John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Separately, Madam President, I come to the floor today to highlight a pressing national security concern that just doesn't get enough attention. Members often come to the floor to talk about specific military threats that other nations pose to the United States, and that is good and right. For example, we have heard a lot about Iran this week as the Senate considers the Iran Sanctions Extension Act--a bill that will help ensure that President-Elect Trump and future Presidents will have the authority they need to reimpose sanctions on Iran, even in spite of President Obama's flawed nuclear deal which provided relief from these same types of sanctions and others without getting a whole lot of meaningful concessions from Tehran in return. This bill passed the House a few weeks ago with more than 400 votes, and I am glad there has been significant bipartisan support to move it forward here. But today I want to talk about a problem that is partly of our own making, and that is threats to our long-term military readiness. It is no secret that our military leaders continually call on Congress to adequately fund the weapons programs that enable our troops to defend our Nation. The major concern I have and one that is shared by leadership at the Pentagon is that our military's technological edge on the battlefield is being whittled away by other countries, such as China and Russia, that are working at breakneck speed, investing millions of dollars to erase our advantage in many areas of military capability. That means we have to wake up to the risks that are inherent in this situation and do more to invest in the next generation of weapons to meet the challenges on the battlefields of tomorrow. The nations that are most belligerent and hostile to America and our interests are not cutting back on their investment in military technology, so we simply do not have the luxury of being complacent. Recently, I had a chance to meet with Under Secretary of Defense Frank Kendall, the Defense Department's top acquisitions person or top weapons buyer. He is charged with equipping our men and women in uniform, and he has been thinking long and hard about the need to get the next generation of our military the very best capabilities possible. As he has said publicly in speeches and in congressional testimony, he is concerned that our enemies are rapidly expanding and building out their technological innovations for military applications. But it is important to understand that these countries aren't just building up their own militaries to simply defend themselves; countries such as China and Russia are doing all they can to invest in specific technologies to defeat our forces and to be used for purposes of aggressive activity, whether it is in the South China Sea or in Europe, where Russia continues to threaten the NATO alliance. Countries such as China and Russia are preparing not for next week but for the coming decades to effectively counter and defeat the U.S. militarily. That is a big concern of Secretary Kendall, and it should be a major concern for all of us here in light of the responsibility of Congress to provide for our military. I have a chart that helps explain where we are headed. Here we can see the research and development projections for the United States, China, and the European Union. It is not hard to see that China will soon outpace the United States. This represents total research and development spending for the countries involved--not just in military R&D, but given the fact that a large percentage of research and development is spent on defense- related efforts, on military weaponry, it is a useful bellwether for understanding what the future holds in terms of Chinese and Russian military investment relative to our own. Clearly, we can see that China is on track to overtake the United States in this critical area in the next decade. I should also point out that, according to one report, this isn't just because China is so committed to research and development; it is also because in recent years, due to austerity measures in our own country, U.S. investment in research and development is increasing at a historically low rate. Why is this important? Well, it is important because China is using some of this R&D to make weapons that are designed to undermine interests of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region. One recent study made headlines just this week, highlighting that both China and Russia are developing high-speed, high-altitude weapons designed to penetrate traditional U.S. defensive systems, such as our ballistic missile defenses, to attack not only our allies but to potentially attack the mainland of the United States as well. Reports continue to surface about Chinese cyber theft of top U.S. military and industry secrets. Once they have stolen our trade secrets, the Chinese military can create copycat or cloned weapons for their own use without having to invest the years and billions of dollars that we have to in this country for research and testing and development of those weapons. They can simply steal the blueprints and copy them, saving themselves a lot of money and a lot of time in producing those weapons. So while nations like China are doing all they can to build their capabilities and research the next cutting-edge weapons, the U.S. military is extremely limited in the amount of money we are investing in our own future, instead having to spend that money to maintain the readiness of current forces. That is where the money has gone--to try to maintain the readiness of our current forces, not looking out to the next 5 and 10 years, to the growing threat of our adversaries having weapon systems that will have the capability not only to be used offensively but potentially to defeat American forces around the world. We know we need a robust military budget in order to allow us to walk and chew gum at the same time--to both maintain these world-class forces at high levels of readiness and ensure our troops have the cutting-edge weapons of tomorrow. Back in March, the Committee on Armed Services heard testimony by current Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. At the end of his prepared remarks, Secretary Carter made a point we all need to better understand. He said: We don't have the luxury of just one opponent, or the choice between the current fight and future fights--we have to do both, and we have to have a budget that supports both. He went on to explain that means being ready to fight the battles of today and train our current troops but also to develop the technologies and perfect the strategies to fight the wars of the future. And we know from Ronald Reagan's doctrine of peace through strength that military readiness is much more likely to make sure that we don't have to fight those battles because it deters the aggressive actions of our adversaries when America leads and when America is the strongest military in the world. But when our opponents see us pulling back, both in terms of our investment and in terms of American leadership, they are all too happy to fill the void left by that withdrawal. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has apparently failed to see that national defense is the most critical function the Federal Government performs, and so every time we get into this discussion about how do we spend more money to keep the American people safe and secure, they want to enter into a discussion about how we can raise spending caps so we can spend more money on nondefense discretionary spending, and so it goes. I believe that defense spending--making sure our men and women in uniform have the training and equipment they need for the current fight but also that we are preparing for the mid- and long-term so they will have the weapons and resources they need to fight the fights of the future--is job No. 1 for us here in the Congress. It is not too late to eliminate some of these spending caps and to adequately fund the Department of Defense. I look forward to working with all of our colleagues to make sure we take care of job No. 1 before we then look to other priorities in our Federal budget. We can't take for granted the fact that the U.S. military is the best in the world. We are the best in the world, but there is no certainty or guarantee that will always be the case, especially when our adversaries are making investments for the future and as America's leadership pulls back out of the world and allows others to fill that void. There are other nations at our heels spending a lot of money specifically to neutralize our military advantages and defeat us. The threat extends far beyond China. North Korea, for example, continues to threaten us and our allies with their nuclear weapons and their missile tests. As I indicated earlier, Russia continues to make tremendous advancements in areas such as cyber and electronic warfare, working to render our most effective and advanced capabilities ineffective. We don't have any time to waste, and we have to spend more time and more energy looking not just at the threats of today but those of tomorrow and beyond. Frankly, once the threat is upon us, it may be too late to do the sort of research and development and investment we need in order to be prepared. So I am hopeful that the next Congress, working with the new administration, will be able to move the needle in the right direction. We certainly can't just cross our fingers and hope for the best. That is not fulfilling our responsibilities and doing our duty as Members of the Congress. If we want to maintain our position as the most capable military in the world, we have to continue to act, and act without delay. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday I spoke about the 21st Century Cures bill the House passed by a very large margin last night, and I am looking forward to taking up that legislation here in the Senate. I am particularly grateful that it includes some mental health reform legislation that I introduced here in the Senate. This represents the very first mental health reform in more than a decade, and it is high time we got it done. There are a lot of people who contributed to this effort, and I think it is something we can all be proud of. With the mental health portion of the bill, we have two chief goals in mind--first, to help those who are mentally ill get the treatment they need, and secondly, to help law enforcement and first responders know how to respond to a potential mental health crisis in order to keep the person they are responding to safe, as well as the first responders themselves. It opens up existing funds so that they can be used for more outpatient treatment options. That way, local and State governments can help identify mentally ill offenders, assess their mental health needs, and get them in the right treatment to improve their condition, rather than sending them to jail, where they will be warehoused and their condition will likely just get worse and worse. This legislation will also provide flexibility to State and local authorities so they can use what works in their communities to help mentally ill individuals in the criminal justice system get healthy. This could include things such as assisted outpatient treatments, where families can help their loved ones, with a backstop of court supervision so they will remain compliant with their doctors' orders and take their medication, which will allow them to lead productive lives. This legislation will make available Federal grants so that our law enforcement officials have the resources to get the kind of training they need. When law enforcement officials are called to the scene of an incident with somebody suffering from a mental health crisis, it is very important that they know how to deescalate that crisis, both for the well-being of the individual suffering that crisis as well as the law enforcement officials responding. It will allow the creation of more crisis-intervention teams comprised of law enforcement and first responders and even school officials, where appropriate, so they can rapidly respond to and counter a threat of violence in the community. Yesterday I received messages from some of the people who have worked with us on this legislation and know all too well how mental illness can affect our families. One individual wrote: After losing both [a] son and a husband to suicide, and having an adult son with bipolar disorder, I know only too well the frustrations of the mental health system. Thank you, Senator, for your determination and hard work to bring change to this broken system. This is why these mental health reforms are so important. People need help and the mental health system needs reform, and that is why we need to pass the 21st Century Cures bill--for all the good it will do in addition to these important reforms in dealing with mental health challenges around the country. So I look forward to finishing the job next week and sending it to the President's desk.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I didn't hear how long.

Mr. CORNYN. No objection here.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, while he is still in the Chamber, let me express my gratitude to the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Enzi, for his leadership on these very difficult but very important issues. One of the things I am most concerned about is that there no longer seems to be bipartisan consensus toward how to deal with our spending problems. We look at annual budget deficits and we look at the increase in the debt, and we know we have no current means to pay that back. While the Federal Reserve has basically made money free--in other words, interest rates are so low now, we don't have to pay our debt holders as much money now as we will in the future--we all know this is a ticking time bomb, with only about 30 percent of our Federal spending being discretionary or appropriated funds and roughly 70 percent being on autopilot. As our interest rates go up more and more, that is going to crowd out more of that 30 percent that we need to spend on our Nation's priorities, like national security. This is a very serious issue, and I am grateful to the Senator from Wyoming, the chairman of the Budget Committee, for his leadership. I look forward to working with him as we work together to try to come up with meaningful solutions.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I understand that the Senator from Montana will not be offering a unanimous consent request, so if it is all right with my colleagues, I wish to explain why I have objected. Excuse me. I will yield back to the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of my friend and colleague from Washington--excuse me, Oregon, but I will reserve my remarks until after he makes the next UC request.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are winding down the final days of the 114th Congress, and some of the work we have been engaged in is coming to fruition. I spoke to the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who told me he thought the WRDA bill--the water resources development bill--was coming together and would likely be voted on in the House tomorrow. I believe that Senator McCain and Chairman Thornberry in the House-- the Armed Services Committee--have a national defense authorization bill that on Friday will be voted on in the House and then will be coming over here to the Senate. We know that we have to, by the December 9 deadline, pass an appropriations bill that will keep the lights on for the Federal Government for an undetermined, at this point, period of time, probably sometime into next spring, when we will have a new President and a new administration. This afternoon in the House, they are going to be voting on another important piece of legislation that I wanted to talk about briefly. It is called the 21st Century Cures Act. This has been a product of a lot of methodical and very deliberate hard work on both sides of the aisle in both Chambers, and it will make a big difference in the lives of Americans because it will help make our country healthier and stronger. As its name suggests, it will help develop medical treatments and cures for some of the most tragic health problems facing families today. Recently, I was at the 75th anniversary celebration at the MD Anderson hospital in Houston, TX, and it is the premier cancer facility in the country. Some time ago, the hospital started their own MD Anderson Moon Shots Program and is doing all that it can do to study and research various forms of cancer with the goal to eliminate cancer as a public health threat. Of course, we know that Vice President Biden, who was part of that 75th anniversary celebration at MD Anderson in Houston, and this administration have their own Cancer Moonshot Program to help eliminate cancer, and that will also be part of this 21st Century Cures bill. The whole idea of the Moonshot, even to the current generation, reminds us that at one time we thought putting a man on the Moon was impossible, outside the realm of possibility, but because of a vision and because of a commitment and a desire to push the bounds of our capabilities, they persevered and we found a way. MD Anderson's Moon Shots Program serves as another example of American ingenuity, ambition, and dogged determination to make the lives of our families and the future generations better than our own. Fortunately, as I said, this Cures bill the House will be voting on today, which we will vote on next week, will provide funding for cancer and Alzheimer's research, among other terrible diseases, so that the best medical community in the world can help make great strides in fighting them. This legislation will also fund the battle against opioid abuse, prescription drug abuse--something we have discussed a lot here on the floor during the last year because of the devastation that it has brought about in many parts of the country. Of course, we know that when the opioids aren't available, cheap heroin imported into the United States from south of our border is part of that scourge as well. Overdoses and the abuse of opioid drugs are tearing families apart. This bill will provide additional grant funding to States to combat it and to help people who are already in the grips of this terrible addiction to find a way to freedom. I am particularly glad that this legislation includes bipartisan mental health reforms that I introduced in this Chamber last year, known as the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act. I want to express my gratitude to Senator Alexander, Senator Murray, and others on a bipartisan basis and bicameral basis for working with us to make sure we include mental health reform as a component of the 21st Century Cures legislation. We all know that mental health problems are something that American families have to deal with. I dare say there is probably not a family in America that doesn't have to deal with this in some way or another-- either at work, with people you go to church with, or with people you live next door to. In some way or another, mental health problems are rampant. A lot of that has to do with well-intended but unintended consequences of deinstitutionalization of our mentally ill back in the 1990s. The idea was that it was not appropriate to institutionalize people with mental illness, and so we ought to deinstitutionalize them. But we contemplated that there would be some sort of safety net after they went back to their communities where they could get treatment and where they would get the care they needed. Unfortunately, what has happened and what my legislation is designed to address is that our jails have become the de facto default mental health treatment facilities in this country. I recently was at a meeting of a large county sheriffs association in Washington, DC, and a friend of mine, the current sheriff of Bexar County, TX, Sheriff Pamerleau, said: How would you like to meet the largest mental health provider in America? I said: Well, sure. She walked across the floor and introduced me to the sheriff of Los Angeles County, who runs the Los Angeles County jails. You get my point. We are warehousing people in jails and other places and not giving them the treatment they need in order to get their basic underlying problem taken care of. Of course, people with untreated mental illness frequently engage in petty crimes--trespassing and other things--which end them up in jail. But if they don't get treated, they are going to stay in that turnstile and keep coming back. We all know the problem of homelessness in our streets. You walk down the street in Washington, DC, or any city in the country--such as Austin, TX--and you see people who have obvious symptoms of mental illness who are not being treated. What this legislation does is to provide a pathway to treatment, primarily by using preexisting appropriations to make grants to our States and local communities so they can deal with these using the very best practices in the country. For example, the Federal Government already spends about $2 billion a year on grants to State and local law enforcement. Doesn't it make sense to prioritize dealing with these mental health problems and particularly with the best practices in places such as San Antonio, TX, where the mental health community and law enforcement and other leaders have come together to try to come up with a program to divert people with mental illness to treatment and to provide additional training to law enforcement, to deescalate some of the conflicts that occur--for example, when the police show up and confront somebody with obvious mental illness. If the police don't get the kind of training they need, then that could end up in a tragedy, either for the person being arrested or for the police officers. It is really important that we deal with this in a sensible way, and this legislation helps to do that--again, using some of that $2 billion in grant funding we give to State and local law enforcement but prioritizing and authorizing some of the very best practices occurring in communities around the country so that more people can benefit from these programs. This also provides families additional tools. For example, if you have a family member who is suffering from severe mental illness--let's say they are an adult--there is not a whole lot you can do about it if they refuse to seek treatment or comply with their doctor's orders. There is a means--a very difficult means--for temporary institutionalization. For example, you have to get a doctor's order and then go to court and get somebody put in a State hospital or an institution, but they are not there forever. They may be there for 30 days or so, until their symptoms abate because they are complying with their doctor's orders and taking their medication. The great news in mental health treatment is there are a lot of miraculous treatments, and if the person afflicted with mental illness will comply with their doctor's orders and take their medication, they can lead relatively normal and productive lives. But the great problem is that so often people refuse to take their medication. They start feeling better. They quit, and they become sicker and sicker, until they become a danger both to themselves and the community. One of the things this legislation does is to provide an additional procedure, called assisted outpatient treatment, which gives local courts and civil courts the authority to consider a petition whereby a family member can come in and say: My son, my daughter, my husband, my relative is having serious problems with their mental illness and they are noncompliant with their treatments. Judge, will you please enter an order, which essentially is like probation, saying that periodically you have to come back and report to the court on your compliance with the order, but part of that is to follow your doctor's orders and to take your medication. I am not saying it is a panacea, but it provides family members another tool when their loved ones become mentally ill and when there are no good options for the family members to assure that they will get the treatment or remain compliant with their doctor's orders by taking their medication. I applaud the House for taking up these critical reforms. I know Congressman Tim Murphy has worked on this long and hard in the House. There are a lot of other people who have worked on this mental health reform. In this Chamber, Senator Bill Cassidy has been a champion and Chris Murphy, among others. Really, the persons who have gotten us this far--there are two of them--are Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, the chairman and the ranking member of the HELP Committee. But it has taken a bipartisan, bicameral effort to try to get us to this point, and I am glad that we will be voting on this next week, after the House passes it today. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know sometimes that when people hear us engage in these debates, they think we don't like each other and we can't work together; that we are so polarized, we are dysfunctional. Actually, these Senators are my friends in addition to being colleagues. Let me just explain how I think their concerns are misplaced. First of all, we all care about, on the spectrum of privacy to security, how that is dialed in. As the Presiding Officer knows, as the former attorney general of Alaska, we always try to strike the right balance between individual privacy and safety and security and law enforcement, and sometimes we have differences of opinion as to where exactly on that spectrum that ought to be struck, but the fundamental problem with the requests that have been made today is, Federal Rule Of Criminal Procedure 41 has already been the subject of a lengthy 3-year process with a lot of thoughtful input, public hearings, and deliberation. As the Presiding Officer knows, the courts have the inherent power to write their own rules of procedure, and that is what this is, part of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. What happens is a pretty challenging process when we want to change a Federal rule of criminal procedure. We have to get it approved by the Rules Advisory Committee. It is made up of judges, law professors, and practicing lawyers. Then it has to be approved by the Judicial Conference. Then, as in this case, they have to be endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41, which happened on May 1, 2016. If there was any basis for the claim that this is somehow a hacking of personal information without due process of law or without adequate consideration, I just--I think the process by which the Supreme Court has set up, through the Rules Advisory Committee and through the Judicial Conference, dispels any concerns that the objections that were raised were not adequately considered. I am also told, Senator Graham from South Carolina chaired a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee--I believe it was last spring--on this very issue. So there has been some effort in the Congress to do oversight and to look into this, although perhaps it didn't get the sort of attention that it has gotten now. The biggest, most important point to me is that for everybody who cares about civil liberties and for everybody who cares about the personal right of privacy we all have in our homes and the expectation of privacy we have against intrusion by the government without due process, this still requires the government to come forward and do what it always has to do when it seeks a search warrant under the Fourth Amendment. You still have to go before a judge--an impartial magistrate--you still have to show probable cause that a crime has been committed, and the defendant can still challenge the lawfulness of the search. The defendant always reserves that right to challenge the lawfulness of the search. I believe all of these constitutional protections, all of these procedural protections, all the concerns about lack of adequate deliberation can be dispelled by the simple facts. There is a challenge when cyber criminals use the Internet and social media to prey on innocent children, to traffic in human beings, to buy and sell drugs, and there has to be a way for law enforcement--for the Federal Government--to get a search warrant approved by a judge based on the showing of probable cause to be able to get that evidence so the law can be enforced and these cyber criminals can be prosecuted. That is what we are talking about. All this rule 41 does is creates a circumstance where if the criminal is using an anonymizer, or some way to scramble the IP address--the Internet Protocol address of the computer they are operating from--then this rule of procedure allows the U.S. attorney, the Justice Department, to go to any court that will then require probable cause, that will then allow the defendant to challenge that search warrant--but to provide a means by which you can go to court and get a search warrant and investigate the facts and, if a crime has been committed, to make sure that person is prosecuted under the letter of the law. I appreciate the concerns my colleagues have expressed, that somehow we have gotten the balance between security and privacy wrong, but I believe that as a result of the process by which the Rules Advisory Committee, the Judicial Conference, and the Supreme Court have approved this rule after 3 years of deliberation, including public hearings, scholarly input by academicians, practicing lawyers, law professors and the like, I think that ought to allay their concerns that somehow this is an unthought-through or hasty rule that is going to have unintended consequences. I think the fundamental protection we all have under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution against unreasonable searches and seizures and the requirement that the government come to court in front of a judge and show probable cause that a crime has been committed, and that even once the search warrant is issued, that the defendant can challenge the lawfulness of the search--all of that ought to allay the concerns of my colleagues that somehow we have gotten that balance between privacy and security right because I think this does strike an appropriate balance. Those are the reasons I felt compelled to object to the unanimous consent requests, and I appreciate the courtesy of each of my colleagues.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I respect our colleague's right to come to the floor and ask unanimous consent. I understand that there are three unanimous consent requests, and I will be objecting to all three of them. I will reserve my statement as to why I am objecting after the third request. At this point, I object to the unanimous consent request.

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, earlier this year the Republican leadership made a somewhat controversial decision, but when you think about it, it shouldn't have been all that controversial. It was to allow the American people, by their selection for the next President of the United States, to express their views about who ought to be nominated to the vacancy left by the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia. This is not an easy decision, but the fact remains that the Supreme Court considers rules on some of the most pressing, challenging questions of our time. It does some very important things, such as interpreting the Constitution. They are the final word. It also guarantees liberty by the separation of powers and enforcing the Bill of Rights and the like. It is no exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court affects the lives of every man, woman, and child in our country, and it is obviously a truism that the people who occupy those seats will have a very clear impact on the future direction of not only the Court but our country. We have to consider lifetime appointments carefully. As Justice Scalia liked to say during his lifetime, why in the world should people trust nonelected judges to make value judgments and in so doing, substitute their judgment for the views of the duly elected Members of Congress who represent the American people and who are politically accountable? That is why he said judges ought to take a rather limited role, or view of their role, under the Constitution. I agree with him. The role of the judiciary is not to say what the law should be but, rather, what the law actually is. Unfortunately, we know the Supreme Court of the United States has become such a controversial place in large part because of its tendency to substitute its value judgments for those of the American people or to read into the Constitution words that nobody found in the last 200 years, but miraculously somehow they sprung up with new meaning, resulting in the creation of a new constitutional life that nobody ever dreamed existed before. It is true that the Supreme Court plays an essential function in our government, and there was simply too much at stake not to let the American people, through their selection of the next President, have a say. Well, suffice it to say, 3 weeks removed from election day, it is clear that we heard their voice. I think by the selection of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States, the American people clearly realized that even though the Supreme Court wasn't on the ballot, the person who selected the next Supreme Court Justice--perhaps the next two or three--was clearly on the ballot, and there was a clear difference between those choices. I think people realized that Secretary Clinton would likely appoint more judges in the tradition of people like Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor, people who demonstrated their record of being willing to take some license with the Constitution and the laws and basically rewrite them in their own image. I think the American people knew they were choosing between activist judges who essentially operated as unaccountable, unelected legislators wearing black robes or judges who believed in the more traditional role for the judiciary--judges who actually interpret the written words on the page passed by the Congress and signed into law or the Constitution itself. I believe that is how our Founding Fathers intended our separation of powers to work. The judiciary is not supposed to be a substitute for Congress and the political branches; it is supposed to represent a check and balance to make sure that the laws that are passed do not violate the Constitution as written and that the laws that are passed are faithfully enforced according to the words in the statute. I, for one, look forward to considering President-Elect Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court in due time. Since I have been in the Senate, I have had the privilege of participating in the nomination and confirmation of four Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. As members of the Judiciary Committee, we are at ground zero in that process, and I know Chairman Grassley is already preparing, along with members of the committee, to receive the nomination of President-Elect Trump. We don't know whom he will nominate to the Court yet, but he has given the American people a pretty good idea of the type of jurist he would nominate. I think that is one of the reasons millions of Americans voted for him. They wanted an administration committed to the Constitution, and they saw that commitment reflected in the list of men and women President-Elect Trump circulated as potential nominees to the Court. Now that we have heard from the American people, I look forward to going through the confirmation process once again. I am sure it will be a rigorous contest of ideas. I am sure there will be a lot of different views expressed, and that is OK. But in the end, I am confident that we will elect President-Elect Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court. I am optimistic that it will be somebody in the tradition of Justice Scalia, somebody who believes in upholding the rule of law in the country. Having been a member of the State judiciary for 13 years, I have some pretty strong views on this topic. If people want to take on the role of a policymaker, I believe they ought to run for Congress or some legislative office or maybe run for President. They shouldn't seek to be a judge on the Federal court or in the court system because that is not primarily a policymaking role. It is important but perhaps less exciting in some ways or at least is a less visible way of interpreting the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. That is important and straightforward enough, but it is important that the people who are nominated and confirmed understand what their important but limited role is under our constitutional government. As I said, we need a Justice like the late Justice Scalia, who believed that the words in the Constitution matter. We need a Justice who brings some sense of humility to the bench. That is a very important quality. I remember Chief Justice Roberts talking about the importance of humility when it comes to the job of judging. When one has a lifetime tenure job and can't be removed from office except by impeachment, that gives them a lot of latitude to do things that perhaps maybe humility would dictate that we not do. So we need people of good character, people with the requisite qualifications and experience and with the right judicial philosophy, I believe. We need a Justice who will fight for the Court to take its proper role as a check against executive or legislative overreach, but it ought to be constrained by the words of the Constitution as written and by the words in the legislation Congress has passed. There is no justification under our Constitution for a judge who simply views their position as license to do what they want or substitute their opinion for that of the elected representatives of the people. I am optimistic we will be able to move forward with President-Elect Trump's nominee to fill the bench and will soon be up to full speed of nine Justices. Through President Obama's tenure, we saw the Senate confirm two of his Justices to the Supreme Court. As I mentioned, those are two of the four confirmations in which I have had the pleasure of participating in the confirmation process. President Obama was able to replace two members of the Court. In recent months, we heard our friends across the aisle say how important it is to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Scalia. We know they disagreed with us on our decision to leave that decision to the voters who selected the next President, but I trust they will feel the same way now--that it is important that we fill this bench without undue delay now that the people have spoken. It is the American people who I believe have made a choice in the type of Justice they want confirmed to the Court. They have determined that what our country needs is a Justice committed to the rule of law and to the Constitution--not politics, not value judgments, but enforcing the law as written. I look forward to helping the new administration deliver that for the American people.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, today the House will take up a piece of legislation known as the Justice for All Reauthorization Act, a bill that will help victims as they seek to restore their lives and will better equip law enforcement to fight some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. This legislation will help put more of the guilty behind bars and provide key resources to forensic labs across the country while aiming to end the rape kit backlog. The rape kit backlog in particular has been something that a wonderful woman named Debbie Smith has committed much of her life to, making sure we provide the resources to local forensic labs that test those rape kits because of the power of DNA and forensic testing. One can literally tell with almost certainty whether the evidence contained in a rape kit matches a DNA sample from a suspected sexual offender. Likewise, one can also exclude the suspect from being the one who provided that forensic DNA sample. In other words, you can exonerate as well as convict people as a result of testing from these rape kits. Being involved in this issue, we initially heard there were as many as 400,000 untested rape kits in America. Some of them had been tested 20 years after the fact only to find that the sexual offender didn't just commit one act of violence or sexual assault but was a serial offender. There are stories of individual courage on the part of victims of sexual assault who have come forward to tell their story about the impact of this important elimination of the rape kit backlog. There are cities like Houston--Houston, under the leadership of Mayor Parker, basically said they are going to eliminate the rape kit backlog in Houston on their own, with perhaps some Federal assistance. They were able to identify a number of perpetrators in unsolved crimes because they were able to tell that the DNA in these rape kits matched certain hits on the FBI's CODIS list, where they maintain the data bank of DNA samples that are matched against those collected from suspects, collected in forensic examination. Suffice it to say that this legislation will contribute to ending that rape kit backlog, and I believe that is a good enough reason to support it. It will make sure that brave people like Debbie Smith, who years ago suffered a sexual assault and who has made this one of her causes in life--it will make sure that no woman would have to endure what she had to endure, and that is where law enforcement fails to use all the resources available to it to find her assailant and to bring them to justice. Most importantly, this legislation will also help strengthen victims' rights and help them pursue their justice in court. We already passed it once unanimously in the Senate back in June, and I am thankful to the leadership in the House for bringing this bill up in the waning days of the 114th Congress. I look forward to the House bringing up and passing this legislation today and to us taking it up here with any amendments that the House may offer and taking it up here I hope by unanimous consent and passing it before we leave for the holidays. With that, 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 Tennessee (Mr. Corker) and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Gardner). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Gardner) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I confess that I came to the floor to talk about some of the nominations that we are going to see coming from the administration, particularly regarding one of our colleagues, Senator Sessions, the Senator from Alabama, to be the next Attorney General. I am somewhat taken aback by the nature of the comments that I hear coming from the Senator from Massachusetts. I had to refresh my memory of the Senate Standing Rules, which I thought prohibited this sort of ad hominem attack--the claims of corruption, selling legislation for campaign contributions. I thought the rules of decorum of the Senate prohibited that sort of demagoguery. But I am not sure you can write a rule that would prohibit somebody who is actually determined to defy the very voters they claim to be representing. If our Democratic colleagues like the result of the election that just occurred on November 8, I would say: Keep on keeping on. Keep on with this same sort of ad hominem attacks and attacking the motivation of people, rather than talking about policy. I thought that is what the Senate was supposed to be all about--not where we come in here and call each other names. It is no wonder that the American people are turned off by what they see as politics as usual. I think what they told us on November 8 is that they actually would like to see us accomplish some things--first of all, starting with listening to them, not telling them what is good for them and saying: Well, if you don't like it, you are going to have to take it because the people in power, the people working in Washington, the elites in America know better than you do what is good for you. So when I hear the Senator from Massachusetts come in and give essentially a political speech, such as she did, not talking about the merits or the policy but rather making personal attacks against Senators and people who support the policy, I just think this is beneath the dignity of the Senate. I would hope we would rise to the occasion, in the wake of this historic election and say: You know what, we can do better. The American people deserve better than what they have been getting coming out of Washington. The only way we are going to be able to turn this country around is by, first of all, listening to what the American people are telling us. We know what they said is this: We are not happy with the direction of the country, and we are not happy with what is happening in Washington. To come in and make the kind of speeches that I just heard a moment ago is disturbing. It is disappointing. We can do better than that. We must do better than that if we are going to regain the confidence of the American people that we are actually worthy of their support as we try to guide this ship of state and try to pass laws that actually will improve the quality of their lives by growing the economy, by making it possible for people to find work who want work so they can provide for their families, to try to make sure that the American people are safe and secure, and to provide for our common defense. Those are the sorts of things we ought to be focused on. So it is a little distressing to walk into this Chamber, in what used to be known as the world's greatest deliberative body, and to hear the sort of diatribe and the personal attacks and the name calling that we just heard from the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the reason I came to the floor is to make note of the fact, as I alluded to a moment ago, that President-Elect Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate one of our own, a Member of the Senate, to be the Nation's top law enforcement officer. Our friend, the junior Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions, is undoubtedly qualified and prepared for this role as Attorney General because of the long career he spent protecting and defending our Constitution and the rule of law. If there is one thing we can do in the U.S. Government to help restore the public's confidence, it will be to reembrace the concept of equal justice under the law and ensure there is not a double standard by which people are judged--the powerful, the well-connected, and then the rules that apply to everybody else--but, rather, that the same rules apply to all of us. The same laws apply to all of us. In fact, that is the bulwark of our constitutional democracy. Frankly, I think the American people have seen, in the last two Attorneys General--the current one and her predecessor, Mr. Holder--is essentially an office of the Department of Justice that was not worthy of the name ``Justice.'' It should have been called an extension of the White House political operation because so much of the way they conducted themselves was governed not by the rule of law but by political considerations. Our friend, the Senator from Alabama, understands firsthand the importance of hard work as well. He is the son of a country store owner from Hybart, AL. He received his law degree from the University of Alabama. He served in the U.S. Army Reserves. As we know, his service didn't stop there. Guided by a sense of duty for the last five decades, Jeff Sessions has dedicated his life to the State of Alabama and to the United States itself, first as a Federal prosecutor--including 12 years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, then as the State's attorney general, and now in the Senate where he has served with distinction for the last decade- plus. Above all, Jeff Sessions has worked for the people of his State and this country with one purpose in mind; that is, to uphold the rule of law. His career in the Senate reflects this earnest commitment to do what is right, not what is popular, not what is politically convenient but to do what is right, guided by the Constitution, the laws, and inspired by the people he was elected to serve. He has been a defender of our military families and played a leading role in ensuring that rural communities have the health care they need. I understand the long knives are already starting to come out against President-Elect Trump's nominees and that Senator Sessions--our colleague from Alabama--is not going to be spared some of those attacks, but I would ask some of these critics who don't know his entire record to consider the fact that a few years ago he teamed up with the senior Senator from Illinois to reform sentencing charges on crack cocaine, sentencing charges that disproportionately discriminate against African-American communities. It was a bipartisan solution that in Jeff's words, ``achieve fairness without impeding our ability to combat drug violence.'' I would also ask these critics to consider the bill he introduced with Senator Ted Kennedy, the now-departed ``liberal lion of the Senate,'' to use grant funding to reduce sexual assaults in prison. The legislation requires the Department of Justice to keep track of these assaults, and it was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Taken legislatively, these are not the sorts of actions that fit this distorted picture that some of the critics are already starting to draw about Senator Sessions and his record in the Senate or his character as a man. I have had the honor of working closely with Jeff on the Senate Judiciary Committee since I came to the Senate, and I am proud to call him a friend. Those who have watched him day-in and day-out understand his stalwart commitment to the rule of law and his deep and abiding concern for our country. Of course, we wouldn't be Senators if we didn't sometimes disagree with each other. It is just normal, but Senator Sessions has always engaged with seriousness and cordiality and the kind of civility this Chamber and this country could use more of. By the strength of his arguments, he has helped us all to see the weaknesses in our own arguments as he has worked together with his colleagues to try to help us build consensus, which is the only way we get anything done and the way our constitutional system was designed. Only by building consensus can we move our country forward. We are going to miss Senator Sessions in the Senate when he moves on to the executive branch as Attorney General, but it is even more important, at this point in this country's history, to have a champion of the Constitution and the rule of law at the Department of Justice and to help restore the reputation of that Department. As I said earlier, for years now--during the course of Attorney General Holder's tenure and unfortunately succeeded by Attorney General Lynch--the Department of Justice has twisted the Constitution to further the President's political agenda. I give just one example. When Congress was performing its legitimate oversight responsibilities into a gun-running operation gone wrong called Fast and Furious, Attorney General Holder was called before the Senate Judiciary Committee, called before our corresponding House committee, and simply defied those committees' lawful and appropriate oversight responsibilities over what the Department of Justice was doing. To my knowledge, this resulted in his having been the first Attorney General to be held in contempt of Congress--a sitting Attorney General of the United States held in contempt of Congress. Unfortunately, the Obama administration put politics ahead of our national commitment to the rule of law and too often demonized those who worked to protect us. I have every confidence that Senator Sessions, as the Attorney General of the United States, the head of the Department of Justice, and the Trump administration will defend the rule of law and will use his expertise in the Constitution to play an essential role in our President-elect's Cabinet. As a 15-year veteran of the Department, Senator Sessions understands better than most what needs to be done to help the Department of Justice refocus its responsibilities and its priorities. Here is the bottom line. We need people in the highest rungs of our government who will ensure our Constitution is preserved, protected, and defended. Senator Sessions, as the next Attorney General of the United States, will do just that.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, while the President-elect is considering additional nominees to fill his Cabinet, we in the Senate--working together with our House colleagues--have our own responsibilities to fulfill before the end of this year. Most pressing is legislation to fund the government, something that unfortunately has been hindered by our Democratic colleagues slow- walking the appropriations process. Actually, calling it slow-walking is a little too generous. What they did is block the normal appropriations process, where the 12 separate appropriations bills would be voted out of committee--which they were, on a bipartisan basis--but then they would come across the floor of the Senate where amendments would be offered, and we would actually vote on them before sending them to the President to be signed into law. Instead of this normal process--which is transparent, it is bipartisan, in the best traditions of the Senate--we were denied the opportunity to do that, resulting now in our need to pass a year-end continuing resolution, kicking the funding of the government over to perhaps sometime in the spring. This was strictly as a result of the gamesmanship of our colleagues, many of them blocking the same appropriations bills they voted for, on a bipartisan basis, before the Appropriations Committee itself. Despite those obstructions, we have actually tried to do some good work. We passed our first bicameral budget since 2009. As I said, the Appropriations Committee voted out all 12 appropriations bills. Despite the obstructionism we have seen and despite where we find ourselves, I ask all of us to take stock of where we are, given what we saw happen in the historic election of November 8. I think the American people have made very clear they want the government to function and they don't have a lot of tolerance for gamesmanship or partisanship or obstruction, but we cannot move forward with other substantial legislative goals until we address funding for the remainder of this fiscal year. While I am disappointed we find ourselves where we are today--having to pass another short-term continuing resolution until next March or so--this waiting until the last minute is not a good way to do business. I hope next year, with the new administration and with the leadership of Senator McConnell, Speaker Ryan in the House, and with more cooperation from our Democratic colleagues, we can have a regular and open appropriations process, one that will serve the American people much better. It will certainly serve the interests of the Defense Department and other people who need to be able to plan beyond 2 months or 3 months in terms of what they can do with the money Congress is going to appropriate. Until then, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to set aside the disputes we have had over the last year and the election itself----which I know some are finding it easier to see the results of the election in the rearview mirror than others, as evidenced by the comments I heard from the Senator from Massachusetts when I came to the floor--but we need to pass a bill that will fund the government and allow us to move forward. I hope we can do that. Then, once we have completed the work for this year, we can come back in the new year with a new administration, a new Congress, and recommit ourselves to doing the people's work and doing it in a consensus-building, bipartisan way that listens to what our constituents are telling us they want, not the siren call of the people who think they know better than they do what is good for them but to listen to the American people and then get about the work of passing legislation which promotes their interests. This is first to assure for the common defense but, secondly, to make sure our economy starts to grow again so people who want to find work or want better paying jobs can find work available so they can provide for their families and pursue their American dream. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Sessions.)

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, soon we will have a chance to vote on the American Energy and Conservation Act, a bill that has been championed by our colleague from Louisiana--actually, both of them, Senators Cassidy and Vitter--and they have done a terrific job of getting us to this point where we are voting on this important piece of legislation. This bill is about as straightforward as it can get. It incentivizes American energy production through revenue sharing agreements with the Federal Government. This is important because States like mine-- especially along the gulf coast--spend an awful lot of money investing in infrastructure to support an industry that benefits not just our States, not just the region, but the entire country. It is time to balance these costs with reasonable revenue sharing agreements such as we have struck in the past. Given that these States produce a big portion of the oil and gas our entire Nation needs to keep the lights on, it is only right that these States should benefit from some modest revenue sharing. This legislation would make sure that is possible. So I hope our colleagues will support it when we vote on it shortly. Energy Policy This legislation is a good example of the kind of energy policy that a new Congress can put forward next year and actually have the prospect of being signed into law under a new administration, under a new President. One of the things I think I have observed about the Obama administration is that while the President claims to be ``all of the above'' in terms of his outlook on energy, he really isn't. He is into picking winners and losers. One of the reasons many people in coal- producing regions in our country felt betrayed by his policies and by the President was reflected in the outcome of the vote. In West Virginia, for example, I think Mrs. Clinton got 27 percent of the vote in a State that previously had been predominantly a Democratic State. That is because many people felt as though their very livelihood had been taken from them as a result of the regulatory overreach and, frankly, what they call--and I think appropriately so--the War on Coal. But, as I said, ``all of the above'' is actually the right policy; it is just that I don't think President Obama ever really meant it. A lot of folks try to paint with broad strokes about energy: Either you are on the side of the environment, climate change, or you are on the side of innovation and new technologies, or you are on the side of traditional oil and gas development. I would dare say--and this may come as a surprise to some of my colleagues--that Texas actually produces more clean energy from wind than any other State in the Nation. I know we are known as an oil and gas State, and that is true, but we really do embrace an ``all of the above'' strategy. As a result, I think it has really helped our economy stay ahead of the national economy, even during tough economic times for the country. So we can have literally an ``all of the above'' policy, including one that works well for the environment. As a matter of fact, because of fracking and horizontal drilling and the ability to produce more natural gas in the United States, we have actually seen emissions into the environment come down dramatically because more people are opting for natural gas rather than other fuel sources. So this is, frankly, a win/win proposition. We know that, as I said, Texas is known as leading the way in oil and gas production, and this fact was underlined and emphasized just this last week when the U.S. Geological Survey announced that one shale formation in the Permian Basin near Midland-Odessa contained the largest estimate of continuous oil that they have ever surveyed in our country. This should give us a little bit of humility when it comes to making long-term predictions. I don't know whether it was 10, maybe 15 years ago, there was some discussion about something called peak oil. In other words, the argument was that we had basically discovered all of the oil and gas there was to discover and there wasn't any more out there. This just shows how time and time again people underestimate the initiative and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs and the people who work hard, including our scientists, to create new technologies to help us move forward. That is why I am optimistic about our country as long as we don't stand in the way of those innovators and those entrepreneurs. In Texas we have learned that the best policies sometimes are just to get the government out of the way, off our back, out of our way, with its hand out of our pocket, and frankly, let the experts do their jobs with limited bureaucratic influence. That is something the whole country can benefit from, and I am hopeful that during this new administration under President-Elect Trump, working with Republican majorities in both Houses, we can begin to untangle the stranglehold the regulatory state has imposed on so much of our economy, whether it is in the banking industry--I see the chairman of the Banking Committee here, and he knows this hot topic well. The regulations put on our small businesses, on our energy producers--all of this has stunted the sort of normal economic rebound we would see following a recession like we had in 2008. I am looking forward to getting a lot done to help free up our Nation's economy and in particular by promoting our Nation's energy resources. We used to think of natural resources as a tremendous benefit and a comparative advantage one nation has over another, but I have to tell my colleagues that we have squandered those natural advantages we have had in this country by not unleashing this sleeping giant of American energy. It is not just important to our economy, it is important to our national security and the world order. As we all know, in Europe and elsewhere, people like Vladimir Putin use energy as a weapon. When people have a sole source of energy and it is from Russia and he can turn it off and on at his whim, that creates a lot of problems for them and, frankly, keeps them from asserting themselves in the world order. But by providing export capacity like we did with lifting the export ban on oil in December and, hopefully, doing the same thing with liquefied natural gas--something we have an abundance of, cheap, liquefied natural gas--we can provide an alternative energy supply to countries in Europe and around the world. So we need to seize this opportunity to reform the regulatory process. We need to address the renewable fuel standard, which is not working for anybody, and we need to build on the energy renaissance occurring in States such as North Dakota and Texas and States that take a pro-growth, pro-energy outlook. I am proud of the energy-friendly environment in my State. The Texas example proves that we can take advantage of the natural resources that God blessed us with to help consumers, to help seniors, to help people on fixed incomes, and we can do this without damaging the environment. We can actually do it and improve the environment, as we have seen in the case of natural gas production and use taking the place of other forms of energy production, and a reduction in emissions occurring consistently as well. So it is time we take this know-how to the rest of the country. I want to make it clear that making our energy sector stronger is so essential because it benefits everyone. No. 1, it creates jobs. It creates benefits for families who are provided for by those jobs. It helps daily commuters out on the road with affordable energy. It also helps small businesses do what they can do to keep the lights on, not to mention the jobs, as I said a moment ago, created by a healthy energy industry. With the election that occurred on November 8, with the Republicans in the majority in both Houses and now with President-Elect Trump coming into the White House, we can make real strides in energy innovation and production. It is really a historic opportunity, if we think about it. I look forward in the future to discussing even more ideas about how we can capitalize on our Nation's energy resources for everyone's benefit. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee On Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 17, 2016, at 2 p.m., in room SH-219 of the Hart Senate Office Building.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 17, 2016, at 11:55 a.m.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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