John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, about 4 weeks after the House voted on the Articles of Impeachment, the House will name impeachment managers, and we will see those Impeachment Articles delivered here to the Senate, but for the impeachment managers' role in the Senate, that will conclude the House's participation in the impeachment process, and ours--the Senate's responsibilities--will begin. As I said, this vote occurs 4 weeks after the House concluded its whirlwind impeachment investigation. As I look more and more closely at this, it strikes me as a potential case of impeachment malpractice, and I will explain. Four weeks after they passed these two Articles of Impeachment, 4 weeks after they concluded the President has acted in a way to invoke our most extreme constitutional sanction that he should be removed from office, they finally will send these Impeachment Articles to us. As I look at the Impeachment Articles, I am astonished that even though we heard discussions of quid pro quo, bribery, and other crimes, the House of Representatives chose not to charge President Trump with a crime. How you then go on to prove a violation of the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors when you don't even charge the President with a crime, I am looking forward to having the impeachment managers and the President's lawyers address that. At least at first blush, it does not appear to meet the constitutional standard of bribery, treason, high crimes, and misdemeanors. President Clinton was charged with a crime--the crime of perjury-- but, here, President Trump has not been accused of a crime. The vague allegation is that he abused his office. That can mean anything to anybody. Just think, if we dumb down the standard for impeachment below the constitutional standard, what that does is it opens up the next President, who may have a House majority composed of the other party, vulnerable to charges of impeachment based on the allegation that he abused his office, even if they did not commit a high crime or misdemeanor. So impeachment becomes a political weapon, which is what this appears to be, rather than a constitutional obligation for the House and the Senate. Last month, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, said on national television it was a ``rock-solid case'' against the President--``rock-solid,'' but in the moments after the House voted to impeach the President, there seemed to be a lot of doubt about whether there was sufficient evidence to convict the President of high crimes and misdemeanors; so much doubt, in fact, that it led the Speaker of the House to withhold the articles until the Senate promised to fill in the gaps left by the House's inadequate record. She sought promises from Senator McConnell, the majority leader, that the Senate would continue the House's investigation--continue the House's investigation--the one which only a few weeks prior one of her top Members said was a rock-solid case. Well, it either is or isn't. I would say that the Speaker's actions and her cold feet and her reluctance to send the Impeachment Articles here for the last month indicate to me that she is less than confident that the House has done their job. As a matter of fact, in the second Article of Impeachment, they charged the President with obstruction of Congress. Here is the factual underpinning of that allegation: Chairman Schiff would issue a subpoena to somebody who works at the White House. They would say: Well, I have to go to court to get the judge to direct me because I have conflicting obligations--a subpoena from Congress and perhaps a claim of some privilege based on confidential communications with the President. Rather than pursue that in court, which is what happened in the Clinton impeachment and what should happen in any dispute over executive privilege, Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee dropped them like a hot potato, and they simply moved on in their rush to impeach without that testimony and without that evidence. So now they want the Senate to make up for their failure here by calling additional witnesses. I sometimes joke that I am a recovering lawyer and a recovering judge. I spent 20 years or more of my life either in courtrooms trying cases or presiding over those cases or reviewing the cases that had been tried based on an appellate record in the Texas Supreme Court. Our system of justice is based on an adversary system. You have the prosecutor who charges a crime--that is basically what the Articles of Impeachment are analogous to--and then you have a jury and a judge who try the case presented by the prosecution. We have a strange, even bizarre, suggestion by the Democratic leader in the Senate that somehow the jury ought to call additional witnesses before we even listen to the arguments of the President, his lawyers, and the impeachment managers who spent 12 weeks getting 100 hours or more worth of testimony from 17 different witnesses. So this discussion about whether there will be witnesses or no witnesses is kind of maddening to me. Of course, there will be witnesses--witnesses whom the impeachment managers choose to present, maybe through their sworn testimony and not live in the well of the Senate, but it is no different in terms of its legal effect, or witnesses and evidence, documentary evidence, that the President's lawyers choose to present. I think the majority leader has wisely proposed--and now it looks like 53 Senators have agreed--that we defer this whole issue of additional witnesses until after both sides have had the chance to present their case and Senators have a chance to ask questions in writing. This is going to be a very difficult process for people who make their living talking all the time, which is what Senators do. Sitting here and being forced to listen and let other people do the talking is going to be a challenge, but we will have a chance to ask questions in writing, and the Chief Justice will direct those questions to the appropriate party--either the impeachment managers or the President's lawyers--and they will attempt to answer those questions. As I look at this record more, I am beginning to wonder whether the basic facts are really disputed. So when people talk about calling additional witnesses, I think what they are more interested in is a show trial and getting cameras and media coverage rather than actually resolving any disputed facts and applying the legal standard--which is what the Constitution provides--in order to decide whether the President should be acquitted or convicted. That should be the role of the Senate sitting as a jury. The House, it seems, was under no deadline--other than an internally imposed deadline--to complete their impeachment investigation. They could have subpoenaed more witnesses. They could have waited for those subpoenas to play their way out in court and held a vote once they truly believed they had sufficient evidence to impeach the President, enough evidence that they felt confident presenting at a Senate trial. If a prosecutor were to do in a court of law what the House impeachment inquiry did, they would be justly accused of malpractice. To drop the witnesses rather than to actually go to court to try to get the testimony you need in order to support the Articles of Impeachment, that is malpractice because you know if this were a court of law, in all likelihood, the judge would summarily dismiss the case, saying: You haven't shown the evidence to support the charges that the grand jury-- in this case, the House--has made under the Articles of Impeachment. We know that rather than develop the record that would be sufficient to prove their case, Members of the House gave themselves an arbitrary deadline for their investigation and made speed their top priority. Now finding themselves with the short end of the stick, they are trying to pin their regrets and their malpractice on Members of the Senate. Our Democratic colleagues are trying to paint the picture in a way that makes it look like Senate Republicans are failing in their duties, but we will fulfill our constitutional role and duties. The only question is, did the House perform their constitutional duties in an adequate way to meet the constitutional standard? Speaker Pelosi went so far as to say that failing to allow additional witnesses would result in a ``coverup.'' I think I have heard that same charge by the Democratic leader here. I don't really understand the logic of that one. It seems like the only coverup happening is when the Speaker is covering up her caucus's shoddy and insufficient investigation. She is trying to distract from the fact that there is very little, if any, evidence to support the Articles of Impeachment. She is trying to place the blame on the Senate--a strategy you don't have to have x-ray vision to see through. The Speaker went so far as to say last Sunday that Senators will ``pay a price'' for not calling witnesses, but I think they are now beginning to take the mask off and expose their true motivation. Based on what we know now, this is no longer about 67 votes to convict and remove President Trump; this is about forcing Senators who are running for election in 2020 to take tough political votes that can be then exploited in TV ads. That seems to me to demean this whole impeachment affair. This is a thermonuclear weapon in a constitutional sense. To accuse someone of high crimes and misdemeanors and to seek to convict them in a court and remove them from office is a very serious matter, but it has been treated and is being treated like a trivial political matter, a political football. Based on the way that Speaker Pelosi and others have characterized the need for additional witnesses, you would think no one had testified before or had been deposed. But that would be to ignore the House Intelligence Committee's 298-page report--a 298-page report--detailing their impeachment inquiry. It details the actions of the committee, including dozens of subpoenas and the taking of more than 100 hours of testimony from 17 witnesses. So when somebody says this is a question of witnesses or no witnesses, I say that is not true. Those are not the facts. We already have 100 hours of testimony that could be presented in the Senate if it is actually relevant to the Articles of Impeachment, to what is charged. To be clear, all the information will be available to the Senate, and the testimony of 17 of those witnesses will likely be presented by the impeachment managers. Again, our Democratic friends in the House apparently are having a little bit of buyer's remorse, cold feet. Pick your metaphor. With 4 weeks of deep contemplation separating them from the impeachment vote they took, they no longer believe, apparently, that they have enough evidence to prove a high crime and misdemeanor, which is the constitutional standard. As for that 298-page report that they were once so proud of, apparently now they concede by their actions that it falls short of that rock-solid case they promised. So rather than taking responsibility for their own impeachment malpractice, rather than admitting that they rushed through the investigation, skipped over witnesses whom they now deem critical to the inquiry, they try now to blame the Senate and put the burden of proof on our shoulders. Well, as I said earlier, there is no question whether witnesses will be presented. Some of them will be presented who testified in the House of Representatives--the 17 witnesses who testified over 100 hours. I think the Senate, based on the vote of 53 Senators, has wisely deferred whether additional witnesses will be subpoenaed until after we have had a chance to hear from the parties to the impeachment and an opportunity by Senators to actually ask clarification questions. Leader McConnell has been consistent in saying that we wouldn't be naming witnesses before the start of the trial, in line with the precedent set by the Clinton impeachment trial. Ironically, the Democratic leader was in a position during the Clinton impeachment trial that no additional witnesses should be offered and now finds himself, ironically enough, in the opposite posture based on nothing more than the difference in the identity of the President being impeached. To reiterate, we will have a chance to hear the arguments from both sides, along with any documents they choose to present. We will move to the Senators' questions, and then we will decide whether more evidence is required. I personally am disinclined to have the jury conduct the trial by demanding additional evidence. I think that is the role of the impeachment managers and of the President's lawyers. I know fair-minded people can differ, and if 51 Senators want additional witnesses under this resolution, they will have an opportunity to have them subpoenaed. This is going to be a fair process, unlike the House process, which has been--well, I was going to say ``a three-ring circus,'' but that is not fair to the circus. We are going to have a dignified, sober, and deliberate process here, befitting the gravity of what we have been asked to decide. No one, neither the prosecution nor the defense, will be precluded from participating. As a matter of fact, they will drive the process. That is the way trials are conducted in every courthouse in America, and that is the process we should adopt here. In stark contrast to the partisan chaos that consumed the impeachment inquiry in the House, we are going to restore order, civility, and fairness. Over the last 4 weeks, there has been a whole lot of talk but not much action from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the House. They have taken what should be a serious and solemn responsibility in Congress and turned it into a partisan playground less than a year before the next election, when tens of millions of Americans will be voting on their choice for President of the United States. By needlessly withholding the Articles of Impeachment for 4 weeks, the Speaker has all but ensured that the Senate's impeachment trial will overlap with the Iowa caucuses. That is where our Democratic friends will choose their Presidential primary winner, starting with the Iowa caucuses. This trial could even stretch into the New Hampshire primary or the Nevada caucuses. I find it curious that the Speaker's decision will force four Senators who are actually running for President in those primary contests to leave the campaign trail in these battleground States and come back to Washington, DC, and be glued to their seats, sitting as jurors during this trial, when I am sure they would rather be out on the hustings. Rather than shaking hands with voters, they will be sitting here like the rest of us. That will be a big blow to their election. Based on what we have seen in the press, these four Senators aren't what I would call ``happy campers,'' and I don't blame them. You had better believe, though, that their competitors are celebrating. They are going to have the Iowa caucuses, perhaps, and maybe New Hampshire and Nevada all to themselves while these four Senators who are running for President in the Democratic primary will have to be here like the rest of us. So, in holding the articles for 4 weeks, the Speaker just cleared out some of the top contenders in the Presidential primaries--the early ones--and it is pretty clear that the candidate who stands the most to gain from their absence is former Vice President Biden. The politics of this impeachment circus show that it was never a serious one. A constitutional issue? Wrong. It was a political exercise from the start, meant to hurt this President and help the Speaker's party elect a Democrat in his stead in November--or at least Nancy Pelosi's friends in the Democratic Party. Over these last 4 weeks, we have been standing by, waiting to do our duty, wasting valuable time, while the Democrats in the House try to come to terms with their embarrassing and inadequate investigation, and watching them as they try to figure out how they could possibly get themselves out of this embarrassing box canyon they have walked into. I know we are all eager for the process to finally shift from the House's hands to the Senate, and I am hopeful that later this evening we will finally be free from Speaker Pelosi's manipulative games when it comes to impeachment.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, finally there is some good news here in Washington that we will actually get some important things done, and, particularly, I am talking about the USMCA, or the United States- Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. I am hopeful that we can get that voted out of the Senate by tomorrow and get it onto the President's desk. This is a top priority for my constituents, who are farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers, as well as consumers, whose daily lives are impacted by trade with our neighbors to the north and south. We will soon be able to mark it as yet another win for Texas under this administration. For more than a quarter of a century, NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, the predecessor to the USMCA, has been the guiding force in our trading relationships with Mexico and Canada. By virtually any measure, it has been a great success. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 13 million American jobs have been created and are dependent on trade with Mexico and Canada. That is a big deal. A lot has changed over the last 25 years. In fact, then, the internet was in its infancy, smartphones didn't exist, and the only shopping you did was at a brick-and-mortar store. The way business is conducted today has evolved significantly. It is time we bring our trade agreements up to date. That is where the USMCA comes in. It preserves the basic hallmark provisions of NAFTA, like duty-free access to Mexican and Canadian markets, and it adds measures to modernize the agreement. Additionally, the USMCA includes strong protections for intellectual property, which is critical to protecting the incredible innovation that Americans create right here at home. It also cuts the redtape that has been preventing countless small businesses from tapping into foreign markets. It also accounts for e-commerce and digital products at a time when governments around the world are proposing all kinds of new taxes on e- commerce. It is actually the first free-trade agreement with a digital trade chapter. That is why a lot of folks call the USMCA ``NAFTA-2.0.'' It is better, it is stronger, and it is up to date. I have no doubt that this agreement will be a boon to both our national and Texas economies, but I do have some concerns about the path it has taken to ratification. This product was essentially negotiated with the House and given to the Senate as a fait accompli, and I worry that that can set a dangerous precedent for future trade agreements. I hope that is not something we will allow to become a habit, but it doesn't diminish the fact that this trade agreement will bring serious benefits to my constituents and my State and continue to strengthen our national economy. I appreciate the President's commitment to strengthening our trading agreements with our neighbors and bolstering a stronger North America. The USMCA is a big win for all three countries involved, and it is a big win for the State of Texas. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committes are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing in executive session. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing in executive session. Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on January 20, 2017, at 12:19 p.m., the Washington Post ran a story with this headline: ``The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.'' Donald Trump had been President for only 19 minutes when that headline ran. As we have since learned, it has been made abundantly clear that many of our Democratic colleagues simply don't recognize the President as having been legitimately elected, and they have been doing everything they can to remove him from office since he was first elected in 2016. This has now taken a new form, that of impeachment--an impeachment that occurred 27 days ago when the House voted for two Articles of Impeachment. Their impeachment inquiry lasted 12 weeks, but it became clear that Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff and Chairman Nadler were in a big hurry to get those Articles of Impeachment voted out of the House before the holidays. In the end, only the Democrats voted for these partisan Articles of Impeachment. Then the Speaker and the Democrats in the House declared victory. That is when the breakneck pace of the impeachment process came to a screeching halt. It appears Speaker Pelosi got cold feet when she realized the President would be afforded a fair trial in the Senate. That was not good enough for her. When we offered President Trump the same terms that President Clinton received during his trial, that wasn't good enough for Speaker Pelosi, for she wanted guarantees from the Senate. The Speaker of the House flatly refused to send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate in order for her to somehow gain leverage over Senate trial procedures--a responsibility that falls far outside her job description. She was seeking assurances from the majority leader that he would redo the House's shoddy investigative work--something that is not part of our job description under the Constitution. After weeks of holding the articles hostage with nothing to show for it, the Speaker has, apparently, finally caved. In holding the articles, she managed to accomplish something all too uncommon these days: she brought together Republicans and Democrats from both Chambers. Unfortunately, for the Speaker, this bipartisan, bicameral chorus of voices stood in firm opposition to her decision to withhold the articles. Last week, she finally announced that she would be sending over the articles this week, and it now looks like a vote is scheduled for Wednesday, tomorrow, where impeachment managers will be identified, and the process of sending it to the Senate will begin in earnest. In a letter to her House colleagues on Friday, Speaker Pelosi indicated she would be sending the articles this week, and it looks like we are rapidly closing on the start of that trial. As the majority leader has made clear from the beginning, this should be a far cry from the partisan impeachment process we saw in the House. We simply don't want to repeat the circuslike, partisan rush to impeachment that we saw in the House. Our responsibilities as Senators is to sit as a court--literally, as a jury--to consider the case that is being presented by the impeachment managers in the House as well as the President's lawyers. Despite the Speaker's insistence, we, the Senate--the jury--are not going to be handpicking the witnesses before the trial begins. In no courtroom in America does the jury decide how the case before them will be tried. That is decided by the parties to the lawsuit, whether it is the prosecution in the case of a criminal case and the defense lawyer or the plaintiff and defense counsel in a civil case. The jury's job is to sit and listen and to weigh the evidence and to reach a verdict. The Senate will--instead of the process Speaker Pelosi is advocating for--follow the only modern precedent we have, and that is the Clinton impeachment trial. If it was good enough for President Clinton, it is good enough for President Trump. We are going to follow that precedent and provide for some order and fairness in the process and, again, not repeat the circus we saw in the House. Just as we did in 1999, in the Clinton impeachment, we will begin with opening arguments. The impeachment managers, Speaker Pelosi's lawyers, will come over and present their case and argue their case. Then we will turn to the President's lawyers who will have a chance to respond. They can refer to some of the testimony of the 17 witnesses who testified during the House impeachment inquiry. They could offer additional evidence for the Senate to consider. This is not a question of witnesses or no witnesses. That is a blatant misrepresentation by those who are trying to somehow work the public's understanding of exactly how this will proceed. As in the Clinton impeachment trial, all 100 Senators will have an opportunity to hear the case from both sides before making a decision whether we, the jury, want to have additional witnesses presented. That is what happened in the Clinton case, and that is what should happen with President Trump. We will have an opportunity to ask written questions, which will be transmitted to the Chief Justice, who will then put those questions to the lawyers representing the impeachment managers and the President. Then we will be able to get information from them based on those questions. The more I thought about it--ordinarily, in a trial you would have disputed facts, and then you would have the law applied to the facts as found by the jury, but the more and more I have heard about this impeachment inquiry, the more and more I am inclined to believe that the facts are not disputed. If the facts are not really disputed, why would you need additional witnesses? There are people with opinions, there are people who draw inferences, and there are people who draw their own conclusions, but in the end, that is our job, not the witnesses' job. The witnesses' job is to provide the facts, should they be disputed, and it is our job then to decide whether this meets the constitutional standard of treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors. What I find so amazing about these impeachment articles is neither one of them claim that President Trump committed a crime. Unlike the Clinton impeachment, where he was charged with perjury--with lying under oath--President Trump is not charged with any crime. In the first Article of Impeachment, basically, what we have is a disagreement in the way in which the President handled aid voted by Congress that would then be given to the Government of the Ukraine. That is what this impeachment is about. This is not about high crimes and misdemeanors. This is about political differences. This is about stylistic differences. This is where diplomats and others disagree with the way the President handled himself. Well, fair enough, you are entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't make impeachment the appropriate remedy. Here we are 11 months more or less until the next general election. I, for one, think it is dangerous to have 535 Members of Congress essentially be asked to convict and remove a President 11 months before the next general election; in other words, to substitute our views with those of the voters, the American people. I think that is very dangerous. If it succeeds here, I guarantee this will not be the last time. Unfortunately, the House has normalized this concept of impeachment essentially for political differences. That is a dangerous concept, and it would be a dangerous precedent if we were to accept it. This is the third time in American history--the history of our entire country--where this process will go forward in the Senate. We need to be very careful, very sober, very serious, and very deliberate in how we conduct ourselves and how we conduct this trial. Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi has violated her own admonition when, in March of 2019, she said that impeachment is too divisive, and it is just not worth it unless it is bipartisan, unless it is compelling. Well, this impeachment is neither bipartisan nor compelling. Speaker Pelosi apparently got stampeded by the more radical members of her caucus into this position, which now she is trying to find some face- saving way out. That is what this is about. In the end, we know the politics, unfortunately, will continue in the Senate. We know that under the present circumstances, it is highly unlikely that 67 Senators, based on the record we know now, would vote to convict and remove the President. So what is all this posturing and grandstanding about with regard to witnesses or no witnesses--which I said earlier is a false choice. There will be witnesses, and there will be evidence. We are going to let the parties present it, and we are going to listen and make a decision. This is about the Democratic leader trying to put incumbent Senators who are on the ballot in 2020 in a tough position. That is what this is all about. In the end, this is not about President Trump. This is about who is going to maintain the majority in the Senate--whether Republicans will or whether the Democratic leader will accomplish his life's dream and become the next majority leader. That is what this is about. Well, unfortunately, the Speaker's senseless delay tactics have robbed us all of the valuable time that we could have spent conducting this trial and moving on to more constructive business. We are waiting for the Speaker to deliver the articles, but in the meantime we are not sitting around twiddling our thumbs.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it has now been 26 days since House Democrats voted to impeach the President of the United States. This is a predictable ending to an increasingly embarrassing impeachment inquiry. Apparently, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, Chairman Nadler, and others were in such a big hurry to get this done before the end of the year, they have obviously gotten cold feet because they have refused to present the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate so that we can have the trial. As the Presiding Officer knows, ordinarily, if you are presented with a situation in which the prosecution refuses to proceed to put on the evidence in the case, they are dismissed as a routine matter--dismissal for want of prosecution--or if, in fact, they do intend to present the Articles of Impeachment, there is a fundamental notion of basic fairness included in the guarantee of a speedy trial that is obviously being neglected, avoided, and abused by the Speaker and her leaders in the House. Our Democratic colleagues in the House rushed through their investigation in only 12 weeks, and it ended up passing Articles of Impeachment on a partisan basis. After repeatedly saying that this is a grave and urgent matter, it seems that Speaker Pelosi has experienced some buyer's remorse and has questioned just how grave and urgent it really is. Here we are, as I said, 26 days later, and she still has not sent the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. As we know, even though some have suggested the Senate could somehow proceed to trial absent the delivery of those articles here, we can't try the case until the charges are delivered. Finally, last Friday, the Speaker indicated that she will transmit the articles this week. They will also have to name impeachment managers, Representatives from the House who will come over and actually present the charges to the Senate and attempt to produce evidence in support of those charges. It remains to be seen whether the Speaker will deliver the articles this week. She has been withholding them, as I said, for nearly 4 weeks now, claiming that it is part of her strategy to get leverage over the Senate, a strategy that has yielded no positive results. In fact, what we have seen is, the Speaker has zero leverage in the Senate. She runs the House; there is no doubt about that. But the Senate is a separate body. We don't take our instructions from the House, just as the House does not take their direction from the Senate. Before the House even voted on the articles, Leader McConnell said that the Senate should follow the same bipartisan framework used to guide the Clinton impeachment trial. I say ``bipartisan'' because, at that time, 100 Senators agreed to this path forward. The logic goes this way: If it was good enough for President Clinton, then it should be good enough for President Trump. Suffice it to say, the Speaker disagrees. Instead of sending the Articles of Impeachment over and letting 100 Members of the Senate decide how best to proceed, she chose to take matters into her own hands. Apparently, ``the sole Power of Impeachment,'' as the Constitution describes the House's role, isn't good enough for Speaker Pelosi. She is now trying to assume what the Constitution says is the Senate's ``sole Power to try all Impeachments.'' We shouldn't be fooled. Despite her claims, this is not an effort to create a fair process. A fair process would be like the Bill Clinton impeachment trial, which was agreed to by 100 Senators on a bipartisan basis. Our Democratic colleagues in the House threw fairness out the window months ago. This is Speaker Pelosi singlehandedly ignoring the express commands of the Constitution for her own perceived political benefit. Republicans aren't the only ones who think the Speaker has gone too far. There is bipartisan agreement that Speaker Pelosi should send the Articles of Impeachment over here forthwith. A number of our Senate Democrats have expressed their desire to get started with the impeachment trial. I think the senior Senator from California--our friend Mrs. Feinstein, same State as the Speaker of the House--summed it up best when she said: The longer it goes on, the less urgent it becomes. . . . So if it's serious and urgent, send them over. If it isn't, don't send it over. Irrefutable logic. We are hearing from a growing number of House Democrats who have split from Speaker Pelosi and say that it is time to send the articles. For example, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said that ``we control it in the House, Mitch McConnell controls it in the Senate.'' Senator McConnell might disagree with that, but that is what the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee said. He conceded: ``I think it is time to send the impeachment to the Senate.'' With Speaker Pelosi facing increasing backlash from Members of her own party, including her rank-and-file Democrats, you can't help but wonder who is winning this game that she is playing. It is clearly a game. It is laughable to say that she is doing this for the sake of the American people or the Constitution. A new poll released by The Hill and Harris last week showed that 58 percent of voters nationwide think it is high time for the House to send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate--58 percent. This delay isn't putting President Trump in a bad position. In fact, it is further proving the partisan motivations that have been driving the House impeachment inquiry from the very beginning. Speaker Pelosi obviously isn't doing this for the good of House Democrats. Their role in the impeachment inquiry is finished. As I mentioned, a number of her own Members think she is making a big mistake by holding up the articles. This clearly isn't giving our Senate Democratic colleagues a leg up. Several of our colleagues in the Senate have voiced their desire to get this thing going, as one has said. In fact, I think it is actually harming our Senate Democratic colleagues who are on the Presidential campaign trail. Can you think what Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Bennet, and Senator Booker--who, until this morning, were all vying for the chance to be President--are thinking about the desirability of sitting here in the Senate Chamber 6 days a week while the Iowa caucuses are coming up on February 3, the New Hampshire primary, South Carolina, Nevada, among others? The Iowa caucuses are happening just 3 weeks from today. New Hampshire's primary is the week after that. These Senators on the Democratic side who are running for the Democratic nominations have campaigns that are in high gear. I imagine the last place they want to be is in Washington, DC, sitting in this Chamber during an impeachment trial. During the trial, every Member of the Senate will be sitting at our desks, 6 days a week, until we are finished. And no, we will not have our electronic devices. I just saw a piece of cabinetry in the cloakroom where we will be required to turn over our iPads and our iPhones. This will just be us, not speaking--we don't have a speaking role; we have a listening role--sitting for hours each afternoon, 6 days a week, until we finish this process. That doesn't leave a lot of time for our Senate colleagues who are running for the Democratic nomination to talk to voters in Iowa or New Hampshire. The longer Speaker Pelosi holds on to the Articles of Impeachment, the closer a trial gets to overlapping with those key dates. You have to imagine that our friends on the other side who are running for President are getting a little nervous. Cory Booker, who left the campaign trail this morning, recently said this trial could be a ``big, big blow'' to his campaign. Even a short, 2-week trial could mean ``literally dozens of events we won't be able do.'' While that is no longer true for Senator Booker, it is for the remaining candidates. Senator Warren shared this same sentiment, and she thinks being in Washington would prevent her from being able to build critical, personal connections on the campaign trail. Had Speaker Pelosi immediately transmitted the Articles of Impeachment at the end of last year, it would have been the first item on the Senate's agenda when we reconvened in January. We could have used the Clinton model to guide the process, the same process the leader has promised since before the articles even passed. I can't help but imagine that the Senate and the American people would be close to putting this entire saga behind us, but, instead, the Speaker sat on the articles. She stood in the way of the Senate's duty to try the impeachment trial, and she stood in the way of President Trump's due process rights. The only people who seem to gain anything from this are the Democrats who are running for President but who are not U.S. Senators and, thus, aren't going to be tied up during the impeachment trial. Oddly enough, one of these candidates and his son are looming figures in the impeachment inquiry. If you are Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, or any other candidate who isn't a Member of the Senate, you have to be glad that the Speaker sat on these articles for nearly 4 weeks. Having your competitors stuck in Washington, literally in their seats, while you are hitting the campaign trail there--well, that seems like a pretty good advantage to me. The timeline the Speaker created is all but sure to interfere with the Iowa caucuses. It is remarkable that Democrats' effort to impeach a President of the opposing party could end up having a negative impact on the Presidential candidates of their own. All of this is to say, it is time to bring this embarrassing chapter to an end. Republicans and Democrats and the American people all agree that it is time to get the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate so that we can try the case according to our duties under the Constitution and the American people and the Congress can move on. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it has now been more than 3 weeks since the House passed two Articles of Impeachment against the President of the United States. It was a big day for them at the time and one they have been dreaming of and speaking of since the President was inaugurated nearly 3 years ago. For as long as the House Democrats have been wanting to impeach the President, they spent only a short time on the impeachment inquiry itself. As a matter of fact, they rushed headlong into the impeachment process, and now they are trying to make up for the mistakes that Chairman Schiff and Speaker Pelosi made when proceeding in the first place. For example, now they want to relitigate things like executive privilege and whether the testimony of other witnesses should be included in the Senate impeachment trial. In other words, the House wants to tell the Senate how to conduct the trial. Well, the House had its job to do--and, frankly, I think mishandled it--but now they have no say in the way the Senate conducts the impeachment trial, when and if Speaker Pelosi decides to send the articles over here. Twelve weeks was all it took for House Democrats to come up with what they believed was enough evidence to warrant a vote on Articles of Impeachment. I think they are experiencing some buyers' remorse. During that 12 weeks, we repeatedly heard House Democrats say how urgent the matter was, seemingly using urgency as an excuse for the slapdash investigation that they did and that they now regret. When the House concluded their rushed investigation and passed two Articles of Impeachment, we expected those articles to be sent to the Senate promptly. This will be only the third time in American history where the Senate has actually convened a trial on Articles of Impeachment, so this is kind of a new, novel process for most of us here in the Senate. I think there are only 15 Senators who were here during the last impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. Most of us are trying to get up to speed and figure out how to discharge our duty under the Constitution as a jury that will decide whether to convict or acquit and, if convicted, whether the President should be removed. This is serious. Here we are, about 11 months before the next general election. It strikes me as a serious matter to ask 535 Members of the U.S. Congress to remove a President who was voted into office with about 63 million votes. This is very serious. Well, despite the House leadership and Members stating time and again before the Christmas holidays how pressing the matter of impeachment was, there hasn't been an inch of movement in the House since those Articles of Impeachment were voted on. Here we are, more than 3 weeks later, and Speaker Pelosi is still playing her cat-and-mouse game with these Articles of Impeachment. Last night, the Speaker appeared to have dug in her heels even deeper when she sent a letter to our Democratic colleagues about the delay. Following the majority leader's announcement that every Republican Senator supports using exactly the same framework that was used during the Clinton impeachment trial, the Speaker, as you might imagine, was not particularly happy because her gambit obviously didn't work. She has zero leverage and zero right to try to dictate to the Senate how we conduct the Senate trial, just as we had zero leverage and zero input into how the House conducted its responsibilities. Speaker Pelosi told her caucus that the process is both unfair and ``designed to deprive Senators and the American people of crucial documents and testimony.'' Clearly, she doesn't think those documents and testimony were crucial enough to be included in the House investigation in the first place, but I digress. The Speaker is trying to make the most out of a very bad situation of her own creation and intentionally trying to mislead the American people into thinking this framework prevents any witnesses from testifying, which is a false impression. It is demonstrably false. These are the same parameters that guided the Clinton impeachment process, during which witnesses were presented by deposition, giving sworn testimony that was then presented by the parties. In 1999, 100 Senators agreed to this model. You would think if this was fair enough for President Clinton, it would be fair enough for President Trump. To apply a different standard would be just that--a double standard. All 100 Senators agreed during the Clinton impeachment trial to allow the impeachment managers to present their case, to allow the President's lawyers to present their case, and then to permit the Senators to ask questions through the Chief Justice and to get additional information, and then--and only then--decide whether additional witnesses would be required. Under the Clinton model, and now under the model that will be used-- the Clinton model that we will be using in the Trump impeachment trial--if Members felt like they needed more information, they could vote to hear from additional witnesses. That opportunity is still available to them under the Clinton precedent that will be applied in the Trump impeachment trial. That is exactly what happened in the Clinton impeachment trial. After the arguments and evidence were presented, Senators voted to hear from three additional witnesses who were then deposed and whose sworn testimony was then offered. You know, it makes me a little crazy when people say that this is a question of witnesses or no witnesses. There were about 17 witnesses, as I count them, who testified in the House impeachment inquiry. All of that evidence, such as it is, is available to the impeachment managers to offer here in the Senate. If, in fact, the Senate decides to do as the Senate did in the Clinton impeachment, authorize subpoenas for three additional witnesses or more, that still is the Senate's prerogative, which is not foreclosed in the least by this resolution. Well, the Intelligence Committee alone held 7 public hearings with 12 witnesses that totaled more than 30 hours. Presumably, they are proud of the product--the evidence--that was produced during the course of those hearings or else they wouldn't have conducted them in the first place. This isn't a matter of witnesses or no witnesses, as some of our Democratic colleagues and the media attempts to characterize it; this is a matter of letting the parties to the impeachment decide how to try their case. I had the great honor, over a period of 13 years, to serve as a State court judge. I presided over hundreds of jury trials during the course of my experience as a district judge. Never have I seen a model where the jury decides how to try the case. The jury sits there and listens to the evidence presented by the parties, and that is exactly what we are proposing here. So this idea of letting Senators decide how to try the impeachment managers' case or the President's case is something totally novel and unheard of. Setting the rules on whom we hear from, when, and how--as the Speaker wants to do--on the front end makes no sense. Let me try an analogy. It would be like asking an NFL coach to outline every play in the Super Bowl--in order--before the game actually starts. Well, that is not possible. Having this discussion over Speaker Pelosi's demands on witnesses completely ignores the fact that this is simply not her prerogative. Now, I know the Speaker is a powerful political figure. She rules the House with an iron fist, but her views simply have no weight whatsoever, in terms of how the Senate conducts its business, including an impeachment trial under the Constitution. This has all been diversion and, frankly, a lot of dissembling and misleading arguments about things that just simply aren't true. The Constitution outlines a bicameral impeachment process, with each Chamber having its separate and independent responsibilities. As I said, just as the Constitution gives the House ``the sole power of impeachment''--that is a quote from the Constitution--it also gives the Senate ``the sole power to try all impeachments.'' Nowhere is found a clause granting the Speaker of the House of Representatives supreme authority to decide this process. Yes, she has been very influential leading up to the vote of the Articles of Impeachment, over which the Senate had no voice and no vote. Now her job is done, such as it is, but for sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Speaker Pelosi's refusal to transmit the articles unless her demands are met is a violation of the separation of powers, and it is an unprecedented power grab. I must say, I have some sympathy with the Speaker's position. Last March, she said that impeachment was a bad idea because it was so divisive, and unless the evidence was compelling and the support for the Articles of Impeachment was bipartisan, it wasn't worth it. Well, that was in March of 2019. Obviously, things changed, and the best I can tell is she was essentially forced by the radical Members of the House Democratic Caucus to change her position, and now she finds herself in an embarrassingly untenable and unsustainable position. This isn't entirely her fault. While she has been playing games, though, with the Articles of Impeachment, she has been infringing, I believe, on the President's constitutional right to due process of law. Due process is based on the fundamental notions of fairness. That is what we accord everybody in a civil or criminal proceeding--due process of law. The Sixth Amendment, for example, guarantees the right to a speedy trial for every American, and it doesn't exempt certain cases no matter how high- or low-profile they may be. Now, while the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial may not, strictly speaking, apply to an impeachment trial because this isn't a civil or criminal case, the whole fundamental notion of fairness does apply: a right to a speedy trial. It is clear that while Speaker Pelosi dangles these Articles of Impeachment over the President like a sword of Damocles, this is not fair to the President. It is not fair to the Senate. It is not fair, most importantly, to the American people. This distraction--this impeachment mania--has consumed so much oxygen and attention here in Washington, DC, that it has prevented us from doing other things we know we can and should be doing that would benefit the American people. I came here on two occasions to offer a piece of bipartisan legislation that would lower out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs by eliminating some of the gamesmanship in the patent system, only to find--even though it is a bipartisan bill, voted unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee--that the only person who objected to us taking it up and passing it was the Democratic minority leader. Those are the sort of games that, unfortunately, give Washington and Congress a bad name and a bad reputation. I must say this is not just this side of the aisle that thinks the time is up for Speaker Pelosi to send the Articles of Impeachment over here. There is bipartisan agreement here in the Senate that it is time to fish or cut bait. Speaker Pelosi's California colleague, our friend, Senator Feinstein from California, said: If we're going to do it, she should send them over. I don't see what good delay does. Well, good for Senator Feinstein. Our friend and colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, said: We are reaching a point where the articles of impeachment should be sent. Senator Murphy, his colleague from Connecticut, said: I think the time has passed. She should send the articles over. I think we all share the sentiment expressed by Senator Angus King from Maine. He said: I do think we need to get this thing going. He has a gift for understatement. It is high time for the Speaker to quit using these Articles of Impeachment as a way to pander to the most radical fringes of her party. The Members of the House have completed their constitutional role. They launched their inquiry. They did their investigation, such as it was, and they held a partisan vote. That is their prerogative. I don't agree with it, but that is their prerogative, and they have done it. The Speaker should send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate without further delay so we can perform our responsibilities under the Constitution in a trial. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday evening, Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles against military bases in Iraq, which house U.S. troops. After General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a targeted drone strike late last week in an act of self-defense and to deter further aggression against America and our allies, our forces were on high alert for an Iranian attack. President Trump and our military leaders emphasized that we would be prepared for whatever response Iran chose to deliver, and by all accounts we were. If the present circumstances hold, it appears that no U.S. servicemembers were harmed during this attack last night by Iran, which is the best outcome we could have hoped for. In addition, I am glad no Iraqi troops appear to have been injured or killed in this strike as well. While the result of this provocation by Iran could have been a lot worse, it does not diminish the fact that the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism has a sophisticated and capable ballistic program. We know that those capabilities only accelerated under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action--the so-called nuclear deal during the previous administration--as has the regime's pursuit of their nuclear aspirations. I am confident that this administration's maximum-pressure campaign, combined with our unparalleled military capabilities, as well as the President's decisive actions that have culminated in the airstrike last week, have prevented a much worse outcome from this attack by Iran. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Strategic Command, STRATCOM, in Omaha, NE, where their motto is ``strategic deterrence.'' I think that is an important goal to keep in mind; that is, having the means and capabilities not only of hitting back but a message of deterrence to our adversaries to dissuade them from initiating hostilities in the first place. President Ronald Reagan had his own notion of strategic deterrence. He called it ``peace through strength.'' I believe that is something the President's actions last week have begun to restore, no less a luminary than former GEN David Petraeus, who said, after the Soleimani attack, that perhaps--just perhaps--this would reestablish deterrence. Indeed, based on the response by the Iranian regime last night, where they obviously targeted uninhabited areas, and they wanted to save face by showing that they were doing something to retaliate but not wanting to escalate, I think General Petraeus is right on. What has happened, to this point, is reestablishing some level of deterrence. I applaud the President for speaking to the American people this morning and making it clear that, under his watch, Iran will never ever have a nuclear weapon. In my view, this is the single most important policy objective for the United States and our allies in the Middle East. Deterrence through strength, combined with additional economic sanctions, are designed to encourage and persuade the Iranian regime to rejoin the community of nations, which will help pave the way for a better way of life for the Iranian people and to give up these tools of terror which have characterized the Iranian regime since 1979, since the revolution--exporting that terror to other countries. There was no one more responsible for doing that than General Soleimani, who was taken out in an airstrike last week. As we move forward, the United States and our allies can't turn back. We can't relieve this maximum-pressure campaign, and we also must remain cognizant of the dangers of creating power vacuums in the Middle East. I also hope our allies in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom will work with us to persuade the U.N. to invoke the snapback provisions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to restore international sanctions and restrictions on the Iranian regime to further persuade them to join us in negotiations, which will lead to a better outcome for all. It will be helpful if our friends and allies in the UK, France, and Germany will join us in that effort. While the United States has not purposely sought out further conflict that could lead to an unnecessary loss of life, we need to defend--we must always defend American personnel and our interests in the Middle East. As the President has pointed out this morning, one of the things that, historically, has given Presidents like Jimmy Carter the determination to declare the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz as an act of war during his administration was our overdependence on energy from the Middle East. As the President pointed out this morning, thanks to the creativity and innovation in places like Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota, and elsewhere, we are now largely energy independent and self- sufficient. We can now use this as a tool to engage other countries that are completely dependent on countries like Russia, Iran, and others in the Middle East for their energy needs. So this is changing the geopolitics of the world. This is not just the President taking a divisive action against the leading master of terrorism in the Middle East; the geopolitics of the world have shifted, and I hope we will all work together to take advantage of that. As I said, I appreciate the President's courage and leadership. This must have been no easy decision, to be sure. I continue to be proud of our military leadership and the rank-and-file servicemembers who have worked so hard to protect the United States and our national interests in the Middle East and around the world.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 2 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, December 10, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: William Scott Hardy, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, John F. Heil III, to be United States District Judge for the Northern, Eastern and Western Districts of Oklahoma, David Cleveland Joseph, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana, Cory T. Wilson, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, and Edward Hulvey Meyers, of Maryland, to be a Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, before Congress adjourned for the holidays, our colleagues in the House of Representatives carried out their sole priority for 2019, which was to impeach President Trump. That was their No. 1 objective in 2019. While it is no secret that this is something they have been dreaming of since the day President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017, it certainly took our colleagues in the House on a roller coaster ride and the country as well. I liken it, really, not to a roller coaster ride, but to a three-ring circus. It did not reflect particularly well on their body or on the seriousness of the process. From March of last year, here is an important quote to remember. Speaker Pelosi cast a lot of doubt that an impeachment vote would even happen. This is from March 2019. She said: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he's just not worth it. That is what Speaker Pelosi said in March of 2019. As we have seen, it was only a matter of time before the radical Members of her caucus forced Speaker Pelosi's hand and sent the House down a partisan impeachment rabbit hole. That is where they ended up. House Democrats dove head first into--as something our majority leader has said here in the Senate--the most rushed, least fair, and least thorough impeachment inquiry in American history. We have only been through this three times before in American history. This is an extraordinary undertaking under our Constitution, to seek to impeach and remove a President less than a year before the upcoming election over something that does not even allege any crime but rather a disagreement with the way the President has conducted foreign policy, which is his role under our Constitution. For as long as Democrats have been dreaming about this moment, you would think they would be well prepared for a thorough investigation and a presentation of their case to the Senate. Well, as it turns out, that is not even close. They moved through closed door depositions, public hearings, and a vote at an alarming pace, all to ensure that they could wrap up the process by the end of the year. Before the clock struck midnight, they managed to get it done. Despite Speaker Pelosi's insistence less than a year ago that impeachment should be a bipartisan process, the House passed Articles of Impeachment with votes from just one party, which is the definition of partisan, not bipartisan. In spite of the partisanship that has ensnared this process in the House of Representatives, we in the Senate have vowed to follow the framework set by the only modern precedent for an impeachment trial in the Senate, and that is of President Bill Clinton. In 1999, all 100 Senators, including both the current majority and minority leaders, voted in support of a pretrial resolution that laid the foundation for the trial ahead--this was in fairness to all concerned--so that the Senate could know how this would proceed and what they would be called upon to do. Back in 1999, all 100 Senators decided to begin with opening arguments, to move to Senators' questions, and then to vote on a motion to dismiss. This would provide an opportunity to hear the case presented by the parties before the decision was made whether to hear from additional witnesses. I might add that I believe the House heard from 17 different witnesses. All of the testimony certainly could be presented by the impeachment managers in the Senate. Sometimes, I hear people talking about whether we are going to have any witnesses or not. Well, of course, but witnesses come in different shapes, sizes, and form. There could be a live witness. There could be a witness's sworn testimony presented in a hearing or at a deposition outside of the Chamber and excerpts are read into evidence in the impeachment trial. This is not a question of whether we are going to have any witnesses or no witnesses. This is going to be a question of whether we are going to allow the impeachment managers from the House and the President's lawyers to try their own case. In an ordinary civil or criminal case, you don't have the jury trying the case for the prosecution or the defense or for the plaintiff or the defendant. The role of the jury is to sit and listen and then to decide after the evidence is presented. Well, when the time came to vote on the motion to dismiss, during the Clinton trial, every single one of our Democratic colleagues who were here in 1999 voted to dismiss the charges--every single one. That was the Clinton trial in 1999. Then, when Members voted on whether or not to hear additional witnesses, every single one of our Democratic colleague who were here in 1999 voted no--no additional witnesses. Everyone voted no. That includes our friend the minority leader, Senator Schumer, who said on the Senate floor yesterday that everyone who is opposed to additional witnesses is participating in a coverup. Talk about a change of heart. You know that is the danger here in the Senate. If you have been here long enough, you can find yourself on the opposite side of almost any question that could come up. Certainly, Senator Schumer has found himself, first, saying in President Clinton's case no additional witnesses and, now, in the case of President Trump, he has changed the standard and says, if you don't vote for additional witnesses, you are somehow engaged in a coverup. Well, I think people are smart enough to understand what that represents. It represents not only a change of heart, but it represents hypocrisy and a double standard. When President Clinton was on trial, Democrats had zero interest in hearing from additional witnesses beyond that presented by the impeachment managers and the President's lawyers or spending more time on the trial. The way they saw it, all the information had been presented, and so they voted to throw the charges out. Now, I am not faulting them for that, per se. All 100 members agreed to the process that gave them the opportunity to make that vote, and they had every right to do so. Now that a Republican President is on trial, instead of a Democrat, our Democratic colleagues say the same process is not good enough. In other words, what was good enough for President Clinton is not good enough, in their opinion, for President Trump. Instead of following the exact same framework used in the Clinton impeachment trial, they want to set the rules for the entire trial before we have even had a chance to hear the opening arguments. Here, again, I realize we have a lot of type-A personalities here--people who like to take charge--but that is not the role of the Senate during an impeachment trial. We are here to listen to the case presented by the impeachment managers from the House and the President's own lawyers, not to try to take over the process. In fact, the hardest thing a Senator is going to have to do during this impeachment trial is to sit and be quiet and let the parties present their case. Well, our Democratic colleagues are even going so far as requesting specific witness lists even before Nancy Pelosi has sent the Articles of Impeachment over. They obviously are having buyer's remorse about voting out Articles of Impeachment now and essentially admitting that the evidence is so flimsy that it needs to be bolstered by additional witnesses here in the Senate. Well, I am sure it comes as no surprise that Senate Republicans are not on board with this partisan approach to impeachment. As you can imagine, Nancy Pelosi isn't happy that the power to make this decision is in the Senate's hands. One thing I have learned here in the Senate and in the Congress is that the Senate and the House are pretty jealous about the prerogatives of their body to be able to make decisions for themselves. The last thing the House ordinarily wants to do is have the Senate tell them what to do. Certainly, the opposite is true. The last thing the Senate wants to do is to have the House try to direct how the impeachment trial is conducted here in the Senate. Well, that is not the way it works, and that is not going to happen. The Speaker has pulled the emergency brake on this rushed impeachment process and is refusing to send the Articles of Impeachment over here to the Senate because she doesn't think the framework used in the Clinton trial is good enough. She is now trying to use her role as Speaker of the House--admittedly, a very powerful position in our Congress--to try to make the rules of the Senate. She wants to set the parameters for what the Senate's trial will look like, which is not in her job description. I know it is a terrible revelation, but it is beyond her authority, beyond her power, and it ain't going to happen. The way I see it, this dogged determination to interfere in the Senate process isn't because the framework we are planning to use is unfair or partisan. Obviously, all the Democrats who were here during the Clinton trial agreed to a similar process then, and now they want to change the rules for President Trump. Speaker Pelosi also wants the Senate to do the work that Members of her caucus were either too rushed or too lazy to do for themselves. Ordinarily, if the charges are going to be brought, let's say, in a criminal case, there would be an indictment, and then the case would be presented. It would rise or fall based on the presentation of the prosecutors. Well, here, I think the analogy is apt that it is the responsibility of the House to prove the Articles of Impeachment that they have charged. It is their responsibility, not ours. We are supposed to be the jury. Speaker Pelosi knows, as we do, that the House did not do a good job in investigating the facts, and she thinks the Senate should mop up after the House created the mess that they did. That is not going to happen. The House had ample opportunity and time to look at all the facts. The problem the House has is that the facts they have discovered and alleged simply don't represent a high crime and misdemeanor, much less bribery or treason, which are the constitutional standards for an impeachment. What they have is a disagreement on the manner in which foreign policy was conducted with a President whom they hate. That is the reason they have impeached President Trump. It is not because of any bribery, treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors. As a matter of fact, they don't even charge a crime. What they do is charge obstruction of Congress. Here is what happened. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, issued subpoenas to certain witnesses. The White House said: Hey, wait a minute. We believe we have a valid claim of executive privilege. Ordinarily, that would then go to a court, and the court would say yes or no or cut the baby in half. But when the witnesses said we need to go to court for direction, Adam Schiff dropped them like a hot potato and didn't even bother to call the witnesses or go to court to pursue the testimony he said was important. Now, that is on him. That is not on President Trump. To claim that their own mismanagement of the impeachment inquiry is grounds to impeach the President for obstruction of Congress would be laughable if it weren't so serious. At their own volition, they rushed through the impeachment inquiry with reckless abandon, and it is not the Senate's job to reopen and redo their inglorious investigation. The Senate's role, as I said, is to take the evidence compiled by the House and presented by the impeachment managers and conduct a trial based on the evidence that they present, not to somehow initiate a new investigation before we have even heard from the impeachment managers from the House, or to somehow say: Well, we are going to essentially become the impeachment managers ourselves, a role that the Constitution gives to the House and not to the Senate. The Senate's role is to listen and to decide, not to try to hijack the process and to try to do something for the House that they have been unable to do themselves. Once the Speaker transmits the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, the House's role as a body is done, and they speak and act through the impeachment managers, who will be presenting the case on behalf of the House. When the Speaker decides to send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, we will be prepared to do our job. And unlike the House, we will do so in a serious and deliberative fashion and perform our constitutional duties under the Constitution and the rules of the Senate with regard to impeachment trials. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Garrett Beer, a defense fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges throughout the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I have some prepared remarks regarding the Soleimani strike and some other related matters, but I want to take a moment and just respond briefly to my friend, the Democratic leader. There seems to be a lot of irony involved in this question of the Articles of Impeachment. First of all, of course, Speaker Pelosi, who said this is an urgent fulfilling of a constitutional duty and who wanted the Articles of Impeachment voted on in the House, has been radio silent and appears to be getting cold feet on whether or not she will even send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. I would suggest that the first thing we need to know is if Speaker Pelosi is actually serious about this. If she is not, there is no occasion for us to even begin this conversation about how the Senate trial will proceed. Speaker Pelosi is mistaken if she thinks she can direct or influence the Senate's decision on how the trial will proceed. In fact, one of the things I am pretty sure of is that the Senate will not replicate the circuslike atmosphere of the impeachment inquiry in the House, which was one of the most partisan undertakings I have seen in my time in the Senate. I think they are really grasping at straws now and are recognizing they did a poor job in developing the case that led to the two Articles of Impeachment. One was because of a disagreement over the manner in which the President exercised his authority under the Constitution to engage in foreign relations, and the other was based on this bogus idea that by saying: I need to go to court to get some direction on a claim of executive privilege, that somehow, even though Mr. Schiff dropped the subpoena or no longer sought that witness's testimony, one has obstructed Congress's investigation. All of this was without even alleging any crime. I suggest that the Senate is an institution that follows the rules and that we follow our precedents. The most obvious precedent for this impeachment trial is the Clinton impeachment trial. There, we saw 100 Senators agree to a procedure which allowed both sides to present their cases, after which there was a vote to see whether additional testimony would be required. Indeed, there was an agreement to provide three additional witnesses, not live, in a circuslike atmosphere here on the floor of the Senate, but through depositions taken out of court that could then be out of the Chamber, whereby excerpts of those depositions could be offered as additional evidence. That was the procedure that was supported by the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York. I suggest that what was fair for President Clinton is fair for President Trump. It is not much more complicated than that, and that, indeed, is the most relevant precedent. With regard to this claim that some Senators aren't demonstrating impartiality, I recall reading that the Senator from New York, when he was running against incumbent Senator D'Amato, said a vote for him for the Senate would be a guaranteed vote of acquittal of President Clinton. That was hardly impartial. Now he protests too much and, I think, demonstrates his hypocrisy when it comes to the standard by which he holds himself and others. I am sorry. I just can't believe that Senator Warren and Senator Sanders would qualify under anybody's definition of an impartial juror. Yet that is our constitutional system. I think what has happened is that they realize their case is falling short of any standard by which a President would be convicted and impeached, and they are simply grasping at straws.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, following the longest government shutdown in history earlier this year, it seemed to be a bipartisan consensus that we need to get back on track with the regular appropriations process. Both parties knew there was a funding crisis at stake this fall if we could not come together and reach a compromise, so this summer, that is exactly what we did--or at least we thought we did. At the time we reached an agreement that set top-line funding levels for defense and nondefense spending, there was a promise not to derail the appropriations process with poison-pill policy riders, and we got it done in August with plenty of time to spare. It wasn't perfect. No negotiated product ever is, but we knew this agreement would provide us the time and the space and the framework to get the appropriations process back on track and leave room for necessary debate on government spending habits. As our national deficit continues to grow, that could not be more critical. I actually remember a time when concern about the deficit and debt was a bipartisan concern, but apparently, it is not currently. Before we hit the first funding deadline, our Democratic colleagues backed out of the commitment they made in August of 2019. The open debate we hoped for did not happen. We were forced to pass two short- term funding bills known as continuing resolutions, and now, here we are, just days away from the current continuing resolutions expiration, reading text of these funding bills that total nearly $1.4 trillion. We are reading these for the first time. When it comes to the appropriations process, I have learned from experience; you are never going to be 100 percent happy. That is just the nature of compromise. You have got to weigh the good, the bad, and the ugly and decide how the scales tip. There is certainly a lot of calculating when it comes to these appropriation bills, but let me start with the good. I think the national security appropriations package goes a long way to rebuilding our military, providing them the resources they need to maintain readiness, and providing our Armed Forces with the resources they need to face growing threats around the world. From adversaries like Russia and China, to rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran, our military must be prepared to counter a diverse range of threats. This funding bill will continue the work of Congress under President Trump to invest in our military by providing a nearly $20 billion increase over last year's defense funding levels. It will provide funds to both modernize and grow our aging fleet so we can continue to send our troops around the world where they are needed. One of the major challenges we face is the development of new technologies by our adversaries. We cannot have our enemies deploying hypersonic glide vehicles, artificial intelligence, and missile defense systems that rival or perhaps surpass our own. That would be destabilizing. That may produce a miscalculation, which would be dangerous. This bill sends funding toward the research and development of new technologies so we can stay on the leading edge. We should not be satisfied with anything other than America being in the lead when it comes to our national security. I am glad this package also includes a number of provisions that support our men and women in uniform, including a 3.1 percent pay increase, which is the largest in a decade. Above all, this defense funding answers our commanders' request for steady and predictable funding so they can address and plan for the threats of today and prepare for those we will face tomorrow. In addition to strengthening our national security, this package will also make our community safer here at home. It sends vital funding to the Department of Justice law enforcement grant programs and invests $1.4 billion in the border wall system on the Southwest border. As a border State Senator, I can tell you the Border Patrol, whom I consider the experts when it comes to border security, say there are three components of border security: There is physical infrastructure; there is technology; and then there is the personnel, the boots on the ground. This appropriation bill invests $1.4 billion in this system that includes a border wall. Despite concerted attempts from our Democratic colleagues, the President's authorities to transfer funds that he deems necessary for border security remain intact. Now, the domestic spending bill takes strides to address some other challenges. It allows us to bolster our fight against the opioid epidemic, expand mental health access, and improve our crumbling transportation infrastructure. It includes $400 million for farmers and ranchers in Texas and elsewhere affected by drought, trade wars, and low commodity prices. It would also send an additional half a billion dollars to the Army Corps of Engineers that can be used for infrastructure projects right here at home. With less than a year until the next election, it would provide more than $400 million in additional funds to safeguard our election systems so that voters can head to the polls with the confidence that their vote will be counted correctly. As we continue to bring down healthcare costs for the American people by providing them more choice and competition for their premium dollar, this legislation permanently repeals some of the three most oppressive ObamaCare taxes that are burdening American families: the premium tax, the Cadillac tax, and the medical device tax. This bill also extends funding for critical healthcare programs like community health centers. This is the safety net in our healthcare system, the community health center. It is something I have long supported. Despite pushes from our colleagues across the aisle, appropriators also managed to fight off an electric vehicle tax credit expansion, which would be nothing more than a taxpayer subsidy for wealthy Americans who want to purchase electric vehicles. There are a lot of great provisions in these appropriations bills to address some of our top priorities, but I remain concerned that, with some of the shortcomings, these could also be described as the bad part of this appropriation process. The domestic funding bill includes a range of controversial provisions that will move us further away from our goal of decreasing the national debt. It significantly increases deficit spending without offsets or pay-fors for long-needed reforms for mandatory spending programs, which are the primary cause of our deficits and debt, accounting for about 70 percent of Federal spending. This bill also includes a terrible provision, which is a retroactive tax on American energy companies. We did this without any sort of consideration by the committee of jurisdiction--the Finance Committee, upon which I sit--with no opportunity to provide amendments or even a debate on this massive retroactive tax. The only choice we are given now that it has been included as a result of the negotiations among five people is the choice to vote either up or down on this massive piece of legislation. This bill also extends other tax benefits, without addressing problems with the Tax Code, which actually have a negative impact on American businesses and families. This funding bill would also extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which is long overdue for reforms. This sidesteps the need for those reforms entirely. The program is hemorrhaging money, and we need to be looking at ways to improve it, instead of continuing to flush good money down the drain. As I mention, we started this process on a strong path with the budget agreement that was reached in August. I know I wasn't alone in thinking that would help us get the regular appropriations process back on track, but things quickly took a turn--not for the good, not for the bad--but for the ugly. Our colleagues let government funding come second to their disagreements with the President. They tried to inject the very poison pills they vowed to steer clear of and derailed the process that they committed to restoring. Rather than having an open debate and votes on spending, as we planned, the process fell to just a handful of people negotiating behind closed doors. This is reminiscent of the smoke-filled backroom deals that Congress has long been criticized for, and we really have no alternative but to vote up or down on this massive $1.4 trillion spending package without any opportunity to debate it or, more importantly, to change it by offering amendments. The way I see it, this has been the plan of Speaker Pelosi and the minority leader here in the Senate all along. If you think about it, this really puts the power in their hands, which is exactly what they want, and they can extract concessions and other things that are important to them, rather than allow the process to work as it was intended to do through regular order, through the regular appropriations process. This also takes power from their very own Members because no Democrat or Republican can offer any amendment to this which can change it at all under this closed process. So this really isn't just an affront to the Members on this side of the aisle; it is an affront to their own Members who have no opportunity to offer amendments or have meaningful debate and modify the bill. Our Democratic colleagues have held these appropriations process hostage for the past several months. Over what? I think that is an important question. Well, as it turns out, it was their obsession with .3 percent of our Nation's budget. That is not how this process should work, and it is certainly not how to make decisions that are in the best interest of the country. As further evidence of the rush to get this done without adequate consideration or debate or amendment, our House Democrats even had to violate their own 72-hour posting rule for major legislation just to get this legislation done before we leave this week. It is frustrating to see our colleagues across the aisle undermine what could have been a very productive discussion about our Nation's spending habits, about deficits and debt and what our priorities should be, and, instead, chose to move forward with these bills, which fall short in any number of places. I must say that the majority leader, the Senator from Kentucky, was committed to a process of getting these appropriations back on track so we could give a voice to all Members in these negotiations and take them up in an orderly fashion so amendments could be offered, and they could be debated and voted on, all of which has now been swept to the side. I am also grateful for the tireless work of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Shelby, as well as the other members of the committee who have been negotiating an agreement to support our national defense and avoid book-ending the 2019 year with a second shutdown. As we move closer to a vote on these appropriations bills tomorrow, I am going to continue to review their text. They are massive pieces of legislation, and we have only recently gotten access to them. I will be making my individual decision--as I trust each Member will--on whether to support these appropriations bills and whether they represent the best interests of their States and of the American people.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Iowa for her leadership on so many issues, including this one. Obviously, through her work on the Judiciary Committee, where we both serve and from where this important piece of legislation emanated, this has been a long journey. Unfortunately, the politics of the day seem to have slowed almost everything up that we are trying to do. In particular, I also want to recognize the good work of the Senator from Iowa on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. I am a proud cosponsor of the legislation she is leading on. My hope is that after the fever breaks, sometime after the first of the year--I keep hoping for that moment--we will get back to the nonpartisan reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. In the meantime, I am happy to join the Senator on the floor and to talk about the importance of the Debbie Smith Act and to celebrate its imminent passage. Since 2004, the Debbie Smith Act has been the guiding force behind our Nation's effort to eliminate the rape kit backlog. Just so everybody understands, at one point there was a report that there were as many as 400,000 of these forensic kits, which are used to collect DNA evidence following sexual assault, sitting in evidence lockers and police stations or in labs and which remained untested. Once we are reminded of the importance of this evidence and how powerful it is to enable law enforcement officials to identify an attacker with almost complete precision and accuracy, the importance of making sure these kits were tested becomes all that more obvious. Since 2011, the Debbie Smith Act has helped Texas--my State alone-- reduce its backlog of unsubmitted rape kits by approximately 90 percent. The benefits don't stop there, though. The primary goal of this program is to reduce the rape kit backlog and identify attackers-- people who commit sexual assaults. Processing this evidence can also assist investigations in other unrelated crimes because perpetrators do leave their DNA in other places other than just in the crime of sexual assault. Once this evidence is tested, it is uploaded into the FBI's DNA database called CODIS. This is similar to a criminal fingerprint database and can help identify and convict people who commit other crimes as well. For the civil libertarians among us--and I would like to consider myself one of them--this evidence is also very powerful in discounting or disqualifying potential perpetrators from suspicion because if, in fact, DNA of some other person is identified, it obviously is by exclusion of the other person who may be suspected but who will thereby be exonerated. According to the National Institute of Justice, 72 percent of the hits in the FBI database system are the direct result of Debbie Smith Act funding. The benefits of this law cannot be overstated, and it is time once again--past time, really--to reauthorize this critical program. The Debbie Smith Act of 2019 will reauthorize important funding that supports testing this DNA evidence so we can continue to reduce and eliminate the rape kit backlog and ensure that it will not grow again in the future. This legislation also supports important training for law enforcement, correctional personnel, forensic nurses, who are the ones who actually collect the DNA evidence using these forensic kits, as well as other professionals who assist victims of sexual assault. The process of getting this legislation through both Chambers of the Congress has not been easy. I have to say I appreciate all of the advocates who fought tirelessly with us every step of the way to bring us to this moment on the precipice of passing this reauthorization. I want to particularly recognize the folks at RAINN who are consistently remaining above the political fray and always putting survivors first. This legislation would not have been possible without its namesake, Debbie Smith, and the countless other survivors--people like Lavinia Masters, Carol Bart, and others--who continue to lend their voices to this fight. It is not easy for a woman to come forward and say: I was a victim of sexual assault, and I don't know who my attacker was, but I will go through this intrusive examination in order to assist law enforcement in making an identification and prosecuting the case. The fact is, if we don't catch these predators, they will commit further acts of sexual violence over and over again until they are finally caught and kept behind bars. If you have not had the chance to meet survivors and hear their stories, you must because the survivors I have met and worked with over the years in Texas are truly inspiring. I am glad we can finally get this bill passed on their behalf. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 777, which was received from the House.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have further remarks, but I understand the leader is on his way here to file some important documents and help us progress with our work this week. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I understand the majority leader will be here soon, and when he does come, I will be glad to yield to him. In the meantime, I want to talk about last week's report from the inspector general of the Department of Justice on the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and its contacts with Russia in 2016. This is a very long report. It is more than 400 pages long, and it outlines a series of errors--17, all counted--made by the FBI under the leadership of Director James Comey. It is important for people to realize that all these mistakes were made in a previous administration and not under the leadership of FBI Director Chris Wray, and they don't reflect, in my view, the actions of the rank-and-file FBI agents. But it is a serious matter, and we need to get to the bottom of it, and we need to take corrective action. The report details a pattern of concerning behavior by those who were charged with protecting and defending the United States, and it raises a lot of red flags. Last week, the inspector general testified before the Judiciary Committee. I told him at that time--and I think it bears repeating-- that as an ardent supporter of law enforcement and our intelligence community, I worry that the mistakes and the intentionally misleading conduct undertaken by some leaders in the FBI under the previous administration will undermine the public's confidence in what is a very sensitive but important area, like foreign intelligence surveillance. We rely on the men and women of the FBI to identify and counter threats to our national security, all the while protecting incredibly sensitive information and the privacy of American citizens. It requires a tremendous amount of trust from the American people, and I am afraid that some of the information that surfaced in this report puts that trust in jeopardy. The inspector general detailed a number of truly disturbing and alarming facts about how this investigation was conducted, especially when it comes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, otherwise known as FISA. FISA is a means whereby FBI agents can go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and show probable cause that an American citizen is an agent of a foreign power. Obviously, these are very, very sensitive investigations, and the sort of authority that is given to the FBI under these circumstances is very intrusive. In my view, it is entirely justified and necessary when, in fact, you are protecting the United States from very real counterintelligence matters. But the inspector general identified 7 mistakes in the initial Carter Page foreign intelligence surveillance application and 10 additional ones in 3 renewals. These were not typos or misspelled words; these were misrepresentations meant to deceive the court so they would issue a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant. To make matters worse, even as new exculpatory information came to light on Carter Page, this information was not shared with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court--information that they would have found relevant in considering whether the FBI and the U.S. Government had met their required showing. I asked the inspector general whether he believed that if the court knew what we know now, would the court have ever issued the FISA warrant in the first place? He perhaps wisely said he was not in a position to predict what the judges may or may not do, but he said he knew they wouldn't sign a warrant if they were told that all of the information was not included and certainly not if they were lied to, as occurred here in the Carter Page foreign intelligence surveillance warrant. As a former judge myself, I think that is absolutely accurate. But that begs the question, What is the FISA Court going to do about this? We know what we need to do because already the FBI Director has indicated that there are a number of areas where he believes this whole process needs to be reformed in order to restore public trust in the integrity of this process. I was interested to see a report in the New York Times that is dated today at 4:55 p.m. entitled ``Court Orders FBI to Fix National Security Wiretaps After Damning Report.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, this article be printed in the Record. Take a step back from this scenario and think more broadly about how this type of behavior may play out in a criminal proceeding. For example, imagine you are a judge and you find out that you were lied to by the prosecution, that you were presented with information that was not only incorrect but intentionally fabricated to help build their case. What would you do? Well, depending on the scenario, the court may hold that individual in contempt of court. The judge may decide to throw out some of the evidence or the entire case and possibly-- probably--refer that lawyer to disciplinary proceedings, where that lawyer would be in jeopardy of losing his or her law license. These are remedies that exist if these sorts of actions happen during ordinary court proceedings, and I believe they are probably available to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court should the court decide to take that kind of action. I note that in this article I have attached and I referred to earlier, the court has now given the FBI a January 10 deadline to come up with a response to what the court is asking about. Of course, the court, I am sure, had to be troubled by what it saw as not only the sloppy work but the intentional misrepresentation and outright lies used by the FBI in this instance to get this foreign intelligence surveillance warrant against Carter Page--as well they should be concerned. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is different from ordinary courts. It handles cases that are critical to our national security, full of highly sensitive, largely classified information, and these same sorts of remedies that you might use in an ordinary court may or may not apply. The way I see it, if we don't take corrective action--if the FBI doesn't take corrective action, if Congress doesn't undertake a review of this whole FISA process--we will be in danger of losing this ability to investigate or to collect intelligence to keep our country safe. The only way that happens currently is if the public trusts Congress and the FISA Court to enforce the laws and rules to make sure that privacy interests of American citizens are adequately protected, and only based upon an extraordinary showing--an evidentiary showing by the Government that a FISA warrant is warranted should that be ordered by the court. All of that is at risk unless, I believe, reform is undertaken and the court takes corrective action in whatever means it thinks appropriate to punish those who misled it in issuing these four FISA warrants for Carter Page. This whole episode, I believe, sets a very dangerous precedent. If these agents and lawyers are able to break every rule to investigate a political campaign of an American President and are facing no consequences, what is to stop others from doing that in the future? If they can use the awesome power of the Federal Government to investigate a Presidential campaign and someone who later became President, what chance do ordinary Americans have of making sure that the rules will be applied to them and that their privacy will be respected? We have to have accountability for these errors and these intentionally deceptive representations. We can't have people like that working at the FBI who are charged with supporting our national security. We can't allow that to continue or to happen again. We need to see that adequate disciplinary measures are undertaken by the FBI, perhaps by the court itself, while Congress looks at what we can do to reform this whole FISA procedure to make sure things like this do not happen in the future. I was glad to see, in his report, the inspector general said that his office has initiated a full audit to look into the FBI's compliance with FISA procedures across the board. He also noted that the FBI's National Security Division Assistant Attorney General had sent a letter to the FISA Court in July of 2018, outlining some of the errors made in the Carter Page FISA applications and saying that DOJ lawyers will be supplementing that information based on the inspector general report that the inspector general testified on last week. As we look for ways to prevent this type of abuse from happening in the future, we need to hear from the FISA Court what it believes is appropriate discipline and appropriate measures it needs to take to protect the integrity of their proceedings and to stop things like this from happening in the future. All of this would be critical not only to find what went wrong but also what Congress does or does not need to do to protect the integrity of this process. FISA--the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--is absolutely critical to our national security, and we must not only protect the integrity of the process but restore the American people's trust in it. I know this isn't something that can be solved overnight, but I am committed to working with all of our colleagues here in Congress, as well as the Justice Department and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to try to do what we need to do to prevent these failures from ever happening again.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know this year is rapidly coming to a close, and we are all anxious to join our families for the holidays. The impeachment frenzy, though, has almost completely engulfed the Capitol, particularly on the House side, for the past few months and has made it very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to get much of its work done; hence, the last-minute rush to get things done that we should have done weeks and perhaps months earlier. One of the victims of this impeachment mania has been the National Defense Authorization Act, and I am glad we finally were able to pass that today. For the last 58 years, the NDAA--the national defense act--has passed with broad bipartisan support. But this year, things took a little different turn. While we maintained historical norms here in the Senate and passed the bill by a vote of 86 to 8, our House Democratic colleagues took a completely different route. They managed to come up with a bill that was so partisan that not a single Republican voted for it in the House. A party-line vote in the House may not be newsworthy, but a party- line vote on the national defense authorization bill is. Fortunately, after months of negotiations, Senator Inhofe, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Reed, the ranking member, were able to work with their House counterparts to reach a compromise on the bill, as I said, that passed earlier today. This legislation is vitally important because it will give our commanders the predictability they need, as well as the troops the resources they have earned. It also authorizes $400 million for military construction projects in places like Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are made in Fort Worth. Overall, the NDAA will strengthen our national security, and it will benefit all of our servicemembers and their families and our military bases, including those in Texas. So I just want to say that I appreciate the hard work of Chairman Inhofe and Senator Reed, the ranking member, and all of our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee on both sides of the Capitol and look forward to it being signed by the President, hopefully, without further delay. This was a critical step to strengthen our Nation's military, but it is only part of our duty to provide our troops with the resources and training and the equipment they need to succeed. Now we need to take care of the defense appropriations bill, which has now been passed by the House and which will be coming over here to the Senate soon and which I expect we will act on by Thursday. Sadly, though, this has also fallen to the wayside while our Democratic colleagues in the House have worked tirelessly to try to remove the President from office. We are in the posture of having to do that this week only because the agreement that was made last August on spending caps was walked away from by our Democratic colleagues in the Senate, and it has taken us all this time to get back to where we thought we were in the August timeframe. Despite the deal reached over the summer to keep the appropriations process free from poison pill riders, our friends across the aisle have tried to force liberal wish list items into the bill. Thanks to Senator Inhofe, that has largely been avoided. I must also thank Mac Thornberry, the ranking member on the House side. We have also managed to avoid a government shutdown, but the process has certainly not been pretty. We have been forced to pass two short- term funding bills, which have kept the trains running but failed to provide the predictability we thought we were going to get into the future once the 2-year budget deal was agreed upon last August. So I am happy in one sense that the deal was finally reached to avoid a government shutdown, and I am in the process of reviewing these huge funding packages that total about $1.4 trillion. Let me just say that I also appreciate the hard work of our friend from Alabama, Chairman Shelby, and our colleagues on the appropriations committees for their work to keep the doors open and to keep our commitments to our men and women in uniform. I am hopeful we will be able to act before this funding expires this Friday. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the chaos in Washington, DC, precipitated by impeachment mania or our inability to get what should be relatively straightforward work done, like the appropriations process and all the gymnastics over the USMCA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement--in fact, we are coming down to a deadline on Friday, the 20th of December, when the current continuing resolution runs out. Because of everything that is going on, many people may not have been able to pay that much attention--and I think attention is deserved--to the testimony of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. I know there was some news coverage of it, but I wanted to give some reflections on the testimony Mr. Horowitz gave. First of all, the Office of Inspector General is a very important one. They are a watchdog to make sure the laws Congress passes and the rules of the various agencies--in this case, the Department of Justice--are complied with. It is really very, very important. With everything else going on, it is important to have an impartial inspector general to conduct that kind of investigation and to hold people accountable--something that doesn't happen enough here in Washington, DC. Inspector General Horowitz, along with his team, was widely praised for producing an outstanding report this time on the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump administration by the Obama-era Justice Department and the FBI. This is a 480-page report. I have a copy of it right here. It is redacted for public release. If you look at it online--you can look at it through the Department of Justice website--you can see that some of it is redacted or black marks are drawn through parts of it to protect certain classified information. But there is more than enough information contained in this report to know that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump administration by the Obama Justice Department, including Comey and the FBI, was an unmitigated disaster. Mr. Horowitz highlighted some of the truly disturbing and alarming facts about how this Russia investigation was conducted--how it was initiated and how it was conducted. There were mistakes made, including some intentional misconduct, which has now been referred to the Justice Department for potential investigation and even charging and prosecution. This was a troubling report, identifying at least 17 different areas of concern. The report is full of legal jargon, government acronyms, and a long list of names most Americans probably don't recognize. The bottom line is, beneath all of this is a pattern of concerning behavior that ought to concern everyone who cares about civil liberties. At the core of these issues is, under Director Comey, the FBI's abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. I know people have heard the reference to FISA, and that is short for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In other words, when our intelligence services, including the FBI, gather information, they can't do that on American citizens absent a showing of probable cause in front of a court. That is a protection of our civil liberties. When it comes to foreign intelligence, there is a different court--the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court--that has to assess and judge whether they have met the appropriate legal standards. The inspector general found that the Comey FBI failed to file accurate applications to surveil an American citizen by the name of Carter Page. There are very exacting requirements, very technical but very important requirements that the FBI has to put together, in consultation with the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, in order to go to court--the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court--and justify issuance of the authority to gather intelligence on an individual. In this case, they claimed that Carter Page, who was for a time associated with the Trump campaign--they claim that they suspected him to be an agent of a foreign power--in other words, Russia. The way these documents were prepared and the way in which this matter was pursued was hardly a stellar performance by the Comey FBI, and I will mention that here in a moment. Once that FISA warrant is issued, as it was on an American citizen--Carter Page--that individual's private communications then come into the hands of the FBI as part of their investigation of a potential agent of a foreign power. As I said yesterday and reiterated to Inspector General Horowitz this morning--or yesterday morning--spying on an American citizen is not something to be taken lightly. None of us should view this as a trivial matter. That is why there are such strong protections in place to prevent an abuse of power. One of those backstops is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court--a specialized court appointed by Chief Justice Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, that sits in rotation for a time to look at the government's applications for these warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You can imagine that when that court makes important decisions involving the national security of the United States or the civil liberties of an American citizen, they need to have a full picture. They need to have the utmost candor exercised by the FBI of all the details and information surrounding the issue at hand. Again, this is no trivial matter. The court is determining whether the government has a compelling case to secretly spy on an American's communications. Unfortunately, as we heard from Mr. Horowitz, the FBI, under Director Comey, fell dramatically short of that goal. The application for something as serious as a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant should be free from error, let alone intentional lies. Unfortunately, Inspector Horowitz found 17 different instances where the FBI agents involved in securing this FISA warrant failed that standard. First of all, the inspector general identified 7 mistakes in the original application and an additional 10 in 3 renewals, for a total of 4 separate warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These applications weren't put together and examined by rank-and-file agents; these errors came from three handpicked teams that didn't raise any red flags for high-level senior officials--something that Mr. Horowitz said made him deeply concerned, which is a feeling I share. One of the most glaring errors was the applications' reliance on a deeply flawed private intelligence report--opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee--on Donald Trump. This is called the Steele dossier, as people have heard that reference. Mr. Steele is a former intelligence officer who worked for the British Government, the British intelligence services, but he had long since retired from his government service, and now he was out for hire to dig up information--in this case, on a political candidate in the Presidential election in 2016. One of the biggest concerns we have all had since the 2016 election is Russian interference in our elections. Sometimes this is called active measures, where they merely try to sow discord and dissent by social media use, by propaganda, and by intelligence services leaking information. I asked Attorney General Barr, before the Judiciary Committee earlier this year, whether he could state with confidence that the Steele Dossier, which we know was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton administration, was not a part of this Russian disinformation campaign, whether he could say it was not. The Attorney General said no, he could not. FBI attorneys assisting in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation called it a ``close call'' on whether they had sufficient justification to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue a warrant so they could collect intelligence on an American citizen, Carter Page. What made that a close call? What turned a close call into the granting of that authority? Well, it was the Steele dossier. It was a hit piece, really--called that by one of our intelligence agencies--based on internet rumor, not based on verified information. That was used by the Crossfire Hurricane team to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get a warrant issued to surveil and spy on an American citizen. Although I know that taking a look at the real source of the Steele dossier was outside the realm of the inspector general's duties, it is worth investigating because it played a central and essential role in the FBI's FISA applications. That is what Mr. Horowitz found. Mr. Horowitz found on one occasion serious and intentional misconduct on the part of an FBI lawyer, and he now has referred that lawyer for criminal prosecution. But the explanations they offered for the other errors were completely unsatisfactory, and they should not be overlooked or excused. Attorney General Barr echoed that in a TV interview earlier this week. I trust him and Mr. Durham to get to the bottom of it. They have more authority than the inspector general to compel the production of evidence in testimony--much like a grand jury, as opposed to what the inspector general had, which was basically a voluntary willingness of witnesses to come forward and to look at the FBI's internal files. To make matters worse, even as new and exculpatory information-- information that tended to show innocence--came to light on Carter Page, this information was not reflected in what the FBI filed when they requested a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant from the court. You have to wonder--if this level of mishandling is occurring in a high-profile investigation of a Presidential candidate, someone who would later become the leader of the free world, what kind of protections are in place for average American citizens? We place an enormous amount of trust in the U.S. Government to keep us safe and also to respect and uphold our constitutional rights. So seeing these types of errors, intentional and unintentional, slipping through the cracks in such a sensitive investigation doesn't give me much confidence that it is not happening in other cases. Another question I asked the inspector general was on something called defensive counterintelligence briefings. This is a little bit arcane, but let me explain. There are two different types of investigations by the FBI. One is of a potential criminal prosecution. We are all familiar with that. But the second role that the FBI plays is conducting counterintelligence investigations--in other words, protecting the American people and our national security from the attempts by foreign actors, malign foreign actors to gain intelligence on the U.S. Government and the American people, to our detriment and to the detriment of our national security. One of the things Loretta Lynch, who was Attorney General under Barack Obama, said is that in a counterintelligence investigation, defensive briefings are routine. In other words, if the Presiding Officer were a target of a Russian intelligence operation--somebody had bumped into you at the grocery store or shown up at your kid's soccer game or perhaps shown up at your work, and you began to wonder, who this person and why have they taken such interest in me?--well, if the FBI discovers information that indicates this is part of an effort to recruit an American citizen to become an asset for the Russian intelligence services, what the FBI is obligated to do is to give a defensive briefing where they might tell the Presiding Officer or me or anybody else who might be targeted ``This is what is happening to you, so be on your guard. Don't think this is innocent. Protect yourself,'' and in so doing, protect the national security of the United States. These briefings, we learned from Loretta Lynch, are routine. They are given routinely to political candidates, to individuals, and to companies that hear from the FBI about those potential threats so they can take steps to protect themselves. We know that both Presidential candidates of 2016--Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton--received some kind of defensive briefing in August of 2016, but the so-called defensive briefing for the Trump campaign was unique in a number of aspects. At the time the FBI believed the Russians were trying to infiltrate the Trump campaign, you would think that would have been a prime opportunity to share that information with Candidate Trump and his campaign so he could tell the people on his campaign: Be on your guard, and don't engage in any unnecessary contact with people whom you don't know and who might have malign motives. The FBI could have advised the Trump campaign about these potential threats and given them their professional advice on how to mitigate the concerns, but that didn't happen in the case of the Trump campaign. Instead of warning the Trump campaign about possible Russian efforts, they actually inserted--the FBI inserted a case agent into the briefing and used that as an opportunity to collect information in support of their own criminal investigation of GEN Michael Flynn. It is not only unfair to insert an FBI agent into an otherwise benign setting in order to collect information on an American citizen in a criminal investigation, obviously General Flynn did not know the FBI was trying to do this under a pretext, so he couldn't say: I would like to talk to a lawyer. I would like to know that what I say can't be used against me in a court of law. In other words, all of the normal protections under the Bill of Rights that would be given to somebody under a criminal investigation were not afforded because of this pretextual defensive briefing where the FBI agent slipped in in order to collect information. Here is the bottom line: This defensive briefing of the Trump campaign lasted a whopping 13 minutes--hardly enough time to convey the sort of information you would want to a political campaign. I can tell you that if the FBI came to me and told me that some foreign actor was trying to infiltrate my campaign, I would want to know about it, and I would want to tell the people who volunteered in the campaign to knock it off. But President Trump, when he was a candidate, was not given that information or the opportunity to shut it down, which he should have been. Director Wray, to his credit, after hearing about that, has accepted the recommendations of the inspector general and has moved quickly to try to rectify some of these practices, and he has already issued corrective action on them. This doesn't negate the fact that the American people's trust in their government to protect them has been harmed by the Comey FBI. We need the American people's confidence in the laws the Congress passes, the constitutional rights they enjoy under our Constitution, and the oversight that Congress performs and that the FBI and the intelligence community are going to be required to play by the rules of the road and not jeopardize the civil liberties of any American, much less a candidate for the U.S. Presidency. This is something I will talk about more at another time. Chairman Graham of the Judiciary Committee assures me that yesterday's very important hearing, at which Inspector Horowitz testified, will not be the last hearing on this matter but merely the first. There is more to come, as there well should be. I yield floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as all America knows, climbing healthcare costs continue to keep the American people up at night. A Kaiser Foundation poll in September found that the No. 1 health concern of the American people is prescription drug pricing. A whopping 70 percent of those polled think lowering prescription drug costs should be a top priority--a top priority--for Congress, making it the No. 1 item on our to-do list, but our friend and colleague from New York, the minority leader, objected last time I offered unanimous consent to take up and pass a bill, which I will describe here momentarily. I hope, given the intervening time and further reflection, he will not do so today, and we can get this bill passed and address this top priority of the American people. The good news is, Republicans and Democrats both agree we need to do something about it. I have the honor of serving on both the Finance and Judiciary Committees, where we have been looking into this problem and some of the potential solutions. There are pharmaceutical CEOs who earn big bonuses as sales go up. I am not opposed to them receiving compensation, but pharmacy benefit managers who negotiate backdoor rebates that drive up out-of-pocket costs are a problem because of the lack of transparency. What I find very seriously concerning as well is anti-competitive behavior when it comes to patents by drug manufacturers. There are two practices, in particular, that the legislation I intend to offer a unanimous consent request on would address. One is called product hopping, which occurs when a company develops a reformulation of a product that is about to lose exclusivity. Let me just stop a moment and say that one of the ways we protect the investment and the intellectual property of American innovators is to give them exclusivity over the right to sell and license that intellectual property, including drugs. That encourages people to make those investments. In turn, it benefits the American people and the world, literally, by creating new lifesaving drugs, and that is a good thing. There is a period of exclusivity, and after that expires--after that goes away--then it opens that particular formulation up to generic competition; meaning, the price will almost certainly be much lower and more affordable to the American people. This issue of product hopping is gamesmanship, as I will explain. First of all, before the drug loses exclusivity, the manufacturer pulls the drug off the market. This is done not because the new formula is more effective, but it will block generic competitors. The second issue is patent thicketing, which occurs when an innovator uses multiple, overlapping patents or patents with identical claims that make it nearly impossible for competitors to enter the market. This is nothing more and nothing less than abuse of our patent system, and it is coming at a high cost for patients who rely on affordable drugs. Earlier this year, I introduced a bill with our friend and colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, who happens to be a Democrat, to address these anti-competitive behaviors. Our bill is called the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act, and it streamlines the litigation process by limiting the number of patents these companies can use in court. So companies are spending less time in the courtroom and, hopefully, more time innovating these new lifesaving drugs, while opening up these drugs once they lose their exclusivity to generic competition and more and more affordable prices for consumers. This legislation does not stifle innovation; it doesn't limit patients' rights; and it doesn't cost taxpayers a dime. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would lower--lower--Federal spending by more than a half a billion dollars over 10 years. This is just savings to the Federal Government for Medicare and Medicaid. Undoubtedly, it would show significant savings for consumers with private health insurance as well. I am sure it comes as no surprise, then, that this legislation passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee; not a single Senator opposed it. That happened in June. This is December, and there has been no movement since then. We have tried to be patient because we know there are other bills coming from the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. There is a bill coming out of the Finance Committee on which the Presiding Officer and I sit. My hope is that we would have been able to make progress on a larger package, but here we are at the end of the year, and there has been no movement. We have been more than patient, but I think there comes a time when patience ceases to be a virtue, particularly when it comes to providing something that would benefit the American people. There are no concerns about the policies laid out in the bill, as you can see by some of the comments reflected in this chart. Again, our colleague, the Democrat from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, said: ``This bill offers a positive, solid step toward ending abuses in the use of patents.'' Senator Durbin, who is the Democratic whip, a member of leadership, said: It is a bipartisan measure that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. I not only voted for it, I cosponsored it, and I believe it should pass and should become the law of the land. So imagine my surprise when the Democratic leader objected to a unanimous consent request to pass it a couple of weeks ago. He even went so far as to call this ``a manipulative charade'' and ``a little game,'' which is strange because he also called it a good bill. His biggest criticism was it didn't do enough, but as I pointed out then, if you sit around waiting for the big bill to get passed, nothing happens in the meantime, and it is a loss to the American people. I think it is past time for us to take up this legislation, get it passed, get it signed by the President. Our friends in the House of Representatives have already passed two bills, which, put together, essentially reflect the same policy. I can't think of any other reason for the Democratic leader to object than pure politics. He doesn't want anybody to get a ``win.'' That also goes for the Senator from Iowa, when she had offered a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. She happens to be on the ballot in 2020 as well. The only rationale I can possibly think of that the Democratic leader would continue to object to these bipartisan consensus bills is just that he doesn't want somebody to be able to score a point on this side because he feels like that will disadvantage his candidates in the next election and advantage us. There comes a time when we need to put those election considerations to the side and focus on making good policy. I happen to believe good policy is good politics. The truth is, the Democratic leader, in objecting to the passage of this legislation, does have one very big and powerful cheerleader behind him; that is, the drug companies. The drug companies love it when bipartisan legislation gets blocked on the Senate floor for whatever reason. The truth is, they hate this bill, and they don't want to see anything done on this issue. Inadvertently or not, the Democratic leader seems to be providing them a lot of cover right now. My constituents didn't send me to Washington to play these endless games. They sent me here to get results, and that is exactly what I aim to do. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that as in legislative session, the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 132, S. 1416. I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute be withdrawn; that the Cornyn amendment at the desk be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I point out to my friend from New York, I am not the leader or the floor manager of legislation. That is up to Senator McConnell, the Senator from Kentucky. Obviously, there has been foot-dragging on important things like appropriations bills, the USMCA--the important trade agreement with Canada and Mexico--and now there is impeachment mania that has consumed the House of Representatives and has crowded out our ability to get other things done; hence, my loss of patience after waiting since June to get this bill passed. This isn't a case of my wanting to get well; this is a case of wanting to make the American people well by providing them access to low-cost generic alternative drugs and preventing Big Pharma from engaging in the sorts of gamesmanship that keep drug prices up and keep the American consumer down. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.