John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee) would have voted ``nay''.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 17 years ago the Senate voted on something called a sense-of-the-Senate resolution designed to protect American workers and their families from misguided policy with regard to CO2 regulations. Of course, CO2, or carbon dioxide, is a necessary element of life, and plant life depends on CO2 for photosynthesis, which helps make them green. To hear some of the psuedoscientists talk about CO2 here in Washington, you would think it was poison. Suffice it to say, 17 years later the Obama administration is trying to enact similar legislation that was rejected 17 years ago by the Senate in that sense-of-the- Senate resolution. Back in 1997 Members of the Senate were concerned that the Clinton administration might sign a global climate change treaty that imposed higher costs on the United States while exempting developing countries such as China or India. These concerns turned out to be well-founded. The Clinton administration did indeed sign such a treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol in December of that year, but it never got around to having it ratified here in the Senate largely because of a unanimous resolution this Chamber passed several months earlier. The sense-of-the-Senate resolution I alluded to a moment ago was voted on in July 1997, and it received 95 votes in favor and 0 votes opposed. Ninety-five Senators expressed their opposition to any climate change agreement that would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States. They also rejected any agreement that failed to include other countries, and that is for good reasons I will explain in a moment. The message sent by these 95 Senators--a unanimous vote in the Senate--is pretty clear. It makes absolutely no sense for America to adopt job-killing carbon regulations while CO2 emissions from developing countries continue to skyrocket and are not subjected to the same restrictions. Don't just take my word for it. Listen to what one of the most prominent supporters of the 1997 resolution, Secretary of State John Kerry--at the time he was the junior Senator of Massachusetts--had to say: It's just common sense that if you are really going to do something to effect global climate change, and you are going to do it in a fair-minded way . . . we need to have an agreement that does not leave enormous components of the world's contributors and future contributors of this problem out of the solution. In effect, what he was saying was: Why would America do this to itself and throw a wet blanket on job creation and economic growth when other countries were going to continue to produce CO2 unabated? One of the cosponsors of this resolution was the late Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. The Presiding Officer knows Senator Byrd and his legacy very well. While explaining his opposition to the Kyoto-style climate deals, Senator Byrd said: I don't think the Senate should support a treaty that requires only half of the world . . . to endure the economic costs of reducing emissions while developing countries are free to pollute the atmosphere, and in so doing, siphon off American industries. Another cosponsor was Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who was then the junior Senator from Nebraska. He described the likely consequences of Kyoto-style agreements in these terms: As industries flee the United States and other industrialized countries, they would re-establish themselves in developing countries that have much weaker environmental standards than our own. I have just one more point about the Kyoto Protocol, which was unanimously voted down, in essence, 17 years ago. A year after that, in 1998, there was a then-unknown Illinois State senator who voted on legislation that denounced Kyoto and prohibited State regulation of greenhouse gases in Illinois. If you guessed it was Barack Obama, you would be right. One of the State senators voting in favor of the bill, condemning Kyoto, and banning State regulations of greenhouse gases in Illinois was Barack Obama. President Obama voted for legislation that explicitly rejected the type of CO2 regulations that he is now trying to impose on the entire U.S. economy. Yesterday I discussed some of the costs of those regulations, how enormous they would be, and how they would disproportionately fall on the poor and middle class in our country. The truth is most of the burden of higher energy costs would fall on retired people, seniors, and people on a fixed income. In my State our electricity capacity is regularly strained due to the hot August summers. People in my State depend on their air conditioners for safety. The threat of limited access to electricity, or higher costs that people can't afford, literally threatens their health and safety, and certainly their welfare. Lost jobs, lost wages, higher utility rates, and tighter family budgets are the inevitable consequences of this proposed EPA rule that was announced late last week. For that matter, the EPA has also proposed another rule on new powerplants that would impede technological innovation. Several of my Democratic colleagues expressed their deep concern about the additional EPA rule in a recent letter to the President. These seven Democrats noted that ``American technology providers would be incentivized to stop research and innovation in coal combustion, further delaying domestic development of pioneering new technologies that could be exported to improve plants around the world.'' Earlier today one of these Democrats who signed the letter, and happens to be the Presiding Officer at this time, said the Obama administration was ``working against us'' on CO2 regulations, and he described the EPA proposals as ``unreasonable and unacceptable.'' This is obviously not a partisan issue by any means. Any regulation that is this costly is almost impossible to justify unless it was to have clear benefits that outweighed those costs. President Obama's EPA rule can't lay claim to having enormous benefits in spite of these huge costs. Even if you agree with my friends about the long-term risks posed by rising CO2 emissions, and that this sort of regulation is justified, the projected growth of global emissions over the coming decades has almost nothing to do with America and almost everything to do with developing countries such as China and India. Indeed, our emissions have gone down over recent history. Some of that has been due to the renaissance of natural gas, which burns cleaner. But the fact is that anything we would do would be confined to the United States and our economy and would have no impact whatsoever on developing countries such as China and India. Indeed, China--by a very wide margin--is already the planet's largest CO2 emitter. The U.S. Government estimates that China alone will account for nearly half of all growth in worldwide emissions between 2010 and 2040. In short, nothing America does by itself or to itself will stop global emissions from rising. In fact, even if we could magically reduce our own emissions to zero over the next quarter century, worldwide emissions would still increase significantly without major reductions in China, India, and other developing countries. Yet, despite all these costs to American workers and American families--literally a threat due to the lack of grid capacity in places such as Texas because of high-priced energy--President Obama is moving ahead with this massive new energy tax that is effectively, in the words of our colleague from Louisiana, all pain and no gain, and he is right. To put this in context, I think it is important that anyone who happens to be listening understands a few points. No. 1, regardless of what the President calls it, the proposed EPA rule is indeed a massive new national energy tax, one that will affect all workers, all consumers, and all families in America. No. 2, the reason it is being enacted via the regulatory process is because Members of the Senate rejected it 4 years ago at a time when even our Democratic colleagues had a supermajority. In other words, they could have done it when they wanted to when the Senate controlled the White House and both Chambers of Congress, but they chose not to do it then. No. 3, it fits with a broader and deeply disturbing matter. Time and time again, the President has used unelected bureaucrats to skirt the normal legislative progress and override the will of Congress and avoid any kind of electoral accountability. The point is this: When the President, who is not going to stand for election again, gets the Environmental Protection Agency to issue regulations, those bureaucrats don't run for election. The American people--my constituents in Texas and the Presiding Officer's constituents in West Virginia--can't vote the rascals out of office, so there is no accountability in the system. That is what the President was bragging about when he said: I have a phone, and I have a pen. He was effectively saying he was going to do it alone, and that is what he is trying to do here. The result has been a misguided explosion of burdensome and onerous regulations, and those have a cost to our economy. The last quarter-- the last 3 months of the year--we learned that instead of the economy growing in a way that will create more jobs and reduce unemployment, the economy actually contracted. It shrank by a full percentage point. One of the reasons why the economy shrank is because of overly burdensome regulations where there is no cost-benefit analysis, much less any cost-benefit calculus whatsoever. According to one estimate, between 2009 and 2013, Federal regulatory costs increased by nearly $500 billion--a truly astonishing figure. Not only have these regulations proven to be onerous and unwieldy, they have been implemented by agencies that are hopelessly incompetent at handling even basic responsibilities. As my friend the junior Senator from Oklahoma said a few years ago: It is absurd to allow an agency as incompetent as the EPA to exercise vast new powers when they can't manage less complex tasks. If the EPA can't train 250,000 contractors to manage lead paint rules . . . why should we expect them to regulate the energy-consuming processes used in every sector of the economy? If this competence question of a huge bureaucracy sounds familiar, I think we are now learning that when the hubris overcomes the good judgment of leaders here in Washington and decides to take over one- sixth of the economy, which is our health care sector, you get ObamaCare and the disaster that has proven to be in terms of its implementation. None of the essential promises that were made about how it would actually work have been kept. In other words, if you like what you have, you can keep it, the price would go down $2,500 for a family of four, and, yes, you can keep your doctor. None of those promises have proven to be true. Yet those were the promises upon which ObamaCare was passed. Now we see the administration make additional extravagant promises that can only be borne out of hubris based on what we have seen as the implementation of ObamaCare. Not only have these regulations proved to be onerous, they are not going to work the way the administration predicts, except we are pretty sure it will kill jobs and reduce economic growth and further extend this lengthy recession which has been the slowest economic recovery in America since the Great Depression. At a time of mass unemployment and historically low levels of labor force participation, America needs an energy policy that is projobs and proworker and profamily. This new EPA rule is the opposite of that. It would destroy jobs, it would hurt workers, and it would hurt consumers because it would raise the cost of living for middle-class families, including people on fixed incomes such as seniors. The fact that such a regulation is even being considered not in Congress but in the executive branch agencies such as the EPA, amid the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression, illustrates once again how misguided this administration's priorities truly are. I wish to clarify once again that the debate over President Obama's EPA rule is not about the science of climate change; it is a debate about whether massive regulations should be forced to pass a simple cost- benefit analysis. The EPA rule clearly fails that test. For all of those reasons and plenty more, we will be continuing to urge President Obama, from this side of the aisle but in a bipartisan way, to put jobs and families ahead of politics and ideology. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are not in a quorum call, are we?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, several years ago when the majority party, the Democratic Party, controlled 60 seats in the Senate and had literally the numbers to do whatever it wanted to do, the majority leader tried to push through a new massive energy tax bill known as cap-and-trade. Not only did it fail to pass, the majority leader never even brought it up for a vote, primarily because members of his own party recognized there would be huge costs associated with this new energy tax, and that the benefits, indeed, on balance did not outweigh the costs or, perhaps most charitably stated, were neutral. There were hardly any real benefits to speak of on the plus side, but there were plenty of negatives, including lost jobs, lost wages, higher utility bills, and a less competitive U.S. economy. Now the Obama administration, we learn, is in the process of enacting a backdoor energy tax, not through the votes of Members of Congress-- the only people who could be held accountable for how we vote--but rather through the regulatory process through the Environmental Protection Agency. Much like the cap-and-trade bill that collapsed in 2010, the EPA regulation that was announced earlier today would impose major new costs on America's economy while doing virtually nothing to improve the environment. I will explain my reason for saying that in a moment. I will talk about the economic costs in a second, but first I want to emphasize that over the coming decades America's contribution to the growth of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions will be virtually nonexistent. Consider these numbers from the Energy Information Agency: Between 2005 and 2012, America's energy-related carbon dioxide emissions actually declined by more than 10 percent. Between 2005 and 2012, our carbon dioxide emissions did not go up but they declined by more than 10 percent. By contrast, over the same period of time China's energy- related carbon dioxide emissions grew by nearly 64 percent. So ours went down 10 percent and China's went up by 64 percent. As a result, China is now producing far more carbon dioxide emissions than the United States. Looking ahead, the Energy Information Agency has projected that developing countries--countries that don't have a developed economy like the United States but do want our standard of living and a better life for their people--will be responsible for 94 percent of the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions between 2010 and 2040, with China alone accounting for 49 percent of that increase. As for the United States, during that same period of time carbon dioxide emissions will barely increase at all. I mentioned these figures because some of my friends across the aisle have repeatedly declared that President Obama's backdoor energy tax will help us ``fight climate change.'' Given the numbers I just listed, it should be clear to us that any rule such as what the EPA is proposing would do little to affect global emissions unless developing countries such as China and India do exactly the same--assuming that is something we would want to make as a priority, and assuming the benefits outweigh the costs. The fact is that China has no interest in sacrificing economic growth for speculative long-term climate benefits, nor do India or other developing nations. We have to remember that these countries alone still have hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty. They want a better and growing economy, so why in the world would they impose these restrictions on themselves? It is not going to happen, and that is what they told us. In short, President Obama's EPA rule would place America's economy-- an economy that shrunk by 1 percent last quarter--at a competitive disadvantage without having any substantial effect on global climate change or on CO2 emissions overall. In other words, it would be all pain and no gain. As I mentioned, the pain would be very real. It would come in the form of lost jobs due to a slowing economy, lost wages, and higher electricity prices. In my State, the month of August gets to be pretty hot, and our grid operates at maximum capacity. Due to a variety of EPA regulations, the price of those higher electricity prices is borne by the people who are least able to absorb those costs--particularly people on a fixed income, including the elderly. Also, the job loss would be concentrated on blue-collar workers in the fossil fuel industries--most notably the coal industry. These workers have already been hurt by EPA regulations, but these new proposed regulations would make that pain even worse. The higher electricity costs and higher utility rates would affect all of us, but the heaviest burden would fall on people who are at a low or fixed income; in other words, the people who are least able to pay more for their utility bills. If a regulation can't pass the basic cost-benefit test, then in my view it has little business being enacted--and it should certainly not be enacted by nameless, faceless bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the American people or for the consequences of what they are passing. That is especially true when our economy is suffering through the weakest economic recovery and the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression. Why--if this makes sense at any time--would we want to do it now? Median household income has also declined by nearly $2,300 since the recession formally ended. We have had a period of anemic economic growth in this country, a high unemployment rate, the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, and the highest percentage of people who dropped out of the workforce because they are discouraged about the prospect of finding jobs at any time since Jimmy Carter was President. In the meantime, if you are buying your health insurance in the ObamaCare exchanges and your health insurance premiums have gone up--we know the cost of fuel and gasoline has gone up, and the cost of food has gone up. The middle class will be disproportionately burdened by this EPA regulation in a way that does not, on net, change the global environment, and would kill jobs and hurt families in return for negligible, or even nonexistent, benefits. Once again, we see that the President has decided to place ideology-- his wish of how the world ought to look--ahead of the numbers. He is famous for saying, let's do the arithmetic. Let's do the arithmetic. The arithmetic does not make the case that these regulations should be passed; indeed, it defeats the argument that they should. Sadly, rather than engage in the normal legislative process that would allow my colleague, the Presiding Officer from Maine, who may have a different view from mine, and others to debate and vote on these issues and make policy so we can be held accountable for what we do, the President has decided to skirt the legislative process and instead rely on unaccountable bureaucrats to enact measures that would never pass through Congress. Yet the idea of this President is: I have a phone and a pen, and I can go it alone. He can do it by himself. Well, he can't. Our Constitution does not allow that. Sooner or later the American people are going to hold folks accountable for enabling this sort of unilateral activity. In my view this is an unforced error that will damage our economy, hurt our workers, and raise the cost of living for middle-class families and those on a fixed income. I find it astonishing that this misguided regulation is being considered now when our economy is growing so slowly and so many people are out of work or have left the workforce, and the median household income is down, yet costs for health care, food, gasoline, and other commodities are going up. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I want to speak briefly on three topics this afternoon: human trafficking; the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, TX, in 2009; and finally, the way the Senate has become a killing ground for good ideas because of the practices of the majority leader. Human Trafficking Starting with human trafficking, we know that while slavery was formally abolished in the United States years ago, it continues today in the form of human trafficking. Tragically, too many children are victims of modern-day slavery--literally tens of thousands right here in America. That is why in recent years I have joined with colleagues on both sides of the aisle--obviously, this is not a political or partisan issue--to work together in a bipartisan way to introduce a series of bills aimed at accomplishing three things: No. 1, shedding light on this tragic reality. Most people in their communities around the country are not even aware of the scourge of human trafficking that is happening right under their nose. No. 2, we have tried to do everything we can to save children--minors--from the sex trade. And No. 3, we have tried hard to bring these traffickers to justice. I was proud to be one of the cosponsors of the 2012 Child Protection Act, which gave law enforcement agencies better tools with which to protect children and apprehend criminals. More recently, I joined with the senior Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden; the senior Senator from Minnesota, Ms. Klobuchar; and the junior Senator from Illinois, Mr. Kirk, to introduce something we call the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. Our bill would establish a domestic trafficking victims fund that doesn't come from tax dollars but, rather, from fees and fines paid by people who commit law enforcement offenses. It would allocate tens of millions of dollars to both fight human trafficking and, just as importantly, to help victims get the sorts of services they need in order to heal and to become productive citizens once again. It would also give law enforcement officials more tools to crack down on human trafficking and the broader criminal networks that support them. The bill would streamline human trafficking task force investigations by giving investigators access to better technologies and enhance cooperation between Federal and State law enforcement partnerships. It would also allow law enforcement officials to prosecute each and every member of a human trafficking organization, as opposed to merely the on-the-ground managers, and it would increase the penalties for criminals who prey on children through sex slavery. Finally, it would improve the availability of restitution and witness assistance for trafficking victims by allowing for a larger portion of forfeited Federal criminal assets to go directly to the victims. To be clear, as I said a moment ago, this bill would be funded by the fines imposed on the people who commit the crimes of child pornography, child prostitution, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and commercial human smuggling offenses at the Federal level, and it would not increase the Federal deficit. Earlier this week, the House of Representatives acted by passing its own version of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, and I would urge the majority leader and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to bring the Senate version up for a vote in the committee and on the floor of the Senate as soon as possible. After all, during a time when politics seems to pervade everything here in Washington, DC, and we are approaching a midterm election where it seems so hard to do things that should be easy, this is one thing we ought to be able to do together. Fort Hood I would also urge the majority leader to allow a vote on separate legislation that has already been approved by the House Armed Services Committee as an amendment to the national defense authorization bill, and is now being introduced as an amendment to the Senate bill by my colleague Senator Cruz of Texas, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. This legislation I am referring to I first introduced several years ago following the terrorist attack on American soil at Fort Hood, TX, when MAJ Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and injured dozens more. These individuals who lost their lives deserve the same sort of recognition on the field of battle as people who lost their lives in other parts of the world--perhaps overseas. The same benefits should be available to the families of those who survive terrorist attacks anywhere in the world. There is no doubt about the fact that what happened at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, was a terrorist attack. The shooter happened to be a lone-wolf terrorist, happened to be an American citizen, and happened to be a member of the U.S. Army, but he was also a radicalized Islamist who reportedly exchanged at least 20 emails with a senior Al-Qaeda member before committing this massacre. The Al-Qaeda leader with whom he corresponded is someone who has since become more notorious and even better known--a man named Anwar al-Awlaki. This person was also the one who maintained a relationship with a terrorist who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas day in 2009, less than 2 months after the Fort Hood attack. We have just had a vote on one of the lawyers who wrote the memo by which President Obama authorized a drone attack on Anwar al-Awlaki on September 2011 overseas, so there is no question the Fort Hood shooter believed he was acting on behalf of Al-Qaeda. There is no one who can deny he shouted ``Allah akbar'' before opening fire, and no one who can deny he has since described the act as an act of jihad. Yesterday I had the chance to question FBI Director James Comey, and I asked him whether he agreed with the assessment that this incident was ``workplace violence,'' which some have amazingly called this, or whether he thought this was an Al-Qaeda-inspired attack of terrorism here on America soil. His response--something I thought would have been painfully obvious--was yes, it was a terrorist attack in 2009. Was the shooter a card-carrying member of Al-Qaeda? Well, I am not sure exactly what that is, but to me that is the wrong question entirely. We have to remember that Al-Qaeda leaders, such as Ayman al- Zawahiri has called upon his terrorist followers to commit dispersed, small-scale attacks exactly like the one that occurred at Fort Hood in 2009. We do know, from the rich evidence that was discovered during the prosecution of Major Hasan, that the Fort Hood shooter was most certainly a disciple of Anwar al-Awlaki. The awarding of Purple Hearts should not be contingent on geography. In other words, if an Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist kills a group of our brave men and women in uniform overseas, it shouldn't be treated any differently than if one of their inspired terrorists kills one of our members of the military here at home as well. The soldiers who were killed or wounded at Fort Hood were casualties of a global war on terror, period, and they deserve to be treated as such by the U.S. Government. They deserve the exact same recognition that military victims of Al-Qaeda's terrorist attack in New York on September 11, 2001, received--the same recognition they received--nothing more and nothing less. Awarding them the Purple Heart is a matter of justice, a matter of honor, and a matter of honesty. The House of Representatives has shown great leadership on these issues that should unite us both on the huge trafficking front and on the Purple Heart recognition I just mentioned. It is time now for the Senate to follow suit, and I hope the majority leader will help us get this legislation up, move it across the floor, pass it, and send it to the President so he can sign it into law. Senate Operation The third point is that I cannot let the remarks of the majority leader this morning pass without comment--the remarks majority leader Harry Reid made on the floor this morning about how the Senate is being operated. The majority leader came to the floor this morning and called the legislative process a game. He accused Republicans of stalling important pieces of legislation, such as the 55 provisions of the tax extenders bill that died last week in the Senate. But we need to be clear about exactly who is responsible and what has happened. This is the third time in 2 weeks the majority leader has killed legislation which enjoys broad bipartisan support. First, it was the energy efficiency bill known as the Shaheen-Portman bill. The majority leader killed that piece of legislation when he refused any opportunity--either for Democrats or Republicans--to offer any amendments and get votes on those amendments. If he had simply done that, that legislation would be on its way to President Obama today, if not already signed into law. Then last week we saw these 55 expiring tax provisions, some of which enjoy broad bipartisan support, such as the research and development tax credit and the deduction for State sales tax, which is important to my State because income taxes paid at the State level are deducted from the Federal income tax bill of people who live in those States and pay State income tax. As a matter of fairness and parity, I support a number of the provisions in the tax extenders bill. But when the majority leader brought it to the floor and he refused to allow any amendments whatsoever to this legislation, the minority, of which I am a member, had no choice but to stop that legislation in its tracks because that is the only leverage we had to wake up the majority leader and say it is important for the minority and the people we represent to have a voice in what happens on the Senate floor. Our Founding Fathers decided that each State would get two Senators. But when one or maybe both of those Senators are in the minority party and if they are shut out of the legislative process entirely because all amendments and even constructive suggestions are denied, then my constituents--the 26 million people I represent in the State of Texas-- have been shut out of the process and denied the constitutional representation they are guaranteed under our founding documents. There is a theme that resulted in these bills killed by the majority leader; that is, since the 113th Congress, the majority leader's utter refusal to allow debate and votes on amendments by Members of both parties--both parties. While I am not happy about the fact that my constituents have been shut out of this process, I would think my Democratic friends' constituents can't be happy about the fact that they have been shut out of the process as well. Here is an amazing statistic. Our Democratic Senators have introduced 676 amendments to bills on the floor since last July. That is 676 amendments not by the minority party but by the majority party that controls this body. Do we know how many votes they got on Democratic amendments? They got 7 votes on Democratic amendments since the beginning of the 113th Congress. During that same period of time, Republicans have filed hundreds of amendments too. That used to be the way the Senate worked. Both parties participate, we represent our States, and we have full and open debate and an amendment process. Then we vote, the majority rules, and then bills get passed and sent to the President for signature. But no more under this majority leader. Now, during this same time frame, while Democrats only got 7 rollcall votes, the minority got 9 rollcall votes since last July. So I find it a little ironic that, both on the energy efficiency bill and the tax extenders bill, it was Senate Republicans who stood up--not only for the right of minority party Senators to get votes on amendments they had filed, but also for the right of our Democratic colleagues in the majority party who have basically been frozen out of the process as well. It might be true that constituents back home in those States where Democratic Senators were elected would be asking the question: Look. My Senator who I voted for, whom I support, is a Member of the majority party. But you're telling me that they can't participate in the legislative process by offering good ideas to make legislation better and to get votes? How ineffectual can you be? I happen to know from talking to many of my Democratic colleagues that they are not happy about the process either. And it is not just about process. It is not just about the prerogatives of individual Senators. This is about the constitutional guarantees of representation by two Senators for each State, and the rights of the minority to participate in the process and the people that I represent back home in Texas being shut out of the process altogether. So the Senate has become a virtual killing floor for good bipartisan ideas because of the way the majority leader has run the Senate. Then there is what happened yesterday on the patent reform bill. I have been a member of the Judiciary Committee since the time I got to the Senate, and we have been working very hard to try to deal with the problem of patent trolls. Patent trolls are big a problem in industries we wouldn't even suspect, including real estate, restaurants--not to mention high tech, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the like. But what happens is people buy patents, not for the purpose of making something, not for the purpose of being productive, but for the purpose of having a basis upon which to file a lawsuit. Then they shake down small startups, the innovators, the people who we are depending upon to create new products that will make our lives better, make us healthier and make us all live longer, and help grow our economy to create jobs. These people are either being snuffed out altogether or are very much prejudiced in terms of their ability to grow because of all of this patent troll activity. I have been working closely with the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, who has been working hard on this issue; Senator Schumer, the Senator from New York, a Democrat; Senator Hatch, who is a senior Member of the Judiciary Committee; and Senator Grassley from Iowa, who is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. We were in a pretty good place yesterday where we thought, as a result of hard negotiations and good bipartisan work, we were going to be in the position for the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to mark up and to vote on a patent reform bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, only to be told last night that the majority leader basically killed that bill before it could even be acted on in the Judiciary Committee. So this is the third time in 3 weeks the majority leader has basically been responsible for killing good bipartisan legislation--the energy efficiency bill, the tax extenders bill, and now the patent reform bill. It is the majority leader's imperial leadership, where he is not just the floor leader for his party, he is not just the traffic cop for the Senate, but he is the one who wants to pick and choose who gets to participate in the legislative process. In the process, he has shut out not just Republicans but Democrats too, and he has turned this institution which used to be known as the world's greatest deliberative body into a pale imitation of what it used to be. I continue to hope, maybe because I am an optimist by nature, that the majority leader will see the error of his ways and realize he is not only hurting my constituents but he is hurting the constituents of every Member of the Senate by denying us an opportunity for an open legislative process where everyone's voice can be heard, where the American people can watch and listen, where they can reach their own conclusions about the merits of each argument, and where they can hold us accountable for how we vote. That is what elections are supposed to be about. So I hope some day the majority leader will change his attitude about an open legislative process and will help restore the Senate's status as the world's greatest deliberative body. I predict if he does not do that, the voters may well do that in November by changing the hands of the majority from the Democratic party to the current minority party. Then things will change, and this body will return to its status as the world's greatest deliberative body. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) and the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) and the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I am joined by the chair and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee to discuss section 1046 of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act conference report, which we will vote on shortly in the Senate. I would like to thank the chair and ranking member for their leadership on this important legislation and rise with them today to discuss the provision and address my concerns about the effects on Army Corps of Engineers' reservoirs in Texas. It is important to remember that the long-term reliability of the Corps' multipurpose reservoirs remains a critical economic issue for many regions of our country. Cities, water districts, businesses, and other users depend on these reservoirs both for hydropower generation and to meet their larger water supply needs. That is especially true in arid States such as Texas. Indeed, the reservoirs have helped our States--and many others--to mitigate the effects of serious droughts. For that matter, Texas suffered the most intense drought in recorded State history just a few years ago, and water levels at a number of reservoirs remain dangerously low. Statewide, reservoirs are only at 64 percent of their capacity, according to the Texas Water Development Board. As one of America's fastest growing States, water supply management is becoming more and more important to individual Texans and their communities. Thankfully, local and State leaders have worked hard to devise effective strategies. Similar to other States, Texas has very specific laws on water rights and environmental flows. Since 2007, we have had a legal process that provides for a basin-specific scientific assessment, a formal review, and then recommendations by interested stakeholders. The State government oversees this process by working with stakeholders to balance environmental flow needs with other public interests, such as water needs. It is crucial to understand that the water stored in these reservoirs belongs to Texas and has been allocated to users in accordance with Federal and State law. It is also crucial to understand that the non- Federal sponsors of the reservoirs pay for storage, operations, and maintenance. Any changes to the operations that affect the authorized purposes of the reservoirs should never be made without their involvement. Section 1046(a) in the conference report requires the Corps to update its operations of reservoirs report, and to include a plan for reviewing the operations of individual projects, including a detailed schedule for future reviews of project operations. In carrying out these reviews, the Corps must coordinate with the appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies, along with any public and private entities that could be affected. Going forward, during the deliberations over a project-specific review, the Secretary must carefully weigh the use of limited Federal operations and maintenance funding and may accept funds from other agencies or non-Federal entities if necessary. Furthermore, the Secretary must ensure that all recommendations offered at the conclusion of the review, one, do not impinge on State water rights; two, are consistent with State water plans, and, three, do not affect any authority of a State to manage water resources within that State. The language is explicit: It does not change the authorized purpose of any Corps dam or reservoir, and the Secretary may only carry out recommendations and activities pursuant to existing law. Let me repeat: There is no new authority to modify reservoir operations granted to the Corps of Engineers. Of course, the Secretary has always had the authority to review the operations of these reservoirs and to improve their efficiency. As they undertake these reviews and carry out activities, this conference report language is clear that all authorized project purposes are maintained.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), and the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the steady trickle of allegations surrounding abuses of our veterans has turned from a trickle into a monsoon. It seems every day that goes by there is an additional bad news story about appointment lists that have been cooked to look like the waiting times were not as long as they were, allegations such as those at the Veterans' Administration hospital in Phoenix, where allegedly there were secret waiting lists where 40 veterans died waiting to get health care, and the secret waiting list was being created to make the backlog appear not as serious as it was. As we discuss and debate all the numbers on wait times and backlogs, it is important as always, whenever we are talking about statistics and numbers, to remember these are real human beings and these are our veterans with real individual stories. They represent people such as Dale Richardson, who is a Vietnam veteran from East Texas who died of cancer after reportedly waiting 2 months to hear back from the VA about scheduling chemotherapy treatments. They represent people such as Thomas Breen, a Navy veteran who, similar to Mr. Richardson, died of cancer after a 2-month period in which he reportedly waited in vain to hear back from the VA about an appointment time. They also represent people such as Edward Laird whose story was written up in the Los Angeles Times this last weekend. Mr. Laird is a Navy veteran, age 76, who discovered a couple of unusual marks on his nose, and so he went to the doctor at the Phoenix VA hospital to get it checked out, and according to the Los Angeles Times, the doctor said he needed a biopsy, but it took almost 2 years before Mr. Laird was allowed to see a VA specialist, and when he finally did get to see the specialist, he was told that the biopsy was unnecessary and so it wasn't done. Mr. Laird found it hard to believe, but that is what they told him. Unfortunately, by the time he got the VA hospital in Phoenix to agree to see him--the situation with his nose which he could tell as simply a layman had gotten worse--Mr. Laird was ultimately diagnosed with cancer and literally half of his nose had to be taken off because of cancer. As Mr. Laird told the Los Angeles Times: ``I have no nose, and I have to put an ice cream stick up my nose at night so I can breathe.'' I will just mention one other story from the Phoenix system. Earlier this month a woman named Kim Sertich told the Arizona Republic that her father received such poor care at the Phoenix VA that she was forced to pay for private care until he ultimately died in 2011. In her own words, she said: Whenever anyone asked how my father died, I say, ``From being in the VA hospital.'' The icing on the cake is when I received a letter of condolence from the hospital, and they had the wrong name for my dad. It is obvious from anecdote to anecdote, from the drip, drip, drip that then turns into a flood, there is something terribly wrong with the health care and the way the Veterans' Administration is administering 589,000 claims, with more than half of them backlogged, according to the standards and criteria of the Veterans' Administration. We have known that the backlog has been a problem for years. Indeed, we have tried to come together in a bipartisan way and legislatively through the national defense authorization bill, where we added money. We have added resources to the VA system. Obviously, we have not gotten to the bottom of the problem. Part of it, I am afraid, is systemic, and some of it, sadly, is part of the bureaucratic culture at the VA, where accountability is unknown. You don't get credit for doing a good job. You don't get demerits for doing a bad job. There is no accountability, and this is what you get without accountability. Not only is the VA system failing to provide our military heroes with reliable health care that they deserve, there are also news reports that the VA across the country has been falsifying appointment data in hopes of covering up wait times. Sadly, some of those allegations have come from my State. We have allegations of data manipulation of these appointment times in Austin, where I live, and Harlingen, in South Texas, and San Antonio and Waco. For that matter, a former VA doctor named Richard Krugman told the Washington Examiner that up to 15,000 VA patients in South Texas were either denied colonoscopies,--of course, those are cancer screening examinations--or they were forced to endure long, pointless delays. Dr. Krugman fears that many of those patients simply died awaiting their cancer screening or awaiting treatment. If the problems at the VA are just a fraction as serious as what they appear from the news reports that we see day in and day out or the stories I recounted today, if they are a fraction as severe as what they appear to be, we have a national scandal of the highest order. Let's be clear about what is happening. U.S. military veterans are literally dying because of bureaucratic failures and in some instances bureaucratic fraud. There is simply no excuse for what reportedly happened in Harlingen, Phoenix or in any of the cities where veterans or veterans officials have made their allegations. Yet it disturbs me that I am not sure the President is taking this with the requisite urgency. Apparently it is in the talking points to say, when somebody raises this scandal--I think Jay Carney said the President is mad as hell. That is what Eric Shinseki said when he testified before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee last week, but that is, frankly, not good enough. We need less rhetoric and more action. For starters, the President has still not demanded the resignation of the person in charge of the Department of Veterans Affairs. We all admire General Shinseki for his service in the U.S. Army, but he on his watch has presided over some of the biggest scandals at the VA in history. It is painfully clear, no matter what you think about General Shinseki--and I admire him for his service in the Army, but it is painfully clear the VA needs a fresh new set of eyes, new leadership, in order to recover, reform, and regain the confidence of America's veterans. President Obama still stands by his VA Secretary while nothing seems to be happening. Yes, we read about where there is an audit here, audit there, but we need top-to-bottom review and reform and we need to see the VA once again regain America's confidence. It is not just me who is saying this. One of the largest veterans affairs organizations in America, the American Legion, has called on Secretary Shinseki to step down and new leadership to be appointed. Here is just another example of the administration's unserious response to this scandal. The person who has been nominated to serve as the VA Under Secretary of Health, Dr. Murawsky, currently oversees a VA health care system in Illinois that was recently rocked by all-too- familiar allegations of secret waiting lists. I note that Dr. Murawsky spent 2 years as the direct supervisor of Sharon Helman, who worked in the Great Lakes Health Care System before becoming Director of the Phoenix system. As we all know, Ms. Helman was placed on administrative leave after the Phoenix VA was charged with creating secret waiting lists of its own. For these reasons I asked President Obama to withdraw Dr. Murawsky's nomination. We need a clean break. We need new leadership, a fresh set of eyes, and we need a sense of urgency in what is a growing scandal. As I said a moment ago, if even a fraction of these failures and abuses were true, it would represent a national scandal of the highest order. It is not enough for the VA Secretary to say, I am ``mad as hell.'' That doesn't solve anybody's problems. That doesn't fix what is broken in the VA health care system. What America's veterans want and deserve is bold reform and new leadership. President Obama has the power to make that happen, and it is long past time for him to use it. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the front page of yesterday's San Antonio Express News featured the heartbreaking story of a former Army combat medic by the name of Anson Dale Richardson, a man from East Texas who did multiple tours in Vietnam and went on to work as a heavy equipment operator. Last September Dale was diagnosed with a very serious form of throat cancer. His doctor says he told medical officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs to put Mr. Richardson on an immediate course of chemotherapy. What happened next is the sort of tragedy that is becoming all too familiar, with revelations from Veterans' Affairs clinics and hospitals around the country. According to the Express News, after being told to start chemotherapy right away, Mr. Richardson waited to hear from the VA about his appointment. He waited and waited, but he never heard back. On November 4, Dale Richardson died. We will never know whether he would have or could have survived cancer because he wasn't given that chance because he wasn't able to start the chemo treatments when his doctor first diagnosed him. But we do know that the Veterans' Administration's reported failure to give him any chemo treatments took away his one last hope of beating this terrible disease. When he died, Dale left behind a wife named Carolyn. In an interview with the Express News, Carolyn Richardson said of her late husband, ``I just wish he'd had a chance.'' Dale Richardson's Austin-area doctor--the doctor who says he told VA officials that Mr. Richardson needed immediate chemotherapy--got in contact with my office to express his outrage and his tremendous sadness and anger and frustration at Mr. Richardson's death. In fact, the doctor said this episode was so disturbing that he is no longer accepting contract work from the Veterans' Administration. He also said that a VA physician personally told him: ``The system is broken, and I'm glad I'm retiring.'' Given all of the stories that have accumulated and those that seem to appear with every new edition of the daily newspapers--all the reports of veterans dying or suffering because of the long wait times, all the reports of appointment data being falsified, all the reports of VA employees participating in coverups--given all that, it seems painfully clear to me that the system is indeed broken and that the current VA leadership is unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to fix it. With that in mind, I know that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary Shinseki, testified today before the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I haven't yet had a chance to read the transcript of his testimony, but I am hoping he will have answered or will at some point answer these questions: No. 1. Can you confirm, Secretary Shinseki, that supervisors of VA facilities have been ordering employees to conceal wait times? I would like for him to answer this question: Secretary Shinseki, can you confirm whether VA cancer patients needing chemotherapy are being provided with treatment in a timely manner? No. 3. Secretary Shinseki, can you confirm whether the VA is withholding all bonuses and pay raises from those employees who have been accused of falsifying appointment data? No. 4. Secretary Shinseki, can you confirm whether VA facilities are preserving all appointment-related documents? In other words, can you assure the Congress and the American people that evidence is not being destroyed? Finally, Secretary Shinseki, can you confirm whether all VA staffers at the facilities under investigation will not be assigned to investigate other VA facilities--a case of the fox perhaps watching the henhouse. These questions go to the very heart of the VA's credibility or to the lack thereof. We have millions of veterans in this country and tens of millions more people who either know a veteran or are related to one, and I would like to think that all Americans, whether they know a veteran, whether they have a veteran as a family member, all Americans are united in our concerns with the way our veterans are being treated and join with us in our commitment to get to the bottom of this mess and figure out what went wrong and fix it. We all deserve answers, and we deserve them now. If Secretary Shinseki cannot provide the necessary assurances, then it will become obvious that the VA is suffering from not only a systemic crisis of competence and accountability but from a systemic crisis of leadership as well. I know everybody claims to be outraged by these news reports, by the steady stream of allegations, and yet I fear the Obama administration is not treating this with the kind of urgency it demands. Remember, the administration has now spent more than $4\1/2\ billion setting up the ObamaCare exchanges, and we remember what happened with the Web site that was the portal where people would sign up for these exchanges failed. It was all hands on deck. I commend the administration for its timely response to that problem, but by comparison, with the tragedies we are reading about in the newspapers about the 40 veterans who died in Phoenix while reportedly waiting for treatment at a VA clinic or hospital when put on a secret waiting list, I don't see that sense of urgency coming from the administration or from this Congress, for that matter. I do commend Senator Sanders and Senator Burr, the chair and ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee of the Senate, for having Secretary Shinseki and others here today so we can begin the process of peeling the layers of the onion so we can get to the truth. I realize the administration has to balance competing priorities, but in my view there are few priorities more important than honoring our sacred promise to America's military heroes. I would hope we can all agree that even one story like Dale Richardson's is one too many. The time for happy talk and empty promises is long past. What our veterans deserve and need now is real accountability and reform and not this sort of ``kick the can down the road'' attitude that seems to pervade Washington but, rather, a real sense of urgency to get to the bottom of the problem and to fix it without any delay; otherwise, there will be more veterans who will be forced to suffer and possibly lose their life as Dale did because of the incompetence of the administration at the VA and the lack of leadership necessary to get to the bottom of this and get it on the right course. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Ayotte), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran).

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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