John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I see my colleague, the senior Senator from Texas, on the floor, and she intends to speak on the same subject. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the American people know judicial activism when they see it. They know a controversial ruling that is totally out of step with a judge's accepted role in our form of government when they see it, whether it be the redefinition of marriage, the expulsion of the Pledge of Allegiance from our classrooms and other expressions of faith from the public square, the elimination of the three-strikes-and-you're-out law, and other penalties for convicted criminals, or the forced removal of military recruiters from college campuses. Justice Owen's rulings come nowhere near those examples of judicial activism that we would all recognize clearly and plainly. There is a world of difference between struggling to interpret the ambiguous expressions of a statute and refusing to obey a legislature's directives altogether, or substituting one's personal views or agenda for the words of a statute. It is clear, then, that Justice Owen's record deserves the broad and bipartisan support that she has gotten, and it is equally clear that her opposition only comes from a narrow band on the far-left fringes of the political spectrum. So if the Senate were simply to follow more than 200 years of consistent Senate and constitutional tradition, dating back to our Founders, there would be no question about her being confirmed; she would be. Legal scholars across the political spectrum have long concluded what we in this body know instinctively, and that is to change the rules of confirmation, as the partisan minority has done, badly politicizes the judiciary and hands over control of the judiciary to special interest groups. Mr. President, 4 years is a long time. The majority leader and those who support this nominee's confirmation have shown extraordinary patience during this debate. But there is a point at which patience ceases to be a virtue, and I suggest that we have reached that point. We need a resolution of this issue. We need for Senators to step up and to vote ``yes'' or vote ``no.'' But we simply need for them to vote. The record is clear. The Senate tradition has always been majority vote, and the desire by some to alter that Senate tradition has been roundly condemned by legal experts across the spectrum. Professor Michael Gerhardt, who advises Senate Democrats about judicial confirmations, has written that a supermajority requirement for confirming judges would be ``problematic, because it creates a presumption against confirmation, shifts the balance of power to the Senate, and enhances the power of the special interests.'' D.C. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, a respected Carter appointee, has written that the Constitution forbids the Senate from imposing a supermajority rule for confirmations. After all, otherwise, ``[t]he Senate, acting unilaterally, could thereby increase its own power at the expense of the President'' and ``essentially take over the appointment process from the President.'' Edwards thus concluded that ``the Framers never intended for Congress to have such unchecked authority to impose supermajority voting requirements that fundamentally change the nature of our democratic processes.'' Georgetown law professor Mark Tushnet has written that ``[t]he Democrats' filibuster is . . . a repudiation of a settled, pre- constitutional understanding.'' He has also written: ``There's a difference between the use of the filibuster to derail a nomination and the use of other Senate rules--on scheduling, on not having a floor vote without prior committee action, etc.--to do so. All those other rules . . . can be overridden by a majority vote of the Senate . . . whereas the filibuster can't be overridden in that way. A majority of the Senate could ride herd on a rogue Judiciary Committee chair who refused to hold a hearing on some nominee; it can't do so with respect to a filibuster.'' And Georgetown law professor Susan Low Bloch has condemned supermajority voting requirements for confirmation, arguing that they would allow the Senate to ``upset the carefully crafted rules concerning appointment of both executive officials and judges and to unilaterally limit the power the Constitution gives to the President in the appointment process. This, I believe, would allow the Senate to aggrandize its own role and would unconstitutionally distort the balance of powers established by the Constitution.'' She even wrote on March 14, 2005: ``Everyone agrees: Senate confirmation requires simply a majority. No one in the Senate or elsewhere disputes that.'' Mr. President, the record is clear. The Senate tradition has always been majority vote, and the desire by some to alter that Senate tradition has been roundly condemned by legal experts across the political spectrum. Throughout our Nation's more than 200-year history, the constitutional rule and Senate tradition for confirming judges has been majority vote--and that tradition must be restored. After four years of delay, giving Justice Priscilla Owen an up-or-down vote would be an excellent start. Exhibit 1 May 3, 2005. Re Priscilla Owen. Hon. John Cornyn, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Senator Cornyn: I write in support of the nomination of Priscilla Owen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. I write as a law professor who specializes in constitutional law. I write as a pro-choice Texan, who is a political independent and has supported many Democratic candidates. And I write as a citizen who does not want the abortion issue to so dominate the political debate that good and worthy judicial candidates are caught in its cross hairs, no matter where they stand on the issue. Justice Owen deserves to be appointed to the Fifth Circuit. She is a very able jurist in every way that should matter. She is intelligent, measured, and approaches her work with integrity and energy. She is not a judicial activist. She does not legislate from the bench. She does not invent the law. Nothing in her opinions while on the Texas Supreme Court could possibly lead to a contrary conclusion, including her parental notification opinions. I suspect that Priscilla Owen's nomination is being blocked because she is perceived as being anti-choice on the abortion issue. This perception stems, I believe, from a series of opinions issued by the Texas Supreme Court in the summer of 2000 interpreting the Texas statute that requires parental notification prior to a minor having an abortion. The statute also provides for what is called a ''judicial bypass'' to parental notification. Justice Owen wrote several concurring and dissenting opinions during this time. She has been criticized for displaying judicial activism and pursuing an anti-choice agenda in these opinions. This criticism is unfair for two reasons. First, the Texas statute at issue in these cases contains many undefined terms. Further, the statutory text is not artfully drafted. I was a member of the Texas Supreme Court's Advisory Committee that drafted rules in order to help judges when issuing decisions under this parental notification statute. My involvement in this process made it clear to me that in drafting the parental notification statute, the Texas Legislature ducked the hard work of defining essential terms and placed on the Texas courts a real burden to explicate these terms through case law. Moreover, the statute's legislative history is not useful because it provides help to all sides of the debate on parental notification. Several members of the Texas Legislature wanted a very strict parental notification law that would permit only infrequent judicial bypass of this notification requirement. But several members of the Texas Legislature were on the other side of the political debate. These members wanted no parental notification requirement, and if one were imposed, they wanted courts to have the power to bypass the notification requirement easily. The resulting legislation was a product of compromise with a confusing legislative history. In her decisions in these cases, Justice Owen asserts that the Texas Legislature wanted to make a strong statement supporting parental rights. She is not wrong in making these assertions. There is legislative history to support her. Personally, I agree with the majority in these cases. But I understand Justice Owen's position and legal reasoning. It is based on sound and clear principles of statutory construction. Her decisions do not demonstrate judicial activism. She did what good appellate judges do every day. She looked at the language of the statute, the legislative history, and then decided how to interpret the statute to obtain what she believed to be the legislative intent. If this is activism, then any judicial interpretation of a statute's terms is judicial activism. Justice Owen did not invent the legislative history she used to reach her conclusion, just as the majority did not invent their legislative history. We ask our judges to make hard decisions when we give them statutes to interpret that are not well drafted. We cannot fault any of these judges who take on this task so long as they do this work with rigor and integrity. Justice Owen did exactly this. Second, we must be mindful that the decisions for which she is being criticized had to do with abortion law. I do not know if Justice Owen is pro-choice or not, but it does not matter to me. I am pro-choice as I stated before, but I would not want anyone placed on the bench who would look at abortion law decisions only through the lens of being pro-choice. Few categories of judicial decisions are more difficult than those dealing with abortion. A judge has to consider the fact that the fetus is a potential human, and this potential will be ended by an abortion. All judges, including those who are pro-choice, must honor the spiritual beauty that is potential human life and should grieve its loss. But a judge has other important human values to consider in abortion cases. A judge also has to consider whether a woman's independence and rights may well be unconstitutionally compromised by the arbitrary application of the law. All this is further compounded when a minor is involved who is contemplating an abortion. I want judges who will make decisions in the abortion area with a heavy heart and who, therefore, will make sure of the legal reasoning that supports such decisions. I think the members--all the members--of the Texas Supreme Court did exactly this when they reached their decisions in the parental notification cases. I was particularly struck by the eloquence of Justice Owen when she discussed the harm that may come to a minor from having an abortion. She recognized that the abortion decision may haunt a minor for all her life, and her parents should be her primary guides in making this decision. Surely, those of us who are pro-choice have not come to a point where we would punish a judge who considers such harm as an important part of making a decision on parental notification, especially when legislative history supports the fact that members of the Texas Legislature wanted to protect the minor from this harm. As a pro-choice woman, I applaud the seriousness with which Justice Owen looked at this Issue. If I thought Justice Owen was an agenda-driven jurist, I would not support her nomination. Our founders gave us a great gift in our system of checks and balances. The judicial branch is part of that system, and it is imperative that it be respected and seen as acting without bias or predilection, especially since it is not elected. Any agenda-driven jurist--no matter the issue--threatens the honor accorded the courts by the American people. This is not Priscilla Owen. So even though I suspect Justice Owen is more conservative than I am and even though I disagree with some of her rulings, this does not change the reality that she is an extremely well-qualified nominee who should be confirmed. It would be unfair to place Priscilla Owen in the same category with other nominees who, in my opinion, are judicial activists and who I do not support. Some of these other nominees appear to want to dismantle programs and policies based on a political or economic agenda not supported by legal analysis or constitutional history. They appear to want to push their views on the country while sitting on the bench. Priscilla Owen should not be grouped with them. Justice Owen possesses exceptional qualities that have made and will make her a great judge. I strongly urge her confirmation. Sincerely, Linda S. Eads, Associate Professor of Law.

Mr. CORNYN. I want to respond first to an argument made earlier this morning. This is in the category of we can disagree about matters of opinion and matters about policy, but we should not disagree about the facts, when the facts are so plainly there before us and evident. Richard Paez, a nominee of President Clinton, has been held up as perhaps one of the examples of our side treating a Democratic President's nominee unfairly. As this chart aptly demonstrates, if we would agree to treat Priscilla Owen exactly the way that Paez was treated, then Priscilla Owen would be sitting on the Fifth Circuit today, just as Judge Paez is now serving on the circuit court in the Federal judiciary. In other words, this is not an example justifying the actions being taken against this President's nominees. This is an example of why the obstruction we have seen is wrong and unfair. All we are asking for in this debate is a simple up-or-down vote for this President's nominees. Priscilla Owen has been waiting 4 years for that simple up-or-down vote, which is all we are asking for. As I said, 4 years ago, Priscilla Owen was nominated to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She serves currently and has served on the Texas Supreme Court, where I had the honor of serving with her. She is an exceptional jurist, a devoted public servant, and an extraordinary Texan. Yet after 4 years, she still awaits an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. This is the irony of where we find ourselves. Although a bipartisan majority stands ready to confirm her nomination, a partisan minority obstructs the process and refuses to allow a vote. What is more, this partisan minority insists for the first time in history that she must be supported by a supermajority of 60 Senators, rather than the constitutional standard and Senate tradition of a majority vote. I know Priscilla personally. It is hard for me to reconcile the caricature that most people have seen drawn of her by some of the rhetoric used, certainly, with what I know about her personally. Those who know her would not recognize her from the caricature being created in the Senate and elsewhere when talking about this outstanding nominee. She is a distinguished jurist and a distinguished public servant. She has excelled at virtually everything she has undertaken. She was a top graduate of her law school class at the remarkable age of 23 years and received the top score on the Texas bar examination. She entered the legal profession at a time when few women did. After a distinguished record in private practice, she reached the pinnacle of the Texas bar, which is the Texas Supreme Court. She was supported by a larger percentage of Texans in her last election than any of her colleagues-- 84 percent--after enjoying the endorsement of virtually every newspaper in the State. She has been honored as the Young Lawyer of the Year by her alma mater, as well as an outstanding alumna of Baylor University. The irony in this partisan obstruction of a bipartisan majority who stand ready to confirm her is that Priscilla Owen enjoys bipartisan support in the State of Texas. Three former Democratic judges on the Texas Supreme Court, as well as a bipartisan group of 15 past presidents of the State bar of Texas support this nominee. The Houston Chronicle, one of our major newspapers, in the year 2000 called her ``[c]learly academically gifted,'' stating that she ``has the proper balance of judicial experience, solid legal scholarship, and real-world know-how to continue to be an asset on the high court.'' The Dallas Morning News, another major newspaper in our State, wrote on September 4, 2002: She has the brainpower, experience and temperament to serve ably on an appellate court. The Washington Post wrote in 2002: She should be confirmed. Justice Owen is indisputably well qualified. Priscilla Owen is not just intellectually capable and legally talented, she is also a fine human being with a big heart. The depth of her humanity and compassion is revealed through her significant free legal work and community activity. In fact, she has spent most of her life devoted to her community. She has worked, for example, that all citizens be ensured access to justice, as the Texas Supreme Court's representative on the mediation task force of that court, as well as her service on statewide committees of lawyers and her successful efforts to prompt the Texas Legislature to provide millions of dollars per year for legal services to the poor. She was instrumental in organizing a group known as Family Law 2000, which seeks to find ways to educate parents about the effect that divorce can have on their children and to lessen the negative impacts therefrom. She teaches Sunday school at her church, St. Barnabas Episcopal Mission in Austin, TX, where she is an active member. It is plain, from these and so many other examples, that Justice Owen bears no resemblance to the caricature that has been painted of her in the Senate. She is, in fact, a fine person and a distinguished leader of the legal community. One would think that after 4 long years, she would be afforded the simple justice of an up-or-down vote. I remain optimistic, hopeful, that this violation of many years of Senate tradition, the imposition of a new supermajority requirement of 60 votes, will be laid aside in the interest of proceeding with the people's business, a job my colleagues and I were elected to faithfully execute. For more than 200 years, it was a job that we faithfully executed when it came to voting on a President's judicial nominees. Senators from both sides of the aisle exercised mutual restraint and did not abuse the privilege of debate out of respect for two coequal branches of government--the executive, that has a constitutional right to choose his or her nominees, and an independent judiciary. Until 4 years ago, colleagues on both sides of the aisle consistently opposed the use of the filibuster to prevent judicial nominees from receiving an up-or-down vote. One of our colleagues, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, said in 1998: Nominees deserve a vote. If our . . . colleagues don't like them, vote against them. But don't just sit on them--that is an obstruction of justice . . . The senior Senator from Vermont, in 1998, said: I have stated over and over on this floor that I would refuse to put an anonymous hold on any judge; that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported; that I felt the Senate should do its duty. I could not agree more with those comments made in 1998 from the very same colleagues who today oppose the same principle they argued for a few short years ago. We are doing a disservice to the Nation and a disservice to this fine nominee in our failure to afford her that up- or-down vote. The new requirement the partisan minority is now imposing--that nominees will not be confirmed without the support of 60 Senators--is, by their own admission, unprecedented in Senate history. The reason for this is simple. The case for opposing this fine nominee is so weak that using a double standard and changing the rules is the only way they can hope to defeat her nomination. What is more, they know it. Before her nomination was caught up in partisan special interest politics, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee predicted that Priscilla Owen would be swiftly confirmed. On the day of the announcement of the first group of nominees, including Justice Owen, he said he was ``encouraged'' and that ``I know them well enough that I would assume they'll go through all right.'' Notwithstanding the change of attitude by the partisan minority, this gridlock is really not about Priscilla Owen. Indeed, just a few weeks ago the Democratic leader announced that Senate Democrats would give Justice Owen an up-or-down vote, albeit only if other nominees were defeated or withdrawn. Obviously, with these kinds of offers being made based on cutting deals and pure politics, this debate is not about principle. It is all about politics. It is shameful. We should all subscribe to the notion that any nominee of any President, if they enjoy majority support in the Senate, should get an up-or-down vote. I am talking about whether we have a Democrat in the White House or a Republican, whether we have Democrat majorities in the Senate or Republican. The rules should apply across the board exactly the same to all nominees, regardless of who wins and who loses from a political consideration. But what bothers me most is that any fair examination of Justice Owen's record demonstrates how unconvincing and unjustified the critics' arguments are against her specifically. For example, she was accused of ruling against injured workers, employment discrimination plaintiffs, and other sympathetic parties on a variety of occasions. Never mind the fact that good judges, such as Justice Owen, do their best to follow the law, regardless of which party will win and which party will lose. That is what good judges do. Never mind that many of her criticized rulings were unanimous or near- unanimous decisions of a nine-member Texas Supreme Court. Never mind that many of these rulings simply followed Federal precedents authored or agreed to by appointees of President Carter and President Clinton, or by other Federal judges unanimously confirmed by the Senate. And never mind the fact that judges often disagree, especially when a law is ambiguous and requires careful and difficult interpretation. One of the focal points on Justice Owen's record is a criticism of enforcing a popular Texas law that requires parental notification before a minor can obtain an abortion. Her opponents allege in the parental notification case that then-Justice Alberto Gonzales, our current Attorney General, accused her of ``judicial activism.'' I heard that argument again this morning on the floor, notwithstanding the fact the charge is demonstrably untrue. For any Member to repeat this argument that is simply not true, in spite of the fact that it has been demonstrated that it is not true, is to me an unconscionable act of distortion of the facts. Here again, we can disagree about the policies, and we can even decide to vote differently on a nominee, but let's not disagree on the facts when they are so clear. Not once did Alberto Gonzales say Justice Owen is guilty of judicial activism. To the contrary, he never even mentioned her name in the particular opinions that are being discussed. Furthermore, our current Attorney General has since testified under oath that he never accused Justice Owen of any such thing. What's more, the author of the parental notification law that was at issue supports Justice Owen for this nomination, as does the pro- choice, Democratic law professor who was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court advisory committee who was supposed to write rules, and did write rules, to implement the law. In her words, Owen simply did ``what good appellate judges do every day. . . . If this is activism, then any judicial interpretation of a statute's terms is judicial activism.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have been listening to the debate. The people who may be listening to this across the country and around the world on television, to the extent they are following it, may be forgiven if they wonder what is going on. People are talking about what we are doing on the floor in such breathless and nearly apocalyptic terms, referring to the nuclear option. This is not about America's foreign policy. This is about the rules of the Senate and the power of the Senate to determine for itself the rules by which we are governed. It is certainly an important matter, but we should tone down our rhetoric a little and try to address squarely the issue. I worry when I hear Senators use words such as ``despicable,'' ``Neanderthal,'' ``scary,'' or ``kook'' in describing nominees by this President to the Federal bench. I would have thought that kind of rhetoric was unbecoming to a body such as the Senate, sometimes called the world's greatest deliberative body. I hope during the course of the debate we will take a deep breath, as we try to calmly but deliberately address the issues that lie before us. That is what I will strive to do for my part. I want to talk in particular about Priscilla Owen. Before I do, I neglected to ask unanimous consent that I be allotted 20 minutes out of our side's time.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Caroline Garner, a member of my staff, be granted the privileges of the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my colleague, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other of our distinguished colleagues in introducing The Homeland Security FORWARD Funding Act of 2005. I would like to thank Senator Feinstein for her collaboration in crafting this legislation. I know that she has thoughtfully examined the current state of our Homeland Security Funding and the many other interrelated issues, and I thank her for her fine leadership as we work together exploring ways to better protect our country. We say it often, and it is true: ``9/11 changed everything.'' The attacks of that day were unprecedented in our history, and they brought with them the need for similarly unprecedented security measures. In an effort to respond quickly to the devastation that was wrought upon our country, the Federal Government created a system that worked to raise overall national emergency preparedness to ensure we could better guard against another such terrorist attack. And so we embarked on the task of shoring up our airline, transportation, border, and port security. We worked to protect our critical infrastructure, to protect our cyber security, our agriculture and food supply systems. But taxpayer dollars are not limitless, and Congress must work to ensure every penny be directed where it will do the most good. It is imperative that we guard the places across our nation where terrorists may strike and where such strikes could do the most damage to our people, our government, and our national economy. We believe this is the most responsible way to prepare for any future terrorist attack. We need to have a system that will protect our most vulnerable population centers, and that recognizes the need to protect the critical infrastructure and vital components of our national economy. I am reminded of a recent tour I took of several Texas seaports. I visited with port directors, industry leaders, and emergency responders in and around the ports of Houston, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi. They have enormous security needs and the consequences of a terrorist attack on any of these facilities would be devastating, not only to the local communities, but to the economic engine of the whole country. The legislation that Senator Feinstein and I now propose would require that Federal Homeland Security funds be allocated to states according to a risk-based assessment. It is vital that we better allocate our limited resources to the vulnerable places in the country we most need to protect, and that that these funds are distributed in an efficient and timely manner. Senator Feinstein and I have evaluated the 9/11 Commission recommendations that call for allocation of money based on vulnerabilities, and our legislation provides for a distribution formula for homeland security grants based on three main criteria: Threat, vulnerability, and consequence. This would require states to quickly pass on federal funds to where they are most needed. This bill is inspired by the hard work and examination done on this issue by our colleagues in the House and Senate. We have also taken input from stakeholders in our respective States and from across the country. It is our hope and intention that by introducing this bill we can contribute and enrich the public discourse on this critical issue and help move the Nation toward a more rational and effective distribution of our homeland security resources. Key provisions of this bill include: establishing a First Responder Grant Board, consisting of Department of Homeland Security leadership, that will rank and prioritize grant applications based on threat and vulnerability. Enabling a region that encompasses more than one State to apply for funds. The money would still pass through the States, but would go to the region to better enable coordination and planning. Provides greater flexibility in using the funds, allowing a State to use them for other hazards consistent with federally established capability standards. And it allows States to retain authority to administer grant programs, but there are penalties for States that do not pass funds to local governments within 45 days, and if a State fails to pass the funds through, local governments may petition the Department of Homeland Security to receive the funds directly. Continuing to spread Homeland Security funds throughout the Nation irrespective of the actual risk to particular States and communities would be to ignore much of what we have learned as part of our effort to assess our vulnerabilities since the attacks of September 11. So I would urge that we swiftly work to pass this legislation, to better ensure the safety of our citizens.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my colleague, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other of our distinguished colleagues in introducing The Homeland Security FORWARD Funding Act of 2005. I would like to thank Senator Feinstein for her collaboration in crafting this legislation. I know that she has thoughtfully examined the current state of our Homeland Security Funding and the many other interrelated issues, and I thank her for her fine leadership as we work together exploring ways to better protect our country. We say it often, and it is true: ``9/11 changed everything.'' The attacks of that day were unprecedented in our history, and they brought with them the need for similarly unprecedented security measures. In an effort to respond quickly to the devastation that was wrought upon our country, the Federal Government created a system that worked to raise overall national emergency preparedness to ensure we could better guard against another such terrorist attack. And so we embarked on the task of shoring up our airline, transportation, border, and port security. We worked to protect our critical infrastructure, to protect our cyber security, our agriculture and food supply systems. But taxpayer dollars are not limitless, and Congress must work to ensure every penny be directed where it will do the most good. It is imperative that we guard the places across our nation where terrorists may strike and where such strikes could do the most damage to our people, our government, and our national economy. We believe this is the most responsible way to prepare for any future terrorist attack. We need to have a system that will protect our most vulnerable population centers, and that recognizes the need to protect the critical infrastructure and vital components of our national economy. I am reminded of a recent tour I took of several Texas seaports. I visited with port directors, industry leaders, and emergency responders in and around the ports of Houston, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi. They have enormous security needs and the consequences of a terrorist attack on any of these facilities would be devastating, not only to the local communities, but to the economic engine of the whole country. The legislation that Senator Feinstein and I now propose would require that Federal Homeland Security funds be allocated to states according to a risk-based assessment. It is vital that we better allocate our limited resources to the vulnerable places in the country we most need to protect, and that that these funds are distributed in an efficient and timely manner. Senator Feinstein and I have evaluated the 9/11 Commission recommendations that call for allocation of money based on vulnerabilities, and our legislation provides for a distribution formula for homeland security grants based on three main criteria: Threat, vulnerability, and consequence. This would require states to quickly pass on federal funds to where they are most needed. This bill is inspired by the hard work and examination done on this issue by our colleagues in the House and Senate. We have also taken input from stakeholders in our respective States and from across the country. It is our hope and intention that by introducing this bill we can contribute and enrich the public discourse on this critical issue and help move the Nation toward a more rational and effective distribution of our homeland security resources. Key provisions of this bill include: establishing a First Responder Grant Board, consisting of Department of Homeland Security leadership, that will rank and prioritize grant applications based on threat and vulnerability. Enabling a region that encompasses more than one State to apply for funds. The money would still pass through the States, but would go to the region to better enable coordination and planning. Provides greater flexibility in using the funds, allowing a State to use them for other hazards consistent with federally established capability standards. And it allows States to retain authority to administer grant programs, but there are penalties for States that do not pass funds to local governments within 45 days, and if a State fails to pass the funds through, local governments may petition the Department of Homeland Security to receive the funds directly. Continuing to spread Homeland Security funds throughout the Nation irrespective of the actual risk to particular States and communities would be to ignore much of what we have learned as part of our effort to assess our vulnerabilities since the attacks of September 11. So I would urge that we swiftly work to pass this legislation, to better ensure the safety of our citizens.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I think maybe 15 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN. The American people know a controversial ruling when they see one, be it the redefinition of a traditional institution such as marriage, the expulsion of the Pledge of Allegiance, and other expressions of faith from the public square, the elimination of the ``three strikes and you're out'' law, and other penalties for convicted criminals, or the forced removal of military recruiters from college campuses. Justice Owen's rulings fall nowhere near this standard or category. There is a whole world of difference between struggling to interpret the ambiguous expressions of a legislature and refusing to obey a legislature's directives altogether. It is clear Justice Owen deserves the broad bipartisan and enthusiastic support she obviously enjoys across the political spectrum. It is equally clear her opposition comes only from a narrow band on the far left fringes of that political spectrum. If the Senate were merely to observe 200 years of consistent Senate and constitutional tradition dating back to our Founders, there would be no question about her ability to be confirmed. She would be sitting on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Legal scholars across the political spectrum have long concluded what we in this body know instinctively, and that is to change the rules of confirmation as a partisan minority has done badly politicizes the judiciary and hands over control of the judiciary to special interest groups. One Professor Michael Gerhardt, who advises Senate Democrats on judicial confirmation, has written that a supermajority requirement for confirming judges would be ``problematic, because it creates a presumption against confirmation, shifts the balance of power to the Senate, and enhances the power of special interests.'' DC Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, a respected Carter appointee, has written that the Constitution forbids the Senate from imposing a supermajority rule for confirmation. After all, otherwise, ``the Senate, acting unilaterally, could thereby increase its own power at the expense of the President'' and ``essentially take over the appointment process from the President.'' Judge Edwards thus concluded that ``the framers never intended for the Congress to have such unchecked authority to impose supermajority voting requirements that fundamentally change the nature of our democratic process.'' Mr. President, I think I have about 5 more minutes of my remarks. I ask unanimous consent that I be given an additional 5 minutes and the Senator from Vermont be given the same.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. I thank the Senator from Vermont. Georgetown Law Professor Mark Tushnet has written that ``the Democrats' filibuster is a repudiation of a settled preconstitutional understanding.'' He has also written, ``There's a difference between the use of the filibuster to derail a nomination and the use of other Senate rules--on scheduling, on not having a floor vote without prior committee action, etc.--to do so. All those other rules can be overridden by a majority of the Senate whereas the filibuster cannot be overridden in that way. A majority of the Senate could ride herd on a rogue Judiciary Committee chair who refused to hold a hearing on some nominee; it can't do that with respect to a filibuster.'' Georgetown Law Professor Susan Bloch has condemned supermajority voting requirements for confirmation, arguing that they would allow the Senate to ``upset the carefully crafted rules concerning appointment of both executive officials and judges and to unilaterally limit the power the Constitution gives the President in the appointment process. This, I believe, would allow the Senate to aggrandize its own rules and would unconstitutionally distort the balance of powers established by the Constitution.'' In summary, the record is clear. The Senate tradition has always been majority vote, at least up until the last 4 years. The desire by some to alter that Senate tradition has been roundly condemned by legal experts across the political spectrum. And now the 100 Members of this body have a decision to make. Do we accept this dramatic and dangerous departure from 200 years of Senate precedent or do we work to restore the tried and true Senate tradition and practice? I know the majority leader and, indeed, the Democratic leader have been working trying to find a way. I prefer, though, a way that would allow our nominees, all nominees, whether they be Republican or Democrat, to receive an up-or-down vote where a majority of the Senate stands ready to confirm them. I believe we should choose collaboration over contention any day of the week, if possible. But bipartisanship is a two-way street. Both sides must agree to certain fundamental principles and the most fundamental principle is fairness. Fairness means the same rules apply, the same standards, whether the President is a Republican or Democrat. But bipartisanship is difficult when long- held understandings and the willingness to abide by basic agreements and principles have unraveled so badly. When fairness falters, bipartisanship, too, will fail. So I ask my colleagues what are we to do when these basic principles, commitments, and understandings have been so badly trampled upon? What are we to do when nominees are attacked for doing their jobs, when they are attacked for following precedents adopted and agreed to by Presidents Carter and Clinton, and when they are singled out for rulings agreed to by a unanimous, or near unanimous court? What are we to do when these nominees are demonized and caricatured beyond recognition, when they are condemned as unqualified while at the same time they are deemed unanimously well qualified by organizations Democrats used to revere? What are we to do when Senate and constitutional traditions are abandoned for the first time in more than two centuries, when both sides once agreed nominees should never be blocked by filibuster and then one side denies the existence of that very agreement, when their interpretation of Senate tradition changes based on who is in the Oval Office? It is time to fix the broken judicial confirmation process. It is time to end the blame game and fix the problem and move on. And it is time to end the wasteful and unnecessary delay in the process of selecting judges that hurts our justice system and harms all Americans. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague from Vermont and yield the floor. Exhibit 1 Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, May 3, 2005. Re Priscilla Owen Senator John Cornyn, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Senator Cornyn: I write in support of the nomination of Priscilla Owen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. I write as a law professor who specializes in constitutional law. I write as a pro-choice Texan, who is a political independent and has supported many Democratic candidates. And I write as a citizen who does not want the abortion issue to so dominate the political debate that good and worthy judicial candidates are caught in its cross hairs, no matter where they stand on the issue. Justice Owen deserves to be appointed to the Fifth Circuit. She is a very able jurist in every way that should matter. She is intelligent, measured, and approaches her work with integrity and energy. She is not a judicial activist. She does not legislate from the bench. She does not invent the law. Nothing in her opinions while on the Texas Supreme Court could possibly lead to a contrary conclusion, including her parental notification opinions. I suspect that Priscilla Owen's nomination is being blocked because she is perceived as being anti-choice on the abortion issue. This perception stems, I believe, from a series of opinions issued by the Texas Supreme Court in the summer of 2000 interpreting the Texas statute that requires parental notification prior to a minor having an abortion. The statute also provides for what is called a ``judicial bypass'' to parental notification. Justice Owen wrote several concurring and dissenting opinions during this time. She has been criticized for displaying judicial activism and pursuing an anti-choice agenda in these opinions. This criticism is unfair for two reasons. First, the Texas statute at issue in these cases contains many undefined terms. Further, the statutory text is not artfully drafted. I was a member of the Texas Supreme Court's Advisory Committee that drafted rules in order to help judges when issuing decisions under this parental notification statute. My involvement in this process made it clear to me that in drafting the parental notification statute, the Texas Legislature ducked the hard work of defining essential terms and placed on the Texas courts a real burden to explicate these terms through case law. Moreover, the statute's legislative history is not useful because it provides help to all sides of the debate on parental notification. Several members of the Texas Legislature wanted a very strict parental notification law that would permit only infrequent judicial bypass of this notification requirement. But several members of the Texas Legislature were on the other side of the political debate. These members wanted no parental notification requirement, and if one were imposed, they wanted courts to have the power to bypass the notification requirement easily. The resulting legislation was a product of compromise with a confusing legislative history. In her decisions in these cases, Justice Owen asserts that the Texas Legislature wanted to make a strong statement supporting parental rights. She is not wrong in making these assertions. There is legislative history to support her. Personally, I agree with the majority in these cases. But I understand Justice Owen's position and legal reasoning. It is based on sound and clear principles of statutory construction. Her decisions do not demonstrate judicial activism. She did what good appellate judges do every day. She looked at the language of the statute, the legislative history, and then decided how to interpret the statute to obtain what she believed to be the legislative intent. If this is activism, then any judicial interpretation of a statute's terms is judicial activism. Justice Owen did not invent the legislative history she used to reach her conclusion, just as the majority did not invent their legislative history. We ask our judges to make hard decisions when we give them statutes to interpret that are not well drafted. We cannot fault any of these judges who take on this task so long as they do this work with rigor and integrity. Justice Owen did exactly this. Second, we must be mindful that the decisions for which she is being criticized had to do with abortion law. I do not know if Justice Owen is pro-choice or not, but it does not matter to me. I am pro-choice as I stated before, but I would not want anyone placed on the bench who would look at abortion law decisions only through the lens of being pro- choice. Few categories of judicial decisions are more difficult than those dealing with abortion. A judge has to consider the fact that the fetus is a potential human, and this potential will be ended by an abortion. All judges, including those who are pro-choice, must honor the spiritual beauty that is potential human life and should grieve its loss. But a judge has other important human values to consider in abortion cases. A judge also has to consider whether a woman's independence and rights may well be unconstitutionally compromised by the arbitrary application of the law. All this is further compounded when a minor is involved who is contemplating an abortion. I want judges who will make decisions in the abortion area with a heavy heart and who, therefore, will make sure of the legal reasoning that supports such decisions. I think the members--all the members--of the Texas Supreme Court did exact1y this when they reached their decisions in the parental notification cases. I was particularly struck by the eloquence of Justice Owen when she discussed the harm that may come to a minor from having an abortion. She recognized that the abortion decision may haunt a minor for all her life, and her parents should be her primary guides in making this decision. Surely, those of us who are pro- choice have not come to a point where we would punish a judge who considers such harm as an important part of making a decision on parental notification, especially when legislative history supports the fact that members of the Texas Legislature wanted to protect the minor from this harm. As a pro-choice woman, I applaud the seriousness with which Justice Owen looked at this issue. If I thought Justice Owen was an agenda-driven jurist I would not support her nomination. Our founders gave us a great gift in our system of checks and balances. The judicial branch is part of that system, and it is imperative that it be respected and seen as acting without bias or predilection, especially since it is not elected. Any agenda-driven jurist--no matter the issue--threatens the honor accorded the courts by the American people. This is not Priscilla Owen. So even though I suspect Justice Owen is more conservative than I am and even though I disagree with some of her rulings, this does not change the reality that she is an extremely well-qualified nominee who should be confirmed. It would be unfair to place Priscilla Owen in the same category with other nominees who, in my opinion, are judicial activists and who I do not support. Some of these other nominees appear to want to dismantle programs and policies based on a political or economic agenda not supported by legal analysis or constitutional history. They appear to want to push their views on the country while sitting on the bench. Priscilla Owen should not be grouped with them. Justice Owen possesses exceptional qualities that have made and will make her a great judge. I strongly urge her confirmation. Sincerely, Linda S. Eads, Associate Professor of Law. Mr. WYDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. CORNYN. Reserving the right to object, I would ask the Senator through the Chair whether he would agree Senator Lott be recognized to speak after the Senator from Oregon on the same basis. He also apparently wishes to come to the floor and speak.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 4 years ago, the President nominated Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Justice Owen is an exceptional jurist, a devoted public servant, and an extraordinary Texan. Yet after 4 years, she still awaits an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. Four years today and we are still waiting for a vote. Although a bipartisan majority of the Senate stands ready to confirm this outstanding nominee, a partisan minority obstructs the process and refuses to allow that vote on her nomination. What is more, the partisan minority now insists, for the first time in history, that she must be supported by a supermajority of 60 Senators rather than the constitutional standard and the Senate tradition of majority vote. I know Justice Owen personally, having served with her on the Texas Supreme Court for 3 years. She is a distinguished jurist and public servant who has excelled at virtually everything she has set out to do. She was a top graduate of Baylor Law School at the remarkable age of 23 and scored the top score on the Texas bar exam. She entered the legal profession at a time when relatively few women did. After a distinguished record in private practice, she reached the pinnacle of the Texas bar, the Texas Supreme Court. In doing so, she was supported by a larger percentage of Texans than any of her colleagues during her last election, receiving around 84 percent of the vote, after enjoying the endorsement of virtually every newspaper in Texas. She has been honored as the Baylor Young Lawyer of the Year and the Baylor University Outstanding Alumna. Priscilla Owen enjoys significant bipartisan support. Three Democratic judges on the Texas Supreme Court and a bipartisan group of 15 presidents of the State Bar of Texas support her nomination. The Houston Chronicle, in September of 2000, called Owen ``[c]learly academically gifted,'' stating that she ``has the proper balance of judicial experience, solid legal scholarship and real-world know-how to continue to be an asset on the high court.'' The Dallas Morning News wrote in support of Owen on September 24, 2002: She has the brainpower, the experience and temperament to serve ably on an appellate court. The Washington Post wrote on July 24, 2002: She should be confirmed. Justice Owen is indisputably well qualified. Lori Ploeger, Justice Owen's former law clerk, wrote in a letter to Senator Leahy on June 27, 2002: During my time with her, I developed a deep and abiding respect for her abilities, her work ethic, and, most importantly, her character. Justice Owen is a woman of integrity who has profound respect for the rule of law and our legal system. She takes her responsibilities seriously and carries them out diligently and earnestly. Ms. Ploeger continued: Justice Owen is a role model for me and for other women attorneys in Texas. Mary O'Reilly, a lifetime member of the NAACP and a Democrat, in a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein, dated August 14, 2002, wrote: I met Justice Owen in January of 1995, while working with her on the Texas Supreme Court Gender Neutral Task Force . . . I worked with Justice Owen on Family Law 2000, an important state-wide effort initiated in part by Justice Owen . . . In the almost eight years I have known Justice Owen, she has always been refined, approachable, even-tempered and intellectually honest. Priscilla Owen is not just intellectually capable and legally talented; she is also a fine human being with a big heart. The depth of her humanity and compassion is revealed through her significant free legal work and community activity. Priscilla has spent much of her life devoting time and energy in service of her community. She has worked to ensure that all citizens are provided access to justice as the court's representative on the Texas Supreme Court Mediation Task Force and to statewide committees, as well as in her successful efforts to prompt the Texas legislature to provide millions of dollars per year in legal services for the poor. She was instrumental in organizing a group Ms. O'Reilly spoke of known as Family Law 2000 which seeks to find ways to educate parents about the effect divorce can have on children and seeks to lessen the negative impacts it has on them. She also teaches Sunday school at St. Barnabas Episcopal Mission in Austin, TX, where she is an active member. It is plain from these and so many other examples that Justice Owen is a fine person and a distinguished leader in the legal community. One would think that after 4 long years, she would be afforded the simple justice of an up-or-down vote. I remain optimistic. While I know the Democratic leader has offered a UC to consider the nomination of one of the justices currently being filibustered, I don't see why that same principle would not apply to all of the justices, and we would just say that any nominee of any President, whether they be Republican or Democrat, where a bipartisan majority stands ready to confirm them, should receive that up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. I remain hopeful the current 4-year violation of long-term Senate tradition, the imposition of this new supermajority requirement, will be laid aside in the interest of proceeding with the people's business, a job my colleagues and I were elected to faithfully execute. For more than 200 years, it was a job that we did indeed execute. Senators from both sides exercised mutual restraint and did not abuse the privilege of debate out of respect for two coequal branches of government--the executive that has the constitutional right to choose his or her nominees and an independent judiciary. Indeed, until 4 years ago, colleagues on both sides of the aisle have consistently opposed the use of the filibuster to prevent nominees from receiving an up-or- down vote where they clearly had bipartisan majority support. Senator Kennedy, the distinguished senior Senator from Massachusetts, said in 1998: Nominees deserve a vote. If our . . . colleagues don't like them, vote against them. But don't just sit on them--that is obstruction of justice. And Senator Leahy, the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, who was just on the floor, said in 1998: I have stated over and over again on the floor that I would refuse to put an anonymous hold on any judge; that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported; that I felt the Senate should just do its duty. I could not agree more with these comments made by Senator Leahy and Senator Kennedy. But today we are doing a disservice to this fine nominee in our failure to afford her that up-or-down vote that they advocated a few short years ago. The new requirement this partisan minority is now imposing, that nominees won't be confirmed without support of 60 Senators, is, by their own admission, wholly unprecedented in Senate history. The reason for this is simple: The case for opposing this fine nominee is so weak that using a double standard and changing the rules is the only way they can defeat her nomination. What is more, they know it, too. Before her nomination got caught up in this partisan fight, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee predicted that Justice Owen would be swiftly confirmed. On the day of the announcement of the first group of nominees, 4 years ago, including Owen, he said he was ``encouraged'' and that ``I know them well enough that I would assume they would all go right through.'' Notwithstanding the change of attitude by the partisan minority, this gridlock is not really about Priscilla Owen, certainly not about Priscilla Owen the person. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the Democratic leader announced that Senate Democrats would give Justice Owen an up- or-down vote, albeit only if other nominees were defeated or withdrawn or simply thrown overboard. Obviously, this debate is not about principle. It is all about politics. It is shameful. Any fair examination of Justice Owen's record demonstrates how unconvincing the critics' arguments are. For example, Justice Owen is accused of ruling against injured workers, against those seeking relief from employment discrimination, and other sympathetic parties on some occasions. Never mind, however, that good judges such as Judge Owen do their best to follow the law regardless of which party will win and which party will lose. Never mind that many of her criticized rulings were unanimous or near unanimous decisions of a nine-member Texas Supreme Court. Never mind that many of these rulings simply followed Federal precedent authored and agreed to by appointees of Presidents Carter and Clinton or by other Federal judges unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Never mind that judges often disagree, especially when the law is ambiguous and requires careful and difficult interpretation. The Democratic leader raised the frequent objection and that is criticized Justice Owen for attempting to interpret and enforce a popular Texas law requiring parental notification before a minor can obtain an abortion. Her opponents allege that in one parental notification case, then-Justice Alberto Gonzales accused her of judicial activism. That charge is untrue. I read myself the opinions again this weekend and the charge is simply untrue. Gonzales did not accuse Owen of judicial activism. Not once did he say Justice Owen was guilty of judicial activism. To the contrary, he never mentioned her name or her opinion in the opinion the critics cite. Furthermore, our current Attorney General has since testified under oath that he never accused Owen of any such thing. What is more, the author of the parental notification law in question supports Justice Owen, as does the pro-choice Democratic law professor who was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court's advisory committee to implement that law. In other words, Owen simply did ``what good appellate judges do every day. If this is activism, then any judicial interpretation of a statute's terms is judicial activism.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this letter be printed in the Record at the close of my remarks.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to combat the scourge of sex trafficking within our borders, by targeting and reducing demand. The bill is entitled the End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act of 2005. For the last four years, the President has been a stalwart champion of strengthening efforts to combat the scourge of human trafficking and slavery, not just abroad, but within our very own borders as well. Last July, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing I chaired, highlighted many of the Administration's landmark efforts in this area to date. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that the institutions of slavery and involuntary servitude--institutions that this Nation fought a bloody war to destroy--continue to persist today--not just around the world, but hidden in communities across America. It has been nearly two centuries since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and well over a century since the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Yet to this day, men, women and children continue to be trafficked into the United States, and coerced into lives of forced labor and sexual slavery. The stories they tell are tragic, disturbing, and heart- rending. And the acts they endure are not just unconstitutional, not just criminal--they are profoundly evil, immoral, and wrong. Shortly after the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing I chaired, the President made clear that ending the demand for trafficking is a critical component of this effort, in remarks he delivered before the first national training conference on Human Trafficking in the United States: Rescuing Women and Children from Slavery, hosted by the Justice Department in Tampa, Florida, and attended by a representative from my office. As the President stated, ``we cannot put [human traffickers] out of business until and unless we deal with the problem of demand.'' Moreover, as the State Department's 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report notes, ``[c]onsiderable academic, NGO, and scientific research confirms a direct link between prostitution and trafficking. In fact, prostitution and its related activities . . . contribute[] to trafficking in persons by serving as a front behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation operate. . . . [P]rostitution directly contributes to the modern-day slave trade and is inherently demeaning. When law enforcement tolerates . . . prostitution, organized crime groups are freer to traffic in human beings.'' So it is appropriate to expand our fight against the most coercive forms of human trafficking and slavery our society has ever witnessed, to include an effort to combat sex trafficking and prostitution as well. And it is appropriate to target the demand for sex trafficking as an essential element of our strategy to eliminating sex trafficking within our borders. Accordingly, for the past several months, I have been working with various anti-trafficking organizations to craft legislation to focus attention on the demand for sex trafficking within our own country. Last October, Senators Schumer and Specter and I introduced an earlier version of the legislation I introduce today (S. 2916). Representatives Pryce and Maloney introduced a companion bill on the House side that same day. And today, I am introducing a revised version of the bill, designed to achieve precisely the same objective: ending demand for sex trafficking. I am pleased that Senator Specter has again agreed to co- sponsor the legislation. Moreover, Senator Schumer remains a close partner on this bill. Our offices are still working out some drafting issues with some of the anti-trafficking groups, and I am hopeful that Senator Schumer will once again be the lead Democrat co-sponsor of the bill. A parallel bill will be introduced in the House later today by Representatives Deborah Pryce, Carolyn Maloney, and Bobby Scott. This legislation is the product of extensive discussions over the last several months between my office, Senator Schumer's office, and major anti-trafficking organizations, as well as the offices of Representatives Pryce and Scott. I am pleased to report that, as a result of those discussions, we now have a bill that is supported by a broad coalition of anti-trafficking and human rights organizations-- including the Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas, Faces of Children, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Concerned Women for America, the Hudson Institute, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, the Leadership Council for Human Rights, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Polaris Project, the Protection Project, the Religious Freedom Coalition, the Salvation Army, Shared Hope International, the Southern Baptist Convention, Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE), the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, World Vision, and other organizations and advocates. I ask unanimous consent that letters of endorsement from various anti-trafficking organizations be included in the Record. In conclusion, this is important legislation to protect the victims of sex trafficking and to reduce demand. I hope that the Senate will act favorably on the bill.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to combat the scourge of sex trafficking within our borders, by targeting and reducing demand. The bill is entitled the End Demand for Sex Trafficking Act of 2005. For the last four years, the President has been a stalwart champion of strengthening efforts to combat the scourge of human trafficking and slavery, not just abroad, but within our very own borders as well. Last July, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing I chaired, highlighted many of the Administration's landmark efforts in this area to date. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that the institutions of slavery and involuntary servitude--institutions that this Nation fought a bloody war to destroy--continue to persist today--not just around the world, but hidden in communities across America. It has been nearly two centuries since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and well over a century since the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Yet to this day, men, women and children continue to be trafficked into the United States, and coerced into lives of forced labor and sexual slavery. The stories they tell are tragic, disturbing, and heart- rending. And the acts they endure are not just unconstitutional, not just criminal--they are profoundly evil, immoral, and wrong. Shortly after the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing I chaired, the President made clear that ending the demand for trafficking is a critical component of this effort, in remarks he delivered before the first national training conference on Human Trafficking in the United States: Rescuing Women and Children from Slavery, hosted by the Justice Department in Tampa, Florida, and attended by a representative from my office. As the President stated, ``we cannot put [human traffickers] out of business until and unless we deal with the problem of demand.'' Moreover, as the State Department's 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report notes, ``[c]onsiderable academic, NGO, and scientific research confirms a direct link between prostitution and trafficking. In fact, prostitution and its related activities . . . contribute[] to trafficking in persons by serving as a front behind which traffickers for sexual exploitation operate. . . . [P]rostitution directly contributes to the modern-day slave trade and is inherently demeaning. When law enforcement tolerates . . . prostitution, organized crime groups are freer to traffic in human beings.'' So it is appropriate to expand our fight against the most coercive forms of human trafficking and slavery our society has ever witnessed, to include an effort to combat sex trafficking and prostitution as well. And it is appropriate to target the demand for sex trafficking as an essential element of our strategy to eliminating sex trafficking within our borders. Accordingly, for the past several months, I have been working with various anti-trafficking organizations to craft legislation to focus attention on the demand for sex trafficking within our own country. Last October, Senators Schumer and Specter and I introduced an earlier version of the legislation I introduce today (S. 2916). Representatives Pryce and Maloney introduced a companion bill on the House side that same day. And today, I am introducing a revised version of the bill, designed to achieve precisely the same objective: ending demand for sex trafficking. I am pleased that Senator Specter has again agreed to co- sponsor the legislation. Moreover, Senator Schumer remains a close partner on this bill. Our offices are still working out some drafting issues with some of the anti-trafficking groups, and I am hopeful that Senator Schumer will once again be the lead Democrat co-sponsor of the bill. A parallel bill will be introduced in the House later today by Representatives Deborah Pryce, Carolyn Maloney, and Bobby Scott. This legislation is the product of extensive discussions over the last several months between my office, Senator Schumer's office, and major anti-trafficking organizations, as well as the offices of Representatives Pryce and Scott. I am pleased to report that, as a result of those discussions, we now have a bill that is supported by a broad coalition of anti-trafficking and human rights organizations-- including the Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas, Faces of Children, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Concerned Women for America, the Hudson Institute, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, the Leadership Council for Human Rights, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Polaris Project, the Protection Project, the Religious Freedom Coalition, the Salvation Army, Shared Hope International, the Southern Baptist Convention, Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE), the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, World Vision, and other organizations and advocates. I ask unanimous consent that letters of endorsement from various anti-trafficking organizations be included in the Record. In conclusion, this is important legislation to protect the victims of sex trafficking and to reduce demand. I hope that the Senate will act favorably on the bill.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill I am introducing today--to amend chapter 1 of title 3, United States Code, relating to Presidential succession--be printed in the Record. I also ask unanimous consent that the section by section analysis titled ``Presidential Succession Act of 2005'' and the letter sent to the chairmen of the RNC and DNC be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill I am introducing today--to amend chapter 1 of title 3, United States Code, relating to Presidential succession--be printed in the Record. I also ask unanimous consent that the section by section analysis titled ``Presidential Succession Act of 2005'' and the letter sent to the chairmen of the RNC and DNC be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I was looking on our desks at the bill that is actually supposed to be the subject of this debate. It is 231 pages long. It provides an emergency appropriation to help pay for our ongoing global war on terror. I remind my colleagues that is the stated purpose for this Senate time. Indeed, last week 60 of my colleagues joined me in saying that national security demands the passage of this bill unencumbered by a premature debate on immigration reform. Listening to our colleague from Alabama and others who have spoken to this subject, we are getting a better sense of how complicated this issue is and why it is so important, as 61 of us said last week, that we proceed with this emergency appropriation for the ongoing global war on terror and reserve enactment of comprehensive immigration reform for a few months hence, after we have had a chance to go through the appropriate committees of the Congress, the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship that I chair in the Judiciary Committee. Chairman Specter of the full committee has promised an expedited markup once we are able to go through the regular order and develop a comprehensive plan. Notwithstanding the sense of the Senate by 61 Members that we should not engage in this premature debate and risk bogging down this important bill to provide financing to our troops in the battlefield, here we are. What is it that the problem of this bill, the so-called AgJOBS amendment, seeks to fix? I suggest it does not purport to fix our porous borders. It does nothing to provide additional resources to our beleaguered Border Patrol and others who are doing the very best they can to try to secure our borders. We know not only do people come across those borders to work, but the same people who will smuggle those workers across the border are the same people who can smuggle terrorists or criminals or others who want to do us ill across those borders. So AgJOBS, just so everyone understands, does not purport to deal with that problem. Does this bill purport to deal with another glaring deficiency we have; that is, a lack of detention facilities for those people our Border Patrol do catch and detain at the border so we do not have to continue in what is sometimes called a catch and release program where detainees, people who cross illegally are detained but because we do not have adequate facilities are released and they merely try again, and perhaps try and try and try until they finally make their way across the border and into the interior of the United States and simply melt into the landscape? This bill does not have anything to do with that. It will not fix that problem. Nor does this bill provide additional resources and equipment to our Border Patrol who, as I indicate, are outmanned and underequipped. This AgJOBS amendment, nor the alternative offered by Senator Chambliss and Senator Kyl, does not purport to deal with the problem of 40 percent of the illegal immigration in this country coming from overstays. By that I mean people who come here legally on a student visa or a tourist visa or some other short-term legal authorization but simply blow past that deadline and, here again, become part of that population estimated to be somewhere on the order of 10 million people--although we really do not know--who are currently living in the United States outside of our laws. This bill does not purport to even address that. It does not do a better job of helping identify who is in our country and why they are here, why they chose to come outside of our laws and live in the shadows. It does not help us do a better job of identifying them and asserting what their purposes are in our country--whether they are criminals, whether they are potential terrorists, or whether they are people coming here simply to work. This AgJOBS bill also does not deal with the difficulty involved with employers who want to try to ascertain the legal status of their workforce. It does not help them by providing them a database of workers who are lawfully in the country and who are authorized to accept employment. So employers have to persist in doing the best they can in trying to fill the jobs that go wanting for lack of workers by hiring people they perhaps do not know but would have to admit, perhaps in private conversations, are people who are here illegally outside of our laws. This bill does not help them one bit. This bill does not provide a database of workers who are actually authorized to work and who are legally present in the country. My point is, there are a lot of problems that confront our national security, a lot of problems that confront our immigration system that need to be addressed that are not addressed in this legislation. To the contrary, rather than trying to address immigration reform comprehensively, rather than trying to improve our border security, our homeland security, by knowing who is in our country and why, rather than providing us a better means of identifying those who, although they begin in this country legally, overstay their time and become part of the population that is here illegally, rather than help employers, this bill does none of that. Instead, what it does is it deals with one segment of the industry that has grown to depend on undocumented workers, and that is the agriculture industry. While I am sympathetic to their concerns, the problem is that it is only one of the industries that relies on undocumented workers. You could as easily file a bill and rather than call it an AgJOBS bill, you could call it a restaurant workers bill, or a residential construction workers bill, or a hotel workers bill, or any one of the number of different industries that has, over time, grown to depend on approximately 6 million people who constitute the illegal workforce currently in the United States. This bill does not purport to deal with any of those other industries and thus chooses one over the other in a way that I think violates one of the fundamental principles of American law, and that is that persons similarly situated ought to be treated as equally as possible and not in any favorable or discriminatory fashion. So I think this bill, as premature as it is, as well intended as it may be, does not help us solve a lot of the problems that can only be addressed by comprehensive immigration reform. It actually does harm by violating some of our basic principles of equal justice under the law. It is important we deal with these problems. I failed to mention one of the problems is we have approximately 400,000 absconders present in the country now and we simply do not have the adequate human or other resources necessary to find out where they are and to show them the way out of the country. Among these absconders, unlike the rest of the population I mentioned, the some 10 million people, are individuals who have been convicted of serious crimes, about 80,000 of them, and who simply have melted into the landscape. As I say, we have about 400,000 absconders, including those 80,000, the difference being those who have simply exhausted all means of appeal and review in our immigration system, who are under final orders of deportation, but who, rather than be deported, have simply gone underground. Here again, this is another issue this bill does not deal with that comprehensive immigration reform would and that we should. What I fear will happen, because it may be tempting to try to fix our immigration problems on a piecemeal basis, is piecemeal solutions and efforts will risk undermining the larger effort and the need to enact comprehensive reform. Indeed, I would venture a guess that if the AgJOBS bill were successful, or even if the alternative offered by the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Arizona were to be successful, there would be many in this Chamber, and perhaps around this country, who would say: OK, now we have finished that job. We do not need to look at any further immigration reform. The only problem with that is they would be wrong, given the glaring problems that do exist in our country and the challenges to our national security and our ability to look ourselves in the mirror and say, yes, we are a nation of laws, when, in fact, we have such lawlessness existing among us for any one of us to see, if we take the time to look at it. Well, besides dealing with one industry, the AgJOBS bill also has some very troublesome provisions which I think undermine its claimed status as a temporary worker provision. Indeed, an estimated 860,000 illegal alien agricultural workers could qualify, and it also permits them to bring their spouses and children, which could bring the total number of AgJOBS beneficiaries to as many as 3 million people. Now, the interesting thing about that is it does not stop at the people who are already here who came into the country in violation of our laws. Another startling provision of this bill actually invites back to the United States certain aliens who were here illegally and who performed the requisite 100 hours of agricultural work between July 2003 and December 2004 but who have already left. These aliens would be allowed, under this AgJOBS bill, to drop off a ``preliminary application'' at a designated port of entry along the southern land border, pick up a work permit, and reenter the United States. So not only are we dealing with people who are here now but people who were here illegally and who have left. We are now saying: Come on back and pick up a work permit and reenter this pathway toward full American citizenship ahead of all of the other people who are playing by the rules and waiting in line. That is wrong. Another provision of this bill which I have some concerns about is entitled ``Eligibility for Legal Services,'' which requires free, federally funded legal counsel be afforded--that is, paid for--by American taxpayer dollars through the Legal Services Corporation to assist temporary workers in the application process for legal permanent residency. Not only does this bill deal with a specific industry and ignore the rest of the industries that have come to rely, in significant part, on undocumented workers, this invites into our country the spouses and children of these workers--a total of some 3 million people potentially. And these workers, of course, will not be here temporarily if they are essentially setting up home in the United States. There is a difference between an approach that says we will set up a framework for people to come and work but then return to their country, which is truly a temporary worker program, and one such as this which says, don't just work and return, but work and stay and break in ahead of the line of all the other people who have applied to come to this country legally, even though you have chosen to do so otherwise. Beyond that, we are going to provide you with a free lawyer. I think it is not a stretch to say the AgJOBS bill will invite even more lawsuits since it expands the ability of the Legal Services Corporation to sue growers in several areas. The reasons the current provisions of the law which deal with agricultural workers have been unsuccessful are, No. 1, because the caps are set too low and, No. 2, because it has become so bureaucratic and burdened by regulation that it basically is not a viable alternative for the agricultural industry, and growers have come to expect excessive litigation as a result, which this AgJOBS bill would do nothing to fix but would aggravate. Let me speak briefly about the bill Senators Kyl and Chambliss have offered today. It does compare favorably with some of the provisions in the AgJOBS bill because it does not provide for amnesty. It does not provide a path to U.S. citizenship automatically ahead of all of the other people who have played by the rules and who have applied in the regular course of our laws. It has many of the same failings I mentioned earlier about being a partial solution to a real and comprehensive problem. I hope my colleagues will recall the vote they cast just last week, when 61 of us voted on a sense of the Senate to say that this appropriations bill, providing emergency funds for the warfighters, the people risking their very lives to defend us in the global war on terrorism, ought to take the front seat and that we ought to reserve comprehensive immigration reform to a later date and not slow this bill down because of that. Having not resisted the temptation to get embroiled in an immigration debate, I hope our colleagues will listen carefully to the half solutions and the special interest legislation this represents. I don't begrudge employers who need workers from trying to find a legal solution to that. I am for doing that but on a comprehensive basis, not just an industry-specific basis and particularly not on a basis that provides additional benefits to these workers in the form of amnesty that they would not otherwise be entitled to and denies other people equal opportunity to participate in a temporary worker program. As complicated as this issue is and as important as the debate is, now is not the time to be engaging in it. Certainly now is not the time to pass a partial solution which will undermine our ability to get comprehensive immigration reform done. It is my distinct impression that there is a big difference between the thinking on the part of the advocates of the AgJOBS bill in this Chamber and our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. Realistically, as part of this emergency appropriations bill, to get the warfighters what they need in order to do the job we have asked them to do and which they volunteered to do, I cannot see the other Chamber agreeing to this ill-considered and premature immigration legislation at this time. I urge my colleagues to vote against both the AgJOBS bill, to vote against the alternative offered by the Senators from Georgia and Arizona, but at the same time to say, you are more than welcome, as we work together for comprehensive reform, to work with us. We will try to meet you halfway in working out a consensus on this very tough and complex but important issue that should not be handled in the way they have proposed to handle it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I have no objection.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment numbered 372, which is at the desk.

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CORNYN. Reserving the right to object, I have no objection to that request. I note that Senator Feinstein, who is also joining me as a cosponsor on this amendment, would like to speak following me. Senator Isakson would also like to speak. I ask unanimous consent they be recognized.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I point out the debate we have been seeing here in the last couple of hours to me proves the point, and that is this is a complex, difficult, contentious issue, but one that, from what I heard over the last couple of hours, we all agree needs to be addressed. Indeed, that is what the resolution says. It says Congress must engage in a careful and deliberate discussion about the need to bolster enforcement of and comprehensively reform our immigration laws. That is what the resolution says. I know different Senators have different proposals. As I have said, I think the idea is we ought to take up those in the Judiciary Committee in the Subcommittee on Immigration, and we ought to be able to come up with a bill we can present to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and other members. We can have it marked up. With the help of the majority leader, we can get it to the floor of the Senate. It would be my hope we can do that within the next few months. I agree. We have a serious problem that has long been neglected in this country, and it cries out for an answer. Lest any of our colleagues think this is not a complicated matter, let me point out some of the matters contained in the AgJOBS bill alone which I think are very controversial. For the benefit of our colleagues who are listening, this will give them a flavor of why I say this is such a complex and contentious issue. For example, although the AgJOBS bill purports to be a temporary worker program, it does not have a requirement once people are qualified to work in the program that they actually return to their country of origin. I believe this component of a work-and-return concept is absolutely critical to any program we might justly call the temporary worker or guest-worker program. Second, one of the provisions of the AgJOBS bill is entitled ``Eligibility for Legal Services.'' This provision requires free, federally funded legal counsel be afforded through the Legal Services Corporation to assist temporary workers in the application process for legal permanent residency. That is right. The bill requires that the taxpayers pay the bill for these allegedly temporary workers to apply for legal permanent residency under the bill, creating a new legal right and a new right to legal representation for which the American taxpayers are going to be called on to pay. Third, the AgJOBS bill allows farm workers who are currently working illegally in the United States to cut in line in front of workers who have followed legal avenues from the start, violating the principle the Senator from Tennessee articulated so well just a few moments ago. Next, AgJOBS grants amnesty to as many as 3 million illegal aliens who say they have worked recently in U.S. agriculture, along with their family members. So not only are we talking about a worker program, we are talking about bringing families and children, which common sense tells us will decrease the likelihood that at any such time in the United States part of this program will indeed be temporary. Indeed, it is more likely that they will stay beyond the span of their visa and live here permanently. One other point: Since virtually all of the special agricultural workers granted the one-time-only amnesty enacted in 1986 left agricultural work as soon as they had their green cards on hand, AgJOBS puts illegal aliens on the path to U.S. citizenship in a two-step process. First, illegal aliens would be granted temporary residence and indentured for up to 6 years to ensure they continue to work in agriculture in the short term. Next, once these newly legalized aliens are provided records of labor, they will be granted lawful permanent residence and then U.S. citizenship--amnesty, in a word. Next, AgJOBS also freezes wage levels for new legal H-2A, nonimmigrant, agricultural workers at the January 2, 2003, level for 3 years following enactment. The undocumented worker can then stay in the United States indefinitely while applying for permanent resident status. They can become citizens so long as they work in the agricultural sector for 675 hours over the next 6 years. Their spouse and minor children are permitted to accompany them and will also earn legal permanent residency status. I point that out because, as the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, said earlier, I doubt there are many of our colleagues who understand the content of this AgJOBS bill. If the Senator from Idaho chooses to offer it as an amendment, we will take up that debate. Senator Feinstein and others may offer some amendments, and I hear that Senator Kyl and Senator Chambliss may have amendments of their own. Who knows how many other amendments may be working out there related to AgJOBS or maybe a more comprehensive bill to deal with this issue generally. But that makes the point. While we are spending time talking about immigration reform, we are not getting to the job that ought to be highest on our list of priorities; that is, making sure this emergency supplemental appropriations bill passes without undue delay and without getting bogged down in other matters, such as immigration reform. In the end, I join with all of my colleagues and say it is past time we deal with immigration problems in this country comprehensively. We have no border security now. We do at the bridges, but between the bridges it is come and go almost as you please. While many people come across the border to work, we understand as human beings people who have no hope or no opportunity where they live will do almost anything to be able to provide for their family. Be it human smugglers or be it self-guided trips across the Rio Grande or across our northern border, it is relatively easy to get into the United States, and the terrorists who know that can exploit that and hurt the American people. We also know once people get to the interior of the United States, there is virtually nonexistent law enforcement. We have inadequate detention facilities along the border, particularly in my State. They have to let virtually all of the detainees, the immigrants who come across illegally, go on their own recognizance and ask them to come back for a deportation hearing 30 days later. It should be no surprise that in some instances 88 percent of them don't show up and simply melt into the landscape--many of them working in places all across the country doing jobs Americans, perhaps, do not want. But this demonstrates how badly broken our immigration system is, our border security, our interior enforcement, and the reason we need to deal with this comprehensively, not just with a Band-Aid. I hope my colleagues will join Senator Feinstein and me and the others who have spoken already in support of the Cornyn-Feinstein resolution and let us have a debate about immigration--comprehensive immigration reform. But let us not do it at the time when our troops are fighting the war on terror and delay them getting the equipment and the resources they need in order to do the job they volunteered so nobly to do on our behalf.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Senator from Maryland for working with us. This amendment is a sense of the Senate that Congress should not delay enactment of the supplemental appropriations bill by attempting to conduct a debate about comprehensive immigration reform at this time. As I made clear, along with Senator Kyl and others on this point, I am for comprehensive immigration reform. It is long overdue. It is something in the regular order we are going to consider, both in the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship, which I chair in the Judiciary Committee, but also I have talked with the chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter, and he has advised me that once we complete our work--hopefully in the next couple of months--he would give us an expedited markup in the full committee. On a subject so complex and potentially divisive as comprehensive immigration reform, it is appropriate we take up this issue as we would most complex issues; that is, by the regular order. It is particularly important we do so in light of the subject matter of the present legislation in the Senate which is an emergency supplemental appropriations bill that should be passed without undue delay so our men and women in uniform can get the resources they need, including the equipment to do the job we have asked them to do and which they have so heroically agreed to do on our behalf in the war on terror. I confess there are many good proposals out there with regard to immigration reform. The Senator from Maryland has a proposal on H-2B on which there will be some agreement; some people will agree with it. The distinguished Senator from Idaho has a bill called the agriculture jobs bill which will attempt to create a workforce that can work in the agricultural industry. I have some problems with the details of that bill, but in the main it is a well-intentioned effort to try to deal with part of this problem. I say ``part of this problem'' advisedly. Rather than try to deal with this issue on a piecemeal basis, it is important we enact comprehensive reform. For too long we have simply ignored the fact our borders are not secure, that once people get past the border they literally can melt into the landscape. It has resulted in the current untenable proposition that there are about--no one knows for sure--10 million people who have come into our country outside of our laws. We need to deal with that, particularly in a post-September 11 environment, by addressing the security concerns, by restoring our reputation in this country as a nation that believes in and adheres to the rule of law but also in a way that is compassionate and deals with the economic reality involved where approximately 6 million of those 10 million people are currently in the workforce, many performing jobs American citizens simply do not want to perform. It is not because I disagree with the general intent of immigration reform that I speak in favor of this resolution, which says we ought to take up this matter but in the regular course and on another day. It is mainly because I do not want to see, nor do I believe any Senator on the floor or in their office or elsewhere would want to see us get bogged down and diverted in an immigration debate that, frankly, I do not think we are yet ready for, and at a time which I think could well damage our long-term prospects at getting comprehensive immigration reform passed, but particularly in a way that is calculated--let me change that word; it is not ``calculated''--the result likely would be that we would slow down and perhaps bog down this emergency supplemental appropriations bill to equip our troops with what they need. So this resolution suggests, in the last paragraph, that: Congress should not delay the enactment of critical appropriations necessary to ensure the well-being of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces fighting in Iraq and elsewhere around the world, by attempting to conduct a debate about immigration reform while the supplemental appropriations bill is pending on the floor of the United States Senate. I commend this to all of our colleagues. I express my appreciation in particular to the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, for working with us. We both serve on the Judiciary Committee and believe this is an important issue. But it needs to be handled in the regular course that would not divert us from the immediate task at hand, which is to make sure our troops have the resources they need in order to complete the job we have asked them to do on our behalf. Mr. President, with that, I yield to the Senator from California.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the question of the Senator from Illinois. For purposes of the Senate bill, it is absolutely critical, as I think the debate has shown so far, we not get into other unrelated issues to the war supplemental, but we ought to leave it up to the conferees. Obviously, we are going to have to deal with the House provisions, and that is going to be worked on in the conference committee I do not expect to be on. This is the agreed language Senator Feinstein and I have been able to come up with, and it covers the area we have some control over; that is, what happens in the Senate on the Senate's version of the bill. Certainly, I will want to work with the Senator from Illinois and all my colleagues to try to make sure we enact comprehensive reform. Part of the problem is we are taking this in a rifle-shot fashion when I think what we need to do is deal with it comprehensively. That is the reason for the resolution.