John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair how much time remains on this side of the aisle?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I was going to use the occasion to ask unanimous consent that following the Senator from Washington speaking, I would like to be recognized for up to 10 minutes in morning business.

Mr. CORNYN. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I express my appreciation to the Senator from Washington for allowing Republican Senators to intervene and the extent to which Democratic Members speak, I would like to make sure we have equivalent time on our side. I think we can work that out.

Mr. CORNYN. I would like 10 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I hear the distinguished Senator from Washington and other Members on that side of the aisle complain about their inability to get things done. But I have to remind them, here we are on December 5, 2007. We have been operating on a continuing resolution because the majority has failed to pass and send to the President 11 appropriations bills. We are not doing the basic work Congress is supposed to do to keep the lights on, to keep the Government working. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.

Mr. CORNYN. I will not yield.

Mr. CORNYN. I will reclaim my right to the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. I will be glad to respond to the distinguished Senator after I conclude my remarks. The fact now is that we have before us an effort--a misguided effort--to protect 23 or so million Americans from a middle-class tax increase. We know health care providers and physicians are going to be subjected to Draconian cuts in their reimbursement rates. We know our intelligence community needs a permanent solution to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which will expire in February. And we know that instead of providing the funding to our troops that they need in order to protect us and our allies in the global war on terror, we are seeing strings attached, other qualifications insisted upon by the other party, which have impeded and slowed down and, indeed, to this point stopped our ability to fund our troops. I wish to particularly, though, focus on the tax increase that, as a result of the inaction of the majority--the so-called alternative minimum tax--is going to take place unless we find some way to work our way through this issue without a tremendous tax increase on other hard- working Americans. If there were ever a misnomer for a tax, this would be it because for an increasing number of Americans the alternative minimum tax is neither alternative, nor is it minimal. Congress, it should be remembered, created the AMT almost 40 years ago in response to the testimony of the then-Secretary of the Treasury that 155 taxpayers paid zero Federal income tax on their 1967 tax returns. Unfortunately, but I guess predictably, this tax, created to target the very rich, the 155 who paid no taxes, has now grown to cover roughly 6 million people today and will grow to cover roughly 23 million people next year unless action is taken. It has, in the process, grown to cover more and more taxpayers and now will capture unsuspecting middle- class taxpayers by surprise unless Congress acts. This is because, unlike the regular income tax, the AMT is not indexed for inflation. This means that over time, economic growth and inflation have caused a steady increase in the number of middle-income taxpayers who will get hit by the AMT. Working parents who have children and qualify for deductions and credits under the standard tax system get a rude awakening when they discover they are subjected to the alternative minimum tax, which literally cancels out many of these deductions. This will add unnecessary complexity to the Tax Code and increase tax compliance costs and complicate taxpayers' decisions. In recent years, Congress has enacted temporary fixes to prevent the AMT from hitting millions of taxpayers with a higher tax bill. While this solution is not perfect, it did at least limit the reach of the AMT. Now, the Senate has considered legislation on five different occasions that would have either eliminated the AMT or greatly scaled it back. In one instance, not a single member of the majority party voted to fully repeal the AMT, and only one Democrat supported a proposal that would have rolled the increase in the AMT back to rates that took place under President Clinton. Of course, history tells us that President Clinton himself vetoed the bill that would have eliminated the AMT back in 1999. We know the majority leader has now filed cloture on H.R. 3996, known as the Temporary Tax Relief Act of 2007. Note, Mr. President, the title, ``Temporary Tax Relief.'' While the bill provides limited temporary relief for taxpayers, it, at the same time, permanently increases taxes on America's entrepreneurs and makes it more difficult for the United States to remain competitive in the global capital market. In other words, it makes taxpayers pay for the mistake Congress made 40 years ago when it created the AMT. The bill makes fundamental changes to the laws affecting the taxation of partnerships. These partnerships have successfully encouraged the pooling of capital, ideas, and skills in a manner that promotes entrepreneurship and risk-taking, and, not to be overlooked, jobs. The bill raises taxes on capital formation in the United States and will increase the cost of and thus decrease the availability of capital to businesses throughout the country. The bill will severely handicap a vibrant and growing part of the U.S. economy in terms of our global competitiveness. International competition for capital is a driving factor for business. At a time when many of us are raising concerns regarding the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets and pointing out that our economic competitors are doing everything they can to emulate the success of our capital markets, the last thing we should want to do is to put the United States and U.S. businesses to a disadvantage by increasing taxes on capital formation and driving investment dollars away to other markets. We simply can't afford for the Senate to tax long-term investments in a way that puts America at a competitive disadvantage. Many on the other side would argue that any AMT relief should be ``paid for'' by raising revenue in order to neutralize the effect of the AMT cut. They say they can't just fix the AMT because it is revenue they have already anticipated. This is a revenue which, in fact, they need to fund the ever-increasing growth of the Federal Government, unfortunately demonstrated by pork-laden appropriations bills and a bloated budget. At every turn throughout the year's appropriations season, we have seen the majority push for more and more spending. Threatened with a Presidential veto, they have dared the President to veto these bloated spending bills, only to find us in the mess we are in today. Those on the other side of the aisle have been counting on the increased revenue from the AMT to fund their growth of the Federal Government. They seem to consider the mistaken growth of the AMT to be some kind of windfall profit, and, in fact, they seem to have forgotten where the money comes from in the first place. We all should know it comes from hard-working American taxpayers, families, people in my State of Texas who already pay their fair share of taxes and can't afford to bear the burden of the Government's mistakes. So rather than fix the AMT and protect taxpayers from this unwarranted and unexpected tax increase, my colleagues would prefer to replace the AMT revenue with a new tax under a new name. I have to tell you that this kind of shell game is a too typical Washington approach. Instead of figuring out ways to keep the hands of Washington bureaucrats in the pockets of taxpayers, this Congress ought to continue to do all it can to protect millions of middle-class taxpayers from a tax that no one ever intended for them to have to pay in the first place. Taxpayers already work for 4 months out of the year to pay their local, State, and Federal taxes. The last thing Congress should be doing is increasing the number of days American taxpayers work for Uncle Sam instead of for their families. What is worse, Congress's inability to provide timely AMT relief will also cause unnecessary delays in processing tax returns and getting refunds to taxpayers who are entitled to them. The IRS Oversight Board, an independent board created by Congress as part of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, told Congress just last month that a delay threatens the IRS's ability to process returns and issue refunds in a timely manner and will impose a significant burden on taxpayers. But that is where we find ourselves today as a result of the mismanagement of our agenda. According to the IRS governing Oversight Board, delaying the filing season by just 2 weeks would delay the processing of 6.7 million returns, putting a hold on $17 billion in refunds owed to hard-working American taxpayers. If the tax season is delayed by 1 month, this would delay 40 million returns from being processed, and $87 billion in refund checks owed to taxpayers would remain in the Federal Treasury. This is real money to real Americans, and the political games surrounding it ought to end. We should not be using the AMT relief as hostage to be exchanged for tax-and-spend policies and the growth of the Federal Government. Taxpayers can't afford it and neither can the American economy. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the last 2 weeks we have been back in our States visiting with our constituents and reporting to them on the work of the Congress. I did the same. I was in Texas traveling across our State. People would ask me almost everywhere I went what is happening in the Congress, and specifically the Senate. I am sorry to say I had to tell them: Not much is happening. Here we are, 2 months into a new fiscal year and we have yet to pass 11 out of the 12 appropriations bills that literally keep the lights on and instead are working on a continuing resolution, or on auto pilot based on last year's budget and appropriations bills. I guess I was a little embarrassed to tell them that the approval ratings which we have seen on the Rasmussen poll and others, the Gallup poll and others, appears to be well deserved. It is not a partisan matter. It is not that Republicans like what is happening and Democrats do not like what is happening, or vice versa, or independents like what we are doing. The fact is, no one seems to be satisfied. Given the 11 percent or so approval rating, I have to believe that in large part it is due to the fact that we simply have not taken care of our business. Nowhere in the rest of America could people fail to do as much as we have failed to do in the Senate and survive. Whether it is your family budget or it is the small business, you could not get away with it. Only Congress can get away with it, I guess, to the extent it has, the failures and inaction. There are two areas particularly I want to talk about in the next few minutes, where this has grave national security implications. First, as Secretary Gates, the Secretary of the Department of Defense, has told us, if they do not get emergency supplemental funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are going to have to begin to give people notices that they are going to run out of money in February. But they have to issue the notices 60 days in advance, which means by December 15 there are going to be lots of folks who are going to be getting pink slips just in time for Christmas because the Senate has failed to act on an emergency supplemental request to fund our troops. Frankly, I do not think we ought to be in that position. No. 1, it is completely inconsiderate of the families and the individual circumstances of those individuals who are doing their best to support our men and women in uniform. Secondly, it is completely unnecessary. If we would simply take care of our business and quit playing political games by tying deadlines to the appropriation of emergency funds to support our troops, we could fund our troops and continue to have the debates here in the Congress about what our policy ought to be. Those debates are important. I respect people with different opinions than mine. But we should not be doing it at the expense of our men and women in uniform or putting in jeopardy the jobs of people in civilian clothes who support our men and women in uniform, by tying the appropriation of this emergency funding to these deadlines to the emergency funding. I hope we will get this done and get it done quickly. Also, we have, in fact, a middle-class tax increase getting ready to come into full flower with the so-called alternative minimum tax. Unless we act, the 6 million people who currently pay this tax today will grow to 23 million next year. So that is another victim, those taxpayers are another victim of our inaction and failure to act in a responsible way when it comes to getting our work done. I want to join my colleague from Missouri, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, as well as my distinguished colleague from Arizona, and focus a little bit here in the next 5 minutes or so on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As most Americans who have followed our debates here know, our ability to listen in on conversations between terrorists and to stop further terrorist attacks on our mainland and our homeland, as well as over in Iraq and Afghanistan, depends on a robust intelligence- gathering capability. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was a law passed back in 1978, back in a different era, which served our purpose then and made sure that no intelligence gathering, no wiretaps could occur against Americans. But the fact is that law has needed updating, has been updated from time to time. But we need to make clear that when it comes to monitoring communications between terrorists and foreign nations, it is not necessary to prepare a mound of paperwork and have an army of lawyers process it through a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to get a permit to do so. We have, as we all know, passed a temporary measure which will expire in February. But we need to act on this permanently and not continue to jam all of our business into the last few weeks and put people in doubt, particularly in the intelligence community, of whether they will have the capability to detect and deter future terrorist attacks by employing this capability. Before we passed a temporary patch, I think, in August--or before we broke for the August recess--because of a ruling by a judge and because of changes in technology, it had been reported in the press that we had lost about two-thirds of our intelligence-gathering capability. Fortunately, we were able to fix that on a temporary basis. But there are also other important parts of this legislation such as how do we treat the telecommunications carriers that did what they were asked to do in the security interests of the American people and cooperated with the Federal Government? Are we going to provide them the legal protection they are entitled to under the law or are we going to hang them out to dry and make them liable for lawsuits and damages, perhaps, and jeopardize the intelligence that we have gained with their cooperation? That is the wrong way to treat these telecommunications carriers. We ought to not reward them but at least do our duty with regard to these citizens, corporate and individual alike, who cooperated with the U.S. Government in gathering intelligence and not punish them by hanging them out to dry and making them the subject of numerous lawsuits and litigation. Just one quick example: When Joseph Anzack was kidnapped by al-Qaida on May 12 while serving in Iraq and killed a few weeks later, you have to wonder if the paperwork that took roughly 10 hours to complete, along with a group of lawyers before an authorization to monitor communications which directly implicated his kidnappers would have saved his life. On that date, May 12, he and Alex Jimenez and Byron Fouty were kidnapped. But a 10-hour delay in getting the FISA paperwork done may have cost Joseph Anzack his life, and may have severely hampered the continuing efforts to find Alex Jimenez and Byron Fouty. While the Protect America Act that passed in August, as I said, provided a temporary fix to the problem, it will expire in February. I just ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, why are we delaying the passage of this important fix to this temporary act? Isn't it important enough to make sure we do everything possible not to hamper our intelligence-gathering capability? We are, in fact, a nation at war, and we ought to act like it. That means arming our intelligence community with the tools they need to detect terrorist communications and to deter future terrorist attacks. I know 9/11 seems like a long way off in the minds of many, and many have acted as if it never happened, but the fact is, unless we have robust intelligence-gathering capability, and unless the Senate acts promptly to permanently grant the power to our intelligence community to detect these communications, we are at grave risk, and we should not be as a result of Congress's inaction. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I yield myself 10 minutes of our allotted 30 minutes.

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, amid the news we have received this last month on a variety of fronts--some good, some bad--is some very positive news from our economy. October marked the 50th straight month of positive job creation in the United States, a new record since the Government began keeping such records in 1939. Unfortunately, Congress has set a record of its own last week, when it finally sent the first of 12 appropriations bills that should have been finished before October 1, when the new fiscal year began, to the President for his signature. Not since 1987, 20 years ago, has Congress taken this long to send a single appropriations bill to the President this late in the fiscal year. I ask this question: What family, what small business, who in the United States could run their fiscal house this way, other than the Congress? Only the Congress has the power to basically suspend the powers of disbelief and pass something called a continuing resolution so that spending remains on auto pilot at last year's levels, rather than meet the needs of this current year by passing appropriations bills. Instead of working hard together, as I genuinely believe most Members of this body want, we see instead a calculated game being played out. I want to focus specifically on our Veterans and Military Construction bill which should have been passed as a stone-alone bill and should have been signed by the President before Veterans Day this last Monday but was not. Rather than working to see that the funding for our veterans and for quality-of-life funding for military families, which is absolutely essential for a volunteer military force such as ours, we see this bill has consciously been held behind, even though it passed some 2 months ago, presumably to serve as a vehicle for a large spending bill that will be offered in December. This veterans funding bill is perhaps the most telling and troubling sign of the games this process has degenerated into. It strikes me--and I believe I am not alone--that there is a serious discrepancy between what Congress says to our veterans and what Congress does for our veterans. Knowing how important veterans funding is to the President and to the country as a whole and to the Members of this body, some of my colleagues have decided instead to use this bill as a vehicle to expand Washington spending and, unfortunately, engage in partisan games. Rather than funding the veterans bill by itself with important funding and benefit enhancements that will serve America's veterans and military families, the majority leader has decided, initially at least, to try to merge this bill with another bill he knew the President was going to veto. As a matter of fact, he did yesterday, the Labor-HHS bill, because it would cost American taxpayers $11 billion more than the President asked for and included a number of, shall we call them, ``interesting earmarks'' or special projects designated by Members of the Senate. Fortunately, we were able, through a point of order urged by my senior Senator, Mrs. Hutchison, under Senate rules, to separate the Veterans and Military Construction bill from an overloaded Labor, Health and Human Services bill. I ask my colleagues to consider what the American people are supposed to think when they see examples such as this. The labor bill the President vetoed included a special interest earmark for a San Francisco museum called the Exploratorium. I have never heard of the Exploratorium before, but let me explain a little about this particular earmark that was included in the vetoed bill. This is to fund, at taxpayer expense, a museum that has more than 500,000 visitors each year and an annual budget of almost $30 million. Yet the American taxpayer has been asked unknowingly to spend money on Exploratorium-- payments of more than $11 per visitor over the last 6 years. What is perplexing to me is why the majority would knit together funding for this Exploratorium, for example, along with about 2,000 other earmarks or special interest appropriations, with money for veterans health care. Why should veterans be required to shoulder the burden not only for this earmark, which I think we could fairly debate the appropriateness of, but over $1 billion set aside for earmarks in a completely unrelated matter and unrelated bill? This is exactly what the majority leader tried to do last week, along with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. At the end of the day, we were able to stop this strategy and prevent our veterans from becoming yet another political football in the appropriations process. Unfortunately, we still haven't seemed to learn the lessons from this unfortunate gamesmanship, because we still have not yet passed the Veterans and Military Construction appropriations bill, even though it has been sitting there, waiting to go to the President for about the last 2 months. Just as we were able to free our veterans from this pork-laden trap, the majority leader indicated that the veterans bill would not actually ever get independent funding. On November 7, he said: Some Republicans are seeking to separate the two bills, to force a vote just on the VA bill and vote just on the Labor- Health and Human Services bill. If we do that, here is what happens. This bill will go back to the House with only the Labor-Health and Human Services bill. That is all the President will get. He will not get the veterans bill. In other words, the majority leader on November 7 said that if we were successful in splitting these two bills apart, the President would get the porkbarrel spending bill that pluses up spending for these 2,000 earmarked special projects and is $11 billion over the President's requested amount, and the majority leader would make sure that the Veterans and Military Construction appropriations bill didn't go to the President. I don't know how this kind of action can be characterized other than a shameful way to treat our veterans and to deal with the quality-of-life issues included in the military construction portion of this appropriations bill. It is past time to fund the Federal Government at appropriate levels and to give our veterans and troops currently in harm's way the funding they need, as well as those who have proudly worn the uniform of the U.S. military whom we honored just this last Veterans Day, last Monday. It is long past time we put aside the gamesmanship that, unfortunately, seems to characterize so much of what happens here in Washington when it comes to politics. I think we ought to try to figure some way to work together to reverse the lowest approval rating in recent time which the American public currently has with regard to the U.S. Senate, to help put a stop to these games and liberate our Nation's finances from the grip of partisan politics, I would suggest, and to make sure we do not end up in a game of chicken where the American people are told if we do not pass a bloated Omnibus appropriations bill there will be a shutdown of the Government. I believe we ought to go ahead and pass, by way of insurance, the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. This legislation will guarantee that the Government continues to work for the American people until Congress passes responsible appropriations bills. We need to do this sooner rather than later. It does not look as if we are going to get it done this week before we break for the Thanksgiving recess, but we sure ought to get it done when we come back on December 3. Passing the Government Shutdown Prevention Act will make sure the American people need not be frightened into thinking the Federal Government will not continue to operate and fund essential programs while we continue to debate what the appropriate level of appropriations bills should be. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 more minutes, to be followed by the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be split evenly between the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, my colleagues from the majority want to spend $23 billion above what the President has requested in his budget for discretionary spending. Now, that is $23 billion in discretionary spending over and above entitlement spending, which has been operating again on autopilot at the growth rate of about 8 percent per year. They have claimed $23 billion is not all that much money. But I would suggest that only in Washington is $23 billion to be considered pocket change. The American people are smarter than that. They know somebody has to pay for that money. It does not magically appear. What it means is the Federal Government is going to reach into their pockets and extract it from their hard-earned wages in order to fund these vast expansions of Government programs. We need to make sure that we are better stewards of the taxpayers' dollars and that we regain the lost confidence the American people had in this institution. We need to take care of problems, for example, such as the growing alternative minimum tax, which threatens to grow from 6 million taxpayers this year to 23 million taxpayers next year--a typical so-called tax-the-rich program, which, just as they always do, tends to grow to creep into the middle class. We need to make sure the middle class does not suffer a huge tax increase by dealing with the alternative minimum tax. Again, instead of being in lockdown, as we are on the farm bill because the majority leader will not allow any amendments to be offered except for ones he cherry-picks, we ought to be solving these problems, pass a Veterans and Military Construction bill, get it to the President, and not have a game of chicken with $23 billion in excess spending, which we know the President is going to veto. Instead we should engage in a meaningful dialog to try to come up with a negotiated amount. We should eliminate this middle-class tax increase which is going to grow from affecting 6 million people to 23 million people unless we do something about it before the end of the year. Mr. President, I know the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire is here with us and ready to take the floor, so I yield to him. I ask that the Senator from South Carolina, who I know is coming down after the Senator from New Hampshire, be reserved 8 minutes of the time we have remaining. Mr. President, could I ask how much time we have remaining on this side?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire how much time in morning business this side has remaining?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues from Georgia, Senators Chambliss and Isakson, in talking about the news from Iraq. It is important as we discuss the challenges we still face and that the Iraqi people still face in Iraq to talk about the complete picture. Unfortunately, while we have heard much of violence in Iraq, and the challenges that face us, we have not heard enough about the successes the American military and our Iraqi allies are meeting with in that country. It wasn't that long ago that the surge General Petraeus, the counterinsurgency strategy that he is the architect of and which he has executed, was called a failure on the floor of the Senate. It is ironic, looking back, as sometimes it is helpful to go back and learn from history--and you do not have to go back very far, actually, just the summer and the spring of this year--when leaders on the other side of the aisle called the surge a failure. The most ironic part of it is that General Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq at the time, said: We have not even started the surge yet, so let me have a few months. Well, General Petraeus has now had a few months, and the surge has now had an opportunity to make a difference. In fact, there is much positive news to report. I have to think the biggest mistake the naysayers have made is to bet against the men and women of the U.S. military. That is always a mistake, because the American military men and women have demonstrated they can accomplish the goals they set out to do, and they are making a tremendous difference in Iraq in eliminating terrorist strongholds, as we continue to train the Iraqi military to take our place. As I have always said, we all want to bring our troops home. The question is, are we going to bring our troops home based on conditions on the ground and the Iraqis' ability to secure and stabilize their own country or are we going to do it regardless of the consequences in a way that will create the potential for a failed state in Iraq, another terrorist haven, and encourage our sworn enemies in Iran and elsewhere, embolden them to think that America cannot be trusted and America will turn its back on our allies? In May, one of our senior colleagues said the surge was supposed to bring stability essential to political reconciliation and economic reconstruction. But he said at the time: It has not and it will not. One short month later, the majority leader and the Speaker of the House, in a letter to the President, wrote: As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results. The increase in U.S. forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation. We even bore witness to atrocious ads run by organizations such as moveon.org slandering General Petraeus before he even had a chance to come here and to report on the status of the surge in September. Well, the numbers do not lie, to the dismay of many Americans. Some of my colleagues have chosen to conveniently gloss over and try to explain away the progress that has been made by General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy. Far from being a simple increase in troops, we learned General Petraeus's strategy was a new way to attack the enemy in Iraq, that is, utilize support from both local Iraqi citizens and tribal leaders to form an offensive against insurgent and terrorist groups, and the strategy has met with a resounding success. It has become a common story, but one worth repeating, that Al Anbar Province, a Sunni stronghold, was virtually overrun and lost to American and Iraqi forces, because al-Qaida basically had its way with that region, had terrorized the people so much that they would not stand up and fight them and basically were being held as victims of terror. Now the so-called Anbar awakening has occurred. Tribal leaders have come forward and volunteered their people to serve in the Iraqi police force and the Iraqi security forces. Now Al Anbar Province has essentially been rid of organized al-Qaida strongholds. The Washington Post editorial page on October 14 recognized the decreased violence in Iraq and noted that evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August, and 77 percent from September. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. We are thankful that American casualties are down as well. Numbers recently released by the Pentagon corroborate the progress occurring in Iraq in and around Baghdad. The DOD reports terrorist operations are down by 59 percent; operations targeting Iraqi forces more than 60 percent; car bombs are down by 65 percent; casualties due to enemy attacks are down by 77 percent; and violence during this last Ramadan period was the lowest in 3 years. But perhaps the most convincing evidence that things, good things, are happening in Iraq, is the fact that the Iraqi people are beginning to move back into areas they had previously left behind, hopeless that peace and security could ever be accomplished. According to recent news reports, even cab drivers are feeling it is safer to drive around Baghdad neighborhoods where sectarian violence once made it impossible for them to enter. But perhaps the most telling story of increased security in Baghdad is one told by the Iraqi people themselves. According to an Associated Press article from this past weekend, thousands of Iraqi refugees who previously fled their homes in Iraq for the relative safety of neighboring Syria have now returned to their home country. While it is easy for some skeptics to second-guess numbers and statistics pertaining to the security situation in Iraq, it is nearly impossible to ignore the fact that thousands of Iraqis who not long ago were living as refugees in a foreign country now feel safe enough to come home. This reversal of refugee trends clearly indicates that there are good things happening in Iraq and around Baghdad. The AP reports that ``In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped.'' The article goes on to quote one refugee who returned home to his neighborhood of Khadra. ``In Khadra,'' he said, ``about 15 families have returned from Syria.'' He said, ``I've called friends and family still there and told them it's safe to come home.'' Where there was once widespread fear among Iraqi citizens, we are now seeing something new--hope, hope for a better and safer future. Nothing confirms this more than the return of refugees and their testimony that it is becoming safer in Iraq. While not yet safe, no one is saying the job has been completed, but surely an honest, objective appraisal would acknowledge the improvements in the security situation as demonstrated not only by these statistics but by testimonials from Iraqis themselves. These heartwarming accounts of families reuniting in neighborhoods, which not long ago had been written off as hopeless, and businesses opening their doors are important lessons for us all. The strategy employed by General Petraeus has worked and is continuing to work. The efforts of our military men and women who have put their hearts and souls into this mission are now paying dividends and producing results. These security gains are not a fluke. What we are seeing is a direct result of a carefully designed strategy which includes ramped-up counterinsurgency operations, increased efforts to foster cooperation and reconciliation among local tribes, and our continued backing of the hard work of the American military and support for their families. As we are presented with funding requests by the Pentagon to bring about a stable and peaceful Iraq, we are ensuring that our soldiers have the resources they need to bring peace and stability to a tumultuous land. My hope is we will not use the funding request from the Pentagon for continued support for our troops as another political football, as it has been used in the past, particularly in the face of such hopeful and promising news for which I would expect we would be grateful and thank our men and women in uniform and their families who have sacrificed so much to help bring this about, along with our Iraqi allies. General Petraeus told reporters this past weekend: In general, we think that there are no al-Qaeda strongholds at this point. While he was quick to remind us that they are still a potent threat, his assessment of the progress in Iraq can be nothing but reassuring. I shudder to think of what would have happened had we listened to the naysayers months ago who said we have to withdraw all our troops, even before the surge was fully implemented. So far, we have voted 59 times on Iraq-related resolutions, most of which are nonbinding sense-of-the- Senate resolutions; 59 times we have voted even before the surge had a chance to be implemented. Now we see what a mistake it is to bet against the men and women of the U.S. military. Thank goodness those resolutions were not successful, and thank goodness our American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and Coast Guard were able to carry out this new plan under the leadership of General Petraeus. We now see at least some hope in a land where hope was in short supply. Although many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle prejudged the surge strategy and continue to oppose our efforts in Iraq, some of whom call even today for cutting off funds to support our troops, we see now substantial evidence of progress. It is my continued hope these positive developments may yet change the tone of the national dialog on the global war on terror, including the campaign in Iraq. It is time for all Members of this body to take an objective look not through a political lens, not through a lens which sees only the next general election, but to look objectively at what our troops are accomplishing in Iraq. Instead of focusing only on the challenges, we should at least be honest enough to acknowledge the accomplishments, not the least of which are the indisputable gains in security made through their sacrifices. I, for one, am proud to applaud the undeniable achievements of our troops in Iraq. Their hard work and tireless dedication have reminded us that a stable and peaceful Iraq is within reach. It is my fervent hope that my colleagues will join me in acknowledging and honoring the successes achieved by our military personnel and renew their support for them, their commander, and the counterinsurgency strategy that is bearing fruit and to always remember their families at home who wait for their loved one to return as soon as our mission is accomplished. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, if, as the New York Times reported today, Judge Mukasey were to state a conclusive opinion on the legality of certain interrogation techniques which he has not been briefed upon, it would potentially prejudice and put in jeopardy intelligence officials who may have engaged in interrogation techniques that now, without knowing the facts, this nominee would conclude had stepped across a legal threshold. That would not be the responsible thing to do. Indeed, Judge Mukasey has done the only responsible thing a careful person and a person who understands the ramifications of his decision may extend far beyond a confirmation hearing and potentially put in jeopardy America's patriots who are trying to protect and save the lives of other Americans and other people around the world. So I hope we would try to do better. I hope we would do what we all came here to do as Senators representing our States and try to solve real problems, not to create artificial barriers and pretexts for making what turn out to be naked political judgments about some of these important issues that confront us. I thank the Chair for her indulgence, I thank my colleagues for their patience, and I hope we get on with the business of passing a children's health insurance bill and have a speedy confirmation for Judge Mukasey as the next Attorney General of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I was looking at the most recent public opinion polls on the Congress, and let me report what they say. It says just 16 percent of likely voters think Congress is doing an ``excellent'' job or a ``good'' job, while 36 percent are willing to call the legislature's performance ``fair.'' A plurality of 47 percent say Congress is doing a ``poor'' job. Now, I do not know about you, but if my kids brought home a report card that said only 16 percent of their work was either ``excellent'' or ``good,'' 36 percent ``fair,'' and 47 percent ``poor,'' I think there would be a little trouble at home until we got their priorities straightened out. This Congress, this Senate, has lost a sense of its priorities. Our priorities should be working together across the aisle to try to solve our Nation's challenges. That is the reason I came to the Senate. I honestly believe regardless of whether we call ourselves Republicans or Democrats or Independents, that is what motivated virtually every Member of Congress to come here: to try to do something for our constituents, for our States, for our Nation, and for our future. But, unfortunately--I do not know whether it is the water we drink in Washington, DC, or somehow just the environment we encounter here--once people come to Washington they seem to get locked into these partisan battles and lose sight of that objective, which is to do something good for the American people, to help them solve some of their problems, to deliver results. I know many of our colleagues--whether they are Republicans or Democrats--are frustrated by our inability to do that. As the Presiding Officer knows, we have weekly meetings, bipartisan meetings, trying to figure out--it is almost like group therapy sessions: How can we get out of the rut we are in? How can we solve some of the problems that confront us? But here we are again. My colleague, the senior Senator from Texas, talked about her concerns that the SCHIP debate--the State Children's Health Insurance Program debate--had become not a problem to be solved but, rather, a political football. I am afraid I have to agree with her that we have been through this debate over the last few weeks, and nothing--not even the rhetoric--has changed. It seems as if all we have had is people dusting off their old speeches they delivered a few days or a few weeks ago, and not listening to one another, not actually rolling up their sleeves and getting to work to try to resolve the differences. The truth is, as we have said over and over again, what is wrong with this bill is we simply do not seem to have a consensus that we ought to enact a solution. The fact is, we know there is bipartisan agreement the State Children's Health Insurance Program--designed to help low- income kids whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy private health insurance--that they need a little help in order to get access to good quality health care. There is broad bipartisan, perhaps unanimous, agreement we ought to get that done. But, unfortunately, what we have seen is a program proposed that little resembles the original program, which was designed to help low- income kids. We see a bill that has grown by 140 percent, a $35 billion tax increase in order to cover who? Low-income kids? Well, no. In 14 States we know it is used to cover adults. We know proposals had initially been made that would have allowed waivers to be used to cover families making up to $80,000 and more--bearing little resemblance to its original goal. Now we see a new bill that is before the Senate that represents the old bill except--if this is possible--it is even worse. It is amazing to me the authors of this new bill would come back with this so-called compromise, spending $500 million more than the last bill, yet covering 400,000 fewer children. You heard me correctly--spending almost a half billion dollars more and covering 400,000 less children. And, still, despite my pleas and the pleas of many of our colleagues to the contrary, this bill does not put the health and welfare of the lowest income children first. I have said it time and time again, but let me say it one more time: Right now, in my home State of Texas, there are roughly 700,000 uninsured low-income children who qualify for Medicaid, who qualify for the SCHIP program, but we have not made the effort to reach out to them to get them to sign up for a benefit for which they are already legally qualified and for which there are funds already available to pay for their health care. These 700,000 children in Texas who qualify for SCHIP or the Medicaid Program do not know about the programs or do not know how to apply. I have to tell you, I was recently in Houston, TX, at a place called the Ripley House, which is a neighborhood program run by the Texas Children's Hospital, where I saw a copy of the application form for Medicaid and SCHIP. It reminded me of a financial statement that a business man or woman would have to fill out in order to apply for a line of credit or even maybe a financial application you would have to fill out to buy a home. It was enormously complicated and, I am sure, intimidating to many low-income parents who would like to sign up their children. But we have to refocus our efforts not on growing the size of the program beyond recognition to cover the middle class and to cover adults; we need to return our focus to low-income kids and figure out how we can get those families who are the intended beneficiaries of this program signed up on the program so we can get more kids out of the emergency rooms and on to some form of health insurance which will allow them to get preventive care and to keep them healthy and productive as young Americans. But here we go again. Here we go again. We are going to have another meaningless vote in the sense that while it no doubt will pass, the President said he is going to veto it, and we will be right back in the soup again. The second veto, roughly the same bill, except for the fact that this bill spends more money, covers fewer kids, and we are not solving the problems the American people sent us here to solve. I think it is regrettable. It is not why I came here, and I doubt it is the reason why the vast majority of our colleagues come here. But here we are stuck in a rut again, playing the same sort of political games, more concerned about scoring points on some imaginary scoreboard, according to arbitrary rules that nobody knows, other than it seems like these poor, low-income kids are the ones who are losing in the end. Mukasey Nomination I also come to the floor to talk about another disappointment I have with regard to the confirmation proceedings of the new nominee for Attorney General of the United States, Judge Michael Mukasey. I serve as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I am grateful to Chairman Leahy that on Tuesday we will finally have this nomination on the Judiciary Committee markup so we can vote up or down in the Judiciary Committee on this nominee. But it seems that Judge Mukasey-- just when we thought, here is somebody who is a respected Federal district judge and who has served with great distinction in that capacity, who has been the presiding judge of both the Jose Padilla case--do my colleagues remember that? He was an individual accused of terrorism and where there were many extensive legal challenges to his detention. Judge Mukasey handled that case, at least in part. He also tried and presided over the 10 individuals who were convicted for their involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, one of the first incidents of terrorism on our soil back in 1993, before we realized al-Qaida had declared war against the United States and we finally woke up on September 11 and acknowledged that. But throughout his career as a judge, Judge Mukasey has proven to be an independent voice of reason, justice, and a strong advocate for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. For 18 years, he served on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, one of this country's most important and prestigious Federal courts. For 6 of those years, he served also as the chief judge. The U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, wrote of Judge Mukasey's work presiding over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, saying that he: Presided with extraordinary skill and patience, assuring fairness to the prosecution and to each defendant and helpfulness to the jury. His was an outstanding achievement in the face of challenges far beyond those normally endured by a trial judge. In short, Judge Mukasey's qualifications as a lawyer, as a judge, as a dedicated advocate for the rule of law are unimpeachable and undeniable. Well, it looked like things were going pretty well. There were 2 days of hearings for Judge Mukasey in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Judge Mukasey was doing well when he said: You know what. I am not afraid to tell the President of the United States when he steps over the line and violates the law. If that were to happen, he said, it is my job as Attorney General to tell him: Here are the parameters for your actions, Mr. President, and you, just like the lowest of the low, the highest of the high, are subject to the law of the United States under the Constitution. Believing as he does in the concept of equal justice under the law, Judge Mukasey showed no fear and no favor in terms of the way he would interpret and apply the law were he confirmed as Attorney General. But now we see some of my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee have sent Judge Mukasey a letter asking him about his legal conclusion and opinion about an interrogation technique that is allegedly used against some of the worst enemies of the United States--terrorists--in order to get information from them--consistent with our laws and the Constitution and our treaty obligations--that will allow us to save American lives and prevent future terrorist attacks. They complain about Judge Mukasey's answer, not because he doesn't acknowledge what the law is--our international treaties banning torture, our domestic laws that ban torture--but because, he says: I have not been briefed on this particular interrogation technique that you are asking me about, and because it is a classified procedure, I don't know the facts. So let me tell you what the law is. Let me reassure you I will steadfastly enforce the law. I don't care whether it is the President of the United States I have to tell no or anybody else. But you know what. Being a responsible lawyer, being a responsible former Federal district judge, let me say that while I can tell you what the law is, I can't give you a conclusion that you are asking for as to whether this particular technique is legal or not because I haven't been briefed on it. I don't know what the facts are. Now, that is a responsible answer. As a matter of fact, that is the only responsible answer for a careful lawyer, a judge such as Judge Mukasey. Frankly, if he had answered the question without knowing what the facts were in some conclusive way, I would doubt his qualifications and his temperament. I would wonder: Maybe this person wants to be Attorney General too badly, that he is willing to make rash decisions without knowing what the facts are in order to get confirmed. But instead, Judge Mukasey said: You know, I need to know what the facts are. I can't answer your question conclusively, even though I reassure you I will steadfastly enforce the law. I oppose torture as abhorrent to our values, personally repugnant to me. I would tell the President of the United States, if I concluded that some particular interrogation technique stepped across that legal threshold. Once again, we find the facts apparently don't matter, that this responsible answer which Judge Mukasey has given has been offered as a pretext to oppose his nomination. I think it is a shame. As the New York Times today reported, if Judge Mukasey, who I am confident will ultimately be confirmed as the next Attorney General of the United States, were to say--Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.

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

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I understand the chairman of the Finance Committee objected this morning to a unanimous consent request offered by Senator Inhofe regarding legislation that would ensure that American taxpayers would not pay higher taxes next year. The chairman of the Finance Committee indicated they are working on these provisions and he doesn't want them taken up now; he wants to bring them up later. It is important to talk about two taxpayer-friendly provisions in the IRS Code that will disappear in the next 60 days unless we do something about it. The first is a provision that gives taxpayers the option of deducting their State and local sales tax. My State of Texas, like a handful of other States, does not believe it needs a State income tax. We don't have one. We are not going to get one. What we do want is a level playing field when it comes to the Federal income tax code allowing the deduction of State and local sales tax, just as it allows currently a deduction of State income tax from one's Federal tax return. State and local governments have a number of options for raising revenue to pay for essential services they provide to their citizens. Some States raise revenues through an income tax. Some States, such as Texas, use a sales tax. Others use a combination of the two. In an effort to help protect people from overly burdensome taxation, the IRS Code has in the past allowed taxpayers to deduct all the State and local taxes they paid from their Federal taxes. Up until 1986, taxpayers could deduct State and local sales taxes. Unfortunately, this was unfairly eliminated. For 18 years, Texans and other States without a State income tax did not have the same level playing field other States had. I view this as a matter of gross discrimination against those States that have a State sales tax rather than a State income tax. It is simply unfair and needs to end on a permanent basis. That is why 3 years ago, I worked with several of my colleagues to reinstate the State and local sales tax deduction as part of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. Without quick Senate action, the citizens of Texas will once again be treated unfairly by the IRS Code by disallowing the deduction of State and local taxes. Our State and local governments have to have the flexibility to collect taxes that fund essential services in a way they find most appropriate without putting our citizens at a disadvantage. Again, make no mistake about it, Texans don't want a State income tax. We are a low-tax, pro-growth State. That is why we have seen 3 million people move to Texas since 2000, because it provides incentives for job creation by small businesses and big businesses alike. We are not asking for the Federal Government to somehow bless Texas adopting a State income tax. We don't want it. What we do want is fundamental fairness. If the Senate allows this provision to expire, it will be punishing the citizens of my State based on geographic location and preference for a different tax system. Extending the sales tax deduction effectively gives Texans $1 billion in tax relief every year. This money not only helps hard-working middle- class families save money--perhaps to invest in a small business or pay for college tuition for their children--it helps spur economic and job growth as well. Last week I introduced legislation, along with Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, that extends for 2 years the $4,000 above-the-line deduction for taxpayers who pay for college tuition. We frequently talk about the importance of education on the younger generation, from elementary school through college and beyond. We talk about the importance of continuing education, literally lifetime learning, in order for us to maintain and extend our global competitiveness. Aside from simply encouraging people to pursue a college education, we ought to do our best to make college more affordable and accessible and less of a burden on working parents who want to send their kids to college. Originally part of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, this deduction allows taxpayers to deduct up to $4,000 from their Federal income tax return regardless of whether they itemize deductions or not. This deduction goes a long way to help families struggling to put their children through college and benefits millions of taxpayers annually. According to the College Board, this deduction, along with grants and other education incentives, has helped lower the cost for the average student who goes to a public university by $3,600 and $9,300 for those who attend a private college. Both of these deductions keep money in the pockets of taxpayers. In my State of Texas, they allow them to pay for things such as health care, clothing and food, things they need and ought to be able to use their hard-earned money to pay for, rather than writing a bigger check to Uncle Sam. It is appropriate to use the IRS Code not only to provide for fundamental fairness when it comes to allowing the deduction of State and local sales tax from a Federal income tax return; it is also appropriate to use the IRS Code to provide for further educational opportunity. Right now taxpayers have to work a total of 120 days, about a third of the year, to pay their tax burden, whether it is Federal, State, or local taxes. The last thing we should do is force taxpayers to work more hours, longer days for Uncle Sam and not for their family. Rather than waiting for some future bill to hopefully address this need, the Senate should extend these taxpayer-friendly provisions today. I hope we will have another opportunity to come back to the floor, and I urge the Senate to extend these two important provisions in the near future. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Briefly, Mr. President, I commend my distinguished friends and colleagues from New Jersey and Florida for this statement of solidarity with the Cuban people. I could not agree more that it is important--certainly now as much as ever--that we stand arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, opposed to oppressive regimes that really govern by fear. I have to say, just briefly, to my friend from Florida, Senator Martinez, I know his personal history of being a refugee from Cuba when he was 16 years old, being part of a Pedro Pan effort to bring young Cubans to America so they could have a better life. He also shared with me recently a movie which, while a work of fiction, I think, gave me a very emotional sense of what people in Cuba, in Havana in particular, must have experienced with the Cuban people being oppressed by Fidel Castro. I have to tell my colleagues, it is a bleak existence that these people, who are seeking nothing more than the most basic of human rights, have under a heartless regime of a dictator such as Fidel Castro. So I just wanted to express a few words of thanks and words of solidarity for my colleagues from New Jersey and Florida and to reiterate that all of us, all of the American people stand in solidarity with those in Cuba who seek change, who seek what we perhaps too often take for granted; that is, our freedom to speak, to live, to worship as we see fit. We ought to do everything we possibly can to support them.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I realize today is Halloween, so millions of children all over the globe will be showing up at our homes, saying ``trick or treat.'' Unfortunately, Congress has been up to more tricks than treats lately. I say that with a sense of irony but also a sense of great disappointment. Almost 3 weeks ago, on October 11, I sent a letter to Senator Reid, the Senate majority leader, and the Speaker of the House, Congresswoman Pelosi, urging them to work across the aisle with Republicans and Democrats to come up with a sensible compromise on the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Today, as we know, is October 31, Halloween, and we have still not been able to come up with a compromise that is reasonable and fiscally responsible which the President will sign. The families and the children in my State of Texas who are, unfortunately, put on edge and suffering some sense of anxiety wondering whether this important program will continue to serve the needs of low-income children are being unfortunately taken advantage of and disadvantaged. Why in the world would Congress play this kind of game and make those who are the most vulnerable among us the most anxious about their future and whether they will be able to get the health care which everyone in Congress believes low-income children ought to receive? Instead of negotiating and trying to come up with a sensible compromise, we find the leadership in the House of Representatives rushing through a bill with little bipartisan input. Rather than trying to hammer out a meaningful compromise, we find a bill that actually costs just as much but serves fewer children and which otherwise makes minor tweaks to the legislation. This bill clearly misses the mark and fails to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program according to the original intent of the program, which is putting low-income children first, low-income children whose families earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid-- that is up to 100 percent of the poverty level--but who make up to 200 percent of the poverty level. Unfortunately, due to the inaction of the U.S. Congress, we have 700,000 low-income Texas children who qualify for Medicaid, who qualify for SCHIP, but who are currently not signed up and receiving those benefits. Instead, Congress is taking its eye off the ball and exploding this sensible program that deserves to be authorized by raising the eligibility cap to 300 percent of the poverty level but doing nothing--I reiterate--nothing to ensure that low-income children, including 700,000 low-income children in Texas, have coverage first before we grow the program to higher income levels and cover adults as well. In fact, this legislation repeals the requirement that 95 percent of low-income children below 200 percent of the poverty level be covered first before extending coverage to children from higher income families. I do not believe this provision has the interests of the children this legislation was designed to serve put first. Instead, I think it puts partisan political interests ahead of the interests of low-income children. All of this has come, of course, in response to the President's veto of the original SCHIP reauthorization, a proposal that failed to encourage participation among the poorest of our children, and instead expanded coverage to children of higher income families as well as adults. Rather than being an obstacle, the President's veto should be looked at as an opportunity to reengage on a bipartisan basis to come up with a solution. It is no wonder that Congress's approval ratings are around the 11-percent range. When the people across America look to Washington to find solutions to their problems, what do they find? They find partisan posturing and precious few results. This is an opportunity to deliver a result and to keep a promise that we, on a bipartisan basis, have made to the poorest children in our country. What should we have asked ourselves as to what we should do? While we leave our children and their families blowing in the wind, will we turn their lives into campaign promises or will we, instead, keep our word that we came here to serve the needs of the American people, and particularly the most vulnerable among us, by continuing this important program and making sure that poor kids get health care first, before we look at growing this program to cover other more well- to-do children or perhaps even adults as are covered currently in four States. The recent debate on SCHIP has focused too much on our political gains and not enough on the well-being of our poor children. This bill has become another political football in a game that has been raging for months, but, unlike any other game that I am familiar with, this game has only an imaginary scoreboard, the results are arbitrary, and nothing--nothing--it appears, is out of bounds. Whenever a health care package for low-income children is delayed because some want to engage in partisan games and political posturing, you know things have gone too far. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and yet expecting different results. Well, by that definition, this is insanity. We know the original bill that was vetoed by the President was because it strayed far from the original objectives. It was not funded on a source of revenue that could be expected to pay for this radical expansion of the current program by 140 percent. Well, we know the reasons the President vetoed that legislation. And what does the leadership in the House of Representatives decide to do? Well, they decide to essentially do the same thing again and dare the President, one more time, to veto this legislation. It is clear this is not, by definition, good-faith negotiation and attempt, on a bipartisan basis, to solve this very real problem. Rather than give voice to those who want to find a better and more sensible solution to this problem, we will find ourselves this afternoon simply voting on another substantially flawed bill, which the President has likewise promised to veto. Of course, when the bill returns from its short and uneventful trip to the White House, we will not fail to see the video cameras paraded out for the press conferences to talk once more about how the President and those who voted against this bill have heartlessly blocked it. It has become a cynical ploy. Everybody gets it. Only people inside the beltway in Washington or inside this Chamber who continue to engage in partisan posturing do not get it. The American people see through it as clearly as you would expect. The truth is no one wants to see SCHIP reauthorized more than the Members of the Congress, on a bipartisan basis. It is an enormously successful program passed with broad bipartisan support in 1997, and it should be continued. As a matter of fact, those of us who voted against the bill the President vetoed believe we should continue the program, and we should add at least $10 billion to the original funding in order to cover more and more low-income kids. But even more important than that, in my State of Texas, half of the uninsured children in Texas who are eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP under the current program are not signed up. What is Congress doing to make sure those children are reached out to, that their parents are assisted in filling out the paperwork so they can qualify for this program? Precious little. Precious little. Congress continues to add 140 percent to the current authority under this program, to take money out of necessary outreach to reach out to the low-income kids and to explode this program into one that covers people making much more money than double the Federal level of poverty. I will do everything in my power to ensure these children get the health care they need. The problem is, as I and many of my colleagues have pointed out numerous times, this bill does not make these children a priority. It does not make these children a priority but, rather, an afterthought. Instead, it puts other children, many of whom already enjoy the benefits of private health insurance, in competition with these low- income children for CHIP coverage. The result is that children who most need it get crowded out in favor of children who already have private health insurance. This bill simply does not fix the problem. It raises the eligibility for CHIP enrollment without a concerted effort to enroll those children who are currently eligible first. Additionally, this new bill does nothing to close the loopholes on income disregard. Now, that is a fancy way of saying disregarding the rules. You say the rules are one thing, but you come behind it later on and say: Well, forget some of these rules when it comes to qualifying income. This bill is another example of that kind of gamesmanship under the title of income disregards which allows States the ability to, in effect, define a family's income by saying: We will not take into account all income. We are going to disregard some so you will qualify for this Federal Government taxpayer-paid-for benefit. This loophole would allow States to actually exceed 300 percent of poverty level by disregarding part of the family's income. Neither does this bill address the crowd-out effect which is expected to shift 2 million children from private coverage to government-run health care. There are a number of other problems with this bill that do nothing to eliminate the document fraud and identity theft that would allow noncitizens to qualify for the benefits under this legislation. We can do better. We must do better. But we cannot do better as long as we continue to engage in this partisan gamesmanship and political posturing. Unfortunately, it is the low-income children, among the most vulnerable in our country, who are the ones who are left wondering: Is Congress going to act in their best interests? Unfortunately, they have seen very little evidence so far that they are our No. 1 priority, as they should be. Instead, partisan politics appear to be the No. 1 priority, and those children appear to be something left behind. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, may I inquire how much more time this side of the aisle has in morning business?