John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

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

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter). Further, if present and voting. the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. So not only is the unemployment rate unacceptably high, those are people still looking for work. We know more and more people are simply giving up because they have quit looking, and they are reflected in that smaller percentage of people actually in the workforce. As we all know, the President has had multiple opportunities to make that grand bargain for long-term debt reduction. He has endorsed a grand bargain but walked away from his own bipartisan fiscal commission, the so-called Simpson-Bowles Commission, in December of 2010. He might have also endorsed a grand bargain put forward by the Bipartisan Policy Center's Domenici-Rivlin Commission, but he walked away from that one too. President Reagan negotiated with Tip O'Neill. President Bush 41 negotiated with George Mitchell. President Clinton negotiated with Newt Gingrich. President Bush 43 negotiated with Ted Kennedy. That is what Presidential leadership requires, and which is so obviously missing in this context. I hope the President will follow up on this meeting we had this morning and begin the kind of negotiations that would provide a payment plan to pay off the debt America already owes--by the way, it is not just America, it is every man, woman, and child in this country--before he comes back here and asks us to raise the credit card limit by another $1 trillion. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, tomorrow morning--unless it has otherwise changed--we will be voting on the request from the majority leader and the President to raise the debt ceiling by more than $1 trillion. It will not actually be a dollar figure. It will be suspended for roughly 1 year--the debt ceiling, that is. So everybody understands what the majority leader and the President are asking us to do: America has maxed out its credit card. It is about $16.7 trillion. I know we talk about millions and billions and trillions as if we could actually conceptualize what that means, but here is an interesting comparison: Under President Obama--he has been in office for about 5 years now--our national debt has gone up $6.1 trillion. The debt accrued by all 43 previous Presidents was $10.6 trillion. Our national debt is $16.7 trillion, and President Obama has asked to raise that credit limit another $1 trillion. Here is the catch: If he had a plan to actually deal with how we are going to pay down this $16.7 trillion, then maybe there would be a discussion. What he wants is what he called a clean debt ceiling, which is a blank check. President Obama wants a blank check to continue to borrow more and more money--not so we, the present generation, can live up to our responsibilities and make sure we are fiscally responsible but, rather, to foist that debt off onto the next generation and beyond with absolutely no plan in place to repay it. We have heard discussions about grand bargains. We were with the President this morning. He was kind enough to invite Republicans in the Senate over to the White House. He sort of chuckled about the grand bargain that he and Speaker Boehner and others have been pursuing over the last few years. He likened it to a unicorn. In other words, he likened it to a mythical creature no one has actually ever seen. That is what the grand bargain is, at least under this administration. We reminded the President this morning that none of us wanted a government shutdown. This is not what we actually want, and we are all eager to end it. We also told the President that now is the time--and divided government is perhaps the best time--to end our fiscal crisis and to be responsible for the $16.7 trillion and come up with a payment plan. If you went to the credit card company and said: I want to raise my credit card limit another $10,000, they would say what is your plan to actually pay down the debt you already accumulated? If you come back to us with a plan, then maybe we can talk about raising the limit on your credit card. As I said, for the 220 years between the start of George Washington's Presidency and the end of George W. Bush's Presidency, the Federal Government accumulated $10.1 trillion in debt. During the Obama Presidency alone, it has been $6.1 trillion. If the President gets his way tomorrow in the vote, we are going to have to get a blank check to raise it another $1 trillion-plus. It won't be $6.1 trillion; it will be $7.1 or $7.2 trillion with no plan to pay down the debt and deal with the impact of this growing indebtedness on our economy and on our next generation. It is important to remember what the President has said about the debt. In 2008, when he was a Member of the Senate, he said adding $4 trillion to the national debt was, in his words, ``irresponsible'' and ``unpatriotic.'' That was President Obama back in 2008, and here he is again asking for a higher debt limit with no plan to repay the $16.7 trillion or any portion of it. President Obama is also the same person who said in 2009: ``I refuse to leave our children with a debt they cannot repay.'' He is the same person who said in 2010 that America's massive debt ``keeps [him] awake at night.'' I can't imagine he is getting much sleep these days if that is true. This is the same person who in 2011 echoed the comments of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ADM Mike Mullen when he was asked what his biggest concern was as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Mullen said the greatest long-term threat to America's national security is America's debt. President Obama said he agreed with that. Finally, President Obama is the same person who in 2012 said he was running for reelection ``to pay down the debt in a way that's balanced and responsible.'' The most amazing thing I thought about the meeting we had with the President this morning is that he was actually taking credit for a reduction in the deficit. Of course, the deficit is different from the debt. The deficit is how we measure the amount of money coming into the Treasury and how much goes out in a given year. We are now spending roughly 16 cents on the dollar of borrowed money; in other words, more money than what is coming in. The President was actually taking credit for the annual deficit's decrease. The deficit can be zero this year, and we would still have $16.7 trillion in debt. Those are related but different issues because the debt accumulates over many years when you spend more money than you have actually coming in. In fact, if we look back, the two reasons the deficit has gone down this year is because, No. 1, one of the largest tax increases in American history that the President demanded in January of this last year--that was the fiscal cliff negotiation--and, secondly, it was the Budget Control Act and the sequester, which has actually capped discretionary spending for the last 2 years. That is what has caused a reduction in the deficit, not anything else. So now the President said it is no big deal, this debt--$16.7 trillion is no big deal. And $17 plus trillion is no big deal, either, to hear the President say it today. Now the President has changed his tune. Earlier he told ``ABC News'': We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it is going to be in a sustainable place. Well, besides being completely irresponsible and not making decisions today but, rather, kicking the can down the road to the next generation and beyond, this high debt is having a present-day impact on slow economic growth. All we have to do is read the Congressional Budget Office reports, which say when the Federal Government borrows this much money from foreign governments such as China and elsewhere, that is money--the Federal Government is actually competing in the marketplace against the private sector for credit and it actually drives down private sector investment. With the debt this high, people know something is going to happen. Either the Federal Government is going to have to cut spending to deal with this debt or the President is going to want to raise taxes again, and that is exactly what he has requested year after year. Speaking of the next 10 years, the President's latest budget proposal, which he unveiled in April, would increase our debt by $7.4 trillion as well as raise taxes by another $1.1 trillion, even though the President has raised taxes by $1.7 trillion already. There is a reason why our economy is growing so slowly, why the private sector is sitting on the sidelines rather than investing and creating new jobs. There is a reason why the percentage of people active in the workforce is at a 30-year low. That is called the labor participation rate. All we have to do is Google the Bureau of Labor Statistics and it will tell us what the labor participation rate is. It is at a 30-year low. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, earlier this week the majority leader quoted from a speech delivered on September 30 by Ed Gillespie, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the current chairman of the Republican State Leadership Committee. The majority leader used this quotation to attack Congressional Republicans and defend the hardline strategy embraced by Democrats. Unfortunately, he took Mr. Gillespie's words out of context and failed to mention some of the other remarks Mr. Gillespie made in that very same speech. Not surprisingly, Mr. Gillespie has responded with a letter. He ends his letter by saying: ``Republican governors and legislators work across the aisle daily to solve the most critical issues in their states. It's an example of executive and legislative leadership you and President Obama would do well to emulate.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Mr. Gillespie's entire letter, along with his entire speech to the 2013 Republican State Leadership Committee Annual Meeting.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, responding to the question of the distinguished assistant majority leader, I would say that we would all like to try to find some way to get back to business as usual when it comes to funding the government through the regular appropriations process. We haven't done that for a long time, and so we have been operating not on individual bills--I think there are 13 separate bills as part of the appropriations process. So now we have unfortunately already degenerated to this continuing resolution process, which has its own problems. I would say to my friend that for every one of the hardships we can mitigate through passing narrow legislation absent a global agreement on the continuing resolution, it seems to me we ought to be doing that. If there are other suggestions the Democratic side has about how we can do that, I think that would be a good thing to do. The problem is that I know the majority leader--I will give the majority leader the benefit of the doubt. I hope he didn't really mean he thought this was a show process, trying to restore these survivor benefits through this unanimous consent request, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I do think there are a lot of questions raised in the minds of the American people whether what is happening here is being done purely for political purposes. We have veterans of World War II and Korea who come to the World War II Memorial only to be met with barricades. I have met a number of the Honor Flights of the ``greatest generation'' at a number of these memorials, and they have basically decided to go around the barricades, as I believe is their right under the Constitution. It seems as if there is an effort made to maximize the pain associated with the shutdown. We know 83 percent of the government is being funded. Why can't we try to chip away at some of these narrow provisions and mitigate some of the hardship that we can rather than getting in our corners, squaring off, and creating more and more problems? I think this is important. We ought to be doing this. We should have done this a long time ago. I would say to my colleagues, there were reports that Secretary Hagel notified the administration of this lapse in survivor benefits before the shutdown even occurred. It took the President 9 days before he finally ordered the Department of Defense to come up with a workaround, thankfully with the help of the Fisher House. I think there is an impression that a lot of gamesmanship is going on. I don't think it becomes the Senate. I think Congress's approval rating is in the toilet, and we ought to be doing everything we can to address the problems where we can.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor to the Senator.

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

Mr. CORNYN. Yesterday I came to the floor with the distinguished majority leader to raise the issue of survivor benefits to those who died in the line of duty. Reportedly, 26 servicemembers have died since the government shut down on October 1, including 5 in combat. Their families have been denied the basic survivor benefits, which include a death gratuity, $100,000 of life insurance, a housing allowance paid for a year, paid in a lump sum, as well as burial and other related expenses. Yesterday I asked unanimous consent that we take up and pass the House bill. The majority leader and I entered into a conversation, and there was a question as to the intervening action by the Department of Defense to try to work around the lapse of the funding. Fisher House, which is a wonderful charitable organization, helps to operate and fund seven different facilities in my State alone. I know they are extraordinarily generous and do very good work. They offered to enter into a contractual agreement with the Department of Defense to fill the gap during the interim. But what I would like to do is ask unanimous consent that we take up and pass the House legislation, which would alleviate the need for Fisher House and the Department of Defense trying to figure a workaround. We would actually pass legislation that would reopen that stream of funding so that these families could get the benefits they deserve. Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.J. Res. 91

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

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of Calendar No. 216, H.J. Res 91, making continuing appropriations for death gratuities and related survivor benefits for survivors of deceased military servicemembers of the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes; that the measure be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, if I could respond briefly, I appreciate the majority leader not objecting to the consideration of this legislation. He believes this issue has been resolved by this contractual arrangement between Fisher House and the Department of Defense, but ultimately the Department of Defense would have to reimburse Fisher House under what I understand is the purported arrangement to be made. This obviates the need for any of that kind of workaround, together with any legal questions that might arise as to whether this is actually something the Department has the authority to do. I am not suggesting they don't; I am just saying this alleviates all those considerations. So I am pleased we were able to come together in a bipartisan way, as we were on the military pay for uniformed military, and pass this narrow piece of legislation. I think maybe now that we have passed the pay for Active-Duty military and we have passed the provision that provides for survivor benefits for the families of the fallen, perhaps that paves the way to be open for some other narrow bills until we can come together on a larger bill. We have offered, for example, funding for the National Institutes of Health, NIH. A few days ago the distinguished assistant leader from the Democratic side gave a very eloquent speech about children's cancer research. Under the bill that was passed by the House on a bipartisan basis that we have called up here, that funding would be restored, as would funding for the Veterans' Administration so they can process disability benefits, which they are not able to do now because of the cutoff in funding. There are a number of areas where I think we can work together constructively if we will do so. I am pleased we were able to take care of this one.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday we learned that for the remainder of the government shutdown one of America's great charitable organizations, the Fisher House Foundation, will provide survivor benefits to military families who have lost a loved one on the field of battle. Fisher House is really just almost too good to believe, a wonderful charity that has helped military families all across our country, including folks in seven different facilities in Texas, from the VA North Texas Health Care System to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, the Carl R. Darnall Medical Center, the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center, and the South Texas Veterans Health Care System. I personally extend my thanks and express my gratitude to Fisher House for making such a tremendous commitment to our military heroes and making such a generous offer for the families of the fallen. Secretary Hagel was quoted when he announced that Fisher House was going to fill the gap left by the cutoff of Federal funds, saying he was ``offended, outraged, and embarrassed that the government shutdown had prevented the Department of Defense from fulfilling this most sacred responsibility in a timely manner.'' I agree with his outrage and sense of offense and embarrassment. But I want to recall how we got here. If our friends across the aisle had simply agreed to delay the individual mandate and to eliminate the special congressional carveout under ObamaCare, this never would have happened. We have now reached day 10 of the shutdown. Over the last week and a half, administration officials have done as much as they possibly can to make this shutdown as painful as possible. They made the decision to barricade the World War II memorials and monuments along the National Mall, hoping to keep out our veterans, many near the end of their lives, for whom these monuments were built as a way of honoring their sacrifice. They kept these barricades in their way to impede or perhaps prevent them from visiting things such as the World War II Memorial. The Obama administration we know has temporarily closed or interfered with privately run parks and historic sites, such as the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in Northern Virginia. Why would the administration, in order to turn up the heat or increase the pain of the shutdown, impose itself to shut down a privately run park? Well, there is a reason for that, and it is because this is a cynical game--not one designed to get to a solution but one to gain political advantage. It should be offensive, embarrassing, and outrageous--to use the words of Secretary Hagel--for a political party to try to use a shutdown for such craven political gain. Meanwhile, our Democratic friends have refused to support legislation that would reopen our memorials and national parks and fund the National Institutes of Health. I heard the distinguished assistant majority leader come to the floor a few days ago and decry the fact that cancer research for children was being temporarily stopped because of the shutdown. We have come to the floor and offered a bill that would reopen it, along with clinical trials, and it has been refused by our Democratic colleagues. We have come to the floor--and the House has passed these bills--and said: Let's fund the Veterans' Administration to make sure the backlog of disability claims gets taken care of and so our veterans who have given so much and sacrificed so much don't have to wait on getting their disability claims processed. That was objected to by the majority leader. They also objected to funding our military Reserves. As I said, they seem intent on maximizing the pain in hopes of gaining political advantage. That is outrageous, that is embarrassing, and it should be embarrassing. Before I conclude, I want to say to all the military families out there who have lost a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a father, or a mother on the field of battle--I want to leave you with the words of a great American President who said: I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Those noble and inspiring words in that prayer are the type of tribute we should be giving to those families who have lost loved ones on the field of battle, not the sort of shortsighted political treatment that has been given by the efforts across the aisle to shut down every reasonable opportunity to alleviate some of this hardship and to mitigate some of the pain. We have done it together successfully when it comes to paying our uniformed Active-Duty military. We got a unanimous consent agreement between the parties to make sure our Active-Duty troops are getting paid. Why is it we can't do the same thing with the survivors of those who lost their lives on the field of battle? When I asked unanimous consent yesterday for the majority leader to agree to that piece of legislation, he asked to delay consideration of that request until the Defense Department could announce its proposal with the Fisher House. Again, I commend the Fisher House for stepping up and trying to fill the void, but why should we not do our job? Why should Congress not act? We should act and I hope very soon. We can do our job and honor these fallen and their families in an appropriate way by coming together as Republicans and Democrats and making sure these survivor benefits to the families who have lost loved ones on the field of battle are paid on a timely basis without being caught up in the political games occurring inside the Halls of Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield for a question.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, amid all the rhetoric and the blame games and, yes, even theatrics, I want to make sure the American people actually understand what President Obama and the majority leader are asking us to do. Their position is that Congress should raise the debt limit--actually suspend the debt limit through the end of 2014 and increase our national debt by another $1.1 trillion without doing anything to solve our underlying fiscal problems, including the $17 trillion in debt we have already run up. I cannot imagine there is anyone in this Chamber or within the sound of my voice who thinks that is a good idea. At some point, if we keep maxing out our credit card rather than dealing with our debt problem, our spending problem, we come back to the bank, so to speak, and ask for our debt limit to be increased another $1.1 trillion, where will this end? I can tell you where I think it will end: It will end in disaster. Ultimately, at some point our creditors will lose confidence in our ability to repay that money. At some point interest rates are going to not be zero or next to zero, they will be up around the historic average, 4 percent or 5 percent, and we will have to pay China and our other creditors more and more of our Federal budget just to pay interest on the national debt. At some point that becomes unsustainable. It will hurt our national security. It will hurt the safety net programs we all care about, to protect our most vulnerable. Unfortunately, the President and the majority leader remain dug in. Notwithstanding the charts we have seen on this floor that talk about negotiations, there have been no real negotiations. The President called Speaker Boehner last night to tell him: In case you missed the message, Mr. Speaker, from when we met at the White House last week, we are still not negotiating. What is that all about? The President could have sent him a text message with as much information as that conveyed. I am told the President has invited the Republican Members of Congress to the White House to meet with him tomorrow. I hope that meeting is more productive than the meetings he has already held or the phone conversations he has had with the Speaker. I can only hope the President has reconsidered his unsustainable position, that he is not willing to negotiate. The Founders of this great country created a Constitution for us with coequal branches of government. Congress is not better or worse than the executive branch. We are coequal. We cannot function without one another. We can pass a law, but it cannot become the law unless the President signs it. The President cannot pass a law without Congress. So we have to learn to work together. In the context of the recent history I want to recount for everybody, the President's refusal to negotiate is simply unsustainable and quite remarkable. Over the last 30 years, virtually every major domestic policy reform has involved at least some kind of bipartisan compromise. In 1983, a conservative Republican President worked with a liberal Speaker of the House and Senate leaders from both parties to save and preserve Social Security. That was in 1983. At the time those Social Security amendments were signed into law, Republicans had the same Senate majority the Democrats have today, 54 Republicans then, 46 Democrats. Meanwhile, the Democratic House majority was significantly larger than the Republican House majority today. Yet both sides did what so far we have been unable to do and that is come together, negotiate and reach an outcome. Ronald Reagan, back in 1983, then signed that negotiated outcome into law. In the end, the majority Senate Democrats voted for those Social Security amendments, as did a majority of Senate Republicans. Three years later, in 1986, liberal Democrats and conservative Democrats joined together to enact another landmark reform bill. Once again the President's party controlled the Senate but not the House. Once again, there was not a refusal to negotiate; rather, there was a negotiation and a bipartisan outcome--notwithstanding the normal partisan rivalries that will always exist. In June 1986, 97 Members of this Chamber, a massive, overwhelming supermajority, voted in favor of the Tax Reform Act which lowered Federal income tax rates and broadened the base. The final version of that bill was supported by a majority of Senate Democrats and a majority of Senate Republicans as well. That was the kind of historic accomplishment that seems to be slipping through our fingers today by virtue of the refusal to negotiate. That was a historic accomplishment that dramatically simplified the U.S. Tax Code and made it more conducive to economic growth--a lesson we would do well to recall and emulate today. Fast forward a decade to 1996. A Democratic President, Bill Clinton, joined together with the Republican House and Senate and, despite partisan pressure enough to go around and all sorts of heated rhetoric, Democrats and Republicans joined together and reformed our welfare system, helping millions of disadvantaged people to get off welfare rolls and make the transition from dependency to work, dignity and self-reliance. That was a great accomplishment. In the end, 78 Senators, including most Senate Democrats and every single Senate Republican, voted for that. One more prominent example. In 2001, a conservative Republican President worked with a prominent liberal Democrat to enact a major overhaul to our education laws. Indeed, the No Child Left Behind Act was a direct result of President Bush's negotiations and collaboration with the late Senator Ted Kennedy. The final legislation 87 Senators voted for, including a majority of Senate Democrats and a majority of Senate Republicans. I am not necessarily saying every single one of those pieces of legislation was something that was perfect in every way. I think we have learned there are things that still needed to be done, particularly when it came to education reform, but the three Presidents I mentioned, two Republicans and one Democrat, worked together to make substantial compromises in order to pass Social Security reform, tax reform, welfare reform, and education reform. But they also understood that politics is the art of the possible and they did not treat the word negotiate as a dirty four-letter word. I want to emphasize one more time that Republicans stand ready to work with President Obama in addressing our country's most serious fiscal and economic challenges. Yet rather than to pursue serious good- faith negotiations over things such as entitlement reform and tax reform, things that would actually be good for our economy and good for our country, President Obama decides to erect and then knock down strawmen. For example, when Republicans talk about entitlement reform, he says we want to eliminate the safety net. When Republicans talk about tax reform, he says we want to give tax breaks to rich people. That is campaigning, that is not governing. Here is the reality, though. Republicans do not want to eliminate the safety net, we want to improve the safety net, particularly Medicare and Social Security. We don't want to give special tax breaks just to the wealthy, we want to give all Americans a simpler, flatter, fairer Tax Code that is more conducive to economic growth. We want the type of Tax Code the President's own bipartisan fiscal commission, Simpson- Bowles--the recommendations they made in 2010. Yet the President ignored it, walked away, and has done nothing to contribute to that debate. We understand, being elected officials ourselves, that all elected politicians have to campaign for office. It goes with the territory. You cannot get here unless you run for office and you win an election. But at some point the campaign has to end. At some point we have to govern. At some point the partisan rhetoric has to give way to actually accomplishing things and solving problems. At some point America's elected leadership needs to demonstrate real leadership and a willingness to govern. President Obama has now reached a critical point in his Presidency, in his second term. He will be remembered for one thing or another. He will be remembered either as a President who was willing to step up when America needed that kind of leadership, when Congress needed bipartisan cooperation in order to solve our Nation's biggest challenges, or he will leave a legacy, if he does not do that, of a President who refused to do his job in order to try to win the partisan battles. We need something better and America deserves better. We need a President who will govern and not campaign perpetually. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter).

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, on this side of the aisle we agree it is good to negotiate, and we should. I would only hope the President of the United States would be a part of that negotiation in order to make it successful. But I would ask my friend why the request is contingent on passage of the House continuing resolution. The Democrats have already rejected the House's request to go to conference on the CR, seemingly in contrast to what they are now asking for, which is a negotiation. Hopefully, we will pass H.R. 3273, the Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth Working Group Act, which will create a bicameral, bipartisan group to address the CR and the debt limit situation. But on the Republican side, again I would say to our friends that we have a longstanding request to make sure reconciliation instructions are not in order in a budget conference so that the debt limit can be increased on a strictly party-line vote. We happen to think it is a problem if the debt ceiling is raised as the Democrats are requesting, that we would see the debt go up by 68 percent under this President--more than all other Presidents in American history who preceded him. We think that is a bad idea. So I would ask the distinguished Senator from Washington whether she would consider an amended unanimous consent request, and we would ask that the Senate, by way of amendment to her request, proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 33, H. Con. Res. 25; that the amendment at the desk, which is the text of S. Con. Res. 8, the budget resolution passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof; that H. Con. Res. 25 be amended, be agreed to; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the Senate proceed to a vote on the motion to insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses, and authorize the Chair to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate; with all of the above occurring with no intervening action or debate; and I would further ask unanimous consent that it not be in order for the Senate to consider a conference report that includes reconciliation instructions to raise the debt limit.

Mr. CORNYN. I object.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there are obviously differences in this Chamber over the fiscal direction of our country, but we should be united in our efforts to do right by our uniformed military and their families and certainly their survivors. The way they have been treated is simply unacceptable--indeed, it is outrageous. The President's spokesman today said he is looking for a solution. We are here to offer one to him. Washington has not gotten a lot right lately but now is our chance. The legislation I will be offering a unanimous consent request on would right this wrong by ensuring that the families of the fallen receive four essential benefits: the death gratuity benefit, the coverage of funeral and burial expenses, coverage of travel to both the funeral and the dignified transfer of their loved one's remains and the temporary continuation of their housing allowance. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives H.J. Res. 91, making continuing appropriations for survivor benefits for survivors of deceased military servicemembers for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, responding to the distinguished majority leader, if that will help facilitate this getting done, we would be glad to work with him. Hopefully, we can find another area, as we did for military pay for our uniformed military, where we can begin to mitigate the hardship caused by this shutdown.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. I object.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, four times the House of Representatives has sent over continuing resolutions with various additions for consideration by the Senate. Each time Senator Reid and the majority party have tabled those provisions, essentially shutting them down without giving them an opportunity for a vote on the merits. The last time, though, I believe Senator Reid led his colleagues down a very treacherous path, because the provisions of this otherwise clean CR would have repealed the provision that carves out Congress and members of our staff and gives us preferential treatment under ObamaCare. The second part of it has to do with delaying penalties on individuals, just as the President has unilaterally done in delaying penalties on employers. There is no good reason for us not to pass both of those provisions. But instead of trying to deal constructively with the House of Representatives--which has sent four separate bills over here on the continuing resolution--the majority leader has chosen to stiff-arm each of those efforts. So when the majority leader comes to the floor and bemoans the government shutdown--something we all agree we should try our best to avoid--he claims they are willing to negotiate and the President is willing to negotiate a change in the outcome. But we know that is not true. We know each time they have shut out Republican proposals from the House of Representatives which would open the Federal Government with reasonable bipartisan agreements. But what really is beyond belief is when I hear our colleagues come to the floor and they say, Why can't we have cancer research for children at NIH continue? Yet we come to the floor and offer bills which would open funding at the National Institutes of Health, that very same cancer research, and they are objected to by the Democratic side of the aisle. I don't know any other word to describe it than hypocrisy. This morning, the Washington Post talks about the case of Michelle Langbehn from California, who was diagnosed with sarcoma and is unable to have an opportunity to participate in a clinical trial at NIH. This is the very same sort of program which would have been funded by the bill we offered on this side of the aisle and was objected to by the majority leader and the Democratic side. There is one bright spot of agreement, and that is we were able to agree unanimously to pass the House bill that funded our troops which passed the House 423 to 0. That is the good news. But the bad news is this has now all morphed into a debate not only on the continuing resolution but on the debt ceiling. What the majority leader and his side of the aisle are apparently proposing is that without making any arrangements whatsoever to pay for the $17 trillion in debt that has already been accumulated, they want another clean debt ceiling increase, and the President says he won't negotiate, but in all likelihood we will be voting later this week on another $1 trillion added to our maxed-out credit card without doing anything whatsoever to take care of the debt which has already been incurred. That is fundamentally irresponsible. That is not me saying it. The American people have said this. The Congressional Budget Office has said this. The President's own bipartisan fiscal commission has said that. In a recent poll from NBC-Wall Street Journal, when people were given the choice between raising the debt ceiling or not raising the debt ceiling, 44 percent said don't raise the debt ceiling, 22 percent said raise the debt ceiling. I realize we have more choices than that. There could be, coupled together with the raising of the debt ceiling, some real reforms of our broken entitlement programs to shore up Social Security and Medicare. But our colleagues and the President himself have said, No, I am not going to negotiate. No, I want a clean debt ceiling. No, I want the freedom to max out the credit card another $1 trillion, without doing anything to pay off the debt that threatens not only our future prosperity, but our national security. I remember very clearly when ADM Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked what the greatest national security threat to the United States was, and he said the national debt. Why would our colleagues and the President of the United States ignore what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the most significant national security threat to our country by saying, We are not interested in any reforms, we are not interested in anything that would actually pay down the debt and remove that threat to our national security and our future prosperity? Why would they say, No, we want to keep on spending money--money we don't actually have--and continue to borrow from our creditors like China and other foreign countries that hold a majority of our national debt? And when interest rates start to tick back up again as the Federal Reserve begins to taper its purchase of our own debt, we are going to see more and more of our national expenditures go to pay interest on that debt, crowding out not only national security but the safety net programs for the most vulnerable people in our country. Madam President, I yield the floor.