John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 2:15 p.m. in room SR-301 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 5 p.m.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SR-253 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a Subcommittee hearing entitled ``The State of the U.S. Maritime Industry: Stakeholder Perspectives.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a Subcommittee hearing entitled ``New Approaches and Innovative Technologies to Improve Water Supply.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Administrative State: An Examination of Federal Rulemaking.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Seapower of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 20, 2016, at 2 p.m.

Mr. CORNYN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday this Chamber passed a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, another bipartisan accomplishment that without a doubt has helped return this Chamber to operating the way that I think we all believe it should function. After that, today we were finally able to move forward with an energy bill, the Energy Policy Modernization Act. We have all been working on that legislation for some time now, and I am pleased we got it done earlier today. I give special credit to Chair Murkowski, the bill manager, and her counterpart Senator Cantwell for their incredible patience and diligence in dealing with this legislation that had been stuck on this Senate floor for some time. Senator Murkowski, in particular, didn't shy away from addressing some of the most difficult challenges head on. Needless to say, her tirelessness, her diligence, and hard work finally paid off earlier today. This legislation is important to the country because it helps update our energy policies and helps America produce more energy, use it more efficiently, and save money in the process. One of the most significant portions of that legislation was streamlining the approval process for the liquefied natural gas export. This is really an example of how our energy future has been transformed so dramatically. You may recall that years ago there were terminals being built around the country on the shorelines that were going to be the recipients of natural gas produced in some other part of the world and then brought to the United States. But thanks to modern drilling technology and the use of fracking--I know in some quarters this is a dirty word, but we have been doing it successfully in the United States for 70 or more years. Thanks to horizontal drilling in fracking and modern drilling technologies, America is now producing more natural gas than we have any use for. It is good for our economy, good for our jobs, and good for the world, really, for America to be able to export more of its natural gas--and oil, for that matter. It is something we dealt with at the end of last year when we lifted the antiquated export ban on crude oil. This legislation, like the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, is another example of how the Senate is back to work. When I talk to constituents and folks back home, I say: Well, you may not have heard--or if you heard it, you may not actually believe it--but we are actually getting some work done in this Congress under new leadership. I think it has been beneficial not only to the country, not just to those directly affected by the legislation we are passing-- things such as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to deal with the opioid prescription drug abuse and heroin issue--not only are the people directly affected by the legislation benefiting, but the entire country is, and particularly Members of the Senate. We have actually been able to debate, discuss, and ultimately vote on legislation. What a concept. It was not too long ago--when the Democratic leader was majority leader--that this Senate was virtually shut down. Even if you were in the majority party, even if you were a Democrat when Democrats held the majority in the Senate, basically because of the decision to shut down the legislative process and to deny anyone an opportunity to offer an amendment, when it came to election time, many of our Democratic colleagues didn't have anything to show for their service representing their constituents in the Senate, even though they were in the majority party. Under the new leadership of the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader is committed to an open process that benefits all Members of the Senate and all 320 million or so people in the United States who we represent. Now any Senator, regardless of whether they are in the majority or minority, can call up and seek votes on amendments to legislation to help make legislation better. I think we have learned an invaluable lesson from the mistakes of the past. Only by working together in a bipartisan way can we try to find consensus and get things done. The American people deserve that. Now that we have finished our work on the Energy bill, I hope we can work together to address other problems facing the country. One of the most fundamental jobs the Congress has to perform is the appropriations process because somebody has to pay for the policies to actually make the policies that we pass work. This week we have a chance to start that process with the Energy and Water Appropriations bill. This is another example of great bipartisan work and commitment, a bill that unanimously passed out of committee. This legislation will invest in our Nation's waterways and fund critical infrastructure projects. Yesterday I spoke about the flooding that has been affecting much of Texas this week, particularly the Houston area, and that we are struggling to deal with. This appropriations bill, for example, would invest in projects to mitigate risks associated with flooding like that which Texas has been experiencing over this week. It would also invest in our nuclear arsenal to make sure we are ready to meet existing and future nuclear threats. To put it simply, this appropriations bill plays a big role, not only in terms of our national security but also in terms of our public safety. That is both at home and abroad. Last year we got stuck. We tried to move the appropriations bills through the regular process, but because of a dispute over spending levels, our Democratic friends basically blocked any ability we had to move the appropriations bill through the regular order or the regular process. Unfortunately, at the end of the year, what that left us with was the need to pass one big Omnibus appropriations bill, something that nobody said they liked. In fact, on the Senate floor I called it not an Omnibus appropriations bill but an ominous appropriations bill. The problem with that is there is very little transparency, and only a handful of people are really directly involved in crafting a bill that spends over $1 trillion. That is a terrible way to do business. Now we are trying to get back to the old-fashioned way--one bill at a time. I commend Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Feinstein for the good work they have done so far. This is going to take a little bit of cooperation and maybe even a little bit of self-restraint, something that Washington isn't necessarily known for. Even though all 12 appropriations bills were sent out of their respective committees last year for the first time since 2009, we weren't able to get it done. I am hoping this year will be different. So far our colleagues across the aisle have said they believe we ought to proceed with a markup of different appropriations bills, voting on them one at a time. This is our first test. Believe me, people are watching to see how we proceed on this legislation and on other appropriations bills, including our colleagues in the House of Representatives. Stop passing some stopgap funding bill at the brink at the end of a fiscal year where people are talking about shutdowns. That is not the way we are supposed to work. We could do better and we could avoid those pitfalls if we would just do our best, show a little restraint, and get our work done. I hope the Energy and Water bill is the first of 12 appropriations bills that we consider, discuss, and ultimately pass because that is what the American people deserve. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would just ask the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, the bill manager--the point he makes is exactly right, and I think most Americans would be surprised at this blue line and the fact that this is the money the appropriations process spends each year, but it is only about 30 percent of what the Federal Government spends--to his point. My recollection is that under current projections, that red line is growing at about 5.3 percent, it seems like, over the next 30 years or so, while the blue line remains roughly flat. But that is a product of a lot of things that need to be fixed, such as the fact that for every $1 put into Medicare, $3 is spent, and the fact that in the not too distant future, the Social Security trust fund is going to run out of money because people are getting older, more people are benefiting, and fewer people are paying into it. But the Senator is exactly right. We actually have been pretty disciplined in dealing with discretionary spending because of the Budget Control Act and sequestration. And many people have decried the fact that we actually renegotiated the sequester numbers, but one reason we did that is for national security purposes, that about half a trillion dollars of the money we spend is for national security. I know the Senator is aware, as I am, that there is good work being done at the Budget Committee level to come up with some budget reforms, but unless we get control of not just the discretionary spending but the nondiscretionary--the mandatory spending, that red line--we are going to continue to see the deficits and the debt grow. And when interest rates go back up to normal levels, we are going to be spending more money on interest on the debt than we will, perhaps, on national security. I told the Senator this was a question and I guess it is more of a statement, but I just wanted to thank him and Senator Feinstein and the Committee on Appropriations for getting us back to regular order and back to work, and I hope we will take up and pass this legislation without undue delay. I would also add that this is not an opportunity for people to empty their out basket on different pieces of legislation they would like. Because of the rules of the Senate, that would create a lot of problems. So, again, I guess we would counsel for some of the self- restraint that was talked about earlier. I thank the Senators from Tennessee and California for bringing this important piece of legislation to us. I hope we can get this done sometime today or tomorrow. I thank the Senator.

Mr. CORNYN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, over this last weekend and through yesterday, large parts of central and southeast Texas experienced torrential downpours. The Houston region in particular experienced so much rain, it led to widespread flooding. I know many people have seen that on TV, in news reports, or online. Many will recall that last year over Memorial Day weekend, Harris County, which is where Houston is located, suffered from similar flooding. This year's rain seems to be even more widespread, with some areas receiving as much as 20 inches of rain in a relatively short period of time. Whole subdivisions were submerged, interstate highways were impassable, and power was knocked out, which affected more than 100,000 people at one point. Tragically, several people have died as a result of these floods. Amidst this tragedy, Texans have been quick to help one another. Crews had performed more than 1,000 rescues as of yesterday afternoon, and even one TV reporter on location covering the story rushed to rescue an elderly man from a flooded underpass. The rescue is on YouTube. I recommend anybody who is interested to watch it. It is really quite a rescue. This morning I spoke to County Judge Ed Emmett of Harris County, and I will continue to stay in close contact with him, as well as the chief of the Texas Department of Emergency Management, in the coming days. The one thing I do know is that Texans are resilient. In particular, the people in the Houston region, where I happen to have been born, are used to storms that cause that kind of flooding. But the rebuilding effort will be long and one that will require support from officials at all levels. Going forward, I will do everything I can to help mobilize Federal resources for the Houston area should the Governor determine a Federal disaster declaration is necessary. In the meantime, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Houston and other affected areas in Texas, and we hope and pray for their safety and their fast recovery.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I will spend a few minutes talking about a piece of legislation that is bipartisan and deserves this Chamber's consideration. Last year, around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I reintroduced the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA. This bill makes minor adjustments to our laws to help Americans who are attacked on U.S. soil get justice from those who sponsored and facilitated that terrorist attack on U.S. soil. When the Judiciary Committee considered this bill earlier this year, it was reported out without objection. I think the reasons for that are pretty clear. We should use every means available to prevent the funding of terrorism, and the victims of terrorism in our country should be able to seek justice from people who do fund that terrorist attack. We have to maintain our diligence to hold those who sponsor terrorism accountable, particularly on our own soil, and we must leverage all of our resources--or as many as possible--to shut off the funding sources for terrorists. Using civil liability to do so has been Federal policy for decades, and JASTA would strengthen that. It is my hope that this legislation will serve as a defective deterrent and will make foreign governments think twice before sending money to terrorist groups who target our homeland. Our country confronts new and expanding terror networks that are focused on targeting our citizens, and we need to do everything we can to stop it, including passing this legislation. JASTA is also important because it would help the victims of the 9/11 attacks achieve closure from that horrific tragedy. I mentioned that this is a bipartisan bill, and I am glad to introduce it with my colleague Chuck Schumer of New York. But unfortunately the President doesn't seem to share these bipartisan concerns about helping the victims of terrorism or deterring others from funding and facilitating it in the future. Unfortunately, the administration has worked to undercut progress of this legislation at every turn. Yesterday the White House insisted that the President does not oppose JASTA on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia even though the administration has made that argument in private. In light of his upcoming trip there this week, it appears that the Obama administration is pulling out all the stops to keep this bill from moving forward before the President's visit to Riydah. I wish the President and his aides would spend as much time and energy working with us in a bipartisan manner as they have working against us trying to prevent victims of terrorism from receiving the justice they deserve. I was glad to see the President abandon an argument that I always found strange, especially coming from him. He didn't seem to care that much about our relationship with Saudi Arabia when he ran through his misguided nuclear deal with Iran, running roughshod over serious concerns raised by the Kingdom. He didn't seem to care much about our relationship with Saudi Arabia when he contended that they should learn to ``share the neighborhood with its mortal enemy Iran.'' In a very real way, the President's opposition to this bill looked like it was asking the victims of 9/11 and their families to pay some of the political price for the President's mishandling of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Well, yesterday the White House claimed it opposed the bill because it undermined the principle of sovereign immunity. In the past, the President said U.S. citizens could sue foreign governments and the United States would get sued abroad. Now, sovereign immunity is an important principle to be sure, but the fact is, the White House is misrepresenting the law. We have had statutory exemptions to this immunity for years for business conduct, torts, and many things, including terrorism. We already had these exceptions in the law, and that has been the law for decades. The only real change is allowing victims of terrorist attacks on the homeland to sue even if the defendant is not designated by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. That is right. All this would do would be to allow victims of terrorist attacks on our homeland to sue even if the sponsor of the terrorist activity was not a State Department designated state sponsor of terrorism. This is a narrow piece of legislation, and it would not upend traditional principles of sovereignty. Yesterday a White House spokesman claimed that JASTA would lead to liability for U.S. humanitarian aid work. That is just false. I am confident that Senator Schumer and I can make that abundantly clear to anybody who shares that misconception. The President's attempt so far to derail this legislation that would help the victims of 9/11 pursue justice under the law is completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, this shouldn't be a surprise. The President has steadfastly refused to declassify and release 28 pages of the ``9/11 Commission Report'' that pertain to allegations of Saudi Arabia's support for the 9/11 terrorists. According to some news reports, President Obama has vowed several times to release this information, but he hasn't followed through on that promise yet. His actions to shield the Saudi Government instead of advocating on behalf of his own citizens rings much louder than his words. That doesn't sound to me like the most transparent administration in American history, which is what the President promised the Nation at his inauguration. The good news is that there is bipartisan support in this Chamber for those who will stand up for these victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and hold the people responsible accountable. I look forward to continuing to work with our colleagues to get this critical legislation passed. The President has his prerogatives under the Constitution. If he wants to veto legislation passed by the Congress on a strong bipartisan vote, he can do that, but 67 Senators and two-thirds of the House can override a Presidential veto. That is in the Constitution too. So the President needs to step up, instead of trying to kill this legislation by private conversations in the Senate. The Senate needs to do its work: Pass this bipartisan legislation, help the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and hold those who fund and facilitate terrorist attacks responsible. If the President wants to get in the way, he can veto the legislation, and we can override that veto. That is the way the Constitution works. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am always impressed with the distinguished Democratic whip and his eloquence, but he is telling the American people that we have to choose between being a nation of immigrants or a nation of laws. The fact is, we don't have to make that choice; we can be both. But we can't do it when we have a President who simply believes he can do an end run around the U.S. Constitution. In fact, according to Pew, about 3.5 million people could claim the benefits of the President's unlawful Executive action, receiving work permits, driver's licenses, and Social Security numbers. While we are a compassionate country, we are a nation of immigrants, that is not the kind of decision the Constitution gives to a single political actor, even if he is the President of the United States. So there is a right way and a wrong way. And I realize the distinguished Democratic whip believes that just because they can't get what they want when they want it, the President can then resort to this end run, but thankfully that is not the view of the courts. The U.S. Federal district court in Brownsville, TX, issued an injunction against the President's Executive action. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that injunction, and now the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in the case this afternoon. This is really more than just about immigration. This is whether, under the doctrine of separation of powers, the Constitution we have lived under for lo these many years gives the President unilateral authority without the approval of Congress, the elected representatives of the people, and in flagrant disregard for the laws that are already on the books. The heart of the case the Court heard today is about stopping a President who said: I have a pen and I have a phone. And even though the American people have given Republicans a majority in both Houses and obviously forced the President to deal with a Republican conference to come up with consensus legislation, the President said: Forget that. I am not about trying to achieve bipartisan consensus on anything. If I don't get what I want, I am going to jam it through the system and hope the courts don't stop me. So it is not just about immigration, it is about the Constitution itself. There are perhaps 22 different times, by my count, where the President of the United States acknowledged he didn't even have this authority. I remember in a speech he gave to La Raza, an interview he gave on Univision, the President denied he had the authority, which now, miraculously, our Democratic friends think is clear-cut under the law. How can that be? It cannot be. I remember specifically being at a meeting where the President invited the leadership of both the House and the Senate to the White House after the 2014 election. Many may recall that leading up to that point, there had been a lot of rumors about the President issuing an Executive action, but he had not done so. I remember specifically sitting there in the White House with some of my colleagues from the House and the Senate, where then-Speaker Boehner said to the President: Please, Mr. President, don't do this. Don't poison the well. Don't make it impossible, by such a polarizing action, for us to build consensus on the building blocks of immigration reform where we could actually agree. I remember Majority Leader McCarthy making the same comment. I joined in and reiterated the same point. The President, defiant, told us he was going to go ahead and do it. There are a lot of conversations people are having today across the United States. I had some of those earlier today during some visits with people who were just wondering how to explain the political environment in America today. What I tell them is that this seems unprecedented in my experience. People are so angry. People are so scared. People are frightened and worried about the next generation. And for the first time in my memory, parents are doubting whether their children will enjoy the same sorts of freedom and prosperity that we enjoy today. That is a tragedy. My parents were part of the ``greatest generation.'' My dad was a B- 17 pilot in the Army Air Corps, even before the Air Force came into being. On his 26th bombing mission over Nazi Germany, while he was flying in the 8th Air Force out of Molesworth, England, he was shot down and captured as a prisoner of war for 4 months. Fortunately, that was toward the tail end of the war. Even though he was injured in his parachute jump--not seriously, as it turned out, although he had some disability associated with that later in life--he managed to survive that and even survived an appendectomy by a fellow prisoner of war when he had appendicitis in a POW camp. It is amazing. I always thought my dad had nine lives. Even though he passed away at the very young age of 67, he survived countless occasions when surely he could have lost his life, including those occasions of jumping out of a burning B-17 plane over Germany and an appendectomy in a POW camp at the hands of a fellow prisoner of war. The reason my parents and all of our parents sacrificed so much and risked so much and worked so hard is that they believed in the promise of America--the promise that exists only when the law is respected, when people in high office are bound by and obligated to and held accountable to the same laws that govern the most humble among us. That is what America is all about--a country where people, if they work hard and play by the rules, can achieve their dreams. I think that is the reason America seems so polarized today. People have sort of jumped outside the usual paradigm of political calculation where you are a liberal or you are a conservative or you are somewhere in the middle. People have sort of jumped that track, and we are seeing something entirely different on the left and on the right. I think the reason is, in part, because of a President who believes he is not bound by the Constitution and laws of the United States. People are frightened because they have seen over the last 7 years-- even though the President was stopped legislatively after the Affordable Care Act was passed and after Dodd-Frank was passed and then stopped by the electorate giving the Republicans a majority in the House and in 2014 a majority in Senate--that this President will not be stopped by the voters. That is the determination he made, and this Executive order is exhibit 1 because he said: I don't care what the voters think. I don't care what the American people think. I don't care what the Constitution says. I don't care that what Congress says should be the law of the land. I am going to do it the way I want to do it. Frankly, that is scary stuff when you are talking about the Commander in Chief, the leader of the free world, and the sort of power that goes along with that. Rather than heed the warning--or I would really call it the plea of leaders in the House and the Senate after the 2014 election--the President decided to go around Congress and try to essentially change the law, giving work permits to people who were illegally present in the country, giving them driver's licenses, even giving Social Security numbers to an estimated 3.5 million people. How can the President do this when Congress is deadlocked? Well, he did it. And that is a question the Supreme Court is going to have to decide. At the time, the President called it a middle-ground approach. He is a master of rhetoric. The problem is the facts belie his words. The fact of the matter is this was a constitutional scorched-earth tactic. And more than anything else, it eroded public confidence in Congress's ability, working with the White House, to get anything constructive done in the area of immigration. The Acting President pro tempore is, of course, from the great State of Oklahoma, and he went to school in Texas. He understands what I understand: We have a large Hispanic population in Texas--about 38 percent. But we are a very diverse State. Many people are surprised when I tell them the third most commonly spoken language in Texas today is Vietnamese--Vietnamese. Can you believe that? We also have a large Indian American population. We are a very diverse State, and the main reason for that is we still represent that land of opportunity that America used to be, where people can come, work hard--those of modest means, with little on their backs and maybe nothing in their pockets--and achieve something and live the American dream. So I resent, I really do resent, the distinguished Senator from Illinois trying to tell us the President was only trying to do something that was good for Texas. He doesn't have a clue. In fact, if we were to follow the policy choices of the leadership in Texas, the country would be a heck of a lot better off when it comes to taking advantage of our energy resources, when it comes to taxes, reasonable regulation, and a willingness to try to accommodate those who invest capital and create jobs. To me, that is the single biggest difference between where I live in Texas and what I see across our country and what is coming out of Washington, DC. There seems to be an attitude here in Washington of how many more obstacles, how many larger impediments can we place in the way of those who invest the capital and those who are creating the jobs and still expect the American dream to be alive. Believe me, we have tested it. The Obama administration has tested it, and what it has produced is disaster. It has produced a health care system that, rather than making health care more affordable, has made it more expensive, has caused people who liked their coverage to give up their coverage only to buy something that had a deductible that has, in essence, made them self-insured. It has created stagnant wages. It has created stagnant economic growth. There are not a lot of problems we have in this country that couldn't be mitigated, made better, if we just saw our economy growing again, instead of the sort of anemic and flatlined growth we have seen since 2008. My predecessor in the Senate, Mr. Phil Gramm, has a Ph.D. in economics from Texas A&M University. He has made the point that, historically, what you see after a recession like the one we saw following the fiscal crisis in 2008 is a V-shape recovery. In other words, you hit the bottom and you bounce up and you grow quickly because basically you have worked the problems out of the system. But what we have seen since 2008 is a U-shaped recovery, if you could even call it that. It is pretty close to flat, where the economy is growing at less than 2 percent, which is not fast enough to keep people fully employed. And we still have--although the unemployment rate has dropped down, we still have the smallest percentage of people participating in the workforce that we have had in the last 30 years. Many people have simply given up, retired early, or made other arrangements. This is a serious matter. The Supreme Court heard arguments today. We know there are currently eight members of the Supreme Court. I heard the distinguished Democratic whip complain about the fact that we have decided to allow the voters to choose in November the President who will make the choice to fill the Scalia vacancy. Well, the fact of the matter is, it is simply too important to allow President Obama, given his penchant for lawlessness and usurpation of constitutional authority--to give him the chance to stack the Supreme Court in favor of a Court that would likely rubberstamp his actions and those of future Presidents for the next 25 years. The hypocrisy is rich, listening to our Democratic colleagues. These are the folks who invented the judicial filibuster. They invented the judicial filibuster. They did that when President George W. Bush was President. As controversial as the nomination of Clarence Thomas was, I believe he was confirmed with 52 votes--not 60 votes but 52 because nobody dreamed back then that Senate rules would allow the minority party to insist on 60 votes to confirm a President's appointee. We know that after the election where the Democratic majority lost that majority, in a lameduck session they jammed a number of appointees onto the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in an effort to pack that court to match the ideological picture they wanted. Again, this is the second most important court in the Nation, which they believed would be more inclined to rubberstamp the overreaching by the Obama administration. We are all familiar with the Biden speech in 1992 when, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he suggested it would be perhaps inappropriate to confirm a Presidential nominee in the waning days of that President's term. We saw the Harry Reid speech in 2005, where he said it is the President's prerogative to appoint, but the Senate is not obligated to grant consent to that nomination. Actually, I agree with Senator Reid back then, but not today, when he has taken the exact opposite approach. Then there is Senator Schumer, the heir apparent to the Democratic leadership in the Senate, who said, in 2007, 18 months before George W. Bush left office: I think there ought to be a presumption against confirmation. To listen to my Democratic colleagues complain about the decision we have made to let the voters vote for the President who is going to fill that vacancy and to watch them--well, it looks like crocodile tears to me, and it smells like hypocrisy. As we have said, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments today in a case brought by the State of Texas and other States that would otherwise be compelled to grant work permits, issue driver's licenses and Social Security numbers to people illegally present in the United States who did not comply with our laws. I am confident the Court will find that the States have suffered real harm from the standpoint of the constitutional notion of standing; in other words, you have to have standing before you can sue. Basically, it means you have to show real or potential harm if the Court doesn't act. I am confident the Court will find standing. But the Court will do one of two things. Either the Court will affirm by being split 4 to 4 or all eight Justices could write in favor of the Fifth Circuit decision to let the injunction stand or, if the Court deems that this issue needs to be held over until the Court has all nine members, after the first of the year, that is a decision the Court can make. This is a very important issue, and I am glad the Court is taking it up. We need to know--we need to know whether we remain a nation of laws as well as a nation of immigrants. The whole idea our Democratic colleagues have foisted on us that somehow we have to choose between those two is a false choice. It is a false choice. We are both. We aren't one or the other. America has always been made better by people who have risked coming to the United States because they weren't satisfied with what they had or where they lived, but the day we begin rewarding people who do this in disregard of the laws is the day we begin to no longer be a nation of laws, and that is a legacy and a treasure we should not squander. Mr. President, I yield the floor.