that the Appropriations Committees can figure out, How much money can we commit to our national security? We have shortchanged our national security in recent years because of the Budget Control Act and sequestration, which creates automatic spending caps, absent some agreed-upon grand bargain. This has been a perennial problem, not just for Congress and the country, but it has particularly fallen hard on our military at a time when 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 our country and confronting the world. We can tick down the list, from North Korea, to Iran, to Russia to China. There is a threat of home-grown terrorism here in the United States because of domestically inspired Islamic extremists. The world is a dangerous place, and it is made safer only when America is strong and America leads, and we can't do that while underfunding our national security apparatus, our intelligence agencies, and the Department of Defense. So we need to take care of that. We also need to deal with disaster relief. I come from a State that was hammered by Hurricane Harvey, the most significant rain event in many, many--perhaps even 1,000--years. More than 50 inches of rain inundated the city of Houston and that environment. Many people are still hurting. Many people are still not back in their homes. Their businesses were blown away. And while the House of Representatives has voted on an $81 billion disaster relief package, because of the holdup here--again, because our Democratic colleagues in the Senate think this DACA issue is more important than those victims of natural disasters, not to mention the wildfires out west--that has been put on ice as well. There are a lot of important things that we need to get done, and I hope we will take advantage of the next few weeks here to get them done as we continue our discussions about DACA and what to do to provide some assistance to these 690,000 young people who were brought here as minor children by their parents and are in somewhat of a box. Earlier today, I went to the White House with several of my colleagues to meet with President Trump to discuss the four areas he has laid out to address the March 5 deadline relating to DACA. We are working through those four issues as I speak, trying to find a permanent solution for the DACA recipients and making sure that border security and interior enforcement is beefed up so that we don't have a repetition of this situation in the future. We also are looking to limit chain migration and perhaps even to use some of the additional visas left over to accelerate the movement of people who have been playing by the rules and have been waiting in line, some for 10 or 20 years, just to rejoin their families here in the United States. Finally, the President instructed us to deal with the diversity lottery visa program. There are about 50,000 visas that are literally provided based on a lottery, not because the immigrant has any special skills or qualities that would help enhance our country and help them contribute to our country but merely because they happened to win the lottery. I think it makes sense to reform that and perhaps use some of those additional visas, again, to deal with the backlog of people who have been waiting in line, patiently trying to immigrate to the country in a legal fashion--we ought to reward them, not continue to punish them--but also, to try to do what we might to maybe reassign some of those visas to merit-based immigration, people who have graduated with skills that we need here in the United States, including the STEM fields--science, technology, engineering, math. I think that makes a lot of sense. Obviously, I am not going to decide this by myself. We are going to have to build a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, and I think we can. I think we can demonstrate our natural American compassion when it comes to immigrants. As I have said before, we are a country that has been built by immigrants. But the part we seem to always forget in this conversation on immigration is that we are also a nation of laws. That is what people have lost confidence in--that the Federal Government is committed to securing the border and enforcing our laws. If we do that, I think the American people will continue to welcome people through a legal immigration system who want to come here to America for a better life, to contribute, and to pursue their dream. Our meeting at the White House was a productive conversation. It was just one of many. I know Senator Schumer visited with the President, I believe last Friday, on the immigration question. Our colleagues, Senator Durbin and Senator Graham, have been working with Senator Flake, Senator Menendez--I think Senator Gardner is part of that, as well, and I am probably leaving somebody out. But they have a bipartisan proposal that they took to the White House. Unfortunately, the President said that it wasn't a proposal he could support, so back we go to the drawing boards. Nobody pretends that this solution is easy, but it is one that we need to address. I believe the President remains engaged and committed to finding a solution for these young adults who were brought here, as I said, through no fault of their own. I especially remain committed to the 124,000 DACA recipients in my home State of Texas. It is no surprise that Texas has a large immigrant population because of our proximity to the border. But we are not alone, and many of these 690,000 DACA recipients are spread throughout every State in the country. I have a personal interest in making sure we come up with a bipartisan solution for these young adults who face such uncertainty, but it is important that any solution we agree on contains two things. First is a DACA solution for these young adults, many of whom are huge contributors to our communities; indeed, these are our neighbors, and they work alongside us in our community. They deserve a thoughtful and compassionate solution that I hope we deliver. I understand the plight they find themselves in. I have had a chance, like all of the Members of the Senate and the House, to meet many of these young people, and many of them are extraordinarily impressive. They have excelled in school. They have a lot of promise. But, unfortunately, they carry this burden of a status that does not permit them to stay in the country absent legislative action. So it is a precarious position, I am sure, to live every day not quite sure of what the future will mean. But any solution we come up with over the next several weeks must also protect the 320 million Americans who already live in the country, in addition to these DACA recipients. What I mean by that is I think there needs to be some natural symmetry here. To the extent that we provide compassionate relief to these young people, I think we need to correspondingly assure the American people that we are actually serious about border security and enforcing our laws. My State has had to bear the burden of a lot of the cost of border security, including placing law enforcement personnel along the border, because the Federal Government has simply failed to do its job over these many years. I know leaders in my State will be glad to see the Federal Government finally step up and accept their responsibility. I know the President has talked frequently about a wall. Some people talk about tactical infrastructure. As a matter of fact, the President referred to the 2006 Secure Fence Act and said: Well, basically, we are talking about the same thing. The Border Patrol usually refers to this as tactical infrastructure. My tutor on matters affecting border security is the current sector chief of the Rio Grande Valley sector, Manny Padilla, who has had a lot of experience in Arizona, Texas, and California. He says that each and every place along the border, each of which is unique in its own way, requires a combination of three things. He said it requires infrastructure--call it defense, call it a wall, call it a barrier; whatever you call it, that's one piece of it. But the second is technological; it is technology. It is an aerostat balloon in the sky, it is ground sensors, it is radar, it is a UAV--an unmanned aerial vehicle--but it basically is tied up in a system that is complemented by boots on the ground, by the Border Patrol, which is an essential component. So when Manny Padilla says that border security at each place along the border involves infrastructure, technology, and people, what he is saying is that we should leave to the experts how to deploy each of these items where it makes the most sense. In Big Bend, out in West Texas, I have flown over the cliffs there that are 3,200 feet tall, that look down into the Rio Grande River. You don't need to build a fence there. You don't need to build a wall there. But if you go to San Diego, CA, or to some of the corridors or to the hard-to-control places on the Texas-Mexico border, maybe what you would prefer to do is to have a technological solution. Or in an urban area, where it is easy to dart across the border into the United States and melt into the urban landscape, maybe it makes sense to have fencing and tactical infrastructures and walls, where appropriate. Being able to put in place the right mix of infrastructure, personnel, and technology will enable us to begin to regain the public's confidence on this issue because if we address the plight of these young adults but do not address the cause of the problem, which is illegal immigration--which is how they got here, being brought here by their parents--we will be back here arguing the same issue a decade from now. I stand ready to work, and I am glad our Democratic colleagues have joined us today in reopening the government so we can work on finding a solution to our border security and immigration challenges. We are all working, and have been for months, on a path forward on DACA, and we will continue to do so now that the government has reopened. We can roll up our sleeves, work with the White House, work with our colleagues in the House and the Senate, and come up with solutions to the four items the President has identified for us. I welcome ideas from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in both Chambers, and certainly from the President himself. Work on this issue will require an effort by all of us. Now it is up to the House to do its job, after we pass this continuing resolution for 3 weeks, and move us past the shutdown. Let's reopen the government and all get back to work. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess until 11:30 this morning for conference meetings.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, President Trump didn't vote to shut down the government. He is not a Member of the U.S. Senate. President Trump did not shut down the government. Now, Senate Democrats are reeling because the President has said that while the government is shut down, he is not going to negotiate a change of our immigration laws that our Democratic colleagues, and, frankly, many Republicans like me would like to see changed relative to the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, young adults. It seems to me, our Democratic colleagues have figuratively shot themselves in the foot; reloaded and shot themselves in the other foot. Now they expect President Trump to somehow rescue them out of this box canyon. I know I am mixing my metaphors here, but this is the situation they find themselves in. They shut down the government, and now they are hurting the very people they shut down the government to help because there are no negotiations going on to find a solution that we would all like to try to achieve. This is really surreal. There is an old saying: Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Facts are facts. Democrats voted to shut down the government because they are impatient to get a solution for these DACA young adults. Now they have to blame somebody else because they are unwilling to own up to their own responsibility. Growing up, my parents told me one of the most important things I could do--and my sister and brother could do--is accept responsibility for our own mistakes, not blame somebody else. That is simply juvenile. We could work this out today. We could work this out now if our Democratic colleagues would simply acknowledge that they, themselves, are the ones who shut down the government. They, themselves, have now caused negotiations for the solution they want to cease because the President rightly says: Why reward bad behavior by continuing the negotiations when they shut down the government? As I said a moment ago, it is surreal. There are casualties. There are casualties, not just to the DACA kids, who are now young adults. These are children who were brought here by their parents without complying with our immigration laws. Being children, they are not responsible. They are not culpable. The law doesn't hold them responsible. We all agree they ought to get some relief, and we would like to be able to negotiate that. But we can't do that when the government shuts down as a result of their miscalculation. The DACA kids, now young adults, aren't the only casualties here. It is our military. It is the National Guard that can't train. It is the 9 million children who are depending on an extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which enjoys broad bipartisan support. I almost couldn't believe my ears. The Democratic leader is a talented politician. He is a very intelligent guy. I enjoy working with him on occasion, but he has been driven into this untenable, unsustainable filibuster because he simply refuses to say no to the most radical fringe of his political base. This isn't like him. This hasn't been my experience working with the senior Senator from New York on a myriad of other things. But as the Democratic leader, he simply could not say no to this narrow fringe of his political base that insists that a solution today on the DACA problem is more important than funding the military, paying our Federal law enforcement officials, or providing health insurance to 9 million vulnerable children. As people begin to realize this miscalculation, we start seeing it reflected in public opinion polls. CNN reported that only 34 percent of the people they polled said that this kind of miscalculation was justified--34 percent. I bet as people learn more, as they are personally affected more and more by this government shutdown--now in day 2--then there is going to be an even greater majority of people who say: This just is not worth it. Why won't you take yes for an answer from Republicans who want to work with their Democratic colleagues? Why would you shoot yourself in one foot, reload, and shoot yourself in the other foot? I realize it is hard for our Democratic colleagues to save face in this outcome, but sometimes in life, when you make mistakes and you can't blame them on anybody else, then you simply need to acknowledge your own responsibility and say: Do you know what? I had the best of intentions, but I was wrong. I made a mistake. That could be liberating sometimes, but not in politics, apparently, and not on this topic--at least not yet. At 1 o'clock tomorrow morning we are going to have a vote. Democrats filibustered a 4-week continuing resolution, but in an effort to provide them a face-saving way out of this dilemma of their own making, the majority leader has offered them a vote on a 3-week continuing resolution, during which we will continue to work on this DACA solution. My guess is it is going to pass because there are a dozen or more Democrats--I understand 19 were at a bipartisan meeting after the government shutdown, trying to figure out how can we help our leaders find their way out of this mess. Do you know what? People who are on the ballot in 2018, which isn't that long from now--it is a great way to run for reelection, isn't it? To say: Yes, I shut down the government. Yes, I hurt the military. I hurt vulnerable children. I inconvenienced everyone, including the government workers, who diligently come here to the Capital--and across the country--to perform their important work on a daily basis. Yes, I basically made their lives worse. Oh, by the way, elect me in 2018. What a great message that is. There are Members on that side of the aisle who are realizing, hey, this is going to hurt me personally. Forget the constituents. Forget the children. Forget the military. They are realizing, hey, this is going to make it harder for me to get reelected. Do you know what? I have now created an election issue on which I might lose. It might be the end of my political career. I hate to think that this is the most important thing in people's calculation here. I hope that rather than their own personal politics, they would be more interested in the other people they are hurting and the futility of this situation they have created. I hope; maybe I am naive. I don't think I am naive, but maybe I am. Maybe not enough Senate Democrats will reconsider what they have done on the 4-week CR and they will not vote for a 3-week CR, even though the majority leader has moved their way to provide them a face-saving way to get out of this box. I don't care what it is--whether it is their own personal, political calculation, whether it is the realization that this is not worth the shutdown--because Republicans are willing to work with them to find a solution before the March 5 deadline for the DACA recipients. Whatever the rationale, I hope there are enough Democrats who will simply say to their leader: You know, you made a mistake. You miscalculated. This isn't about President Trump. President Trump didn't shut down the government. He didn't vote to filibuster this continuing resolution. It was Democratic Members of the Senate, and it was a mistake. Let's correct that mistake, and let's move on. Let's do the right thing for our constituents. Let's do the right thing for our constituents who wear the uniform of the U.S. military. Let's do the right thing for veterans. Let's do the right thing for Federal workers and the law enforcement agents who are simply being hurt needlessly and unnecessarily, but callously, by this shutdown. They may have forgotten about the hundreds of thousands of Americans, including 200,000 Texans who could be furloughed if this shutdown continues. I haven't forgotten about them. That is why I voted to keep the government up and running. Unfortunately, the American people lose out when their elected officials decide that their personal politics or their own political interests are more important than the people they have been sent here to represent. We talked about this all last week. We warned our colleagues on the other side about the effects of a shutdown and urged them not to vote against funding the government. It wasn't just the Senate Republicans. Our House colleagues did their duty on a bipartisan basis and sent us a 4-week continuing resolution. In the meantime, our Democratic colleagues have heard from bipartisan groups of Governors, including seven Democratic Governors, who have said, in effect: Wait a minute. These children who depend on the Children's Health Insurance Program are collateral damage to your political fights in Washington, DC. Why hurt them? They implored us to extend the Children's Health Insurance Program for 9 million children across the country who rely upon it. The answer so far is: Forget about it. We don't care. Our Democratic colleagues continue this shutdown for no good reason. It really is a shame. Here is the other thing that has been pointed out time and again, but I think it is worth repeating. There is nothing in this bill that Senate Democrats oppose. What they are saying is: Other things we want are not in the bill, so we are going to shut down the government. In my experience in the Senate, it is bizarre to say: I am going to vote against a bill that I support. What is that all about? Do they want to fund the government? I think they do if they could figure a way out of this conundrum that is not particularly controversial. Do they want to fund the military? I honestly believe our colleagues across the aisle want to support our military, although it is hard to tell when you see what they have done here. But our military has broad bipartisan support, generally. Do they want to reauthorize CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program, for 6 years? That passed out of the Senate Finance Committee, on which I sit, with broad bipartisan support. It is very popular, not only with the Governors who have to run the program but also here in the Congress. Why abandon all the things you support over an unrelated issue and one that we are in earnest willing to work with our Democratic colleagues to solve? Why decide to be derelict in one of your most basic duties as an elected Federal official in order to hold hostage Congress and the country, really, on an unrelated issue that we are working on, we have been working on, but now, as a result of their shutdown, we can't work on? Let's open the government back up. Let's get back to work and do our job on each of these issues. Of course, the so-called DACA issue is important. I have 124,000 DACA recipients who signed up in good faith with the Federal Government, even though President Obama overreached his authority, according to the courts, and now it is our responsibility to clean up the mess that was created by this end run around the Constitution and Congress. We welcome that part of our responsibility. It is important to me personally, like my friend, the Senator from Illinois, who has been a champion for many years for the Dreamers. In other words, these are the same people who came here innocently with their parents who violated the law, but we don't hold children responsible for what their parents do. But sometimes they get caught up in the consequences, and that is what has happened here. I have had a number of these current recipients of deferred action come visit me in my office. One young man is 22 years old. He told me that he is really worried about his future, and he wants us to try to provide him a predictable future because he wants to make the most of himself. He wants to keep going to school. He wants to contribute to this country that he was brought to by his parents. He knows no other country, really. You would have to have a pretty hard heart not to be moved by the stories that so many of these young people tell. I don't believe anyone here wants to do them harm intentionally. But, indeed, the very people who our Democratic colleagues said they are shutting down the government for are the ones who are suffering and who are being hurt because we have stopped negotiations because of this government shutdown. This is an issue that deserves its own separate, thoughtful consideration instead of being lumped into a manufactured tug of war over a noncontroversial funding measure. I know it sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, because now we can't properly resume negotiations on DACA when we are forced to negotiate to reopen our own government. What is really pretty amazing to watch is that the minority leader keeps trying to shift the blame to the President. There used to be a time when Congress would jealously guard its authority under the Constitution and tell the President, no matter if they were a Republican or a Democrat, that is a congressional prerogative. The Constitution provides that authority to the Senate and the House, not to the executive branch. That used to be the fights we would have with the executive branch. But now, after the Democratic leader has simply abdicated his responsibility and tries to blame the President for something he himself created, it has turned that whole idea on its head. I, for one, am not willing to relinquish the authority given to the U.S. Senate under the Constitution, under the separation of powers--I am not willing to relinquish that to any President. I believe it would be wrong to just say: Whatever the President wants or says or negotiates, we are going to rubberstamp. That would be an abdication of my responsibility to the 28 million people I represent. I am not going to do that. We come from a big, diverse country of more than 320 million people. The Acting President pro tempore proudly represents the people in the great State of Alaska. Their interests and their concerns aren't necessarily the same as every other State. They have unique concerns based on their history and culture and location in the world that are different from some of the other 49 States. That is really the magic of the Senate, that each of us is here representing our constituents in our given States, and we have the responsibility of trying to build consensus and come up with solutions to problems. But I doubt the Acting President pro tempore came here just to be a rubberstamp for any President. Knowing him as I do, I am confident that is not the case. I am not here to do that either. So to hear the Democratic leader call this a Trump shutdown when the President didn't vote to filibuster this bill, when this is a congressional responsibility, not an executive branch responsibility, and to somehow then expect all of us to fall in line, turns this whole idea of the separation of powers in our constitutional responsibility in the Senate on its head. Well, as I have said before, our great country is a product, among other things, of two great inheritances: that we are indeed a nation of immigrants--all except a small fraction of the people who live in the United States now came from somewhere else at some point in their family history. My relatives emigrated from Ireland in the 19th century, I am told, following the potato famine. Others left their home country because of religious persecution. Others came because of their dire economic circumstances, and they simply wanted a better life. They wanted a piece of the American dream. So we all understand that in some ways, the fact that we do hold out that promise of more opportunity, of the American dream for people who come from diverse places around the world--we literally have been the beneficiary of the hard work, the determination, the intelligence, and the resolve of those immigrants who have come here to make America a better place and to pursue their American dream in the meantime. But the part that some people seem to have forgotten--the second great pillar of what has made America great--is the fact that we believe in the rule of law. We believe in the Constitution. We believe in the people being the ultimate word on what the laws are, that the very legitimacy of our laws is derived from the consent of the governed. It is not because of some great idea we have come up with here; it is because the American people have consented and given us the authority we need in order to pass those laws and to govern our great country. So all I am hoping for that might come out of this mess we find ourselves in now is that somehow, some way, working together in a bipartisan way--which is the only way anything gets done around here-- we can regain our lost legacy as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. That is what has made our country so great, in my opinion. An aide to one of our Democratic colleagues was reported as saying: I am concerned we don't have an exit strategy. Well, I think the exit strategy is pretty straightforward. At 1 a.m. tonight, early tomorrow morning, they are going to have a chance to vote to reopen the government for 3 weeks. Again, governing by continuing resolution is a lousy way to govern. It is a miserable way to govern. It is irresponsible. But it is better than a shutdown. So I hope our colleagues will take advantage of this opportunity, of the conciliatory gesture the majority leader has made to shorten the length of the continuing resolution that they filibustered and that resulted in the shutdown and that they will now vote for this 3-week continuing resolution, during which we can reopen negotiations on the DACA issue. It could be--there is no guarantee, but it could be that given 3 weeks more time, we can come up with a solution to all of those issues and more, including disaster relief for Puerto Rico, for Florida, for the Virgin Islands, for Texas, disaster relief for California and where the wildfires have devastated places out west. All of that is being held up, too, as a result of the unwillingness to deal with budget caps, spending caps, because of DACA. That is the other casualty here. My hope is that given 3 weeks to continue our discussions, and learning from their mistakes, I hope we will vote to reopen the Federal Government and take that time to discuss the spending caps and how to move forward on DACA. All eyes are on us. The responsibility is ours. It is not the President's responsibility; it is our responsibility. And every Texan and every American who relies on the Federal Government in one way or another--and that would pretty much be all of us--expects us to do our job. So let's get to work. Let's reopen the government. Let's find a solution to DACA and the other challenges with which we are presented. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, shutting down the government only to fund it 3 days at a time afterward isn't how this place is supposed to work, and it certainly isn't what the American people deserve. We will soon vote to reopen the Federal Government for 3 weeks, where we will have time to discuss spending caps and how to move forward on DACA recipients. If our Democratic colleagues are ready to end this needless shutdown, then let's have the vote right now and open the government so we can begin discussions on bipartisan priorities. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator's request be amended and that unanimous consent be given, notwithstanding rule XXII, that the Senate immediately vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur with amendment, which funds CHIP and reopens the government; further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be considered expired and the Senate immediately vote on the motion to concur with further amendment.

Mr. CORNYN. I object.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I think one of the most offensive things about this government shutdown is that our men and women in uniform are being used as political pawns. That is why I am surprised to see so many of our Democratic colleagues force us into a 2-day government shutdown as part of their strategy and call into question our commitment to fund our military and support their families. It is completely irresponsible, and our servicemembers deserve better. We have an obligation to provide them with the certainty of a full-year funding bill because they deserve it. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the request be amended to provide that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 36, H.R. 1301; that the amendment at the desk, which provides for full funding for authorized activities in the National Defense Authorization Act, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Arizona who spent an awful lot of time and energy on this topic. I am committed to working with him and all of our colleagues to come up with a solution well in advance of the March 5 deadline. One thing I hope he will work with me to confirm is, my understanding is the March 5 deadline means the current DACA recipients can no longer register again for an additional 2 years and qualify for an additional work permit. I think--but I could be mistaken--it doesn't mean they are subject to deportation. What it means is, they can't sign up again for another 2 years, and they will potentially lose their work permit. Having said that, I am not diminishing the urgency of the timeline, and I am committed to working with him and others to try to beat that well in advance during the month of February. I think it does create enormous anxiety for these young people whom I have met, as the Senator from Arizona has. They don't know what their future looks like, and they need to get the certainty that comes along with us giving them a permanent solution which, again, I am committed to do. So I want to make sure I understand exactly what happens March 5, and I described what I think happens. I also know the administration, the Department of Homeland Security, does not prioritize people unless they have committed crimes or otherwise abused the privilege of staying in the United States. Peaceful, law-abiding individuals who have violated the immigration laws--and, of course, these young adults are not culpable in any manner because they came here with their parents so they are pretty blameless, in my book. The point is, I don't think they would be prioritized for deportation. I am confident they would not be, even if I am wrong about what happens on March 5. Mr. President, I yield momentarily to the Senator from Arizona so we could have maybe a little discussion about that. Certainly, I am committed to finding out what exactly does happens on March 5, but I have described, to the best of my knowledge, what I believe will happen.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my friend from Arizona. He is right about the work permits. Everything else aside, if these young people, some 690,000, can no longer work, that is going to have a dramatic negative impact, not only on them but also on our economy and on the people who hire them, all of which is to say, we shouldn't play with fire here. We need to get this addressed, we need to get it addressed on a timely basis, and that is something I am committed to doing. What confounds me the most, though, is why we find ourselves here with the Senate in session and the Federal Government otherwise shut down. It strikes me as completely unnecessary, especially when a number of us--me included--are having two and three meetings a day to try and come up with a solution to this problem. I know people are anxious for the status and what happens to the future of these young adults. I am, too, and I am eager to come up with a solution as soon as we can, but I think some have had what I would view as an unrealistic view of the end game. In other words, I know our friends have been--the Senator from Arizona, the Senator from South Carolina, and others have a group, along with the Senator from Illinois, which they think will be the seed of a solution here, but as they found out last week, the President didn't support their work product. As Senator McConnell, our majority leader, likes to point out, there is one indispensable person when it comes to legislation, and that is the person who signs it. All of us write the legislation, but the President ultimately is the one who decides whether it is going to become law. That is a serious problem in terms of their plan to move forward with the so-called Graham-Durbin proposal. It was just I guess last week--I lose track of the days now--when we met at the White House, where Majority Leader McCarthy suggested that he and I, as the majority whip in the Senate, and the minority whip in the Senate, Senator Durbin, for whom this has been a long, passionate cause, and also the minority leader in the House, Mr. Hoyer, get together and schedule a group of meetings to try to work out our differences and to build consensus. As we all know, nothing happens unless consensus is achieved. Actually, I think the belief--in my view, the unrealistic belief-- that somehow the Graham-Durbin bill was going to be the path forward without the President's signature and with a doubtful future in the House of Representatives--hopefully, that has been set aside. I say that with great respect because I don't want to indicate or send any signal that I don't appreciate their concern or their passion or their effort to try to come up with a solution. It is just that I think it should be clear to everyone that that is not going to be the path forward because of the circumstances I mentioned. The President doesn't support it, and it won't pass in the House of Representatives and even get to the President's desk. So we find ourselves here in a completely unnecessary situation. Our Democratic colleagues were pretty unanimous--with four or five exceptions--in voting down a 4-week continuing resolution and causing the government to shut down. The majority leader, Senator McConnell, has offered them another proposal, which was a 3-week continuing resolution while we continue to do our other work. They objected to voting on that last night, but the majority leader has now filed for cloture, which means that will ripen here tomorrow. They have a choice. They can keep the government shut down for another day before we vote on that, or we could agree to vote on it today and reopen the government while we continue our good-faith negotiations and discussions about these other matters. But when the Democratic leader came to the floor and said that he doesn't want to hurt the military, he doesn't want to hurt people who are suffering from opioid addiction, he doesn't want to hurt the veterans, he doesn't want to hurt people who are relying on the government for a pension or people who are relying on the Federal Government for disaster relief, and so he objected to the continuing resolution and caused a government shutdown--I have to say, that is a strange way of showing your devotion and your support for the military or veterans or opioid addicts or people who are depending on the Federal Government to come up with disaster relief. Shutting down the government helps none of them at all. When he talks about continuing resolutions hurting the military, I agree with that, but the very thing that is hurting the military the most is the shutdown and the uncertainty. Our National Guard can't train, for example. The solution to this short term is an agreement on spending caps so the Appropriations Committee can come up with an appropriations bill that will fund the government through the end of September, through the end of the fiscal year. But what has really happened here, unfortunately, is that our colleagues across the aisle have listened to the most extreme elements in their political party and shut down the government over an unrelated immigration issue that doesn't even ripen until March 5. I say that just to say that it doesn't have to be decided today, nor can it be decided today, but that is what they are trying to hold--all the rest of this--hostage in order to do. All across the country, the headlines reflect the reality. From the Associated Press: ``Senate Democrats derail bill to avert shutdown.'' Even the New York Times headline reads ``Senate Democrats Block a Bill to Keep Government Open Past Midnight.'' I can't help but share in the frustration of those who, in disgust, find us in a situation that we don't want to be in and that makes absolutely no sense to anybody because all the things in the continuing resolution that our colleagues across the aisle voted against last night are things they support. It is support for the military, support for opioid treatment, and support for veterans. But they voted against it in order to hold all of that hostage to this unrelated issue of immigration. The minority leader, my friend from New York, Senator Schumer, has done the best he can to try to spin the story and to try to explain his strategy and to cast blame. I have to admire his talent. Senator Schumer is my friend. We have worked together on a number of items in a bipartisan way to come up with solutions to complicated issues. He is a very talented and smart person, but not even he can come up with a credible story here for why he chose to lead this shutdown effort for the Federal Government because it makes no sense whatsoever. He does have my sympathy. He is the leader of a tough group of Senators-- including some radical Members who are running for President--who have held the rest of their conference hostage and done them no good service in leading them down this box canyon, only to find the government shut down. How do we know that this was their plan all along? Well, the Democratic whip, the senior Senator from Illinois, laid out the strategy in the Washington Post last November. It said: ``Senator Richard J. Durbin [of Illinois] . . . said he is encouraging his colleagues to join him in blocking spending legislation if the legal status of `dreamers' isn't resolved.'' That was last November, and he was already plotting the shutdown we find ourselves in today for this unrelated issue that we are committed to working on, on a bipartisan basis. So the minority leader can't convince us or anybody who knows the facts that this is somehow President Trump's fault. This was their plan--something they have been plotting for a long time now. Now they find themselves in a position where not even they can explain how this helps the country or how this helps these young DACA recipients. It is not going to change anything for them to shut down the government. As a matter of fact, I think it just polarizes people and makes things worse. We are not going to let them hold health insurance for 9 million children hostage over an unrelated immigration issue. That is the Children's Health Insurance Program. The bill they filibustered last night would reauthorize this program for the most vulnerable 9 million children in the country. For what? They support that bill. It was voted out of the Senate Finance Committee on a bipartisan basis, and they come to the Senate floor and they kill it. Nine million vulnerable children. And they support it. It is a strange way of showing it. Clearly, the American people deserve better. Soon, our colleagues across the aisle will have a chance to reopen the Federal Government, a chance to abandon this brinkmanship which threatens the safety and security of the country. It threatens the very people we depend upon to defend us and their families. It threatens access to healthcare for 9 million vulnerable children. They need to fix this. They need to do the right thing for the American people. They can do that today by agreeing to vote on this 3-week continuing resolution that will take us to February 8 while we continue to work on this issue relating to DACA--deferred action for childhood arrivals-- that we talked about earlier, or they can do it tomorrow and keep the government shut down for another 24 hours. My message to them is, think about the men and women who put on the uniform of our country and deploy in dangerous locations around the globe to fight our Nation's wars and protect our homeland. Think about those who wake up in the morning and put on a badge and go out-- possibly into harm's way--to protect our communities. Think about those 9 million children who depend on us for that health coverage. I hope that after having had a few hours of sleep last night and a chance to think through this fundamentally flawed strategy, our colleagues will reconsider. The country deserves better. 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. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, let me say publicly what I have said privately to Senator Tillis and Senator Lankford. Thank you for your leadership. They have done an extraordinary job trying to come up with a solution to the issue, the problem, the challenge that they have already described. I would like to add a little color to some of that, but they have done extraordinary work to try to come up with a compassionate but legal framework by which we can resolve this issue. I have been in the Senate since 2002, and I have been through the immigration wars more times than I care to count. We keep working very hard on this issue, and we always seem to come up short. I come from a State that is one of the most diverse States ethnically in the country, and that is because we have been a big job creator, and a lot of people have been moving there looking for opportunities. We have a large Hispanic population. It makes sense. We are Texas, after all--used to be a part of Mexico. About 38 percent of my constituents are Hispanic, and I know that is a large part of the population we are looking at when it comes to the Dreamers. There are about 124,000 Dreamers in my State and others who are eligible who, frankly, are in a little bit of a box, not knowing how to deal with their situation. When I think about immigration, I think about the two great pillars that have made our country great. No. 1, we are a nation of immigrants. We have benefited from the fact that people have fled religious persecution. They have fled poverty. They have come to the United States to experience the sort of freedom that our country has guaranteed to each and every one of us and the opportunity to pursue the American dream. That, to me, is one of the great things that have made our country the envy of the world. The other part and the part that I think sometimes people tend to overlook and forget is, what makes America great? We are a nation of laws. We are a nation of immigrants, and we are a nation of laws. When we forget either one of those pillars, I think we risk damaging this wonderful inheritance that we have gotten from our parents and grandparents and people who have gone before us. I view this responsibility that we all share together here in the Congress as a sacred trust. We are the stewards of that inheritance. Shame on us if we don't do everything within our power to pass that on to the next generation and beyond. By way of a little bit of background, I think sometimes people get-- it is just natural. We become familiar with these terms like ``DACA.'' People may be listening on TV, saying: What in the heck is DACA? We say: That is a easy. It is deferred action for childhood arrivals. They ask: What is that? We say: We are talking about the Dreamers. That is what Senator Durbin and others have talked about because there is something called the Dream Act that has been introduced and has been advocated for. Basically, what we are talking about are children--now young adults--who were brought into the United States by their parents, and their parents came into the country illegally--that is, they didn't comply with the normal process of applying for citizenship; they came into the country. We all understand why, what motivates a lot of people. A lot of people think, well, I am going to short-circuit the process, jump to the head of the line. The fact is--and I think Senator Lankford said this--in the United States, we don't hold children responsible for the mistakes of their parents. So these children--now young adults--who maybe are able to pursue an education, many of whom have become very accomplished, simply are in a box. I think we have a moral obligation. We have an obligation to ourselves and to our great country to try to take advantage of the talent they have to offer and to help them become full-fledged participants in this great country of ours. I remember being over at the White House in 2012 after the November election. Speaker Boehner was there. Congressman McCarthy, the majority leader, was there. Senator McConnell, the Senate majority leader, was there. I was there. President Obama was there, along with his staff. The President had for some time threatened to try to deal with this population, this sympathetic population that we are talking about, that we want to try to provide some assistance to. He was frustrated with the slow pace of Congress, and so he was just going to do it by himself. That is what we mean when we talk about deferred action for childhood arrivals. President Obama decided to make an end run around Congress, which has the primary responsibility on immigration matters under the Constitution, and to do it by himself. Well, haste makes waste sometimes. What happened is that these 690,000--I think at one point it was as many as 700,000 or 800,000 who have actually qualified. Many have dropped off. About 690,000 young adults signed up for this deferred action for childhood arrivals, which allowed them some security but also gave them access to work permits. Can you imagine what their reaction was when the Federal courts held that what President Obama did was not legal? It was illegal. When President Trump came into office, he did, I believe, the right thing and said: The courts have spoken. This is not something the President can do by himself or herself; this is something in which Congress needs to get involved. So he kicked it over to Congress. Thankfully, he gave us some time to act. I believe the date is March 5, after which DACA beneficiaries or recipients can no longer apply for a 2-year period of deferred action. That is exactly the right thing to do because it has precipitated this debate, it has precipitated these negotiations, and it has precipitated a reality check for many of our Democratic friends that, you know, we are a nation of immigrants but we are also a nation of laws. One reason why I believe this President was elected was because people were enormously frustrated with the lack of border security, with the failure to enforce our immigration laws, and with President Obama's end run around Congress to try to do this unilaterally. This is what precipitated the sorts of negotiations in which we have all been engaged. Senator Tillis and Senator Lankford have been leaders in that effort, putting together an incredible effort to come up with a compassionate and lawful solution and one that respects both of those pillars of our legacy--a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. That is why it is so offensive to me for the Democratic leader to decide he is going to ignore the needs of all the children. I think there are roughly 9 million children who benefit from the Children's Health Insurance Program. He is going to give our military the back of his hand--and military families--by holding our needed support for them hostage so that they can somehow force us to deal with this DACA situation today or last night, and if we don't do it, they are going to shut down the U.S. Government. These 690,000 young men and women truly should be the subject of our compassion, but why would we hold 320 million people hostage to try to get a solution for these 690,000, when we are already hard at work to try to negotiate in good faith an outcome? It just makes no sense at all to me. I appreciate the meetings that we had that Senator Tillis alluded to. The one at the White House--I think it was Tuesday. Was it last week? It seems like a year ago. President Trump invited the press into this bipartisan, bicameral meeting. Ordinarily, what happens after the press comes in and takes pictures and asks a few questions is that they are ushered out, but President Trump let them stay in the Cabinet Room for about 45 or 50 minutes. It was the most incredible experience I have ever had, certainly, in that sort of context dealing with sensitive issues like immigration. I think it was a very positive meeting because it provoked instruction by the President for Majority Leader McCarthy; the Democratic whip, Senator Durbin; the majority whip, Senator Cornyn; and Steny Hoyer, the minority leader in the House. We were instructed to do what Senator Tillis described earlier: come up with a solution to this problem and address the DACA population. How do we show some compassion? How do we get these young adults out of a quandary not of their making but also deal with border security? I happen to come from a State that has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. Senator Tillis described his experience with Senator Heller. I was happy to host them because I think seeing it is worth a thousand words. Hopefully, they enjoyed the experience and learned something from it as well. The Texas-Mexico border is about 2,000 miles long. What the Border Patrol has told me is that they need various tools to secure the border. They need infrastructure like the Secure Fence Act that we voted on in 2006. Then-Senator Obama and then-Senator Clinton and Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader, all voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act. Some people call it a wall. Some people call it a fence. Some people call it tactical infrastructure. Whatever you call it, it is a barrier. It is an essential component of border security at some parts of the border, but it is only part of the system. The system needs to include technology--whether it is unmanned aerial vehicles, ground sensors, radars, aerostats that we saw high in the sky--to try to protect our country against transnational criminal organizations that exploit our porous border to import poison, illegal drugs; that traffic in children for sex or other illicit purposes; or that import their gang members into the United States, only to wreak havoc on communities here in the United States. The object of most of the mayhem associated with that porous border is the immigrant communities in the United States. People act as if there is no negative downside to this porous border and illegal immigration, but I will tell you that frequently the devastation that is wreaked on Americans and on people living here in the United States is in immigrant communities, where these folks do most of their harm. We are working very hard to try to come up with a solution, and it is frankly insulting that the Democratic leader would try to jam this through and hold hostage all of these other very important programs when we are working in good faith to try to meet that March 5 deadline, and I have every confidence we will. But the border is a little more complicated. One of the things Secretary Nielsen, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has pointed out is that because of a provision in the U.S. law, if you immigrate illegally into the United States from Mexico, for example, the Border Patrol can offer you the opportunity to go back rather than process you for illegal immigration and later deport you, but not if you come from a noncontiguous country, like Central America--Guatemala, El Salvador, for example, Honduras. So what we have seen is thousands of people coming across our southern border exploiting that loophole in our law. Let me give one example. I asked Secretary Nielsen the other day: If there is a 17-year-old man--you may call him a boy, but for all practical purposes, he is a man, but he has not yet reached 18. If you know from his tattoos--frequently, that is how gang members are identified by the Border Patrol law enforcement officials, from the tattoos they bear. So you know they are members of the MS-13 gang, one of the most violent gangs emanating from Central America and actually Los Angeles, as well, and many of them have migrated back to Central America. Many of them prey on children back there but come up here as part of the drug distribution networks in the United States. If you know this is a member of MS-13, but they are 17 years old, is there anything you can do under existing law to bar them from the country? She said no. Under the law, they are required to process that person because he is a minor technically, even though he is a man for all practical purposes, and then Health and Human Services must then place him with a sponsor in the United States. It might be a relative. It doesn't have to be a relative. The previous administration didn't even vet those sponsors adequately, so we don't know how many children who were placed with those sponsors may have been preyed upon, trafficked, recruited as gang members, or otherwise abused. But this 17-year-old young man, a member of MS-13, would then be placed with a sponsor in the United States and be told, if he had claimed asylum, to come back in a couple of years for his court hearing before an immigration judge. Senator Lankford, I believe, stated that hundreds of thousands people are backlogged for hearings before immigration judges. We need more immigration judges. In the process, they are told to show back up for a court hearing years in the future, and only about 10 percent show up. I used to say this was sort of an intelligence test--tongue-in-cheek. If you showed up, you flunked the intelligence test, because what most people do is they exploit that vulnerability to simply melt into the great American landscape and become a danger, frankly, to the communities in which they ultimately settle. So this is serious business. My constituents in Texas--all 28 million of them--want a compassionate solution for these DACA recipients. I mentioned that there are 124,000 of them who signed up, and there are others who were eligible who did not sign up because they are afraid of the government. They come from places where government is their oppressor frequently, so they have a hard time trusting government even when government is trying to help them in the United States. My constituents want a solution, but they are sick and tired of the Federal Government failing to do its job on the border. An international border is by definition a Federal responsibility, but the taxpayers in Texas are required to pick up the tab when the Federal Government doesn't live up to its responsibilities, and that has been the status quo for as long as I can remember. It is frankly galling to hear politicians here in Washington, DC, say: Well, we need to do something to help immigrants--and I am happy to do it as the occasion arises, where it is appropriate, particularly like the DACA recipients. Others, I think, need to be deported as soon as we can because frankly they are a danger to the rest of the law- abiding communities here in the country. It is frustrating to hear people talk about just one of those two pillars I mentioned. They say: Yeah, we are a nation of immigrants, and we should welcome immigrants. But they don't want to do anything about our porous borders, and they couldn't care less about making sure we have enough border security to protect us from the drugs, the traffickers, and the violence that finds its way into communities all across our country. So here is the problem: Funding for the Federal Government expires at midnight tonight, and a partial government shutdown will occur if we don't pass a continuing resolution. Our colleagues in the House did their job; they passed a continuing resolution to keep the government up and running until February 16. I really had a hard time believing what I heard my friend Senator Schumer say last night. He said we need to kill this continuing resolution because we need to pass another continuing resolution because continuing resolutions are bad for the military. Well, he lost me on that argument because it makes no sense. It is true that continuing resolutions are bad for the military. That is why we need to get into a regular appropriations process. But does he think a shutdown is good for the military? Does he think a shutdown is good for the 9 million children who depend upon the Children's Health Insurance Program? I think his priorities are completely out of whack. In my home State, just to take one example, the Army Medical Command said that 2,539 civilian employees at Joint Base San Antonio will be subject to furlough, representing $188 million in salaries. Some 12,000 Texas Guardsmen won't be able to drill either. I am aware of the Presiding Officer's distinguished service in the Guard, and she knows what I am talking about. They won't be able to train, they won't be able to prepare for deployments to protect the homeland, and, of course, they won't get paid. It is estimated that 200,000 Texans will be furloughed with the government shutdown, so it is not just the folks who live in the DC area here in Washington, Virginia, and Maryland, where we have a lot of government employees; people across the country will be negatively affected too. Our Democratic colleagues' strategy to hold the military funding and children's health insurance hostage is a complete and shameless reversal of what they claimed in the past. It is a complete and shameless reversal. In 2013, the senior Senator from Illinois said that a shutdown is ``no way to run a country.'' He decried what he called ``political brinkmanship,'' saying we need to stop ``manufacturing one crisis after the next.'' Well, I wish he and his colleagues would look in the mirror and listen to their own previous comments. America needs them to. The truth is, as the Senate majority leader has said, our friends on the other side of the aisle do not oppose a single thing in the bill that the House passed yesterday. They don't oppose anything in the bill. The Senate majority leader is right that this should be an easy ``yes'' vote for every Senator in the Chamber. The bill continues government funding, prevents a needless shutdown, and, as I said, extends a key health insurance program for vulnerable children. How in the heck did we get here? How did the Democrats decide that no was the right answer? Well, we worked hard last month and all this month to try to negotiate long-term spending caps that would bring stability back to government funding. One of the biggest issues was to try to make sure we funded our military in a way that helped them prepare and get ready to fight our Nation's wars or, better yet, to prevent future wars by demonstrating the kind of strength and leadership the people have come to expect from the U.S. military. But our Democratic leadership made it clear that they would stall a final agreement on those spending caps until this unrelated issue of deferred action for childhood arrivals that we have been talking about, which doesn't expire until March 5--they were going to hold all the rest of that hostage until it was resolved. They made it clear that they were willing to shut down vital programs for the rest of the country because we haven't agreed on how to resolve that issue, but we are working hard on it. I had another meeting here today on that. I have actually had three meetings today on that topic, and we are going to get it done before the deadline. While that issue is important and affects roughly 690,000 people, our country is made up of over 320 million people--people who pay taxes, people who expect the Federal Government to work for them. They sure don't expect to be not paid or laid off or furloughed, if you are a government employee. If you are a citizen expecting the government to provide some service but because the bills aren't being paid because Democrats have shut down the government--well, you are being denied access to the services you have a right to expect. Our Democratic colleagues are engaged in a dangerous game of chicken, and they could well crash the government just to appease extreme elements in their party, and all of it, every bit of it, is absolutely unnecessary. Let's call this what it is. Our colleagues are playing favorites and turning their backs on military families and the security needs of the American people. I think that after they had a good night's sleep last night, they probably woke up this morning thinking: What have we done? How do we get out of this? That is why I know the President called Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader, over to the White House earlier today. The report I got was that Senator Schumer said: Let's have another short-term continuing resolution, maybe until next Tuesday. Well, that wouldn't solve anything. That would make none of this better. It would just continue the chaos and leave all the things we need to settle, unsettled. Well, the President did the right thing. He told him: Look, you go back and you talk to the Speaker and the Senate majority leader and you guys work that out. This is what you get paid for. Get her done. That is good advice. The threat of a shutdown by the Democratic leader and his colleagues ignores the overwhelming majority of this country that suddenly feels they are not as important as the few they are focused on--the DACA recipients. All Senate Finance Committee Democrats voted for a 5-year SCHIP extension in October, so they are now actually threatening to vote against a program that Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee voted for. I guess, in the immortal words of John Kerry, they were for it before they were against it. Have they forgotten that if Democrats shut down the government, nearly 9 million kids could lose their CHIP coverage? And why? Because we haven't yet been able to come up with an agreement on something--an immigration issue--but our deadline isn't until March. It is not yesterday. It is not today. It is not until March 5. We hope to get it done earlier. I expect we will. Have they forgotten the 78 percent of defense workers who could be furloughed, laid off; that Active-Duty troops, as well as Guard and Reserve members, would not get paid? In Virginia, there are some 178,000 Federal workers. In Maryland, there are over 145,000. I hope they are on the phone calling their Senators and their Congresspeople. Those are two States that are both represented by Members prepared to shut down the government tonight. In Texas, as I said, there are some 200,000 Federal employees. All of them will be affected, and everybody else who depends on them to protect our State and our communities--or to provide services that benefit everybody else--they are going to be negatively impacted too. Paychecks could cease, services will be disrupted, all because of an unrelated immigration issue that will not get resolved if the government shuts down. That is what is so maddening. Shutting down the government will not solve that problem. I think they are out over their skis, and they are trying to figure out how do we get this thing back and save face in the process. They are realizing this is a very bad judgment call and that their action was entirely disproportionate to resolving the issue they want to resolve--and one we are determined to resolve with them in due course. Let's recall that the 2013 shutdown resulted in the furlough of 850,000 employees and billions of dollars of lost economic productivity. So when the senior Senator from California said yesterday that the results of a shutdown are extremely dire, she wasn't being hyperbolic. She wasn't exaggerating when she talked about the big risks that lie ahead if we don't act. Well, I pray she and her Democratic colleagues will stop stalling, stop playing favorites, and stop daring us to engage in a game of chicken. I will say it again one last time. We have been negotiating in good faith on a solution for the DACA recipients, and we will continue to do so, but shutting down the government will not solve that problem, and millions of people, including our military, law enforcement, and emergency personnel, could lose their paycheck if Democrats follow through on their threat. The time to stop playing games is now. We urge them--no--we implore them: Do not shut down the government. I yield the floor.

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