John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Roberts), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am glad I came to the floor and heard my friend and colleague, the majority whip, from Illinois, and his explanation for how it is clearly within the President's authority to issue this Executive order he plans on announcing tonight. The basic problem is the President himself has said repeatedly he doesn't have that authority. He said it repeatedly. We have all seen the clips on TV and online. He said he doesn't have the power to do it. He was right then, and he is wrong now. There is a right way and a wrong way to solve problems. The right way would have been during the first 2 years, after President Obama won the election in 2008 and his party commanded 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House of Representatives. If this had been a priority for him, he could have done it then. Instead, on a party-line vote, he chose to jam through the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--and we see what a disaster that has been. It was not just me. I was a skeptic. I didn't think it would work. While the goals were laudable and worthy, I just didn't think the Federal Government had the competence or certainly the ability to reconfigure one-sixth of our economy. But the President did it, his party passed it, and it enjoyed no bipartisan support. That is one of the basic problems with what the President is doing today. The reason why it is so important to follow the Constitution-- which requires passing legislation affecting 5 million people through both Houses of Congress and forces us to negotiate and build consensus--is because those are sustainable policies. If you try to do things on a ``my way or the highway'' basis or on a purely partisan basis, those are not sustainable because we know that as time goes by, today's majority will be tomorrow's minority. Now a Democrat occupies the White House. Perhaps next time a Republican will occupy the White House. Who knows. The point is that only objectives we pursue through the legislative process according to the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America that are done on a bipartisan basis through that natural census-building that is required in order to reach our goals--those are truly sustainable policies. And when the President decides to do it through an Executive order, exercising powers that he himself said he does not have, what are people supposed to think? I heard my friend from Illinois say, Well, it has been 511 days and Republicans haven't swallowed the comprehensive immigration reform bill that has come from the Senate. They are not required to swallow it. They can pass legislation or not on their own timetable. The old joke is that the opposing party is our adversary, but the Senate is the enemy. That is the joke in House circles. So there is a natural rivalry between the House and the Senate. They are not expected nor required to accept what we pass, nor are they required to do it on our timetable. I believe Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McCarthy are committed, as am I and the incoming majority leader come January, Senator McConnell, to making progress on an incremental basis in this important area. It has to be thoughtful, and we have to have fulsome debate with everybody participating in the process. There are important questions. What impact is the President's Executive order going to have when the unemployment rate is still at 5.8 percent nationally and when the percentage of people actually looking for work is at a 30-year low because many people have given up because of the slow-growing economy? What is the impact of these 5 million--or however many additional work permits the President presumes to have the power to issue--what is the impact going to be on competition for jobs with the economy growing slowly and jobs in short supply? What is the impact of the President's Executive order going to be on household median income? We know wages have been stagnant for the middle class because of this slow-growing economy. What is the impact of millions of additional people competing for jobs in the economy going to be on wages? I would like to have the answers to those questions. I would also like to know if the President has the power--which he said he doesn't have but now apparently he has changed his mind--to issue this kind of Executive order affecting 5 million people? What about the other 6 million people who are in the country who did not come in in compliance with our immigration laws, who either overstayed their visas or came across the border illegally? I come from a border State. We have 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. We encountered what was described as a humanitarian crisis because we had this magnet known as the impression that we would not enforce our laws that encouraged people to make that treacherous journey from Central America across Mexico. Many of these immigrants lost their lives, were sexually assaulted or kidnapped and held for ransom--very dangerous circumstances in the hands of the criminal organizations that basically control this business. This is a business for them. But if the President has the authority to do this for 5 million, why not the 11 million? How does he explain his action to the 6 million people who will now see these 5 million getting preferential treatment? And how in the world does he explain it to the people who have waited patiently year after year trying to do it the right way? The President has effectively bumped them out of the line and bumped 5 million people ahead of them. I have every confidence that if we were able to do this in a thoughtful, deliberative sort of way, we could find a compassionate and satisfactory outcome for the people who made the mistake of entering the country illegally or who have overstayed. I believe in proportionality. We don't give the death penalty for speeding tickets. So I think there is an appropriate way to address this, but it is not by an amnesty. I call it an amnesty because, basically, there is no reconciliation process. In other words, when a person makes a mistake-- and we all make mistakes and we all understand the aspirations and hopes immigrants bring to the United States because they come here for the same reason people have historically come here, and that is for the American dream. We understand that. But we also understand that when somebody has made a mistake, they need to own up to it and they need to reconcile themselves to lawful authority because, otherwise, the attitude is the law doesn't matter, and it is the law that protects all of us no matter who we are, where we come from, or how we pronounce our last name. And when we have a lawless process, as we do now and which this Executive order does nothing to fix, what that does is perpetuate lawlessness and chaos, and it also continues to enrich these criminal organizations that are more than happy to charge people $5,000, $6,000 a head to make that treacherous journey. Beyond all of the issues I just addressed, this is a terrible precedent. Again, I understand now the President has decided--and some of our Democratic colleagues say, Well, this is the same thing George Bush did and this is the same thing Dwight Eisenhower did. Well, it is not, and the President knew that when he said he didn't have the authority to do this previously. Now he has changed his mind. Now the argument is they issued Executive orders essentially implementing bipartisan legislation such as the 1986 amnesty that Ronald Reagan signed. There were Executive orders taken in furtherance of that consensus position based on the legislation. However, never has any President purported to have the authority to, out of whole cloth, do what this President says he is going to do. Where does he get the authority to issue work permits? I understand he can prioritize prosecution and deportation, and he has, but where does the President get the authority to issue work permits for millions of people? This is rocking people's fundamental confidence in their government. We elect Presidents to faithfully enforce the laws, including the Constitution of the United States. That is the oath the President takes when he is sworn in: ``I do solemnly swear.'' These laws, of course, are beyond the Constitution drafted by Congress. It is ``Schoolhouse Rock.'' Bills start in the House, and in the Senate they have to be reconciled and then sent to the President. That is civics 101. Maybe we need a new course called remedial civics 101 for those who have somehow forgotten how the Constitution is written and how it actually is implemented in the form of the legislative process. Of course, if the President objects to what Congress sends him, that is when the negotiations start. He can veto it. We can vote to override it if we have the votes. If we don't, we are back to square one and we have to start that negotiation again. I have never seen or even read of a President who seems so detached, so disinterested in actually engaging in this process set out by the Constitution. This President says if he doesn't get his way, I have a pen. I have a phone. I am going to go it alone. Well, that is a disaster waiting to occur, because it is a provocation to the other branches of government which say, Well, we are not irrelevant in this process and we may have something to say about it. I think we will see some of that in the very near future with regard to the way appropriations are made and what functions of government fund it. I heard my friend from Illinois say, People are even threatening a government shutdown. That is not true. I take that back. The Democrats are saying that. No Republican has said that. It is just not going to happen. It shouldn't happen and it won't happen. I love it when our friends in the other party like to tell us about our own internal politics. I was at the White House with the President and bicameral, bipartisan leadership and our Democratic friends said that the House of Representatives can't pass any immigration reform bill. Well, I don't know how they know that, unless they have some insider wisdom that is not obvious to the people who actually work there and have the responsibility to make it work. What I know and what I believe is that there is a good-faith desire to try to solve this problem, but not by what I call the ``pig in the python'' approach. In other words, we tried that with the Affordable Care Act, a 2,700-page bill involving trillions of dollars of expenditure done purely on a partisan basis and it didn't work. I think there is an understandable aversion to trying to do things in a comprehensive sort of way. So why not break it down into pieces and do what we can, because there are a lot of different pieces that enjoy bipartisan support. I think the precedent the President is setting is very dangerous, because if he purports now to have this power which he previously said on numerous occasions he didn't have, what about future Presidents? What about policies others may not like? Even if a person believes this is a pretty good idea--a person might say, The President is trying to act because obviously this is a controversial issue and things aren't moving fast enough, so I like what the President is doing. Suppose a person says that. Well, just think about the possibility that a few years from now when we have an election, we have a new President, and what if that President says, Well, President Obama purported to exercise this massive Executive authority in defiance of the Constitution and the laws, so I guess I can do it, too. This is not the kind of political system we want. This is not good for the American people. We do not want a system in which each party, when they happen to be in power, takes their turn abusing Executive authority. We do not want that. I would have thought there are enough people who love this institution known as the U.S. Senate and believe it has an indispensable role in our government who would say, Wait, Mr. President, don't do it, because we may like the policy, but this really is an end run around the Constitution and the role that is appropriately played by both Houses of Congress and the Executive. But, apparently, there are few, if any, folks on the other side of the aisle who believe that our tradition and our constitutional system of legislating is worth preserving--at least in this instance. I have spoken at some length about the practical consequences of the President's amnesty, but those consequences also bear repeating since the eyes of the country are now focused on what the President is going to announce tonight. We know from recent experience that the President's unilateral amnesty will be communicated to people in other countries as a signal that they can all come in. That is what happened with the unaccompanied children; 62,000 of them I think the number is, roughly, from Central America since last October. The reason there was a flood and a humanitarian crisis, as described by the President and the administration themselves, is because the signal was the green light is on and people can come to the United States. People need to come legally. As long as they get here, they can stay. This is because it undermines one of the basic premises of effective law enforcement, and that is deterrence. In other words, we don't want to just try to stop people after they break the law. Actually, it is too late to stop them. What we like to do is deter people from even thinking about breaking the law and, in this instance, even making that perilous journey. There is going to be a surge, an uptick, of some type of an illegal immigration. People are going to see this as a further signal it is OK to come, and they don't need to comply with the law, they don't need to wait. They can just come. If they are one of the lucky ones, they get to stay because this President or somebody will issue a further pardon. As I said earlier, this is also a major boom to the cartels and other gangs who control Mexico's smuggling networks. It will almost certainly lead to thousands of people who committed crimes in this country gaining legal status. It will also, as I said earlier, punish people who played by the rules and waited patiently in line trying to immigrate to the country legally. It will punish them by putting them in the back of the line. Let me just repeat this because it is important to me. America is the most generous country in the world when it comes to legal immigration. We are the beneficiary of the brains, the ambition, the hard work of people who come here from all over the globe. All of us weren't--or almost all of us, our ancestors were not born in the United States. We came from somewhere else. Mine came through Ellis Island from Ireland after one of the potato crop famines in the 19th century. So we understand both the desire to pursue the American dream in this country and the benefits that accrue to our country as a result of legal immigration. That is why we are such a generous country when it comes to legal immigration, but the current chaos associated with illegal immigration has a number of very negative consequences. I mentioned a moment ago my State has 1,200 miles of common border. It gets attention every once in a while as it did when this humanitarian crisis involving these unaccompanied minors occurred, but it happens day after day that people are detained coming across the southwestern border from all over the world. I met a young man about 6 months ago when I was down on the border who had emigrated from Bangladesh. I wondered how in the world did he get here from there. There were a number of other Senators and Congressmen with me. We asked the Border Patrol: Can we ask him? They said: Sure. It turned out he spoke enough English. I asked: Well, how much did it cost you to get here? He said: Six thousand dollars. I said: How did you get here? He said: I had to transit eight countries to get here. That is a pretty complicated itinerary for anybody even under normal circumstances, but what it demonstrates is there are networks not just in Central America and Mexico but around the world that feed people into this network in order to immigrate to the United States illegally. What we are doing is nothing about that. Last year people were detained at the southwestern border from 140 different countries. If someone goes down to the outside of Falfurrias, TX, down in South Texas, they have rescue beacons the Border Patrol has put out. If someone made this long trip from Central America through Mexico in the hot weather, let's say, and they are dehydrated, they are worried about their life and their health, they can actually go hit this rescue beacon and the Border Patrol will come pick them up which is maybe not their first choice, but it is better than dying from exposure. The languages of those rescue beacons, the ones I saw outside the checkpoint at Falfurrias, TX--they are in English, Spanish--that doesn't surprise anybody. The third language is Chinese. Chinese is not a native language for most--for anybody, I bet, in Brooks County, TX. What it demonstrates is that there is a pipeline coming across the southwestern border from all over the world. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see what a potential threat that is from a public safety standpoint. I know there are people who scoff at the idea of enhanced border security. The Senator from Illinois said we have enough Border Patrol to have one every half mile, 24 hours a day. This would be a way to try to secure the border. It has to be a combination of technology. It has to involve boots on the ground, and in some places--this is controversial along the border--we need to have what they call tactical infrastructure, fencing in some places, particularly in urban areas where it is easy to sprint across and be lost in a crowd before anybody discovers them. Last year there were roughly 414,000 people detained coming across the southwestern border--414,000 from more than 144 countries. Does that sound as though we solved the problem of border security? No. We are also sending mixed messages, as I said earlier, in terms of deterrence because people keep coming because they think they have a pretty good shot of making it in, and then the President issues an Executive order. I wish to mention one other issue that has a particular impact on communities in my State of Texas, because we are on the frontlines of this issue, which is cost to the local taxpayer. I know the distinguished Presiding Officer is a former mayor. The cost of health care, law enforcement, and education fall not primarily on Federal taxpayers, they end up falling on local taxpayers, including the taxes they pay for their school district or their city or their county, the emergency health care provided to the local emergency room and of course law enforcement costs. Believe me, people who come across the border are not all coming for the right reason. There are people who exploit our poorest border with criminal intent on their mind. They are dangerous, and so law enforcement has to take special precautions. That costs money. It costs the local taxpayers. The Federal Government has been abdicating its responsibility along the border for a long time. I, for one, have to chuckle when my friends from nonborder States want to tell me and tell my constituents about our backyard because frankly, to put it in a nice way, they need more information because they don't know what they are talking about. Most of my friends in the--this is understandable. We all understand our States and our regions. We know them better than other parts of the country that perhaps we haven't been to, but most of my colleagues--I get the impression that their knowledge of the border is from movies they have seen or novels they have read, not from the facts on the ground or studying statistics issued by the Border Patrol or the Department of Homeland Security. There is a right way and a wrong way to do what the President is purporting to do. The right way to do it is in accordance with the Constitution which requires both Houses to pass legislation and try to reconcile those in a conference committee and then send them to the President. There are regular negotiations taking place all along the way, but there are enough areas of consensus that I believe we can make true progress. We have not been able to do it through a comprehensive bill because I think there is enormous skepticism, not just about Washington but about Congress as well as about comprehensive bills having unintended consequences. Take the Affordable Care Act. The President said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. Your prices will go down, not up. That ended up not being true. When that happens people are skeptical. What are they trying to sell us next? The best way to deal with that, it seems to me, is to break it down into smaller, transparent pieces, and then move the pieces across the floor in the House and the Senate, and let's get them to the President. After we have done that one, two, three, four times, I think people will then say: Well, you know what we have just done is immigration reform in an incremental sort of way. It is not going to satisfy everybody. Again, if your demand is I want everything I want or I am not going to take anything, we know what happens when people lay down those sort of ultimatums. You get nothing. While there are areas on the immigration topic, which admittedly is controversial, it is challenging, but it is our responsibility to address these challenges and these difficulties and do the very best job we can. The answer is not--and it can't be--a Presidential abuse of power. As I pointed out earlier, when we try to do things on that basis, just like if we try to pass legislation on a purely partisan basis, it doesn't work. It is not sustainable. It is a provocation to the people who have been carved out of the process to try to do what they can to defend their role in the process, and that is what I worry about. I remember being at a conference not that long ago when James Baker III and Joseph Calafato spoke. They talked about the importance of bipartisanship. Not that I am ever going to get the Presiding Officer to agree with me on everything I believe and he is not going to agree with me on everything I believe, but they made the point when it comes to some of the most challenging topics, bipartisanship solutions are the only ones that are actually sustainable. What happens is after the next election, the party that was pushed out of the process and run over then says, OK, we are going to try to repeal everything they did because we didn't vote for it and we don't support it. That commends itself to my way of thinking to a recommitment of bipartisan accomplishment. I am committed to that. I know from talking to colleagues across the aisle that after 4 years of being shut out of the process themselves in the Senate, they are going to enjoy the new Congress come January because they will be able to participate in the process. If people have a good idea, they can come to the floor and talk about it. They can offer their idea and get a vote. Nobody is guaranteed to win every time, but people should have a right to get a vote and to raise the profile of the issues they care most about and the people they work for care most about. I wish the President wouldn't do this. It will not work. It is unconstitutional. It purports to exercise a power he himself said he does not have, but he seems determined to do it nonetheless. I believe the American people will react negatively to this President's claim of authority to issue this amnesty, and I believe then the next step is for Congress to do everything we can to stop it and then to do it the right way, not the wrong way. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes in morning business.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I am glad I got to the floor to listen to my friend, the Senator from Illinois, the majority whip, make his remarks. It reminds me of his great passion and commitment to the DREAMers and to the cause of repairing our broken immigration system. While he and I differ on the details, and the feasibility of passing comprehensive immigration reform, we have been trying to do this for-- laboring with this for at least the 10 or 11 years that I have been here. We have been unsuccessful. What does that tell us? It tells us we need to try something different. We need to break this down into smaller pieces. In the House, Speaker Boehner I know has made this pledge to the President and others. I know Senator McConnell, the new incoming majority leader, believes immigration reform is important and we ought to use our best efforts to make progress. But unfortunately the message the President of the United States has sent is he is giving up. To listen to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who support this unprecedented Executive action by the President that is going to be announced on Friday, they have given up. They have given up. What the Senator from Illinois did not say is even the President's deferred action order involving these young people--by the way, I support providing them an opportunity to become American citizens and productive members of society. I think we are all better off--these young people who are not culpable, they did not commit any offense or crime, they came with their parents, and we are much better off. They are much better off. Their families are much better off. Our country is better off if we find a solution--which I am confident we could do. But the message the President has given and our Democratic friends have given is: We give up. We are not going to do our job as legislators. We are going to let the President, with the stroke of a pen, provide an Executive amnesty to millions of people and create an awful lot of harm in the process. The tragedy is we are a nation of immigrants and proud of it. Our rich, diverse heritage would not have been the same without the contribution of immigrants who have come from around the world, contributions that have become part of the very fabric of our lives and our society. Millions of foreign-born immigrants who have come to the United States legally have become successful, patriotic citizens of the United States. We have been the beneficiary because of the opportunities that our Nation provides that nowhere else on Earth provides, and that is the opportunity to pursue the American dream. But part of what makes the American dream possible is the rule of law. It is our Constitution. It is not Presidents getting frustrated with Congress, issuing an Executive order, defying the Constitution, and ignoring his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. That undermines the American Dream. So I listened to my colleague and friend from Illinois saying that this is a question about: Are immigrants good for America or not? I stipulate they are good for America. As a matter of fact, my ancestors weren't born in the United States. We all came from somewhere else. This is really, at bottom, whether the President, when he put his hand on the Bible and he took a sacred oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States, whether he really meant it or whether he had his fingers crossed behind his back. Like many of my colleagues, I have had the privilege of participating in naturalization ceremonies all across my State, where I have seen individuals from Vietnam, India, Mexico, and from countries all around the world take the oath of allegiance to the United States of America. It is an inspiring and heartwarming occasion and, of course, many of them have taken that oath while wearing the uniform of the U.S. military, where they have served with honor and dignity as they await approval of their citizenship. One of the first bills I passed when I came to the Senate was with Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, the liberal lion of the Senate. What we did is we passed a simple piece of legislation that expedited the process whereby immigrants who serve in the military can become American citizens. That was one of the first bills I was a part of that passed when I came to the Senate. Of course, these naturalization ceremonies represent a proud day, not only for these new Americans but for all Americans and for our Nation as a whole, where we welcome new citizens with open arms to this country to find a better life for themselves, for their family and, in the process, for all of us. But the President has now threatened--and he is the one who has made the threat: If you don't do it on my timetable, according to the terms I prefer, I am going to do it myself. He said that time and time again. There is no President who has abused the authority to issue Executive orders more than the current occupant of the White House. All Presidents have issued Executive orders since President George Washington, but no one has held Congress and the Constitution in such contempt that they feel as if Congress is irrelevant--except when I need them to appropriate money or to help them serve my purposes. But the President is going to take steps in the coming days that would send men and women--such as those I have mentioned--who came, playing by the rules, pursuing legal immigration to the United States. He is going to basically tell those folks: Get to the back of the line. We are the most generous country in the world when it comes to naturalization--almost 1 million people a year. But the President is going to tell the people who have been waiting patiently in line, playing by the rules: Get in the back of the line. I am going to put millions of people ahead of you in front of the line who have not played by the rules. Well, it is a sure way to send a message to the rest of the world that our country does not enforce its own laws, which is an essential part of who we are, and where everybody, from the humblest to the most exalted in our country, are all bound by the same laws, whether you are President of the United States or whether you are one of these new Americans who takes an oath to uphold and defend the laws and the Constitution of the United States. I have to say, because I come from a big State that sees disproportionate negative consequences of illegal immigration, this is a sure way to continue to reward the criminal organizations that get rich on the status quo. The 60,000 unaccompanied children that came from Central America that were part of this humanitarian crisis we had last summer continue to come, and the criminal organizations that continue to profit from this money-making operation are continuing to get rich. It encourages children to take a perilous journey, for many of whom it ends in kidnapping, sexual assault or death to get to the U.S. border. The worst part is we just had a national election, as we do every 2 years. I have been in Congress when my side of the aisle wins elections, and we have had a pretty good election. I have been here when we lost, as we did in 2008. But that doesn't mean we can give up on our job, which is to legislate. One of the saddest parts about what the President is going to do is he will poison the well and make it much harder, if not impossible, for us to do the sorts of things for which a bipartisan, bicameral commitment exists to do, which is to make serious progress on our broken immigration system. I am not sure whether we will be able to do as much as I would like to do or the Senator from Illinois would like to do, but we all know the status quo is unacceptable. The President seems intent on provoking a constitutional crisis by adopting policies that he previously said were illegal. He said he didn't have the authority to do it time and time again. Now he has totally done a flip-flop of 180 degrees saying: I have discovered I now do have the authority. I was wrong when I said I didn't have the authority to do it. He seems intent on exacerbating partisan polarization and weakening democratic accountability. We are the ones who are responsible for making these decisions, and we are accountable to our electorate, our voters. Unfortunately, it is going to make it much harder for us to make necessary progress on a number of different matters next year. The President says we haven't acted on his timetable in a way that he prefers, so he is going to go it alone. But just think for a moment about the larger implications of that argument. Every President in history has clashed with Congress. That is part of what we do. That is what the separation of powers is all about. It forces us to build consensus as opposed to pursuing our own agendas, and that is important. That is essential. But failing to get your way in Congress doesn't mean the President can simply override Congress with the stroke of his pen. There is broad support for passing a series of commonsense immigration reform bills. I know the Speaker has said that publicly. The majority leader in the House, Congressman McCarthy, I believe, believes that, and I certainly do. The incoming majority leader, Senator McConnell, has told me he does as well. But what there is no support for, other than purely partisan support, is what the President is proposing to do. So in other words, if the President were willing to negotiate in good faith--and, yes, when your proposal is that I want everything I want or I want nothing, you frequently get nothing. You always get nothing because nobody gets everything they want, and it requires genuine compromise and it requires hard work. Nothing sustainable or meaningful will ever be done in this place without bipartisan support. We have learned that lesson time and time again. But the President seems absolutely allergic--allergic--to good-faith negotiating and genuine compromise. In fact, I am not even sure he likes the job he ran so hard to get elected to, because that is part of his job--to work with Congress in a bipartisan way to achieve genuine consensus and compromise where possible. He is claiming now, apparently, on Friday in Las Vegas, a right that no other President has claimed and, in fact, that he said he did not have, time and time again. I know the White House Counsel's office is preparing a convoluted legal case to justify the President's actions. Most Americans will correctly view this as an abuse of power. Earlier, I asked the President to think about the human costs of encouraging another massive wave of illegal immigration. My State is disproportionately affected, given our 1,200-mile common border with Mexico. It is not only people coming from Mexico; it is from Central America and around the world. But I urged him to think about all the men, women, and children from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who have suffered terrible violence and, indeed, some have died during their long journey through Mexico from Central America. I urged him to think again about whether what he is doing inadvertently rewards and helps fund the criminal organizations that are creating such havoc in Mexico and in parts of Central America. I can only hope the President will reconsider. I certainly am not optimistic because now the White House is leaking press reports about this announcement on Friday. But I believe his unilateral action, which is unconstitutional and illegal, will deeply harm our prospects for immigration reform. It will be deeply harmful to our Nation's tradition of the rule of law and deeply harmful to the future of our democracy. Many Democrats believe, as I do, that this is a mistake. The President should heed their advice, stop making threats, and respect the Constitution. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it took an election on November 4. It took an election, but here we are at long last, some 6 years after the initial application for the Keystone XL Pipeline was filed and, as you know, for a long time now, I think at least since 2012, we have been trying to get a vote, the very same vote that is now scheduled for this afternoon. We have been trying to get a vote on the Senate floor so we could see whether there was a bipartisan majority, a supermajority of 60 or more, who would join our colleagues in the House and pass this bill authorizing the Keystone XL Pipeline and send it to the President. We know the Keystone XL Pipeline would be good for our economy. We know it would be good for job creation, and I know there has been some quibbling, perhaps, about how many jobs, but the Department of State has said about 42,000 jobs would be created as a result of this project. We also know this would be good for U.S. energy security to have a source of safe energy from Canada--one of our best allies and partners to the north--as opposed to shipping it in from troubled regions like the Middle East. It makes sense from an energy security standpoint, and it would be good for national security as well. It would also be good for our strategic interests overseas. I have heard my colleagues, mainly on the other side say that, well, we are concerned about the environmental impact, and I am too, but President Obama's own State Department has once again found that the Keystone XL Pipeline would have a negligible impact on the environment. In short, even in a moment of intense polarization in Washington, there is a strong consensus on Keystone, and if we get 60-plus votes today I think that consensus will be demonstrated. Will we all agree? No. We have strongly held beliefs on both sides of this issue. But the way we function in the Senate is by actually scheduling votes--as we are going to have today--and letting the majority carry the day. And that, I predict, will happen today. This is a day that I know my colleague, the senior Senator from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven, has been working for a long time, again, across the aisle. He has been our No. 1 leader on this issue for years now and he has consistently explained the benefits of the Keystone XL Pipeline. He comes from North Dakota, the second most productive State in the country when it comes to oil and gas. I come from the No. 1 State. I point that out often when it comes to producing oil and gas, and this has been a renaissance for the American economy and for American energy, what has happened in America, thanks to private investment and innovation in the oil and gas industry. Senator Hoeven has constantly worked with people across the aisle to rally the kind of support that has led us to this day, and he has repeatedly pressed the majority leader, Senator Reid, to allow a binding vote on the floor such as we are going to have today, and then the next step will be to send it to President Obama for his signature. Well, we haven't had that kind of vote before the November 4 election. That is why I said elections can change things and indeed, apparently, it has changed the majority leader's mind to allow this vote, which at long last we will have this afternoon. Why has there been a change of attitude on the part of the majority leader to allow us to hold this vote this week? I will leave that to the pundits, but I will say our collective decision on Keystone should be determined by what is in America's national interests, not the interest of a single political party or the interest of a single Senator. The interests of our country as a whole should be our guide. For that matter, it is time for our President to put his cards on the table. I know once this vote was scheduled, the President's press secretary and the President himself made some ambiguous remarks, leaving in doubt whether he would actually sign or would ultimately veto this legislation. I hope we don't see a continuation of the gamesmanship we have seen until this point, and that once this bill passes--if it does this afternoon--the majority leader will send it promptly to the President so the President can make that decision. What I mean by I hope the gamesmanship doesn't continue is I know there is the flexibility the majority leader might have to actually hold the bill here and to wait until after the December 6 runoff election in Louisiana before sending it to the President. But I hope we don't have that kind of gamesmanship. The American people deserve the truth, they deserve accountability, and it has been more than 6 years since this application first came through. The proponents of this project deserve this vote today, as do the American people. As a matter of fact, back in March of 2012, before his reelection, the President traveled to Cushing, OK, to champion the Texas leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline. He didn't have any real role to play in authorizing that, because that was within the continental United States. The President's role, and the one that this bill would force his hand on, literally, is what would authorize this international pipeline between Canada and the United States. That does require his approval. This legislation would require it or, in fact, mandate it. But he went to Cushing, OK, to champion the Texas leg of the Keystone Pipeline project, and it did not need his approval, but at the time he said he would work to expedite that portion. However, that portion didn't require his approval and it was already up and running at the time. So you will have to determine why the President would go there for a project that did not need his approval and said he would expedite it--what his real motivation is. But he said: And as long as I'm President, we're going to keep on encouraging oil development and infrastructure and we're going to do it in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people. We don't have to choose between one or the other, we can do both. I actually agree with what the President said, the words I just quoted. That is a good statement of what our policy should be. But I have been around Washington long enough to know that we can't just listen to what people say, we have to watch what they actually do, because sometimes those are diametrically opposed. In this case, notwithstanding what the President said in Cushing, OK, he has continued to delay, delay, and delay, making a final decision on the portion of Keystone XL Pipeline that requires his approval. But we are here this afternoon to say enough is enough. Regardless of how this vote turns out, it is time for the President to explain his views on the project that his own State Department has said would create 42,000 jobs in America. He can choose to endorse the Keystone XL Pipeline and thereby deliver a significant boost to America's economy, America's security, and America's relations with our largest trading partner in Canada. Alternatively, the President can choose to oppose Keystone and thereby miss a golden opportunity to promote a richer, stronger, and safer American future. I can only hope he makes the right choice. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. Thune). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven) would have voted ``aye'' and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski) would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Only a few years ago a prominent Democrat firmly and unequivocally rejected the idea that the President of the United States could singlehandedly enact an amnesty for millions of immigrants who entered the country without legal authorization. In 2011, for example, this same person reminded us that ``there are laws on the books that Congress has passed'' and that therefore it should not be permissible for the President to ``suspend deportations through executive order.'' Then in 2013 this same individual noted that granting a unilateral amnesty for adults who came to the United States illegally was ``not an option'' because it would amount to ``ignoring the law.'' A few months later this same individual was speaking at an immigration event and was interrupted by a heckler who urged him to stop the deportations by Executive fiat. In response, he said: If in fact I could solve all of these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we are also a nation of laws. That is part of our tradition. Of course, you might have guessed who that person was. It was President Barack Obama on numerous different occasions in the past few years saying he did not have the authority to issue a unilateral Executive order granting, in effect, a right to waive the law with regard to illegal immigration. I have to say that our President has a preternatural ability to say one thing and then do another--the opposite. Now the President is threatening to authorize exactly the type of action he previously said he did not have the authority to order, and he is threatening to do so even after his go-it-alone approach on immigration and so many other issues was so roundly repudiated in this most recent election on November 4. In other words, he is showing contempt for the Constitution, for the voters, and basically anyone who disagrees with him. It is the classic ``my way or the highway'' approach. According to press reports, he will act as early as this week and he will unilaterally grant work permits. Under what authority--I have no idea how he can legislate authority to grant work permits for people who illegally entered the country, but he said, apparently, he is going to try. These are the kinds of maneuvers we would expect to see from tin-pot dictators and banana republics, not from the Commander in Chief and the Chief Executive of the world's greatest democracy. Apparently the President now thinks that he and, I assume by precedent, any future President can simply ignore the laws that he finds inconvenient, that ``if Congress hasn't passed the law, that is a good enough excuse for me to go it alone and do it my way,'' go around it, go against the will of Congress and the American people. This is a dangerous precedent, I hope the President recognizes. If after the next election a President of the other party--my party--is elected, won't this be viewed as a precedent which has been established by this President which could be used on everything from taxes, to regulation, to ObamaCare--you name it. But that is not how our Constitution is written. That is not what the separation of powers doctrine--which is an essential element of our Constitution--provides. Even the Washington Post--not known as being a bastion of conservative thought--has said that failing to get his way in Congress does not ``grant the president license to tear up the Constitution.'' Unfortunately, the President has shown that he has very little patience with constitutional safeguards, especially when they hamper his agenda or complicate his political needs. After all, this is the same President who has unilaterally rewritten ObamaCare by granting extensions, waivers, and the like and who has unilaterally gutted welfare reform and who has made blatantly unconstitutional appointments to the Federal bureaucracy and to the Federal judiciary, only to be corrected by the courts. For that matter, the President has already made a number of unilateral changes in U.S. immigration policy with disastrous results. We have seen literally thousands of convicted criminals released from U.S. custody, including those with violent records. And, of course, it wasn't that long ago that we saw what had been called a genuine humanitarian crisis unfold along the southern border in my State as tens of thousands of Central American children made a treacherous journey in order to cross illegally into the United States and take advantage of a loophole in a 2008 law that we tried to correct but couldn't even get a vote on it in the Senate. At the height of the crisis in early June, the New York Times told the story of a 13-year-old Honduran boy who was detained in Mexico while trying to reach the U.S. border, and his story was pretty typical of what we heard from many people. The Department of Homeland Security conducted interviews with many of the immigrants who came across at that time. ``Like so many others across Central America,'' the Times reported, this boy ``said his mother believed that the Obama administration had quietly changed its policy regarding unaccompanied minors and that if he made it across, he would have a better shot at staying.'' In other words, the impression that we are not going to enforce our law is a magnet. I have no idea how this unilateral action by the President will be interpreted--granting legal status presumably to millions of people by the swipe of his pen. Will that be viewed as a green light for people who want to come to the United States from all around the world, saying: Well, if I can just get to the United States, President Obama will let me stay too. About 1 week later the Washington Post confirmed that the influx of unaccompanied Central American children is ``being driven in large part by the perception they will be allowed to stay under the Obama administration's immigration policies.'' I mention these stories because they highlight the all-to-predictable consequences of failing to enforce U.S. immigration law. So much of law enforcement is the deterrent value--in other words, stopping people from breaking the law in the first instance, not just catching them after they actually break it. And sending the message ``Get here if you can, and you might too be one of the ones who win the lucky immigration lottery and get to stay in the United States'' is a huge magnet for illegal immigration and it undermines--indeed, it guts the deterrent value of enforcing the law. And for what? The President reportedly, unless he rethinks this misguided strategy, will provide some form of temporary relief that will not even be able to be implemented before he leaves office in 2 years, with uncertainty for these immigrants and their families as to what is going to happen beyond. How he is drawing the line is beyond me. I read that apparently the reports that have been dribbled out in the press--and, of course, this town is famous for intentional leaks to sort of issue trial balloons to see how people are going to react. Well, if the trial balloons are correct, if the stories are correct, the President's order will cover roughly 40 percent of the people here in violation of our immigration laws--40 percent. So why did he decide to stop at 40 percent and not do 60 percent or 80 percent or 100 percent? What about the people who have been waiting patiently in line, complying with our immigration laws? To have these other millions of people jump ahead of them and be given some form of legal status is not fair to them, and it certainly doesn't encourage people's compliance with the rules or the law. Then we have to look at who benefits the most. And I am not talking about the immigrants; I am talking about the criminal organizations. This is part of how they operate and their business model. Such criminal organizations will be the biggest beneficiaries of the President's Executive order, which would make it even harder for our friends in Mexico to reduce violence and uphold the rule of law. It would be like a pipeline of additional money and resources into the cartels. And the cartels don't care whether they traffic in children, whether they traffic in drugs or weapons. That is how they make money. That is why they exist. That is what they do. And this ill-advised action by the President would do nothing but ensure that a pipeline of money will continue to flow into these criminal organizations. Time magazine reported: Cartels control most of Mexico's smuggling networks through which victims are moved, while they also take money from pimps and brothels operating in their territories. Yet, again, President Obama just doesn't seem to care. He also doesn't seem to care that his Executive action would harm our opportunity to reform our broken legal immigration system. Republicans and Democrats alike have ideas for how to reform our immigration system, and many of them have bipartisan support. We do know that a comprehensive bill--we have tried to pass one of those for 10 years, and it hasn't worked, so it makes sense to me to try to break it down into smaller pieces and try to build consensus for those, get them across the floor of the House and the Senate and on the President's desk--even on a controversial subject such as immigration. Yet the President has now appeared to decide to trample the normal legislative process and to do immigration policy by fiat. What about the 60 percent who won't be covered by his Executive order? They don't get any relief under his Executive order. They are going to need to look to Congress to know what the rules are. So in the President's desperate attempt to placate some very vocal activist groups and to make up for years of hollow promises, he has decided to flout the rule of law and end up making real immigration reform that much harder to pass. I saw a Congressman from South Carolina, Trey Gowdy, who said: During the first 2 years the President had 60 Democrats in the Senate and controlled the House of Representatives. If immigration reform was such a priority for the President, why didn't he do that? Well, don't just take my word for it that this will make our job much more difficult. The junior Senator from Maine, an Independent but a Member of the Democratic caucus, said of the President's Executive amnesty: I think it will create a backlash in the country that could actually set the cause back and inflame our politics in a way that I don't think will be conducive to solving the problem. I mentioned a moment ago that the results of this anticipated action are all too predictable. So I would ask the President: Why in the world would you want to encourage children to make one of the most dangerous journeys from Central America through Mexico and be subject to the tender mercies of these cartels, which care nothing about them? Why on Earth would you want to establish yet another big incentive for people to enter our country illegally? And why on Earth would you want to help contribute to yet another humanitarian crisis on the Texas-Mexico border? I would urge the President, in the strongest of terms, to respect the rule of law and the democratic process and to give the new Congress that will convene in January a chance to do our job. I don't underestimate the difficulty of dealing with our broken immigration system, but I don't think we have a choice. We do not have a choice. We must. And it will not be something I will like 100 percent; it won't be something any Senator or Congressman will like 100 percent. But that shouldn't cause us to shrink from our duty. If the President is actually interested in having his last 2 years in office be more productive than simply a lameduck session, he needs to work with the Congress rather than go around Congress. I urge him to put the Constitution ahead of his campaign promises and to consider the likely human cost in Mexico and elsewhere of such a lawless policy change. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I agree with the Republican leader that our leader on this issue for years now in the Senate has been the Senator from North Dakota, and North Dakota is a big energy-producing State--second, I must point out, to my State of Texas, but they are making some rapid developments in that area, and a lot of Texans have gone temporarily to North Dakota to help them with the technology, and they are doing a great job. Believe me, it is creating a lot of jobs. These aren't minimum wage jobs, these are high-paying jobs. As a matter of fact, there are labor shortages, and what we need to do is train more people to qualify for these good, high-paying jobs. But I wonder whether the Republican leader--or really I would be interested in anybody's point of view--beyond the election, I think there are going to have to be some changes of heart on the other side of the aisle, because as the distinguished Senator from North Dakota pointed out, we have gotten close, but never quite achieved that 60- vote goal. So if we are going to vote on this now as a result of the intervening election, there are going to have to be some folks on the other side of the aisle who are going to have to have a change of heart and vote for the bill, which I hope they do. But this has been the main impediment--no opportunity for a vote-- because the majority leader, Senator Reid, has refused to grant a vote up until this point. He has changed his mind. That represents progress. But I think we have two impediments. One is the need for additional Democratic votes to actually meet that threshold; and then, as the Senator from North Dakota points out, we don't know whether the President has been chastened or has learned anything from the election, or if he is going to be influenced at all in his decision. I know the Senator from North Dakota has been a bulldog on this issue. He is not going to let this one get away from him, nor should he, for all the reasons mentioned earlier, including the 42,000 jobs. Also, a lot of this oil, if it doesn't come in this pipeline across from Canada to the United States, most of it is going to be refined in southeast Texas and turned into gasoline and jet fuel, which is going to help bring down prices, because we will see a glut of additional supply. But if we don't use it in the United States, this is going to be shipped to China or other places that are rapidly buying natural resources. So I would be interested if the Republican leader has a view of how we get over those final hurdles of getting Democratic votes next Tuesday to get to that 60-vote threshold. Then, how do we get the President to sign this, for a President--at least so far--who has refused to listen to the American people?

Mr. CORNYN. I wonder if the Senator would yield for one last question. I see the Senator from Alaska, and I hope she will join us in this discussion. To follow up on a very important point made by the Senator from North Dakota that hadn't been explored a lot, he talked about the implications of more North American energy self-sufficiency and what that might mean in terms of geopolitics. We know, for example, that Vladimir Putin used his energy as a weapon in Ukraine and Europe to try to intimidate people and to keep them from resisting his invasion of independent republics such as Ukraine. I think it is significant because for so long we have been dependent on imported energy from the Middle East, which we know has been a real challenge because of the instability there, millennia old conflicts and sectarian strife. I would be interested if the Senator from Kentucky or perhaps other Senators have observations about what this means in terms of the safety and the security of the United States as we become increasingly North American energy self-sufficient. We haven't even talked about New Mexico. They are just now beginning to open their domestic energy production to the kinds of things we are already seeing in North Dakota, Texas and Alaska and elsewhere. It promises not only jobs but a great opportunity for us to become a safer and more stable source of this necessary energy supply.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Chambliss) and the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) would have voted ``no.''