John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to express my deep concerns over the President's nomination of Thomas Perez to be Secretary of the Department of Labor. When executing its advice-and-consent role, which, of course, is ensconced within the Constitution itself, it is the duty of the Senate to ensure that the people the President appoints to positions of power are of the highest caliber. It is our duty to examine their record and to determine whether each nominee ought to be granted the public trust. While no one can deny that Mr. Perez has spent his career in public service, I am afraid his record raises serious concerns over his ability to fairly and impartially lead the Department of Labor. Mr. Perez has a documented record of acting with political motivation and being a partisan, selective enforcer of the law. He has been misleading in his sworn testimony and ethically questionable in some of his actions. For example, during his tenure at the Department of Justice, Mr. Perez has been in charge of the Civil Rights Division, which includes the voting rights section. One would hope that if any part of the Department of Justice would be apolitical, it would be the Civil Rights Division. But under Mr. Perez's watch, the voting rights section has compiled a disturbing record of political discrimination and selective enforcement of the law. You don't have to take my word for it. All you have to do is take a look at the 258-page report issued by the Department of Justice inspector general earlier this year. The report cites a ``deep ideological polarization'' of the voting rights section under Mr. Perez. It goes on to say this polarization ``has at times been a significant impediment to the operation of the Section and has exacerbated the potential appearance of politicized decisionmaking.'' Instead of upholding and enforcing all laws equally, Mr. Perez launched politically motivated campaigns against commonsense constitutional provisions such as voter ID both in Texas and in South Carolina. The Supreme Court of the United States, in an opinion written by John Paul Stevens, who was, by all accounts, an independent member of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States held that commonsense voter identification requirements are not an undue burden on the right to cast one's ballot and, indeed, are a reasonable means by which voter fraud is combated and protection of the integrity of the ballot is ensured. Yet Thomas Perez, working at the Department of Justice, targeted the voter ID requirement passed by the Texas Legislature and blocked it effectively, and the same thing in South Carolina, based on nothing but politics--certainly not based on U.S. Supreme Court precedent that states it was not an undue burden on the right to vote, and it was a legitimate means to protect the integrity of the ballot and to combat fraud. The inspector general goes on to describe misleading testimony that Mr. Perez gave before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 2010 about a prominent voting rights case, stating that it ``did not reflect the entire story regarding the involvement of political appointees.'' This is why, when you are sworn in as a witness in court, you are asked to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When what you say is the truth but you leave out other information, it can, in effect, by its context, not be truthful. This is part of the problem with the testimony Mr. Perez gave before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Going further back, we can see Mr. Perez's ideological roots started as a local official in Montgomery County, MD. During his tenure on the county council, he consistently opposed the proper enforcement of our immigration laws. In fact, he went so far as to testify against enforcement measures that were being considered by the Maryland State Legislature. Finally, there is the matter of Mr. Perez's quid pro quo dealings with the City of St. Paul, MN. Of course, I am referring to the well- publicized decision of Mr. Perez to withhold Department of Justice support for a lawsuit against the City of St. Paul. He did so in exchange for the city withdrawing a case that it had before the Supreme Court, a case that many would have believed would have resulted in the Court rejecting an aggressive interpretation of the Fair Housing Act that guided Mr. Perez and the Department of Justice. In fact, that is the reason he did it. He was afraid the Supreme Court would rebuke the Department of Justice's aggressive interpretation of the Fair Housing Act. While this may not have been a direct violation of any laws, it is, at best, ethically dubious. In summation, we have a nominee for the Department of Labor who has a record of ideological, polarizing leadership; giving incomplete and thereby misleading testimony before official tribunals; and of enforcing the law in a partisan and selective manner--in essence, a ``you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours'' way of going about the public's business. As citizens we should ask, Is this the type of person we would want to serve in the President's Cabinet? As Senators, we ought to ask, Is this the best we can do for the Secretary of the Department of Labor? I believe Mr. Perez's record disqualifies him from running this or any other executive agency of the Federal Government. I fear his leadership would needlessly politicize the Department and impose top- down ideological litmus tests. For all these reasons, I oppose his nomination and encourage my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this last Monday night we had a remarkable occurrence in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans actually met together, as the Presiding Officer knows, in the Old Senate Chamber, a historic location where the Senate used to meet before we became so large and expanded to 100 Members. What was so good about that, from my perspective, was that we actually had some communication going on and we learned there were a lot of Senators who were actually frustrated by the way the Senate has been operating. It gave us all an opportunity, there in a confidential setting, to speak our mind and to share our frustrations. But I think one of the things we have forgotten--maybe not forgotten, but need to be reminded of from time to time--is what makes the Senate unique, not just here in America and our form of government but throughout the world. Sometimes the Senate is referred to as the world's greatest deliberative body. As we all know, it has become less so in recent years. But we all remember the story of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia when they were at loggerheads in trying to figure out how to create the legislative branch. There were some who wanted a single unicameral legislative body, and there were discussions then about whether there actually needed to be a Senate in addition to the House of Representatives, which, of course, would literally be representative of the people based on their numbers as opposed to representing the respective States, which is the function of the Senate. Late in the convention there was a compromise proposed by the Senator from Connecticut, Roger Sherman, on behalf of the small States. Of course, the small States were worried the big States would gang up on them. Ironically, under this compromise, it is now the small States that gang up on the big States, but that is another story for another day. Under this Connecticut Compromise, the Senate came to be comprised of two Senators representing each State, no matter how big or how small the State. My State of 26 million people only gets two Senators. The Presiding Officer's State, a smaller State, also gets two Senators. That was part of the Connecticut Compromise back when the country was founded. The Constitution could not have been ratified without this compromise. It initially failed, but Benjamin Franklin later found a better time to reintroduce it and it passed. But here is the real function of the Senate, and it comes from a story told of a conversation between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Of course, Washington had presided over the constitutional convention. Jefferson was in Paris. When he returned, he asked Washington why he allowed the Senate to be formed, because Jefferson had considered it unnecessary. One body based on proportional representation, Jefferson thought, should be enough. Washington then asked Jefferson if he cooled his tea by first pouring it in the saucer, which was the custom of the day. Sure, responded Jefferson. And Washington said: So it is that the Senate must cool tempers and prevent hasty legislation by making sure it is well thought out and fully debated. I mention that story and recite a little bit of history to remind us the Senate was created not just to be another House of Representatives but for another purpose altogether. That is the other reason why Senators are elected for 6-year terms from a whole State as opposed to just a congressional district where our colleagues across the Capitol run every 2 years from smaller areas. Of course, they are supposed to be much more closely tied to their constituents. We are supposedly given a little more flexibility to take the long view and not the short-term view in how we decide matters. That is the reason why so many of us were concerned at the threat of the majority leader to invoke the so-called nuclear option. I know for most Americans this is not something that is at the top of their list to be concerned with, but from an institutional and constitutional perspective it is absolutely critical the Senate remain true to the design of the Founders of our country as framed in our Constitution. As a rationale to invoking the so-called nuclear option and turning the Senate into a purely majority-vote institution, there were claims this side of the aisle had been obstructing too many of President Obama's nominations. But the facts tell a far different story. Thus far, the President has nominated more than 1,560 people for various positions, and only 4--only 4--of them have been rejected by the Senate. Since 2009, this Chamber has confirmed 199 of President Obama's article III judicial nominees and rejected 2 of them, and 80 of those nominees were confirmed by voice vote, which is essentially a unanimous vote. Another 64 were confirmed by unanimous rollcall votes. Does that sound like a crisis? Does that sound like obstructionism? I think not. I would like to suggest it is another problem that has caused the Senate to become, in a way, a nondeliberative body and quite dysfunctional. For example, during Senator Reid's tenure as majority leader, an unprecedented number of bills have come to the floor directly from the majority leader's office. Any of us who remember our high school civics lessons know that, ordinarily, committees of the Congress are supposed to write legislation. Then once the committees vote that legislation out, it comes to the Senate floor. Obviously, the purpose for that is to give everyone in the committees an opportunity to vent their concerns, to offer amendments, to debate them, and then to mark up a bill before it comes to the Senate floor so we do a better job and deal with all of the unintended consequences and the like. But during the tenure of the current majority leader an unprecedented number of bills have simply sprung to life out of the majority leader's office. Many of my colleagues, including Members of Senator Reid's own party, have been left wondering why it is the committees actually even exist in a world where bills simply come to the Senate floor under rule XIV without the sort of deliberation and consideration they should get in committees before arriving here. When legislation arrives on the floor, Senators are routinely denied an opportunity to offer the amendments they see fit and to have debate and votes on those amendments. To give some perspective--and I know some people will say the American people are not interested in the process, they are interested more in the policy, but this demonstrates why the process is so important to getting the right policies embraced--during the 109th Congress, when this side of the aisle, Republicans, controlled this Chamber, Senate Democrats offered more than 1,000 separate amendments-- 1,043 separate amendments--to legislation. During the 112th Congress, when our Democratic colleagues were in charge, Republicans were only allowed to offer 400 amendments--1,043 to 400, a big difference. During the 109th Congress, when Republicans controlled this Chamber, there were 428 recorded votes on Senate amendments--428. In the 112th Congress, there were 224--a little more than half of the number. Since becoming majority leader, Senator Reid has blocked amendments on bills on the floor no fewer than 70 times. In the language of Senate procedure, we call that filling the amendment tree, but what it means is the minority is effectively shut out of the ability to shape legislation by offering amendments on the Senate floor. And that is no small thing. Again, I represent 26 million people in the State of Texas. Being a Member of the minority, when Senator Reid blocks any amendment I wish to offer to a bill, he has effectively shut out of the process 26 million Texans. And it is not just my State, it is every State represented by the minority. As a comparison, the previous Senate majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, a Republican, filled the amendment tree only 12 times in 4 years. So 70 times under Senator Reid, 12 times for Senator Frist. And before him, Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, filled the tree only once in 1\1/2\ years--once in 1\1/2\ years. When Trent Lott was the majority leader, a Republican, he did it 10 times in 5 years. George Mitchell, a Democratic majority leader, did it three times in 6 years. Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, who was an institution unto himself here in the Senate, did it three times in 2 years. And finally, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, the majority leader, a Republican, did it seven times in 3\1/2\ years. My point is not to bore people with statistics but to point out the Senate has changed dramatically under the tenure of the current majority leader in a way where Members of the Senate are blocked from offering amendments to legislation in the interest of their constituents. As majority leader, Senator Reid has denied those rights to the minority and the rights of the people we represent. When he refuses to let us offer amendments and debate those amendments, he refuses to let us have real debate and he is effectively gagging millions of our constituents. One more time I would like to remind Senator Reid of what he promised 6 years ago. He said: As majority leader, I intend to run the Senate with respect for the rules and for the minority the rules protect. The Senate was established to make sure that minorities are protected. Majorities can always protect themselves but minorities cannot. That is what the Senate is all about. I would also like to remind our colleagues what President Obama said in April of 2005, when he was in the Senate. He said: If the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse. My point is to say the Senate has been transformed in recent years into an image of an institution the Founders of our country would hardly recognize, nor would previously serving Senators who operated in an environment where every Senator had an opportunity to offer amendments to legislation and to get a vote on those amendments; where the minority's rights were protected by denying the majority the right to simply shut out the minority, denying them an opportunity to offer or debate important pieces of legislation. That is what has happened under the current majority leader, and that is why I believe those meetings, such as the one we had in the Old Senate Chamber this past Monday night, are so important. But we do have to rely on the facts. Facts can be stubborn, but I think our debate ought to be based on the facts and on a rational discussion of what the Framers intended when they created the Senate and its unique role-- unique not just here in America but to all legislative bodies in the world.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, now that the so-called nuclear option has been averted and the Senate can now turn its attention to other matters of substance, rather than internal matters of how the Senate operates, I think it is important we evaluate how legislation that has passed this body is working. I wish to focus specifically on the Affordable Care Act, which is better known as ObamaCare. Amazingly, Senator Reid on Sunday, in one of the talk shows, was quoted as saying: ``ObamaCare has been wonderful for America.'' The House minority leader, former Speaker Pelosi, has said that implementation of the health care law has been fabulous. This stands in stark contrast to what Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the principal Senate architects of ObamaCare, has said--what he told Secretary Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services--that the implementation of ObamaCare is a train wreck in the making. And then you contrast that with what President Obama himself said about the Affordable Care Act, about ObamaCare, and he said it is ``working the way it is supposed to.'' Well, not all of those things can be true at the same time, and they are not. Indeed, in the real world, unfortunately, it looks as though ObamaCare is a slow-motion disaster in the making. Notwithstanding the President's comments that it is working the way it is supposed to, the administration seems to be acknowledging by its own actions that it is not working the way it is supposed to. Indeed, the administration has chosen to delay the so-called employers mandate, and they have begun to admit what Americans have been saying since at least 2010 when ObamaCare passed--that it has simply proven to be unworkable. Rather than accept the reality and support full congressional repeal of the law, the administration is instead refusing to enforce the law and is choosing to apply it selectively. The law clearly states that as of January 2014 all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees have to provide their workers with health insurance or else pay a penalty. To be clear, I didn't support the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--but that is what the law says. Our Democratic colleagues, 60 of them in the Senate, and the majority in the then-Democratically controlled House passed the law and President Obama signed it, and that is what it says. But the President has chosen to take unilateral action and to refuse to enforce the law that he himself signed and that congressional Democrats passed without a single Republican vote. Whether you supported it or you didn't support it, many of us now are forced to acknowledge and I would think the administration itself would be forced to acknowledge, that the law simply is not working as advertised. It is now obvious that the employer mandate has prompted many businesses to reduce the number of hours and transform full-time jobs into part-time jobs in order to avoid the employer mandate. This has contributed to a surge in the number of people working part-time jobs for economic reasons. Last month alone that number was 8.2 million people--8.2 million Americans who would like to have full-time work but simply can't find it, in large part because of the implementation of ObamaCare. As I said, I voted against ObamaCare 3 years ago. I remember being in this Chamber on Christmas Eve at 7 a.m. in 2009 when our Democratic colleagues passed ObamaCare without a single vote from this side of the aisle. Many of us were voicing concerns about the provisions of ObamaCare, including the employer mandate, long before it became law. The problems with the mandate will, of course, still be there in 2015 notwithstanding the 1-year unilateral delay by the administration, and they reflect broader problems in the Affordable Care Act as a whole. I believe the most commonsense thing we can do is simply to repeal it and to start over and replace it with patient-centered reforms that actually address the biggest challenges that face most families in America. The President said: If you like what you have in terms of your health coverage, you can keep it. Millions of Americans are now finding that not to be the case. The President said a family of four will find their premiums reduced, on average, $2,500. Actually, rather than a reduction in cost, they are finding their premiums are going up and will go up even more when ObamaCare is implemented. My point is that whether or not you voted for ObamaCare, it is important that we now acknowledge the sad reality that it is not working the way even its most vigorous proponents wished it would. Indeed, it seems to be working out in a way most of its critics thought it would. But what is important now is that we work together to give permanent relief to this public policy train wreck for individual Americans and for small businesses. That is actually how we are supposed to function under our Constitution. Even under uniformly Democratic control, as the Congress and the White House were the first 2 years of this President's term, if things don't work out the way even the most ardent proponents of a piece of legislation wish and hope it will, then our job under the Constitution is to work together to try to provide some relief and solutions for the American people. That is true whether you objected to the law in its first instance or you simply supported it. If it turns out not to work as advertised, it is our job to fix it, and we can do so by replacing it with high-quality care that is more affordable and is much simpler to use. Rather than have the Federal Government dictate to you and your doctor what kind of care you are going to get and under what terms, you can, in consultation with your private doctor, make those decisions in the best interest of yourself and your family. The bigger problem is that President Obama is simply deciding which aspects of the law to enforce and which not to enforce, and that is becoming somewhat of a trend, based on political convenience and expediency. Time and time again he has made clear that if a law passed by Congress and signed by the President--whether it is him or another President--is unpopular among his political supporters, he will simply ignore it and refuse to enforce it. Shortly after ObamaCare became law, the administration began issuing waivers from the annual limit requirements, which made it seem as if certain organizations--oftentimes labor unions--would simply be exempted from and would receive preferential treatment based on their political connections. Meanwhile, to help implement ObamaCare, the IRS has announced it will violate the letter of the law and issue health insurance subsidies through Federal exchanges, especially in those places where the States have declined to issue State-based exchanges, even though the law makes clear these subsidies can only be used for State exchanges. Let me restate that. The law says you can only use taxpayer subsidies for State-based exchanges, but because many States have simply said that this makes no sense for them and are refusing to create State- based insurance exchanges, these individuals will now be in the Federal insurance exchange. And even though the law says taxpayer subsidies are not available for those, the IRS is papering over that provision of the law and simply disregarding it. Again, we have seen this time and time again. We saw a similar disregard for the rule of law during the government-run Chrysler bankruptcy when the company-secured bondholders received much less for their loans than the United Auto Workers' pension funds. Even though, under the law, these bondholders were entitled to the highest priority in terms of repayment, they were subjugated to the United Auto Workers' pension fund basically in an exercise of political strong-arming. We saw this again in the Solyndra bankruptcy. Remember that? The Obama administration violated the law by making taxpayers subordinate to private lenders. In other words, they put the taxpayers on the hook rather than the private lenders who helped finance Solyndra. More recently, the administration--and this is something that is in the news as recently as today--made unconstitutional recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals held that the administration's argument in defense of its so-called ``recess appointment power'' would ``eviscerate the Constitution's separation of powers.'' It now appears, as part of the so-called nuclear option negotiations, that even the White House is now being forced to withdraw these nominees who were unconstitutionally appointed and offer substitute appointees. We also know that the Obama administration unilaterally chose to waive key requirements of the 1996 welfare reform law and the 2002 law known as No Child Left Behind. A government run by waiver or by the Federal Government picking winners and losers is the antithesis of equal justice under the law. Look across the street at the Supreme Court of the United States, and above the entry it says: ``Equal justice under law.'' That is the very definition of our form of government, which is designed for a congress comprised of duly-elected representatives of the American people and the President of the United States to write legislation that applies to everybody and not to issue waivers or exemptions or to simply refuse to enforce the law because it has proven to be inconvenient or not politically expedient. The U.S. Constitution obligates the President to make sure all of our laws are faithfully executed. Yet, with President Obama, the pattern is unmistakable: inconvenient or unpopular legal requirements are repeatedly swept aside by Executive fiat. If the law is not working the way it is supposed to, the President should come back to Congress and say: We need to amend the law. We need to replace this unworkable law with one that will actually serve the interests of the American people. But we are not seeing that happen. We are seeing the White House decide on its own that it simply won't enforce a law. Last year, for example, the administration unilaterally announced a moratorium on the enforcement of certain immigration laws. In effect, when Congress failed to pass legislation the President wanted, the President himself simply decided not to enforce the immigration laws. As that example shows, this administration has frequently relied on unelected bureaucrats to override the people's elected representatives. It is simply improper and unconstitutional under our system for the President to decide unilaterally that he is not going to enforce the law. For example, when Congress refused to enact the so-called card check for labor unions, the administration simply turned to unelected bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board. And when Congress refused to extend cap-and-trade energy taxes, the administration turned to unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to attempt to accomplish the same objectives indirectly that had been prohibited by Congress because it couldn't get a political consensus for doing it directly. Indeed, the President has now authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate virtually every aspect of the American economy without congressional approval and without recourse to the American people. When Congress makes a mistake, when we do something the American people don't approve of, they get to vote us out of office if they see fit. That is not true with this faceless, nameless bureaucracy, which is rarely held accountable, and particularly when the President delegates to that bureaucracy the authority to regulate in so many areas and avoid congressional accountability and accountability at the White House. Taken together, all these measures represent a basic contempt for the rule of law and the normal constitutional checks and balances under separated powers. After witnessing the President's record over the past 4\1/2\ years, is it any wonder why the American people and, indeed, Members of Congress were skeptical about his promises to enforce our immigration laws under the immigration bill that passed the Senate recently? Remember all of the extravagant promises that were made for border security, for interior enforcement, for the implementation of a worksite verification system, for a biometric entry-exit system to deter 40 percent of the illegal immigration that comes when people enter the country illegally and simply overstay their visas? If after 17 years the Federal Government still isn't enforcing those laws already on the books, how in the world can the American people have any confidence whatsoever that the President and Congress can be trusted to enforce the laws that it passes? After witnessing the President's performance, I think the American people are deeply skeptical of his promises of future performance, and his selective enforcement of our existing laws undermines public confidence in the Federal Government. I believe the executive overreach I have described is corrosive to democratic government. If a Republican President had ignored these kinds of constitutional checks, had refused to enforce laws he didn't like, refused to defend in court laws he didn't like, and used Federal agencies to flout the will of Congress, you can be sure our friends on the other side of the aisle would be complaining nonstop about the imperial President. Yet they have largely given President Obama a pass. But whether you agree with the President on health care, immigration, energy policy, card check or other hot-button issues, we can all agree--we should all agree--that government should not be picking winners and losers and that we urgently need to restore the rule of law and faithful execution of those laws to their rightful place in the highest reaches of the Federal Government. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I know we have been talking about the nominations process here on the floor and in caucus meetings, but I think it is worth reviewing the facts and comparing President Obama's nominees to how nominees of President Clinton and President George W. Bush have been treated, because I think there is broad misunderstanding. And, of course, when you don't know what the facts are--or the facts you truly believe in are wrong--then you are going to reach the wrong conclusion. I think a fair look at the facts will demonstrate that President Obama and his nominees have been treated more than fairly. As a matter of fact, 1,560 nominees of President Obama have been confirmed during the 4\1/2\ years he has been President, and 4 have been rejected. That is not a bad ratio, 1,560 to 4. When you start looking at how long it has taken for the President's Cabinet nominees to be confirmed, President Obama's Cabinet nominees have waited, on average, about 51 days from the time they were nominated until the time they were confirmed. For President George W. Bush it was 52 days, and for President Bill Clinton it was 55 days. So certainly President Obama has nothing to complain about, at least relative to President George W. Bush and President Clinton in terms of the amount of time it has taken for his nominees to be voted on by the Senate. As far as judges are concerned, there have been 199 of President Obama's nominees confirmed to the U.S. District Court; only 2 of them have been defeated. That is a 99-percent success rate, which I think is pretty good in anybody's book. President Obama has had 28 judges at the district court, circuit court, and other article III courts, so 28 for President Obama and 10 for President George W. Bush at this same point in their Presidency. Someone once said that facts are stubborn. But if you acknowledge the facts, it is hard for me to understand where this sense of outrage and urgency comes from with regard to the President's nominees. Indeed, the renewed sense of urgency of our colleagues across the aisle to change the longstanding rules of the Senate is based either on a misunderstanding of the facts or--I am sorry to say--willful ignorance is the only other alternative. So this is a manufactured crisis with no grounding in objective reality. That is about the nicest way I can say it. The facts show that President Obama's nominees have moved through the Senate at a pace quicker than his predecessors. So what about the nominees to the National Labor Relations Board? These are a special case, because the Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia found that the President exceeded his constitutional authority to make an appointment to these NLRB positions in a reported opinion from the court. But--this is important--it wasn't because Congress or the Senate denied the President his choice for these NLRB appointees. In fact, the President nominated them on December 15, 2011, right before Christmas. So the President nominates them right before Christmas, on December 15, 2011, and the President recess-appointed these same nominees on January 4, 2012. What was so astonishing about that is the paperwork for the nominations hadn't even made its way over to the Senate, and the committee of jurisdiction had not even had an opportunity to have a hearing on these nominees. But in spite of that, the President sought to circumvent the advice and consent function for the Senate that is written in the U.S. Constitution and make what he called a recess appointment. Another notable fact about that is the President himself decided--not the Senate--when we were in recess, leaving the Court of Appeals, when they reviewed this recess appointment and holding it unconstitutional, to say there is no real difference between what the President did in terms of determining the Senate was in recess and deciding to do it while we were breaking for lunch, and held that it was not constitutional. So Senators were not even given a chance to review his nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, much less block them. After the court ruled these appointments unconstitutional, the President renominated them this past February. They were reported out of the committee in May, and due to the inaction of the majority leader--who is essentially the traffic cop for the Senate floor--they haven't even been put up for a vote by the majority leader. This is another important fact that I think most people don't fully appreciate. If I wanted to propose a nominee, I wouldn't have any standing to do so. It is the majority leader of the Senate, representing the majority party, who is the one who determines when these nominees will come up for a vote. So to say that somehow it is the minority's fault these individuals haven't been put up for a vote completely distorts how the Senate operates and is a disingenuous approach, to say the least. We should recall that Republicans and Democrats came to a genuine compromise on the matter of nominations at the beginning of this Congress and a deal was struck: In exchange for Republican support, the majority leader gave his word here on the Senate floor that he would not attempt to change the Senate rules other than through regular order. What that means, as the distinguished Senator from Kansas, the ranking member of the Rules Committee, knows, is going through the Rules Committee and coming to the floor, with 67 votes, to change the Standing Rules of the U.S. Senate. So the majority leader gave his word that he would not try to invoke the so-called nuclear option--which we are now threatened with--but would, rather, seek to change the rules through the regular order, which would require 67 votes on the Senate floor. As it turns out, Senator Reid is apparently willing to go back on his word and is now poised to break the rules of the Senate in order to get his way, in order to change the rules. We have questioned many of our colleagues about, Why would there be such an extraordinary power grab and breaking of one's word when it comes to how the rules changed, and wondered, what is the rationale for this? When we have gone through the same facts I described earlier, which show President Obama's nominees have been treated at least as fairly-- or even more fairly, one could argue--than President Clinton and President George W. Bush, our Democratic colleagues have said, Well, this is a narrow, modest change that would only apply to nominees to positions in this administration. That is not the way the Senate works. If you break the rules in order to change the rules, in this instance, there is a slippery slope, to say the least, to extend this same practice not only to executive nominations but also to Federal judges and to ordinary legislation, which would allow the tyranny of the majority and deny the minority an opportunity to influence ordinary legislation or to make sure its voice was heard when it comes to nominees. So the argument that this is some sort of a narrow fix designed to break some imaginary logjam with regard to this administration's executive nominees is false. The fact is, if the majority leader goes through with this nuclear option, as it is called, he will have set a new precedent in the Senate--one that says it is permissible to break the rules of the Senate at any point simply to get your own way, if the majority has the gumption to do it. I hope the majority leader is aware of the magnitude of this decision. Even more importantly than that, I hope Members of the Democratic caucus understand what this means. I have been here long enough to have been in the majority and the minority. I can tell you that being in the majority is a lot more fun. But I can also tell you that majorities and minorities are fleeting. The shoe will be on the other foot. It is simply shortsighted and, I believe, an abuse of our process to try to jam these nominees through based on some manufactured and imaginary crisis and change the Senate as we know it forever. I hope the majority leader understands the consequences will forever alter the nature of this institution--and not one based on just the rules but based on the relationships that are so important to getting anything done here. We all understand the rules are important. But fundamentally, the way the Senate operates--regardless of whether Republican or Democratic, regardless of where we come from--is your word is your bond. We have to be able to believe it. No matter what their political differences may be, when colleagues across the aisle give their word, you have to be able to depend on it. And if we can't depend on your word and we can't depend on the majority leader's word when he said he won't invoke the nuclear option, it forever undermines the important relationship and bonds of trust and confidence we should be able to have in this institution. Just to go over a few other short points: According to the Congressional Research Service, the Senate is considering President Obama's executive nominations faster than any other recent President. I talked about that recently. But here are some of the President's Cabinet nominees who have been confirmed recently: The Energy Secretary, confirmed 97-0. The only reason we had to vote on it is because the majority leader finally decided to put that nomination on the floor. It was unanimous, 97-0. Everybody who was here voted in favor of that nomination. The Secretary of Interior was 87-11; Secretary of Treasury, Jack Lew, 71-26; the Office of Management and Budget, 96-0; Secretary of State John Kerry was confirmed 94-3--and he was confirmed only 7 days after the Senate got his nomination; the Administrator for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services was confirmed 91-7; the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission was confirmed by voice vote. There wasn't even a recorded vote. That is essentially a unanimous decision of the Senate; Secretary of Transportation, 100-0; Secretary of Commerce, 97-1. It is worth recalling some of the words that were spoken by different Members of the Senate, because this is the kind of thing that will come back to haunt you if you flip-flop and take a different position later on. This is Senator Harry Reid, December 8, 2006: As majority leader, I intend to run the Senate with respect for the rules and for the minority rights the rules protect. The Senate was established to make sure that minorities are protected. Majorities can always protect themselves, but minorities cannot. That is what the Senate is all about. Then there is the majority whip Senator Durbin. This is April 15, 2005: Those who would attack and destroy the institution of the filibuster are attacking the very force within the Senate that creates compromise and bipartisanship. Well, if that is true--and I agree it is true--why in the world would any Senator vote to destroy the very force within the Senate that creates compromise and bipartisanship, particularly when we are making decisions here that affect 319 million Americans. Then there is the President of the United States when he was in the Senate, April 13, 2005. Then-Senator Barack Obama said: If the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to the democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse. I realize we are passionate about our positions on the various issues that come before the Senate, and that is entirely appropriate. We all have convictions about these important issues. But this is the only place perhaps left in the country, I believe, where we can actually debate these in an open and responsible way and be held accountable by the people who send us here--in my case, 26 million Texans. But if we are willing to engage in this sort of shifty behavior, if we are willing to break our word in order to get momentary political advantage, then I think the public's confidence in the Senate is going to be completely undermined, and we will have lost our effectiveness. Also, perhaps just as significantly, the very bonds of trust that are so important in order to get things done around here will have been broken. For what? For a temporary advantage over five or six or seven executive nominees. I daresay if Senator Reid had put these nominations on the floor, we would have seen the vast majority of them confirmed a long time ago. The only reason they were not is because he chose not to do so. What he has done is to put them on the floor now, in this period of time before the August recess, to create a manufactured crisis so he can then invoke the nuclear option and somehow convince Members of his own caucus that they ought to be party to breaking the Senate rules in order to gain temporary advantage. It is incredibly shortsighted, and I think it will exacerbate the gridlock and the divisions here rather than help us try to find ways to build consensus and work together in the best interests of the American people. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, what do you get when Congress passes a 2,700-page piece of legislation on a purely partisan basis that radically transforms one-fifth of our economy and impacts the lives of 319 million Americans? What do you get when you oppose the huge costs of this legislation, and this new bureaucracy that goes along with it, on an economy that is trying to recover from one of the biggest recessions our country ever experienced back in 2008? Well, two of the things you get for sure are higher unemployment and fewer jobs, and anemic economic growth. We have seen both of those in the daily news. I am afraid we now have a new normal when it comes to unemployment in America, which is at 7.6 percent, and that does not count the people who have quit looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a ranking of how they rate the number of people actually looking for work, and it is called the labor participation rate. It is on their Web site. We have the fewest number of Americans in the workforce than we have had in the last 30 years. We didn't get many of the benefits that were promised when ObamaCare was passed at a time when we were essentially told: We are from the government. Trust us. It will all turn out OK. One of the most important numbers in the recent job report is the number 8.2 million. That is the number of Americans who are now working part time instead of full time because the full-time jobs are simply not available. In other words, there are 8.2 million workers who are working part time even though they want a full-time job, but they cannot find one. To give some perspective, the number was 7.6 million in March. So between May and June we have seen that number increase by 300,000. There are 300,000 Americans who were unable to find full-time work, so they had to accept part-time work. When we talk about numbers such as these, I know it is tempting to think of those numbers as just abstractions, but these are the American people. These are moms, dads, brothers, and sisters. These are young adults who are looking for work but simply can't find work on a full-time basis. I would suggest--and I think the evidence is compelling--that one of the reasons for that is ObamaCare. The law requires all businesses with 50 or more full-time workers to provide their employees with government-approved health care coverage, and if they don't, then they have to pay a financial penalty. This requirement was originally scheduled to kick in next year, but last week the Obama administration announced that this so-called employer mandate would be delayed until 2015. In other words, the administration has implicitly acknowledged that the mandate is discouraging the creation of full-time jobs and is actually reducing working hours, which is relegating many American workers--300,000 more between May and June--to part-time work even though they want to work full time. The irony is that the ObamaCare bill passed in the Senate--and I still remember this--on Christmas Eve of 2009 at 7 a.m. in the morning. It was later reconciled with the House legislation in 2010. But we have had two elections occur before the full implementation of this bill. What we are going to see now is moving the implementation off again until after the 2014 election. In my view, that is dangerous because it means there is no electoral accountability for the true impact of this legislation even though we are beginning to see some of it. Of course, the basic problem is that the mandate won't magically disappear in 2015, even after it has been delayed by unilateral action of the administration. But what strikes me as pretty simple is that when you penalize full-time work, what you are going to get is part- time work in order to avoid the penalty. Of course, the employer mandate isn't the only part of ObamaCare that is hampering job creation. The law also contains $1 trillion in tax increases--including a new medical device tax that has already prompted several large manufacturers to close existing facilities or cancel plans for new ones. I remember a few months ago I had a medical device company located in Texas tell me that they were going to be expanding their operations in Costa Rica instead of Texas in order to avoid this tax. The medical device tax has also discouraged health-care savings and lifesaving innovations. One of the great things about our country and our free enterprise system is that if somebody has a better way to do something, they can design it, build it, and consumers can benefit from it. In this case, this medical device tax has been destructive of each of those. Indeed, this tax has been so counterproductive that 79 Members of this Senate--a supermajority on a bipartisan basis--rejected it during the vote on the budget resolution recently and effectively said that it should be repealed. A number of colleagues from across the aisle who supported this legislation initially have now seen that the way this is being implemented can be damaging and destructive not only to job creation but access to quality health care. The same thing can be said of the 81 Members who voted to abolish ObamaCare's IRS 1099 reporting requirement back in 2011. The more we have learned about the implementation of ObamaCare, the less popular it has become. For that matter, the administration itself has had second thoughts about key provisions of ObamaCare. In 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services began granting a series of waivers from ObamaCare's annual limit requirements. It eventually granted more than 1,000. In other words, the administration unilaterally said to some people: You don't have to comply with the law, while the rest of us were stuck with it. In 2011, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suspended all work on the so-called CLASS Act, a portion of ObamaCare that was formally repealed earlier this year. And, a few months ago, Health and Human Services announced that ObamaCare's basic health program would be delayed until 2015--again, after the next midterm congressional election. Just last week, in addition to delaying the employer mandate, the administration also delayed another important provision in the ObamaCare oversight. In other words, it said, You don't even have to prove that you are financially eligible for taxpayer subsidies to get insurance in the health exchanges. This is an invitation to fraud and abuse. We saw in 2008 when the bubble burst after the financial crisis came to a head, one of the root causes of that was companies writing loans to people who couldn't qualify for those loans, but they didn't require any financial disclosure or verification. Those came to be known as liar loans. We are essentially now refusing to learn from that experience in the health care field, on the part of the administration, to see as many people as possible signed up for the health care exchanges, but based only on their unilateral declaration that they are eligible, not any real verification or proof. That is an invitation to fraud. To add it all up, notwithstanding its aspirations and notwithstanding the hopes and perhaps dreams of those who thought we were going to somehow transform health care with this legislation, it has now become clear to me, and I daresay millions of Americans, that ObamaCare has simply not lived up to its promises. It is not working as advertised. I think there is a growing bipartisan consensus to that effect. I have mentioned some examples and some reasons why, including as well that for the past 3 years we have witnessed a nonstop parade of fix-ups, fumbles, delays, and broken promises. For example, during the 2008 campaign, President Obama pledged his health care law would transform health care; it would make health care costs for a family of four go down by $2,500. What has actually happened is the cost of family premiums has actually gone up by nearly $2,400 between 2009 and 2012. According to the Wall Street Journal, healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage under ObamaCare, and that will happen this fall. Some of it is so-called age-banding where young people, such as my two daughters who are 30 and 31 years old, are going to be forced to pay higher premiums to subsidize health care coverage for older people. There are also other provisions such as mandatory issue. For example, if a person finds out that unfortunately they have a disease and are not covered, under ObamaCare they can go out and buy insurance which is not actually insurance anymore. Someone said it is akin to waiting until your house is on fire to buy fire insurance. That drives up the cost and it distorts the insurance market. What we are going to see, and what consumers are going to see, is their health care premiums go up as a result of the implementation of ObamaCare. What about the promise that ObamaCare wouldn't raise taxes on anyone making under $200,000 a year? In fact, the law raised taxes on everyone, from young people with health savings accounts, to middle- class workers with families, to senior citizens living on a fixed wage. President Obama also promised that anyone who liked their existing health coverage would be able to keep it. Do my colleagues remember that? He said: ``If you like what you have, you can keep it.'' I know people like hearing that because most Americans--up to 80 percent and maybe higher--are satisfied with the health insurance they have now. So when the President said, ``If you like what you have, you can keep it,'' most Americans nodded and said that's good. The reality is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, at least 7 million Americans will lose their current health insurance because of ObamaCare. A few months ago one of my constituents in Texas sent me a letter she received from her health care provider. The letter informed her that because of the new health care law--the so-called Affordable Care Act which is turning out to be more unaffordable than affordable--her current health policy would be terminated by the end of the year. The letter also said: ``Never have we experienced the uncertainty and immense challenges that confront the insurance industry during this time of health care reform.'' I don't think it is sufficient for people such as myself or anyone else to criticize this flawed legislation and to say: I voted against it; it is too bad it didn't work out; tough luck. That is not sufficient, and that is not doing our duty. There has to be a better way to reform our health care system, and indeed there is a better way, if we commit ourselves to five overarching principles. No. 1: We must make health care more affordable. That was the promise of ObamaCare, but that is not the reality. It has made health care less affordable, not more affordable. But we must commit ourselves to policies that will make health care more affordable by reining in costs, and I have some ideas on how to do that which I will mention momentarily. No. 2, the second principle: Individuals must have more choices in the health care market and they must be allowed to make their own choices and select whatever options fit their individual needs. The idea of ObamaCare was one-size-fits-all, but we know that one size does not fit all. Different families, different individuals have different needs. We need to restore the choices to individuals and not to the government dictating what those choices should be. No. 3: We must ensure that all individuals, including people with preexisting conditions, have access to high-quality health insurance and to high-quality care. This was a problem in the preexisting system, where people with preexisting conditions found it hard to buy insurance, and this was one of the noble promises of ObamaCare. But we don't have to buy the whole package in order to fix this problem. Indeed, there are many high-risk pools at the State level that if the Federal Government would help support those high-risk pools, people would be able to find health care coverage even if they had preexisting conditions, which otherwise would make that difficult to find. Principle No. 4: We have to protect the doctor-patient relationship. No one wants to have the bureaucracy telling them what health care they can have and whether they can have it. So we have to protect the doctor-patient relationship. This is a bond of trust that most of us have with the individuals we entrust our health care to--our own doctor. We have to make sure people are able to make health care decisions in consultation with their doctor and their family that suit their needs. No. 5: This is the fifth principle for reform that I think we now need to begin the discussion about undertaking. We need to save Medicare. What kinds of policy reforms might these principles generate? Well, for starters, I would suggest we need to equalize the tax treatment of health insurance for employers and individuals. This is something we have discussed time and time again. But why do we favor, through subsidies under the Tax Code, certain types of health coverage and discriminate against people who buy insurance in the individual market? Secondly, from a policy perspective consistent with the principles I mentioned, we need to expand access to tax-free health care savings. There is a company in Texas--actually, it has franchises here in the Northeast--Whole Foods. It is a great grocery store. I had an occasion a couple of years ago to meet with a number of the employees. They vote every year on what their health plan should look like. Year after year after year, they choose a high-deductible health insurance plan along with a health care savings plan so that if they get sick they are protected by the catastrophic coverage, but otherwise they can save and budget for their ordinary health care needs using a health savings account. One of the most amazing things about that is people then begin to take some ownership--have some skin in the game--in terms of their health care choices, and they tend to do what we do generally as consumers, which is they shop around. They say, OK, I have my money. I need procedure X, I need this or that. Where can I get that for the best price and the best quality service? These tax-free health savings accounts transform the health care relationship so people don't only just have some third party paying the bills--like getting a credit card and never getting the bill under much of our current health care system--so expanding tax-free health savings accounts like the employees have at Whole Foods in Austin, TX, is one great policy that would improve our health care delivery system. Third, we need to let people and businesses form risk pools in the individual market. Fourth, we need to improve price and quality transparency. There has actually been some good work done by Health and Human Services recently to release health care expenditures for some of the most common procedures and reasons people are hospitalized. I think it is kind of eye-opening, because some people have found out that for the same procedure--in one instance a person might see $1,000 being charged and in another, a person might see $5,000 being charged for essentially the same practice or procedure. Providing transparency indeed helps to create an opportunity for a market, so market discipline can help normalize and bring down those costs. Improving price and cost and quality transparency are very important to creating a true health care marketplace. Fifth, in Texas we have found ways to curb frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits which don't shut the front door to the courthouse for truly legitimate claims but which have made medical malpractice insurance more affordable because our civil justice system is more predictable. Sixth, we need to eliminate all the unnecessary government mandates that drive up insurance costs. What happens in Austin, TX, and in State capitals across the country is legislators come together and say companies can't sell insurance in our State unless they cover X, Y, and Z. Well, the fact is not every consumer, not every patient needs X, Y, and Z coverage, but by those mandates they end up driving up the cost of that health insurance. What we need to do is eliminate the unnecessary mandates that many people don't use anyway, because those drive up costs. By eliminating those mandates, we can help bring down the costs and make health care more affordable. Seventh, this is an old suggestion, but one that I think is still very important. Why is it that a person can only buy health insurance in their own State? If I want to buy car insurance I can buy it anywhere in the country and I can--if the company is in Oklahoma or New Mexico or Indiana, they can compete for my business. That gives the market an ability to hold down costs and that gives consumers access to lower costs and better quality by allowing that competition to occur across State lines. We don't need another government takeover of our health care system. When the wheels fall off of ObamaCare or, in the language of the distinguished chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, if that train wreck of implementation that he predicted occurs, we don't need another big 2,700-page government program to substitute. We need to implement the types of reforms I talked about to give us lower costs, more accessibility, and greater fairness throughout our entire health care system. Speaking of fairness and accessibility, we know the current Medicaid Program is broken when our most vulnerable citizens have a hard time finding a physician who will actually take a new Medicaid patient. This is one of the problems many of us had with the ObamaCare expansion of pushing a lot of people onto Medicaid which, in my State, is a broken program, where more than 60 percent of primary care physicians won't take a new Medicaid patient because the reimbursement levels are about 50 percent of what private insurance would pay a doctor to treat a patient. So many physicians say, I can't afford to work for 50 cents on the dollar, so I am not going to see a new Medicaid patient. So what you have is this strange dichotomy where people actually have coverage under Medicaid, but they do not have access to health care because they cannot find a doctor to take it at that price, and that actually, I believe, is sort of the dirty little secret about Medicaid. All of us support a safety net program of health care for our most vulnerable citizens--all of us--but Medicaid, as currently constituted, is not the answer for the reasons I mentioned. Each State must have the flexibility to design a program that will actually meet the needs of its residents. What works best in New York, I guarantee, does not work the same way in Texas and vice versa. States should be appropriated a certain amount of money, and I am not suggesting it be drastically cut--which would deny the States an opportunity to provide health care in their own way--but we need to block grant these Federal funds, not micromanage them. We certainly need to eliminate as many Federal strings as we possibly can and provide the States the flexibility to use the same amount of money to provide access to more health care for low-income people. Speaking of access to physicians, this is a big problem in Medicare too. Of course, Medicaid is for the economically disadvantaged. Medicare is for people 65 and older. But in my State, only 58 percent of physicians will see a new Medicare patient. That means 42 percent will not. In other words, if you live in a rural area or you live someplace where physicians will not take a new Medicare patient, you are pretty much out of luck. This is a problem again about the way the Federal Government tries to save money in health care, not by using the discipline of the market--transparency and competition and some of the other reforms I mentioned--but rather by whacking reimbursements to health care providers. The truth is, if you whack reimbursement rates to Medicaid providers and Medicare providers, as we currently do, then fewer and fewer people are actually going to be able to find a doctor who will see them, even though they have the promise of coverage under Medicaid or Medicare. We know, of course, the financial problem Medicare is currently suffering. The fact is--and this is something I wish we would talk more about from the President to the Halls of Congress--for every $1 that an average person puts into Medicare, they take out $3. That is why Medicare, in the long run, is unsustainable. If we are going to keep the promise of Medicare--and we should--to future generations, we need to fix it. But when it comes to treating patients, physicians, I believe, know better than Washington bureaucrats. This is another reason why I support repeal of another provision of ObamaCare which is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, so-called IPAB. There is actually bipartisan support for repealing this provision in the House because what it would do is appoint a group of 15 bureaucrats who would decide what sort of health care was going to be reimbursed under Medicare and what would not. There would be no real recourse to Congress or anybody else because these people would be the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board. It is not hard to predict what would happen if IPAB, as it is called, were implemented. When doctors are forced to accept lower rates, they will reduce the number of patients they see or else they will drop out of the Medicare Program altogether or the types of treatment people will be able to get from their doctor will be determined by the Federal Government's willingness to pay for it rather than their true medical needs. I think we have learned the lesson in Medicaid and Medicare, as elsewhere, that price controls simply do not work, and they will not save Medicare either. It is time to try a new approach that will protect the doctor-patient relationship and expand individual choice. Under the current model, seniors are forced into a one-size-fits-all plan developed in Washington. Under an alternative supported by Republicans and Democrats in different contexts--the so-called premium support model--the Federal Government would pay a designated amount, and then people could use that money to buy their own private coverage. They could supplement it if they wanted to, if they wanted more generous coverage, but that would have to come out of their pocket. But under the premium support model alternative, private plans would be allowed to compete against traditional Medicare, much as Medicare Advantage does now, and seniors could simply pick the plan they want that suits their needs the most. If someone picks a private plan that is cheaper than traditional Medicare, they can keep the savings. Then again, if they want more generous coverage, they can pay the difference. How do we know this sort of approach will work? You do not have to take my word for it. All we have to do is look at what is working now. One of the most successful government health care programs I have seen since I have been in the Senate, and that I know about, is the Medicare prescription drug coverage program. A national survey released in October 2012 found that 9 out of 10 seniors are satisfied with their Medicare prescription drug plan. Similar reforms could be made to other parts of Medicare to help save the program. If these reforms are not made, Medicare will go bankrupt. The great thing about Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program, is it has actually come in 40 percent under projected costs. It is not hard to figure out why. Because when different companies compete in the marketplace for the business of seniors who qualify for Medicare, they are going to compete--you guessed it--on price, so they are going to try to provide it at a less expensive cost, and they are going to compete based on quality of service. That is the great genius of our free enterprise system and of competition. But if we do not make these reforms, Medicare will go bankrupt. That is something none of us should look forward to. So the reforms I have just outlined will give us a health care system with lower costs, a system with greater choice and greater access to high-quality care, a system that upholds fundamental values, such as fairness and consumer choice, and a system that will provide affordable health care for everyone. That is the kind of health care system we all want for our families, for our children, and grandchildren. Three years ago, Congress took a swing at the health care issue but ended up striking out and missed an opportunity to enact necessary reforms. We are still learning that as the implementation of ObamaCare continues to unfold. But the health care debate is not over by any means. It is just beginning in a way. By replacing ObamaCare with patient-centered reforms that reduce costs, improve transparency, and expand access, we can make it easier for all Americans to get the affordable quality health care they deserve. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it seems as if the majority leader and some others are rattling the cage once again in favor of the so-called nuclear option. For those who may not follow this topic closely, this is simply breaking the Senate rules in order to impose majority will on the minority party by changing the procedures by which the Senate functions. In other words, it refers to a process by which the rules of the Senate are broken in order to change the rules themselves. As the distinguished majority leader has pointed out in the past-- right here on the Senate floor in front of his colleagues and constituents and all the American people, Senator Reid affirmed that the proper way to change the Senate rules was through the procedure laid out in those rules. The majority leader, Senator Reid of Nevada, went on to say that he would oppose any effort in this Congress or the next to change the Senate rules other than through the regular order, and he recommitted himself to this proposition in a colloquy with the Republican leader earlier this year. So I would ask the majority leader: Do you plan on keeping your word or are you going to resort to brute political force and break the Senate rules in order to change the rules and fundamentally transform the nature of the U.S. Senate? Should the majority leader break his promise, I believe he will inflict lasting and perhaps irreparable damage to this institution. And during a time when cooperation is very important--as it always is--to try to actually solve some of the Nation's biggest problems, poisoning the well by exercising this so-called nuclear option would be the opposite of what we ought to be doing, which is coming together in a bipartisan way to address some of the Nation's biggest challenges. I would also ask my Democratic colleagues, how do you reconcile your desire for a filibuster-free Senate with the simple fact that Democrats will not always be in the majority in the Senate? As we know, what goes around comes around, and the shoe will always be on the other foot. I can think of a number of legislative proposals that Republicans on this side of the aisle would happily advance with a simple majority--let's say, for example, a full repeal of ObamaCare. That would be a good place to start. As the senior Senator from Tennessee Mr. Alexander recently pointed out, we could finally establish the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada. But the truth is that prudence and a healthy respect for the fleeting nature of power in the Senate, as well as a healthy respect for the voices represented by the minority in the Senate, compel a different course of action because, as we know, the shoe will always be on the other foot at some day in the future. I think it is worth pausing to examine the source of the majority leader's renewed interest in the so-called nuclear option. On the heels of the President's judicial nominations, many of our friends across the aisle are renewing their wayward cries of Republican obstructionism in the Senate, but the facts simply don't bear this out. The facts do not support this conclusion. Indeed, as the Washington Post Fact Checker recently pointed out, from nomination to confirmation, President Obama's district court nominees have moved through the Senate at only a marginally slower pace than his predecessors, while his appeals court nominees have sailed through at a much faster clip than President Bush's. The Senate has confirmed 28 of the President's judicial nominees so far this year. By this point in President Bush's second term, this body had confirmed only 10. Twenty-eight under President Obama and 10 under President Bush at this point in their second term. In total, 199 of President Obama's judicial nominees have been confirmed and only 2 have been defeated. That doesn't sound like obstructionism to me. Meanwhile, the President has failed to produce nominees for 65 percent of the vacant judicial seats, many of which are in my home State in Texas. As the distinguished Presiding Officer knows and as the American people know, it is the President who nominates Federal judges, and then it is the responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent on those confirmations. That is in the Constitution. But if the President doesn't nominate people for these vacancies, then the Senate's role is never engaged on those 65 percent of vacant judicial seats where the President has not even nominated an individual to serve. I would argue that is the true reason for the majority of vacancies and one that calls for the President's immediate attention. So I hope that during the remaining few weeks here in July before the August recess, we don't see a manufactured crisis over how the Senate operates on nominees. We have some very controversial nominees--for example, three of whom were unconstitutionally recess-appointed by the President. And don't take my word for it. In the case of the National Labor Relations Board, the court of appeals held that those were unconstitutionally appointed in order to circumvent the Senate's constitutional role. It is true that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken those cases, and we will soon hear--perhaps by next summer--what the Supreme Court's view of the recess appointment authority of a President might be. But we know that at least three of them--two at the National Labor Relations Board and the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominee-- were recess-appointed and, I think it is pretty clear, in violation of at least the court of appeals' view of what the President's constitutional authority would and should be. We also have other nominees, some of whom are more controversial than others. We have Gina McCarthy, who has been nominated for the Environmental Protection Agency. We have James Comey, who was this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee and who I believe will enjoy broad bipartisan support as the next FBI Director. We have other more controversial nominees, such as Thomas Perez to the Department of Labor. That is in part due to his activities as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he was harshly criticized by the inspector general for politicizing what should be a nonpolitical position, enforcing the civil rights laws of the United States. So we are going to have plenty to talk about and a lot to do, but this should not be used as an excuse by the majority leader to break his word when it comes to changing the Senate rules through this nuclear option process. That would be a disservice to the country. It would certainly irreparably damage the Senate as a deliberative body. It would poison the well when we need to work together as much as we can to try to get other important work done. And it would be extremely shortsighted because majorities can be fleeting, and those who are in the majority today will find themselves in the minority in the future. I think that recognition would caution prudence and temper the political ambitions of the majority leader when it comes to jamming through some of these nominees. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Coats), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in congratulating our recently arrived colleague from South Carolina on his maiden speech. It strikes me we all want the same thing pretty much. We want an opportunity and we want to make sure our kids get the best quality education so they can compete in a global economy. But to be honest about it, we do have different approaches on how to achieve those goals, it strikes me, across the aisle. There are those who believe the government should play a bigger, more expansive role, and they have their own ideas and approach; and there are those of us who believe in limited government, and that that is most consistent with individual freedom and the opportunity to strive, to work hard, and to succeed. It is that notion of earned success. So we have a different approach, and I know the Senator from South Carolina agrees with that. I also believe the Senator from South Carolina has been a tremendous addition because of his background and his upbringing. Some people might say we don't need more lawyers in the Senate, and he certainly is not one of those, but he is somebody who has succeeded in the private sector, been marvelously successful now both in the House and here in the Senate. So it is great to have him as part of the Senate and contributing his unique perspective and being able to articulate as he does so well how small-government, limited-government principles apply to that concept of earned success that all of us want not only for ourselves but for our families as well.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. We yield back all time. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I know the Gang of 8 members who were responsible for the basic framework of this legislation have done tremendous work and have advanced the substance and tone of our discussion immeasurably since 2007, which is the last time we had a major immigration bill on the floor. I think the American people now understand the status quo is simply unacceptable. We have a broken immigration system which, in the words of my friend from Florida Senator Marco Rubio is effectively a de facto amnesty, because we have a system that is lawless and it is uncontrolled and it operates neither in the best interests of our country economically nor represents our values. The American people are famously generous and compassionate. As a society we believe in second chances. All of us have benefited from second chances in life, and I believe the American people believe those who have come here to America in violation of our immigration laws, if they are willing to step up, pay a fine, register, and live in compliance with our laws, should get a second chance as well. As a matter of fact, polling shows the American people support a permanent legalization program for 11 million immigrants living in the United States but only--only--if they are convinced the Congress has made sure they will never ever have to do this again. In other words, I believe the American people believe if the borders were controlled; if they believed we had a biometric entry-exit system which would track visitors who enter the country and who never leave, which is 40 percent of illegal immigration; if they believed we actually had an effective E-Verify or employment verification system that would determine at the worksite when someone shows up to work they are legally qualified to work in America--I believe if we had those three legs to the stool in place, the American people would do, once again, the generous thing, the compassionate thing, and give second chances to the 11 million people who are here. But the problem with this bill--and I say this more out of sadness than anything else--the promises of this bill have simply not been kept. We were told 6 months ago the pathway to citizenship was contingent upon border security and these other enforcement measures taking place. When it wasn't, I proposed an amendment which would condition the transfer for probationary status to legal permanent residency on a certification that the objectives on operational security of the border had been met. I believed that by doing so, we would realign all of the incentives for the political parties--for Independents, for conservatives, for liberals--everybody would be focused like a laser on how to get this done, how to hit the mark. I believe, if we had a mechanism in this bill which did not depend on Congress keeping future promises of performance, we could regain the trust and confidence of the American people such that we could get to a successful outcome. Unfortunately, as the Presiding Officer knows, the proposal I made to do exactly that has been rejected. In fact, the assistant Democratic leader made the point recently in June that permanent legalization has now been delinked from border security. But I believe the problems of this legislation go well beyond the border. When I offered 5,000 Border Patrol agents, I was told that-- even though the Gang of 8 bill offered zero Border Patrol agents, I was told that was a budget-buster. It was simply unaffordable--5,000 new Border Patrol agents. But now we find 20,000 additional Border Patrol agents provided for in this bill. Now we have been told that we have essentially a surge of law enforcement to the border and a huge investment in new technology and boots on the ground. The only thing missing is a plan to make sure those people are actually effectively deployed and that technology will actually be deployed in a way that secures the border. I know the surge worked in Afghanistan, but I am not so sure we need a military surge in South Texas, and particularly in the absence of any plan to make sure people are going to be effectively utilized. What is more, I would say I do not believe the promises made in this bill will ever be kept. I do not believe we will ever have an extra 20,000 Border Patrol agents. I do not believe the huge investment in technology will ever be made because it depends not just on this Congress and this administration but future Congresses and future administrations. So we have, in essence, the American people being asked to grant the gift of a pathway to citizenship, to demonstrate the typical American belief in second chances and demonstrate their compassion. But, in essence, they have been tricked, once again, to trade that in exchange for hollow promises of future action. I think it is an unacceptable deal. The problems with this legislation also extend beyond that. This bill grants immediate legal status to people with multiple misdemeanors and convictions for driving while intoxicated and spousal abuse. As a matter of fact, a person can have been deported out of the country for having committed a crime yet be eligible for reentry into the country and eligible for probationary status under this bill. I think that is shocking. I understand why we would want to give people who are economic migrants an opportunity to get right with the law and to get on with their lives, but why in the world would we want to extend that generosity to people who show nothing but contempt for the rule of law? This bill also hinders law enforcement by making confidential the information contained in applications for probationary status that are rejected. This happened back in 1986. And I remember a quote, I believe it was from the senior Senator from New York after that time, to the effect that that was one of the biggest sources of fraud in the amnesty of 1986. My hope would be we would not repeat that mistake again by keeping that information confidential and away from law enforcement authorities, thereby hindering their efforts to root out fraud and make sure only people who legally qualify for this generosity are able to do so. The other problem with this bill is it simply is a budget-buster. I was told 5,000 Border Patrol agents that would be paid for out of the $8.3 billion trust fund created by this bill was too much, but now we have $30 billion more in additional spending being promised. The argument is that somehow this is free money and it doesn't cost a penny because under the CBO score, there will actually be a reduction in deficits. The problem is that is double-counting the money. It is the money coming into the Treasury because of people who are now registered, who are paying into Social Security and the like. But it takes that money to spend on these other programs and does not appreciate or recognize the fact that money is also going to need to be available to pay future benefits for these same people. That is double- counting. That is phony bookkeeping, and we ought to reject it. The truth is, this bill adds to the budget deficit an additional roughly $14 billion as presently written. At a time when our debt is at $17 trillion, it strikes me as the wrong thing to do to say we are going to add further to that debt and jeopardize our fiscal health for the country as a whole going forward. I will close with this. It gives me great pain to say that I think this is an opportunity we have failed to take advantage of. I think we could have done better and we should have done better. This bill is unworthy of my support and it will be unworthy of support by a number of Members. But my hope is the House of Representatives takes up this issue and we can somehow find our way to a conference committee with the House and produce a bill we can eventually put on the President's desk. It will not be like this bill, I am confident of that. The House has far different views. But what we do have that we didn't have in 2007 is I think a true bipartisan consensus that the status quo is unacceptable and we have to do better. Unfortunately, this bill doesn't keep the promises that were made originally, and for that, I truly regret it.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to compliment the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee for the open process he conducted in committee to process amendments on both sides of the aisle and the open and transparent way that was done. That stands in stark contrast to what has happened here on the floor, where we have only had 10 amendments that have had rollcall votes, compared to 46 rollcall votes the last time we debated comprehensive immigration reform in 2007. I would point out for my distinguished colleague that of the 32 amendments that are being offered now by unanimous consent to be voted upon, 27 of them are Democratic amendments and 5 of them are Republican amendments. Senator Leahy noted that one of my amendments was excluded. Actually all of my amendments have been excluded, including the one that would prohibit legalization of drunk drivers and spouse beaters and other criminals, as well as one that is designed to root out fraud in the program. On behalf of my ranking member, we object.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to my good friend, the assistant majority leader, I am aware of the promises that are made in the underlying bill. My point is there is no mechanism to guarantee the goals the Gang of 8, on which the assistant majority leader has served--the promises that are made in terms of 100-percent situational awareness and operational control--there is absolutely nothing there that will guarantee the American people that promise will be kept, which is a serious problem, which is the reason why, when I saw the bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration reform, I was encouraged. Because I could support a bill that did make a pathway to legal permanent residency contingent upon a certification that these goals have been met. But I cannot based on sad experience dating back to 1986 and 1996, and other times in the past, where Congress has made repeated promises of future performance--promises that are never kept. I would say, in conclusion, the American people are asked to be extraordinarily generous here in terms of providing probationary status and the possibility of legal permanent residency, and maybe even citizenship in the future. That is an act of extraordinary generosity and compassion they are being asked to demonstrate. But to be given just promises that will not be kept by throwing money at the problem, without any real plan to make sure it is going to be effective, this bill falls way short of its promises.

Mr. CORNYN. I will.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Utah in many of his remarks, if not all of his remarks. I come here to speak on the pending immigration bill more in disappointment than in anger because of the lost opportunity we had in the Senate to come up with a bill that would actually do the job of restoring legality and order to our broken immigration system, create a system of legal immigration which would benefit our economy, and reflect our basic values. It has been 5 months since the Gang of 8 first released their framework of principles for immigration reform. At the time, they were saying many of the right things--things that gave me great encouragement that we would come up with a better product than we have today. They promised their bill would secure our borders once and for all. I live in a border State with 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. We know that border permits not only illegal entry into the United States because of inadequate resources and personnel there, but also it is a benefit to the United States because of the legitimate trade that passes through the ports of entry that create and support up to 6 million jobs in America. They promised a tough but fair legalization program. They promised that permanent legalization would be contingent on border security. This is a recurring theme in my remarks because I actually was so naive to believe the representations made by the Gang of 8. In January 2013 Senator Durbin, the distinguished majority whip, said: A pathway to citizenship needs to be contingent upon securing the border. That is what he said in January. Instead of a delivery on that promise, what we got was his statement 6 months later in June of 2013: The gang has delinked the pathway to citizenship and border enforcement. So the American people have been asked to extend an act of common generosity and compassion that is typical of the American people, but what they get in return is no assurance that the system has been restored to order or that the border has been secured. Unfortunately, once again, it is business as usual in Washington, DC. The promises the Gang of 8 made were encouraging and they raised hopes in me and others that we truly would have a bipartisan immigration bill voted out of the Senate that was worthy of the name. But, unfortunately, the bill now bears little resemblance to the initial promises of the Gang of 8. I know we talked a lot about border security, but in addition to a national security issue this is a matter of restoring the public's confidence that the Federal Government will actually do its job. The fundamental problem with this legislation is that it demands border security inputs but not outputs or results. In other words, the idea is--and the Washington Post editorial seemed to get it today--if you promise to buy enough stuff, then somehow the job will miraculously get done. This bill asks us to believe that quadrupling the size of the Border Patrol and expanding the border fence will solve the problem of illegal immigration. I certainly agree that what the Border Patrol calls tactual infrastructure or fencing--and particularly in urban areas--can be a tool that is effective. I certainly believe that additional Border Patrol--my proposal was that we add about 5,000 Border Patrol--would be helpful. Once the technology identifies people crossing the border illegally, they have to have somebody go pick them up. I actually agree with Senator McCain when he initially opposed my amendment to add 5,000 Border Patrol agents, when he said he thought the answer was mainly in the area of improved technology. I agree with that. But imagine my surprise when Senator McCain and Senator Schumer, the two main advocates of this surge in the underlying bill for border security, said: We think 5,000 Border Patrol agents is a budget buster, only to come back a few days later and offer 20,000 Border Patrol agents at an increased cost of at least $30 billion. So without a coherent strategy or mechanism for ensuring results, adding 20,000 Border Patrol agents--assuming that it ever actually happens--and a few hundred miles of additional fencing could turn out to be a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Again, there is something fundamentally wrong with the idea that if we throw enough money at the problem, it will somehow miraculously be resolved. What we need is a plan, and what we need to know is how we can invest in this plan to accomplish measurable results, and this bill does not produce that. So if a person believes the Federal Government is going to hire 20,000 additional Border Patrol agents and spend all this money over the next 10 years, well, as the song goes, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona I would like to sell you. My colleagues don't have to take my word for it. In recent days experts from across the political spectrum have told us this bill takes the wrong approach to border security. And contrary to what my good friend from Tennessee says, it is not ``this bill or nothing.'' This is not the only alternative. So one could say this bill is flawed and doesn't accomplish the job but still be for immigration reform and a solution, which I am. The former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Doris Meissner said the border security provisions in this bill are detached from reality. Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner, also formerly head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the bill ``is simply throwing a phenomenal amount of money at a problem to gain political support''--which it apparently has done--``but is not likely to solve the problem.'' Meanwhile, former DHS official John Whitley has reminded us that we should be focusing on border security outputs instead of inputs. In other words, we should be looking at not just what is put into this but what it actually produces in terms of results. That makes sense. Just spending a lot of money on stuff we are going to buy without any plan and without measuring outputs isn't going to get the job done. An output-based trigger would assure the American people that we will not grant legal status until after our borders are secured. And the reason is because this is not a punitive measure; this is a way of realigning all of the incentives so that Republicans, Democrats, Independents, liberals, and conservatives can all pressure the executive branch and the bureaucracy to actually accomplish the promises set out in the bill rather than just throw money at it. The Presiding Officer has heard me say that the amendment I offered would have made legalization contingent on 100 percent situational awareness of the U.S.-Mexico border and full operational control of the border. I have been criticized by some of my friends who say that is an unreasonable requirement and then ask: Where in the world did you get those figures? Well, I got that out of the Gang of 8 proposal. The difference is that mine would have guaranteed accomplishing the goal; theirs merely promises it but will never keep that promise. I would have also made it contingent on a nationwide biometric entry- exit system--something this Federal Government has been promising for 17 years since President Clinton signed that requirement into law, but that promise hasn't been kept either. I also included in my amendment nationwide E-Verify, which is a way for employers to verify the eligibility of workers who apply for a job, that they can legally work in the United States. As I said, ironically, the Gang of 8 promised all of these same things, but the only mechanism I have seen that would have actually guaranteed it to happen was the amendment I offered that was tabled. What I have described is a real border security trigger, not just another promise--the kind of trigger that will be necessary to get bipartisan immigration reform not just out of the Senate but out of the House of Representatives and on to the President's desk. I don't think we should be so shortsighted as to pat ourselves on the back and say: Hey, the Senate has passed an immigration reform bill, only to find it dead on arrival in the House of Representatives and to make it harder, not easier, to get a consensus bill on the President's desk for him to sign. That is not success. Not surprisingly, the Congressional Budget Office reports that this bill will have only the slightest impact on illegal immigration. The American people are not fooled. A recent Rasmussen poll says that only about 28 percent of Americans actually believe this bill will secure America's borders. The American people have been fooled in the past, which is another reason they are skeptical now, and they don't believe this bill will get it, and I don't either. In short, we are about to vote on a bill that repeats the mistakes of the past and does not learn from them, offering merely promises but no results. But it also makes a few new mistakes as well. Despite earlier promises of a tough but fair legalization program, this bill grants immediate legal status to people with multiple drunk driving convictions and people with multiple domestic violence convictions. And for people who have actually already committed these crimes and been deported, this bill would allow them to come back and register for RPI status. I simply do not understand, nor has anyone attempted to explain, how we can in good conscience support legalization, of violent criminals. I am not talking about just people who have come here to work and otherwise been law-abiding citizens; I am talking about people who come here and, in contempt of our laws, have committed crimes of violence, and they are now going to be rewarded under this bill with probationary status and a pathway to citizenship. A few days ago I challenged my colleagues to come to the floor and explain or perhaps defend these provisions. I didn't find any takers. I also mentioned the tragic stories of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters who lost their lives after being hit by an illegal immigrant drunk driver. Just to give some perspective, in 2011 alone Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported nearly 36,000 people with DUI convictions. This bill legalizes people who have committed driving under the influence offenses as well as people with multiple domestic violence offenses. Some might argue that multiple misdemeanors aren't that big of a deal, but tell that to the family of a loved one who has lost their son, their daughter, their mother, their father, their brother, or their sister because of drunk driving by people who have illegally entered our country. It is worth remembering that the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony can be just 1 day in custody. These are not minor offenses. It is worth remembering that, particularly in a domestic violence context, a felony is often pleaded down to a misdemeanor because of challenges getting cooperation from the complaining witness, who frequently lives with the defendant. No fewer than 23 States classify certain domestic violence offenses as misdemeanors. In Minnesota, misdemeanor domestic violence even includes domestic abuse with a deadly weapon. That law may call it a misdemeanor, but it is a serious crime. So for one last time, I will issue my challenge: Are there any supporters of this bill who will come to the Senate floor and tell the American people why drunk drivers, domestic abusers, and already deported criminals should be given immediate legal status under this bill? Well, I won't be holding my breath. No one has taken me up on that yet. I have just a few final points. We have been told this bill reduces the Federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. Amazingly, in some sort of Washington-style accounting, we can spend about $50 billion and still save money. That is amazing. It is magical. And it is pure fantasy. We were told that previously on the Affordable Care Act, but we know this bill is premised on accounting tricks. The reality is that it will actually increase the on-budget deficit. This is the amazing thing to me. We have some of our colleagues who are some of the most effective deficit hawks in this Chamber--those who have been champions fighting against special spending projects that tend to corrupt the political process--yet they support this bill and seem to have turned a blind eye to the on-budget deficit and the fact that this bill is littered with de facto earmarks, carve-outs, and pet spending projects. We have been told this bill modernizes the southern border. Yet it does absolutely nothing to facilitate the flow of lawful trade and commerce across our border and to allow law enforcement to focus on the criminal element, which would represent a tremendous step in the right direction. I wish to reiterate that I agree with the Gang of 8 and those who support some aspects of this bill that we need a nationwide E-Verify system. I know Senator Portman from Ohio, for example, had an E-Verify improvement amendment, but, like 45 other amendments denied an opportunity to be heard as part of this process wherein we have only seen 10 votes on amendments, he was unable to offer that improvement to this bill. I agree with the Gang of 8 and those who say we need stricter penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants. I agree with those who say we need to increase the number of visas for highly skilled immigrants with advanced STEM degrees. I agree with the goal of unifying families. All of these measures enjoy broad bipartisan support, and I want to offer my congratulations to the Gang of 8 for including them in this bill. However, I can't support a bill that repeats the mistakes of the past by making a promise of future action that will never be kept, particularly on border security, and one that repeats the mistakes of 1986. I certainly can't support a bill that offers immediate legal status to drunk drivers, wife-beaters, and violent criminals. I was disappointed when my RESULTS amendment was tabled, and I am disappointed that today we are about to pass deeply flawed legislation that will not be taken up by the House of Representatives. But I take some comfort in knowing that while the initial Senate debate is ending, the broader nationwide debate is just beginning. In the weeks and months ahead, I want to continue to play an active and constructive role, particularly working with our colleagues in the House of Representatives, to pass real immigration reform that promotes security and prosperity for the American people. I note that one of our colleagues in the House called this bill a runaway train in the Senate, but that train is getting ready to slow down, and I think the American people will benefit from the Congress taking its time to make sure that we not simply pass a bill but we pass a good bill, one that reflects our values and one that also benefits our economy. I think they will benefit from a careful discussion and dialog between the Senate and the House about what ultimately will be the bill that goes to the President's desk.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I yield myself up to 15 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I would be glad to yield as long as it doesn't come out of my 10 minutes.