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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 7 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 Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on pending legislation. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Indian Affairs The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Enhancing Tribal self-governance and safety of Indian roads.'' Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, at 2:45 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Reauthorization, of the SBA's access to capitol programs.'' Subcommittee on Seapower The Subcommittee on Seapower of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, at 3 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces The Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at 2:30 p m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommmittee on Intellectual Property The Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at 2:45 p.m., to conduct a hearing, ``Trailblazers and lost Einsteins: Women inventors and the future of American innovation.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 11 a.m., Thursday, April 4; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Calabria nomination.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, we have spent a great deal of time in my time in the Senate talking about immigration and the situation along the southwestern border. My State has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, so obviously this is very personal to me and my constituents who live and work along the border. We have been caught up in a lot of semantics and more than a little politics in Washington, DC, debating what is a wall versus a fence, what is a crisis versus an emergency--just some of the semantics we have been caught up in--but it doesn't take a rocket scientist or an expert to see there are a lot of problems occurring at the border today. I hope, if there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that there is in fact a problem that needs to be solved at the border, whether you want to call it a crisis like President Obama did or whether you want to call it an emergency like President Trump. Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security sent a letter to Congress detailing the record number of apprehensions along the southern border. Secretary Nielsen noted that Border Patrol was apprehending between 50,000 and 60,000 a month late last year. Last month, it was 76,000, the highest in a decade. At the time of her letter, she said we were on track to interdict nearly 100,000 during the month of March--so almost essentially double from late last year until this coming month. Unsurprisingly, Customs and Border Protection personnel are not equipped to handle these record numbers. Forty percent of the Border Patrol's manpower is spent processing migrants and providing care and transportation. These are, by and large, asylum seekers from Central America. In fact, while the Border Patrol, our primary law enforcement agency providing border security, should be securing the border, many of them are processing unaccompanied children or family units, handing out diapers and juice boxes instead of doing the job they are trained to perform. They have been taken off the patrol line to do this kind of work, leaving areas of the border vulnerable to exploitation by the drug cartels. One way the cartels use this huge volume of humanity coming across the border is to distract the law enforcement agencies from doing their job interdicting the drugs that are poisoning tens of thousands of Americans. We know 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year--about half of those from opioids, including synthetic fentanyl and heroin--90 percent of which comes from Mexico. The amount of people coming across now is so overwhelming that the El Paso Border Patrol Sector has temporarily shut down its highway checkpoints in the interior so agents can help process these individuals. Most of our Members may not realize, we not only have Border Patrol working at the border but also in the interior at checkpoints on major highways because frequently what will happen is people are smuggled through or drugs are smuggled through, and they have to go through checkpoints for a double check, at which time a lot of drugs and a lot of illegal immigrants are discovered. Additionally, detention facilities are at or over capacity. These are relatively small because they are built to house single adults for a short period of time. The record surge of children and family units combined with the impact it has had on processing time has put a serious strain on their resources. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release families and adults from custody. I was on a radio program last week in San Antonio, my hometown. It was said Border Patrol is so overwhelmed, they are essentially just putting people on buses and shipping them into the interior of the State and the country, not even processing them. I have heard from officials at DHS and throughout the ranks of the Border Patrol that in order to keep up with this pace, they need our help. They need more personnel so law enforcement agencies can respond to the crisis, secure the border, and keep our country safe, as well as adequately and efficiently processing individuals who illegally cross the border. We also need additional facilities to house illegal immigrants in custody so we don't engage in the failed catch-and- release policy, which is just another pull factor to encourage more people to come. If they know they are not going to be detained and they are going to be released, that is an incentive for them to come and join this wave of humanity coming across the border. We should be able to enforce the law and properly care for migrants in custody, but inadequate resources are limiting DHS's ability to do both. Ours is a compassionate country. We are a nation of immigrants. Everybody--almost everybody came from somewhere else at some point in their family history, but the only way we are going to be able to maintain that compassion and generosity, when it comes to immigration, is by bringing some order out of chaos. Many illegal immigrants know we are compassionate and generous, and they will take full advantage of the gaps in our border security and flaws in our immigration laws. The cartels--the criminal organizations that get rich moving people from Central America, across Mexico, into the United States--know for sure because they are exploiting those gaps and flaws in our immigration laws. It is not just the sheer numbers of people crossing the border that is concerning, it is the makeup of the people coming across. We used to see primarily single adult males arriving from Mexico, and our current detention facilities reflect that, but now, because of the gaps and flaws in our immigration laws that are being exploited, people coming across are family units and unaccompanied children from Central American countries who almost uniformly claim asylum. That means they have to appear in front of an immigration judge at some point to have their claim assessed and adjudicated. While there absolutely are legitimate families coming to our country for legitimate reasons, that is not the case for all the 36,000 family units apprehended last month alone. Individuals crossing illegally know about the loopholes in our laws, as I said, and they know how to exploit them. For example, in 1997, the Flores settlement agreement determined that the Department of Homeland Security can only detain unaccompanied children for 20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services, which in turn places them with sponsors--usually family members in the interior of the United States. Then they are given a notice to appear at an immigration hearing at some point in the future, but because of the backlog of cases, 98 percent of them don't show up. While this was unquestionably well-intentioned at the time, it has turned into a pull factor for illegal immigrants hoping to game the system, as well as the transnational criminal organizations that get rich engaging in this sort of trade. In 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the Flores agreement, effectively applying the settlement to family units and not just unaccompanied children. So now, rather than single adults arriving at the border alone, they are bringing children with them so they can pose as a family unit. They realize they can bring a child--any child-- and pose as a family unit so they will be released within 20 days. Sadly, Flores is not the only loophole being exploited. Another well- intentioned piece of legislation that is being abused is the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act or TVPRA. This legislation limits our ability to return unaccompanied children from countries other than Mexico or Canada to their home country. These loopholes are an attraction or pull factor and encourage parents to send their children on the dangerous journey to our southern border alone or sometimes with a single parent or sometimes with a smuggler or human trafficker posing as a parent. This isn't a symbiotic relationship, where the smuggler gets an honest day's pay and the migrant gets a comfortable ride to the United States. These smugglers are called coyotes for a reason; they are predators. Children are being kidnapped to serve as a free ticket into the United States. They are often abused or raped along the way, and many arrive at our border in terrible health. We simply cannot allow these practices to continue with no response by Congress. We need to close the loopholes that are being used to unlawfully enter and remain in the United States and provide much needed protection for these vulnerable children. If a pipe burst and caused your kitchen to flood, you wouldn't start by cleaning up the mess; you would start by fixing the pipe first. If we want to have any sort of impact on the massive numbers of people crossing our border, which will only grow, we have to look not just at the problem but at the root cause. I would urge all of our colleagues on the other side to stop viewing this through a purely political lens. This is not a question of Trump wins, you lose or Trump loses and you win. I am afraid that defines a lot of our politics in Washington today. That is a terrible mistake and a disservice to the people we represent, and it is an embarrassment to an institution which is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body. We need to view this together as the humanitarian crisis it is-- President Obama called it that--and view it as a problem that will only continue to grow without our intervention, which it has. We need to view it as an urgent issue that requires our cooperation and, yes, our compromise. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in 2017, I said on the Senate floor that we needed to come together to help rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in the Houston area and that our work was not complete and more work needed to be done. That, unfortunately, still is true today. It is true also for the damage caused by other natural disasters during the same timeframe that was appropriated by Congress but has not yet found its way to the intended beneficiaries. Although we voted to send billions of dollars to help Texans still reeling from Hurricane Harvey, some of those funds are still needlessly caught up in bureaucratic redtape. This is not just a phenomenon that affects my State. It affects all of our States. This is not acceptable to me, and it isn't acceptable to the people I represent--all 28 million of them--and it shouldn't be acceptable to Members of the Senate. This storm ravaged the Texas coast and was the largest rain event in American history, with parts of Southeast Texas seeing 60 inches of rain over about a 5- or 6-day period. It destroyed people's homes, their businesses, and our communities. In the wake of the storm, we all pulled together in Congress, in an unusually bipartisan manner, to provide billions of dollars in disaster aid. Like I said, it wasn't just for Texas. It was for Florida, Puerto Rico, for wildfires out in California, and other places that suffered from natural disasters. The dollars we appropriated, and were signed into law by the President, have helped Texans get back to some sense of normalcy, and I am grateful to my colleagues for working together with us to make that happen. What has not been helpful, however, are the unnecessary delays on the part of the Office of Management and Budget in getting the roughly $4 billion in mitigation funds into the hands of State and local communities that desperately need them. I have searched in vain in the Constitution for where the Office of Management and Budget has the power to veto appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. I can't find it. Yet they are still the impediment to the execution of Congress's intent to get the money to the people who need it. The intent of Congress was crystal clear in the February 2018 disaster supplemental, when we appropriated about $12 billion of community development block grants for disaster recovery. As I said, the undue delay is unacceptable, and I am filing an amendment to the disaster relief that is on the floor of the Senate this week to ensure that these funds and other like funds are properly disbursed. Last month, Governor Abbott, Senator Cruz, and I wrote a letter to the OMB to stop stalling, but so far all we have heard is crickets. The amendment we will file will start a timer on when the Federal Government must release funds appropriated by Congress. It will give the government bureaucracy up to 90 days to get the money untangled from all the redtape and to get it to the communities that desperately need it. This 90-day rule wouldn't just apply to this particular block of funding; it would apply to any funds that are now being withheld by the Office of Management and Budget that Congress appropriates to these States. As I said, last time I checked, Congress had the power of the purse, not the Office of Management and Budget. I don't know about the rest of my colleagues, but I am not OK with letting OMB dictate when and how duly appropriated funds are released to the intended beneficiaries. The disregard of those who are still struggling to rebuild and prepare for future storms by the bureaucrats is appalling. They know the kinds of hardships my constituents are facing, and they know that Hurricane Harvey will not be the last hurricane to hit Texas. It is time to do what is right by our State and local communities who have seen their livelihoods rot in a fleet of floodwater. It has now been more than a year since President Trump signed a bill that would have sent roughly $4 billion to Texas. Imagine what could have been accomplished with that money in the meantime. They could have repaired wastewater treatment facilities that haven't been fully restored. It could have led to important economic revitalization projects in decimated areas. They could have even relocated or elevated damaged facilities to prepare for the next storm. But, no--those projects are still on hold because the OMB has refused to release the funding. The 2019 hurricane season is fast approaching, and it is critical we get work done on long-term projects to protect my State and the Texas coast against future storms. It is difficult to plan for the future with the resources we need being caught up in bureaucratic limbo. We have been waiting to get to the place where before Harvey and after Harvey isn't such a stark difference. With the inclusion of my amendment, the clock will start ticking on the Office of Management and Budget to do its job and ultimately release these hurricane recovery funds. Texas communities have waited long enough. Border Security Mr. President, I want to draw attention to another group of people who need our help, and those are the officers and agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Yesterday, Commissioner McAleenan announced that Customs and Border Protection is facing an ``unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our Southwest border,'' and he provided some alarming statistics. Yesterday morning, CBP had more than 13,000 migrants under their care. Under normal circumstances, a high number is 4,000. They consider 6,000 to be a crisis, and now they have more than double that. Yesterday, the Commissioner said that we are at a ``breaking point'' along the border. Frankly, because the American people aren't acquainted with some of the details, they may think that CBP can easily handle 13,000 people in their custody on a given day, but, unfortunately, that is not the case. CBP's detention facilities are relatively small, built for the short- term detention of single adults. The current immigrant surge from Central America is primarily of children and family units and has put these small facilities at overcapacity levels. Processing times have slowed due to the large number of people being processed and the lack of Border Patrol personnel to process them. As the Chief of the Border Patrol has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, this is intentional on behalf of the transnational criminal organizations that are responsible for transporting people from Central America to our borders. This is a moneymaking proposition. If you can charge $5,000 or more a head for every person you deliver to our border, that is a big, big deal. These people are not just involved in transporting immigrants. They are engaged in trafficking of human beings for sex or involuntary servitude, and they are also engaged in trafficking drugs. I will remind all of us that last year, 70,000-plus Americans died from drug overdoses--70,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year--according to the Centers for Disease Control. A substantial portion of that was part of the opioid crisis, not just prescription drugs but also synthetic fentanyl as well as heroin. Ninety percent of the heroin that comes into the United States comes across the U.S.- Mexico border. As President Obama himself said in 2014, this is truly a humanitarian and security crisis, but it is on steroids today. On Monday, CBP had the highest totals of apprehensions in more than a decade, and on Tuesday, they broke that record. Daily averages for border apprehensions are higher than we have seen at any time since 2006. Last month, CBP apprehended 76,000 people in 1 month on our southern border--the highest monthly total in over a decade. Yesterday, Commissioner McAleenan, announced that, in March, they are on track to beat that record with 100,000 apprehensions along our southwest border. That is 76,000 apprehensions in February and an estimated 100,000 in March. As a result of the surge, because the Border Patrol has to do something, 40 percent of the Border Patrol's manpower is now spent processing immigrants and providing care and transportation. In other words, they are not engaged in their primary mission, which is border security, because they are busy handing out juice boxes and diapers to children, as well as processing the immigrants who are providing other transportation. The Border Patrol simply doesn't have the resources, nor should it be expected to have the resources, to handle this crisis and perform their primary duty, which is to protect our border. We know that detention centers are at or over capacity, and local charities and nongovernmental Agencies are strained, as well, and all of our border communities are being overrun by humanity. Recently, Senator Cruz and I were down at the Sarita checkpoint to name that checkpoint after a heroic Border Patrol agent who was killed by two illegal aliens. We were approached by the chief of police from McAllen--somebody who is well respected in law enforcement circles in our State--who said that because the Border Patrol is simply unable to process all of these people, and they are being released into those communities or put on a bus and sent to places like San Antonio, they are increasingly worried about public safety. That is notwithstanding the fact that many of our border communities are extraordinarily safe, at least on our side of the border. If you go on the Mexican side of the border, they are some of the most dangerous cities in our hemisphere. This is having a profound impact on our local communities, on the men and women of the Customs and Border Patrol. Frankly, it should be an embarrassment to us here in this country that we haven't dealt with this in a more timely and more effective way. Because the cartels have figured this out, people crossing the border today are largely families and unaccompanied minors because of the special way they have to be processed and because of a consent decree called the Flores decision, which says you can't detain them for more than 20 days. That is not enough time to get them in front of an immigration judge in order to adjudicate their asylum claim, so they are released into the interior of the United States. Guess what. Overwhelmingly, they don't show up for their court hearings because they realize they have beat the system. The cartels know that because of the money they make. They are exploiting these vulnerabilities in our laws and in our infrastructure. The only people who can fix that are Congress and the President, working together in a bipartisan way. I know we have had a big debate over border barriers--walls, fences, you name it--but, frankly, you could build all the barriers you want along our southwest border, and it will not stop this flow of unaccompanied minors and family units because, frankly, they are showing up at the border, and they are turning themselves in. So we need to act. Two weeks ago, Ms. Nielsen, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said: ``The situation on our southern border has gone from a crisis, to a national emergency, to a near system-wide meltdown.'' Our Democratic colleagues have called this a fake emergency. They have opposed treating this crisis for what it is. It is even more than an emergency; it is a total system failure, and the only people who can fix it are Congress, working with the President. I am not sure how much longer our Democratic colleagues could be in denial when we see this flood of humanity coming across in higher and higher numbers every day. The issue is staring us in the face. The numbers confirm what we have said all along: This is a border security and humanitarian crisis. Secretary Nielsen made an important point that our communities, our members of law enforcement, and the immigrants themselves are paying the price for our inaction. We have heard it from people at the border who know how to fix the problem, and we need to listen. They have told us time and again that it will take a combination of technology, physical infrastructure, and boots on the ground. It will also take legislative action to fill the gaps in our laws that we know exist and are being exploited by the cartels. I want to commend the men and women of Customs and Border Patrol for working around the clock in a thankless job but in an important job. Frankly, I am embarrassed that they haven't seen more support by the people who represent them in Congress. We have sent them out on a losing battle unless we can work together here in Congress to give them the resources and the legislative fixes they need. I want to assure these dedicated men and women that we are trying, but we need their help to talk to their elected Representatives here in Congress. We need Ms. Pelosi to consider this the same humanitarian crisis that President Obama identified back in 2014, when he called it a humanitarian and security crisis. By any measure, it has gotten much, much worse. We need to give this crisis the serious attention that it deserves. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 4 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 Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 28, 2019, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Department of Energy's Atomic energy defense program.'' Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 28, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of David Bernhardt, of Virginia, to be Secretary of the Interior. Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 28, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Examining the Federal response to the risks associated with per and ployfluoralkyl substances.'' Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 28, 2019, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Daniel P. Collins, and Kenneth Kiyul Lee, both of California, both to be a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, James Wesley Hendrix, and Mark T. Pittman, both to be a United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, Sean D. Jordan, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas, Wing Chau, to be United States Marshal for the District of Rhode Island, and Ramona L. Dohman, to be United States Marshal for the District of Minnesota.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday, the Senate had a significant vote. Senators made their voices heard on the Green New Deal, and after a lot of grandstanding from those Senate Democrats who initially rushed to support this proposal, not a single one voted for the proposal. However, my Republican colleagues and I didn't vote present. We don't believe that is what our constituents sent us here to do. Instead, we voted against the socialist grab bag of policies that would set us back an estimated $93 trillion and would bankrupt the State of Texas. To be clear, voting no on the Green New Deal isn't a referendum on the issue of lowering carbon emissions or finding cleaner energy; it is saying no to the litany of far-left proposals that would leave American families footing the bill to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars each. The Green New Deal promised things like free higher education. You might have thought this was really about the environment; well, it was a grab bag of government handouts and takeovers. It also included Medicare for All, which means that if you have employer-provided health insurance, you couldn't keep it. Even President Obama said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. But not now--not with this new, radical group of Democrats who now say: Forget that promise. We are going to take what you have, even if you like it. There, of course, was the guarantee of jobs. I noted yesterday that the only thing missing from the Green New Deal is free beer and pizza for everybody. It has been estimated that implementing the full list of the Green New Deal's promises would cost the average American family $65,000 a year, which is well over what many Americans make annually. These ludicrous proposals were pitched as a way to uplift the middle class and create jobs, but in reality, they would have undone the economic gains we made these past 2 years under the Trump administration. We could say goodbye to the record-low unemployment levels and the growth we have been seeing. What middle-class American do you know who could afford an extra $65,000 each year to pay the Federal Government for the litany of Green New Deal line items, such as tearing down every building and replacing it with a green version? Even the liberal AFL-CIO's energy committee had this to say: We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families. We will not stand by and allow threats to our members' jobs and their families' standard of living to go unanswered. This is the AFL-CIO. Instead of the Green New Deal, we should follow the Texas model of innovation. But it is not just Texas; there are some great private sector initiatives taking place that deal with this concern about CO2 emissions in a much more practical, rational, free market way. We have a thriving energy sector in Texas, as the Presiding Officer knows, and it isn't stifled by overregulation. That is one reason it is thriving. The Green New Deal would force us to rely on foreign energy sources because we wouldn't be able to produce enough here in the United States to keep the lights on. But with investment in innovative solutions and new technologies, we can ensure that our country can remain energy independent and deal with legitimate concerns about the environment. I applaud our colleagues who voted against this legislation to ensure that the American people won't have to pick up the tab for the far-left wing agenda of our Democratic colleagues. Conversely, I stand ready to work on real, achievable solutions and to find ways to reduce emissions and lessen our environmental footprint without overregulating and overcharging. Deer Park, Texas On another note, most people across the country hadn't heard of Deer Park, TX, until last Sunday. They were probably more familiar with nearby Houston, TX. But last Sunday morning was when the first reports came rolling out that residents were forced to shelter in place when a chemical tank at the Intercontinental Terminals Company, or ITC, caught fire. ITC's tanks hold petrochemical liquids and gases used to produce gasoline--all highly flammable and hazardous. As many could have predicted, but certainly no one had hoped, the fire spread quickly to a nearby tank. By Wednesday, seven tanks were aflame. Firefighters fought for 3 days to extinguish the massive flames, and just when it seemed as if the fire was under control, it flared again last Friday, burning through 11 storage tanks in total. A massive fireball and billowing plumes of smoke could be seen for miles. This didn't stop, as new tanks caught fire, forcing schools and businesses to close and residents to rightfully question their safety. Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. By the end of the week, as ITC drained chemicals from the remaining exposed tanks, the containment wall surrounding the tank farm burst. Foam used to fight the fires and contaminants leaked, forcing a portion of the Houston Ship Channel to close and bringing a new round of health risks associated with the release of airborne and liquid toxins. Earlier this week, officials from ITC said that cleanup crews had removed more than 33,000 barrels of an oily mixture from the ship channel. That is 1 million gallons, which is more than I can even imagine. The chemical fire and resulting chemical spill not only brought grave health concerns to those who live and work around Deer Park and pollution to the air and environment, it also ground businesses in the region to a halt. Because of the chemical spill, nearly 7 miles of the Houston Ship Channel closed for 3 days, cutting off this booming area of our economy from the waterway and delaying shipment of goods up and down the ship channel. Some estimates show that the region's oil and gas and petrochemical sectors lost $1 billion in revenue as a result of the closure. This ship channel sees hundreds of shipments a day, with tankers and freighters moving various products and goods up and down the shoreline to businesses surrounding the Houston area. The effects from the closure of facilities and companies in the area will require a costly and lengthy recovery. Folks along the ship channel in Southeast Houston will also be concerned about health consequences until we can find out more answers. The ITC's tanks contain chemicals commonly used in the production of gasoline--xylene, naphtha, pyrolysis gasoline. Naphtha, in particular, can irritate and burn the nose and throat when inhaled. When exposed to fire, naphtha can produce poisonous gases. The health effects of these chemicals are of grave concern, but it is not just the short-term effects--the irritation and burning--that are concerning; contact with these chemicals can potentially have lasting, long-term effects, making it vital to discern the exact level of exposure to these chemicals caused as a result of the fire. It is important that we get to the bottom of this, and I am proud that our local, State, and Federal officials have quickly jumped into action. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Environmental Protection Agency, local responders, and the Coast Guard were all on the scene quickly and have been working around the clock since the start of the first fire. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, have opened investigations into the fires. The Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, are conducting continuous air quality checks. I appreciate the swift action by local, State, and Federal agencies to protect my constituents in the region and conduct investigations to ensure that we can prevent this type of event from ever occurring again. I will monitor those investigations closely as they progress and will ensure they have the resources they need in order to complete their work. Sometimes when people hear us talk about regulation, they act as if our side of the aisle believes that no regulation is appropriate, which is entirely false. It is important to have regulations to protect the public safety of the American people and particularly in places around tank farms like this one in Deer Park. I think it is very important that any existing regulations--that we make sure those regulations and laws are enforced. As part of this investigation, I hope we will find out that there were no violations of existing regulations and laws, but if there were, then the people responsible should be held accountable. I am not going to prejudge at this early point before the investigation takes place whether there is any legal responsibility or whether anybody did things they should not have done consistent with the laws and regulations that do exist, but I will say that once the investigation is complete, if there were violations of regulations designed to protect the public safety or laws passed by Congress and signed by the President, that I will be the first to demand there be accountability for violation of those regulations and those laws. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last month our colleague, the Senator from New York, the Democratic leader, said: So when the Republican leader says he wants to bring the Green New Deal resolution up for a vote, I say: Go for it. Bring it on. Well, here we are. Senators will soon have a chance to vote on the Green New Deal, and we have already seen a lot of confusion and more than a little waffling from our friends on the other side of the aisle, some apparently confused on exactly what they should do on a resolution they themselves proposed. When it was announced, the senior Senator from Massachusetts quickly pledged her support, as did the junior Senator from New Jersey. But I find it pretty curious that some of our colleagues who were among the first to join these Senators and voice their support for this proposal are now among those saying they will simply vote present--present. Even more interesting is one of the bill's authors, the junior Senator from Massachusetts, who called this vote ``sabotage.'' Ordinarily, when proposing a piece of legislation around here, one is tickled pink when the majority leader schedules it for a vote, but somehow some of our colleagues will vote present--neither yea nor nay-- and others claim it is sabotage. As the vote approaches, we have seen many of our Democratic friends running for the hills, trying to provide space between them and this issue. The Green New Deal is chock full of utopian ideas but completely devoid of concrete plans to implement any of its overreaching policies. Even the name is a little disorienting because the Green New Deal is not just a new radical environmental policy; it is that, but it is more. It encompasses much more than that with Medicare for All, free college, and guaranteed jobs. I might add, parenthetically, you might as well throw in free beer and pizza too. What has been billed as an economy invigorator and job innovator in order to lift up the middle class is really anything but. The bottom line of this proposal is a solution in search of a problem. It is about a message; it is not about finding solutions to real problems. Maybe it is useful to take a step back to look at what we have already done in this Congress to help the middle class and to generate job growth. Over the last 2 years, we have worked to roll back burdensome regulations left over from the previous administration and make much needed reforms to our outdated Tax Code--the first time in 30 years. My constituents in Texas have taken notice, and I have heard from many of them who have seen an increase in their take-home pay, thanks to the tax reform bill, for example. Small businesses in Texas have been able to help give their employees more benefits. For example, Village Foods and Pharmacy in Bryan, TX, said that because of the tax reform bill, they were able to provide employee bonuses and implement a 401(k) retirement program, something they were previously unable to do. In San Antonio, my hometown, Hinee Gourmet Coffee said they used their tax cut savings to give their employees raises, as well as to increase employee benefits and upgrade their equipment. The unemployment rate in Texas remains at 3.8 percent, near its historic 43-year low and on par with the national average. The Lone Star State has added 268,000-plus jobs since February 2018. If you go to Midland, TX, and the Permian Basin, the unemployment rate is 2.1 percent. Labor is tight, and employers are looking for workers because the economy is booming, and they need good people to fill these unfilled jobs. I think my State is proof positive that when the government gets out of the way, the economy can flourish. That is why we have seen so many people flooding into Texas to take advantage of the low taxes and abundant job opportunities. It is also why I find it so ironic that a few weeks ago one of the Green New Deal creators, the Congresswoman from New York, chose South by Southwest in Austin to peddle her socialist agenda, because if implemented, the Green New Deal would wipe out most of this prosperity. It would cut job growth; it would dramatically increase taxes and cripple our red-hot economy. One group has estimated that in order to achieve just one portion of this radical agenda--a net-zero emissions transportation system--the annual cost to families would be about $2,000. That is just for part of the Green New Deal. Add in another Green New Deal proposal, and it gets more expensive-- to the tune of $26,000. No, I am not talking about somebody's annual paycheck. I am talking about the estimated cost for families to implement their universal healthcare program that would wipe out all employer-provided coverage and bankrupt Medicare. Families in Texas and across the country would be on the hook for more than $65,000 a year in order to finance the Green New Deal's expensive and extravagant promises. Unfortunately, the list of expenses doesn't stop there. The Green New Deal calls for a move to 100-percent clean and renewable energy in just 10 years. Right now, Texas generates about 19 percent of our energy from renewables. We like renewables in Texas, but there needs to be a baseload that provides energy when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. The Green New Deal has no plan for how it expects States to actually scale up their number from the 19 percent Texas currently generates from renewables to this 100 percent--no plan at all. Without a plan, Texans can forget about electricity that is affordable and reliable; instead, they need to ready themselves for electric bills that could jump to as high as $3,800 a year. Instead of focusing on a grab bag of government mandates and overreaching regulations that we know would bankrupt our country, we need to follow existing models that point a way toward success. We know what works, and, if you will forgive me, I would suggest the Texas model is a good one. Our model values collaboration and partnership with the private sector in order to create affordable and cutting-edge solutions. We are all about innovation and experimentation. That is how we come up with better, smarter, more efficient, and more effective ideas to deal with problems. It is a model based on innovation that has been the backbone of our successful economy. The last thing we need is another Federal Government wet blanket that puts a damper on all of the great innovation and activity that has caused our economy to boom. Texas is really the best example of this with companies like NET Power and NRG Energy, which are leading the way in innovation. NET Power, which has a plant in La Porte, outside of Houston, has developed a first-of-its-kind power system that generates affordable electricity from natural gas with zero emissions--zero emissions. Our State is also proof positive that one can promote innovation while harnessing the traditional power of oil and gas development. In other words, we can be pro-energy, pro-innovation, pro-growth, and pro- environment. But if we implemented the Green New Deal, we wouldn't be talking only about the added costs and expenses to families; hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs and our export economy, which helps fuel our booming economy, would sharply decline. Our energy independence would evaporate, but our need for and reliance on natural gas, coal, and oil would remain. It would focus our efforts back on being more dependent on foreign energy sources rather than generating them domestically. I am sure Russia, for example, would be happy about that. Some have called the Green New Deal the road map for solving climate change, but to be a road map, you have to have clear points on how to get from point A to point B. You actually need to be clear-eyed about the problem you are trying to solve, and you need details in terms of how you actually hope to get to where you want to go. But this proposal is a pie-in-the-sky, unattainable end destination with no details of how to arrive there. So as the Senate prepares to vote on the Green New Deal, I ask that we keep in mind that our constituents didn't send us here to Washington to vote present. That is a copout. Voting present? Give me a break. People ought to vote their conviction. They ought to vote yes or no. To hide behind some copout vote like present is just to take the easy way out, and it is sad that appears to be the road many of our friends across the aisle are about to take, rather than doing the job they have been sent here to do and working with us to come up with actual, tangible solutions that can become law. I know that if we just tried a little bit harder and avoided these sorts of ideological talking points, we could actually solve more of these problems and ours could remain a strong economy. We could create jobs. We can maintain our energy self-sufficiency here in America, and we can deal with environmental emissions concerns. We can find solutions to those problems, but one big power grab by the Federal Government that ruins the economy, bankrupts us, and, frankly, doesn't really make things better is a bad deal for Texans, and I believe a bad deal for Americans. Unsurprisingly, I intend to vote no, and I hope my colleagues will join me in doing the same. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 10 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 armed services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Chairman's housing reform outline.'' committee on finance The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at a time to be determined during votes, to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Andrew M. Saul, of New York, to be Commissioner of Social Security, Gordon Hartogensis, of Connecticut, to be Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and Courtney Dunbar Jones, of Virginia, to be a Judge of the United States Tax Court. committee on foreign relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Ukraine's progress and Russia's malign activities.'' 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 Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Making electronic health information available to patients and providers.'' committee on the judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Examining guidelines for State action.'' committee on veterans' affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. subcommittee on cybersecurity The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. subcommittee on manufacturing, trade, and consumer protection The Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Small business perspectives on a Federal Data Privacy Framework.'' subcommittee on east asia, the pacific, and international cybersecurity policy The Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy of the Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 9:30 a.m., to hearing entitled, ``U.S. policy towards North Korea after the second summit.''

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, as the world now knows, yesterday evening Attorney General Barr sent a letter to Congress on the investigation by the special counsel. In his letter, Attorney General Barr confirmed the intelligence community's assessment that through a coordinated disinformation campaign and hacking operations, Russia sought to interfere with the 2016 election. Any attempts by a foreign government to interfere with our Democratic processes, successful or unsuccessful, must not be taken lightly. Though the special counsel's investigation was very targeted and specific, Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I serve, continue our work to more closely examine the matter as well as the broader threats posed by foreign interference as part of our oversight responsibilities. Although this was the major focus of the special counsel's investigation, it was not the most anticipated portion of Mr. Mueller's report. After reviewing the special counsel's findings, the Attorney General concluded that the Trump campaign did not coordinate with the Russian Government in their efforts to influence the election. Based on their reaction since General Barr released his letter, it is clear the partisans who will never be satisfied with any results of an investigation will not be appeased by this report from the special counsel or General Barr's summary of Mr. Mueller's conclusions. I hope our colleagues will trust the dedicated team of public servants who investigated this matter for the special counsel and now allow Congress to move on so we can deal with other challenges facing the American people. The worst thing we can do is get bogged down in a relitigation of all these issues over which we have no real authority because Congress's role is to conduct oversight for purposes of determining whether the laws have been faithfully executed or whether changes in the law need to occur. Obviously, the special counsel's role is entirely different. It is a criminal investigation to determine whether there is sufficient evidence of a violation of a criminal law that would warrant presentation to a grand jury, charging, and then a trial. Congress's role is demonstrably and decidedly different. I would like to thank Mr. Mueller for conducting his investigation with the utmost professionalism. For those of us who have seen him in action over many years, we expected nothing different. I would also like to thank Attorney General Barr for promptly communicating his conclusions with both Congress and the American people. Throughout Attorney General Barr's confirmation hearings, he stressed his intent to release as much information as possible, and he is now in the process of delivering on his word. I agree with those on both sides of the aisle, as well as the President, who want the Mueller report to be released publicly. As much of the report as can be released, and consistent with existing law, should be made public so the American people can read it for themselves, but I also agree with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Graham, that we also need to understand better how we got to this place. We need to look at the decisions made by the leadership in the Department of Justice, the FBI, the intelligence community, and the Obama White House during the time in which this counterintelligence investigation was initiated against President Trump while he was still a candidate, and why, contrary to the practice as testified to by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, a defensive briefing was not given to the Trump campaign so they could know that the Russians were trying the doors and the windows and trying to get into the organization. We know now, from Mr. Mueller's report, they were unsuccessful in establishing a connection and collusion, as the word has been used, but we know the investigation that initially was started, ultimately, came up emptyhanded and resulted in this narrative, which prompted the appointment of a special counsel and this long investigation that Mr. Mueller has now completed. So we need to understand that better as part of our oversight responsibilities, particularly those of us, such as the Presiding Officer and I, who are on the Judiciary Committee who have explicit oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice as well as the FBI.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, when President Trump declared a national emergency over the crisis along our southern border, it was immediately met with expressions of concern--some, in my view, illegitimate; others, quite legitimate. As I have said in the past, I will repeat again that this--what we are doing here today--is no one's first choice, but it is useful to recall how we find ourselves at this point today. Of course, when it comes to funding, when it comes to appropriations, Congress holds the purse. That is why, each year, the Congress receives the President's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, just as we did earlier this week. Even though, in the President's budget, he outlines his priorities, my experience in the Senate is that most Presidential budgets, while they are an expression of the President's priorities, are dead on arrival. It then falls to us, in the Senate and the House, to look at his request and to work on a compromise budget and appropriations process and fund the operations of the Federal Government. This process is arduous, it is time-consuming, and it is often frustrating, but it is the way the system is supposed to work. As all Americans can attest, what we have seen over the last few months looks like something very different. The refusal of Democrats in the House and the Senate to engage in negotiations on border security funding led us to a 35-day government shutdown. Despite the clear message from border security experts, despite seeing the humanitarian crisis at the border, described by President Obama in 2014, get many times worse, our Democratic colleagues decided to play politics instead of dealing with the problem. We heard the Speaker of the House call border barriers immoral. The minority leader here in the Senate said that there would be no additional money for physical barriers along the border. They know, just as I know, that back in 2006 and 2008, the Secure Fence Act was passed with broad bipartisan support, including support from then- Senator Barack Obama, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senator Chuck Schumer, currently the Democratic leader in the Senate, who now feels that this President should not get any additional money to fund border security measures that the President believes are an important response to the crisis we see at the border. My preference would be for the normal appropriations process to be used, but when your negotiating partners refuse to take a seat at the table, normal goes out the window. Our colleagues across the aisle left the President with few options to fund what he believed was so important for the Nation's security, and that is what led us to this situation. Enter the 1976 legislation, the National Emergencies Act. What the President did is ask his lawyers to look at what other authority, under congressionally passed laws signed by previous Presidents, might he have to access additional funds, and his lawyers pointed to the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which has granted Presidents, since that time, broad powers to reprogram funding previously appropriated by Congress. This idea that somehow this is an unconstitutional act by this President is simply wrong. Congress has given the President this authority. They may regret it today or they may disagree that this is an emergency or they may disagree with the way the President wants to spend the money to secure the border, but, clearly, the President is using authorities the Congress has previously granted, not just to him but to all Presidents since 1976. My father liked to remind me growing up--one of the things he always told me is that hindsight is always 20-20. Our predecessors did not anticipate the fights we would be having today, which are largely contrived and unnecessary. We should be working together to solve these problems, not engaged in a zero-sum game of political brinkmanship. That is what brought us to where we are today. I think it is appropriate to look at what Congress did in 1976, and in a prospective sort of way, ask ourselves: Have we delegated too much authority to Presidents since that time? There are literally 123 statutory authorizations that could be invoked under the National Emergencies Act--123 times that Congress has said a President, upon the declaration of a national emergency, can reprogram money that Congress has appropriated--123 times. That was a shock not only to me but, I dare say, to virtually all of our colleagues here in the Senate. Many of these statutory grants of authority are exceedingly broad. They cover everything from the military to public health to Federal pay schedules. With these broad authorities already part of the law, the emergency powers provision could be viewed as a fail-safe for an agenda that the administration--an administration alone--is pushing. Let's say, hypothetically, that a future President decides there is a need to declare a national emergency over climate change. Maybe they decide this is a way to enact the Green New Deal being pushed by some of our colleagues across the aisle. Considering the potential scope and scale in which these powers could be abused in the future and this overdelegation of authority that Congress has done 123 times, I believe we should take a look at the National Emergencies Act, once we vote today, and have a fulsome debate and discussion about whether this is really the sort of delegation of powers that the Founding Fathers intended when they said that distinct separated power should be given to each branch of the government: the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branch. It is clear that the President is operating within the authority Congress has given to him. You don't have to like it. You don't have to agree with it, but it is clear the President is operating within the authority Congress delegated to him. Rather than talking in circles and debating that fact, I think our discussion should focus on the structure of emergency powers moving forward. I believe there is a need to rein back in some of the authority that Congress has delegated to presidents just as a constitutional concern, as a constitutional matter, which is why I am cosponsoring a bill which has been introduced by our colleague Senator Lee which gives Congress a stronger voice in processes under the National Emergencies Act. That bill will now be referred to the Homeland Security Committee. Chairman Johnson has said he will give that bill a hearing and then a markup. Then I would expect, at some point, that legislation will make its way to the Senate floor where we will have a debate and a vote. The proposal would allow the President to maintain his statutory powers to declare an emergency, but that declaration would end after 30 days unless Congress affirmatively votes to extend it. This would maintain a President's ability to provide funding during national emergencies while restoring Congress's proper authority under article I of the Constitution. I think this is an honest and important effort to hopefully prevent us from ending up in this predicament in the future. The real cause of where we are today is just politics--Ms. Pelosi's deciding that building any border barrier was immoral, after Democrats and Republicans had not made that a particularly political decision in the past. In fact, it had been bipartisan that we did support it as one tool in the toolbox for Border Patrol, in addition to technology and personnel, some physical barriers. Rather than scolding the President of the United States for exercising statutory authority that Congress has already given, we should try to work together to solve these problems rather than engaging in the kind of political brinksmanship that brings us here today. We should fix--should it be the will of Congress--this massive delegation of authority not just to this President but to any President since 1976. I have to disagree with our colleague from Colorado and others who suggest that what is happening at the border is not serious. By the way, I haven't heard any of them suggest any alternative solutions. Perhaps instead of Border Patrol securing the border we ought to have police officers at the border directing traffic, waving people through to their chosen destination. I think that would be a terrible mistake, but that seems to be the only alternative our friends across the aisle are offering to this humanitarian crisis and emergency at the border. Last month, 76,000 people illegally crossed the border and were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, making this an 11- year high. So rather than 76,000 people in 1 month, which our Democratic colleagues don't seem to think is a problem, let's say next month it is 150,000 or 300,000 or 600,000. As long as we have this attraction for people from other countries to come to the United States, and if they pay the fee to the criminal organizations that transport them here, they will successfully make their way into the United States. They are going to keep coming. It is clear this problem isn't going away, and it is overwhelming the communities along the border as well as the Federal Government's ability to deal with it. I remember what the Director of Customs and Border Protection said. He said: When the Border Patrol is handing out diapers and juice boxes to children coming across the border, the drug cartels will exploit that and move their poison into the United States. I will just remind my colleagues that more than 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year alone. A substantial amount of it was synthetic opioids in the form of fentanyl, but a lot of it had to do with heroin that had made its way from Mexico into the United States because 90 percent of the heroin that comes into the United States comes from Mexico. So while the Border Patrol is handing out diapers and juice boxes, the drug cartels are moving in heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamine across the border into our Nation and getting rich in the process. We know border security is complicated, and that it is not just about security, it is about facilitating legitimate trade, travel, and commerce. Last year alone, there was $300 billion worth of commerce that took place just at Texas ports of entry with Mexico--$300 billion. That supports an awful lot of American jobs. The terrain in the 1,200-mile border between Texas and Mexico varies significantly. What works well in one sector does not work well in another. What I continue to hear from my constituents, including elected officials at the border, is that if this is the Border Patrol telling us what they need in order to succeed to do the job we have asked them to do, we are all in, but if this is just politics and elected officials in Washington trying to micromanage the solution along the border, we are skeptical. This is what they tell me, and I don't blame them. I think we need to take action to adequately fund our border security missions, and I hope our discussions in the coming months will be more productive than they will be this year. I will vote against the resolution of disapproval today and encourage my colleagues to instead ask my colleagues to focus their energy on reforming the legislation that got us into this situation to begin with.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 6 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 Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Financial stability oversight council nonbank designation.'' Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Finance The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The President's Fiscal year 2020 budget.'' Committee on Finance The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 1:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The President's Fiscal year 2020 budget.'' Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 2 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.

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 news cycle is relentless here in Washington, DC, and between cable TV and social media, it is pretty hard to remember what happened an hour or a day or a week ago, but it is important to talk about the context surrounding today's circumstances, and that is why I wanted to come talk a little bit more about what is happening on our southern border. Twelve hundred miles of Texas is common border with Mexico, and we are at ground zero when it comes to what comes across the border and what happens at the border. Frankly, it is a lot more complicated than most people seem to appreciate, at least by the way they talk about it. Not only is the border a source of economic energy for our country, by trade and legitimate travel, we know our border communities themselves are among the safest in the country. Their crime statistics are basically equivalent to that of any other comparable city in any other part of the country, but what happens across the border is a very different story. Some of the most dangerous cities in Mexico are right there along the border, primarily because they are still controlled by the cartels that operate what are called plazas where they essentially take tolls or shake down people who are trying to come across for whatever purpose it might be, whether it is people coming across to find a job in the United States or drug traffickers or human traffickers--people selling women and children for sex or human servitude. So it is a complicated scenario, to be sure, but one thing I can tell you is, there is a humanitarian crisis at the border that was not manufactured by the Trump administration. In fact, the denial in which a lot of our Democratic colleagues find themselves I think is more related to the fact that President Trump is the one currently identifying it rather than the facts on the ground because, in 2014, President Obama called what was happening at the border a humanitarian crisis, and that did not seem to be a controversial comment at the time, but now that President Trump is calling this a crisis and emergency, people, unfortunately, can't take off their partisan jersey, and many call it a fake emergency or fake crisis, which is demonstrably false. Let's go back to 2014. That year, about 68,000 families were apprehended at the southern border, an overwhelming number. This, coupled with an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied children, led President Obama, as I mentioned, to call this a ``growing humanitarian and security crisis.'' That was President Obama. He was right, especially about the growing part. Let me just pause for a moment to talk about why are we seeing children and families coming across the border as opposed to adult men. We detained about 400,000 people coming across the border last year, but we are seeing more and more unaccompanied children and family units coming across the border. The simple fact is, the criminal organizations that exploit this vulnerability at our border have figured out what our laws provide for and where the gaps are, and they realize, if an unaccompanied child or a family unit comes across the border, current law requires us to separate the adult from the child-- because we don't want to put a child in a jail or detention facility-- and place them, through Health and Human Services, with a sponsor, ultimately, in the United States. Once they get a sponsor in the United States, then it may be years, if ever, before their asylum claim is actually heard in front of an immigration judge. The fact is, in the vast majority of circumstances, that asylum claim will be granted--or I should say mooted by the fact that people don't show up months and years later for their hearing in front of the immigration judge but simply melt into the great American landscape. In this case, the cartels win, and American border security loses because our Democratic colleagues simply refuse to work with us to make commonsense fixes to this broken asylum system which allows the cartels and children and family units to essentially exploit the vulnerabilities in our laws and successfully make their way into the country. That is what they call a pull factor. There are push factors because of the violence occurring in countries in Central America, but the pull factor is the fact that if you try to come to the United States as an unaccompanied child or a family unit, you will likely succeed. So it should be no surprise to any of us that these numbers continue to grow. Back when President Obama talked about this being a growing humanitarian and security crisis, there were 68,000 family units apprehended at the border. In the last 5 months alone this year, there have been more than 136,000 family units apprehended along the southern border. Historically, we witness the highest numbers of apprehensions in the spring and summer months, so I anticipate things will not get better-- they will only get worse--in the months ahead. My State and our border communities are certainly feeling the brunt of these growing numbers. We also know, as the Border Patrol has told us, that the cartels that move illegal drugs into the United States frequently try to flood the border with migrants, these family units, in order to distract law enforcement personnel from the heroin or the methamphetamine or the synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl, that come across our border and poison so many Americans. We know that last year alone, more than 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. A substantial amount of that was opioids, including the synthetic fentanyl. Frequently, the precursors come from China through Mexico and into the United States, and 90 percent of the heroin used in the United States comes from Mexico. This is a serious matter, and we should not turn a blind eye to it. Compared to this time last year, family unit apprehensions have grown 200 percent in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. That is McAllen, TX, and that area. They are up more than 490 percent in the Del Rio Sector, and, most staggering, in the El Paso Sector, family unit apprehensions have increased more than 1,600 percent. For those who believe this is somehow a fake emergency or not really a crisis, I would ask them: If those numbers were doubled or tripled, would they believe there is a crisis or an emergency? I believe there is now, and I believe those who deny that a crisis exists are simply turning a blind eye to it for, unfortunately, mainly partisan purposes. Despite what many on the left claim, there is indeed a humanitarian crisis on the border. In addition to the waves of Central Americans arriving by the thousands, we are also trying to stop the flow of illegal narcotics, as I said, and combat the disgusting practice of human smuggling. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, who leads the more than 60,000 professionals working to provide security and a safe place for trade to come across our ports of entry. Many of these employees of Customs and Border Protection call Texas home and work alongside of State and local law enforcement to protect us and our neighbors from the dangerous goods and, yes, persons trying to cross the border illegally. Of course, the C in CBP stands for Customs, and they are also charged with promoting the safe and efficient movement of legitimate trade and travel. In Texas, given our proximity to the border, given our location, that is a big task. Our State is the No. 1 exporter in the country, with exports last year totaling more than $315 billion. That is exporting things that we grow, livestock that we raise, and manufactured goods that we make. We sell those to Mexico, our biggest customer far and away. Folks who live and work along the southern border are proud of the strong bonds our country has with our southern neighbor and the dynamic culture in the region. Many have family on both sides of the border, which makes it an extraordinarily unique place in our country. Thanks to the dedicated Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials, flourishing businesses, and a vibrant community, the border region is thriving. I was on the telephone with one of my constituents from McAllen, TX, yesterday. He said: Our cities on the border are safe. You would think, from what you hear from the national discussion and debates in Washington, that people have to wear body armor in McAllen, TX. I said: Well, part of the problem is that people are confusing the dangerous flow of goods and people across the border with actual violence occurring on the border. Just to reiterate, our border communities on the U.S. side are some of the safest in the country. On the other side, for example, Juarez, which is on the other side of the border from El Paso, has historically been one of the most dangerous places on the planet, as well as Tamaulipas, which is the Mexican State right opposite of McAllen-- again, a hot bed of cartel activity and violence. But U.S. cities, I would say, are relatively safe, just like any other comparable city in the United States. So people perhaps not knowing better or, maybe, perhaps just trying to make a better story out of the facts, and I think conflate these ideas. But there is no doubt that the drugs, the human trafficking, and the masses of humanity coming across our border are creating a crisis at the border of a humanitarian and security nature. Of course, between the ports of entry--and the ports of entry are where the legitimate trade and travel come across our international bridges--there are vast swaths of land that are relatively unpatrolled. The closest Border Patrol agent could be miles away--something human smugglers know and they exploit. These aren't good Samaritans leading immigrants to a better life. They are criminals who put profit before people and have zero regard for human life. According to a 2017 study by Doctors Without Borders, 68 percent of the migrants reported being victims of violence during transit from Mexico or through Mexico, and 31 percent of the women surveyed had been sexually abused during the journey. These are the migrants who turn themselves over to the tender mercies of these criminal organizations. Sixty-eight percent have been victims of violence, and 31 percent of the women have been sexually assaulted. The journey these families face on their way to the United States is a harrowing one, and some of them don't make it. We have to continue working to stop anyone even considering this journey from attempting it. I still remember going to Falfurrias, TX, which is away from the border but is a Border Patrol checkpoint. What happens is that the coyotes will bring people across the border, put them in stash houses in sickening and inhumane conditions, and, then, when the time is right, put them in a vehicle and transit them up our highway system. The Falfurrias checkpoint in Brooks County is one of the ones that checks people coming through on their way into the mainland. But what happens is that the smugglers will tell the migrants: Get out of the car before the checkpoint. Here is a milk carton or jug full of water. Maybe they give them some candy bars or the like, and say: We will see you on the other side. So many of the migrants--particularly in the hottest part of the summer in Texas--unfortunately, die making that trip. I have been to Brooks County and have seen some of the unidentified bones and remains of migrants who died trying to make that trip. Of course, you can imagine coming from Central America in the first place. By the time they even get to Falfurrias and Brooks County and the checkpoint, many of them are already suffering from exposure, including dehydration. As you can imagine, during the time I have been in the Senate, I have spent a significant amount of time along the border meeting with CBP personnel, law enforcement officials, small businesses, landowners, community leaders, and other citizens about the challenges they and we are facing and what it is we might be able to do here in Washington to help. What I have heard repeatedly is that we need a three-pronged approach. I know we are primarily focused on or obsessed with physical barriers, and that is certainly a piece of it, but that is only one of the three elements that we need to deal with border security. We need barriers in hard-to-control areas. We need personnel. We need the Border Patrol. And, yes, we need technology. Technology can be a force multiplier, we all know, to help the Border Patrol identify drug smugglers or human traffickers or coyotes bringing human or economic migrants across. What works best in one sector isn't what is necessarily best for another. So this idea that we would build a physical barrier across the entire State is just nonsense. That is not what the President has proposed. I remember that former Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, later the Chief of Staff, said: We are not proposing to build a wall ``from sea to shining sea''--because he knew what we know, and that is that what works best in one sector doesn't work well in another. So we need to keep both the funding and the flexibility to provide the most needed resources that will work best. That is not something we should be trying to dictate or micromanage from thousands of miles away. As I mentioned, the humanitarian crisis has evolved significantly since 2014, and I have no doubt that it will continue to evolve in the coming years. We need to continue the conversation with experts on the ground and stakeholders on the ground and make sure that we can adapt as the threat evolves. Based on feedback from my constituents in Texas, the funding bill we passed last month included five specific areas, including the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge and the National Butterfly Center, where barriers cannot be constructed. It also included language stating that DHS must consult with local elected officials in certain counties and towns. I happen to believe that kind of consultation can be very positive and can lead to a win-win situation. I will mention just one location in Hidalgo County, TX. They are right there on the river, and they had to improve the levees because they were worried about the rains leading to floods and the destruction that would follow. In order to deal with improvement of the levee system, they actually worked with the Border Patrol to come up with what they called a levee wall, which helped the Border Patrol control the flow of migrants to places where they could be accessed most easily, but it also provided the improvement in the levee system that helped the Rio Grande Valley, and, particularly, Hidalgo County to develop those counties without prohibitively high or even nonexistent insurance coverage. So that is an example of how, by consulting with local stakeholders, we can come up with win-win scenarios. The border region's future is bright, thanks to the dedicated law enforcement professionals, elected officials, and business community leaders who keep it safe and prosperous, but we simply can't turn a blind eye and ignore the high level of illegal migration and substances moving across our border. We can't turn a blind eye to the migrants being left for dead in the ranchlands by human smugglers. We can't ignore the humanitarian crisis that continues to grow at an exponential rate. The President's emergency declaration was his commitment to finally address the problems that overwhelmed our communities along the southern border--both in 2014, when President Obama identified it, and today. It is our duty to deliver real results--not only for the people of Texas but for our friends to the south. I have heard the concerns raised by my constituents and colleagues about the use of emergency powers in this situation, and I share some of those concerns. I still believe that the regular appropriations process should always be used, but, unfortunately, we saw a refusal on the part of the Speaker of the House and others to engage in bona fide negotiations on border security funding, and that left the administration with what it deemed to be an inadequate source of revenue to do the border security measures they felt they needed in order to address the humanitarian crisis. Rather than engaging with the President and debating whether the President has the authority to declare a national emergency for border security--which he clearly does--I think our discussions should focus on the structure of emergency powers laws moving forward and whether Congress has delegated too much power, not just to this President but to any President under these circumstances. I think Brandeis University did a survey of all of the congressional grants of emergency powers that Congress has made over the last years and has identified 123 separate statutes which, if the President declares a national emergency, will allow the President to reprogram money that has been appropriated by Congress for various purposes. I think that is a serious overdelegation of authority by Congress to the executive branch, which is why I intend to cosponsor a bill introduced by our colleague, Senator Lee from Utah, to give Congress a stronger voice in the processes under the National Emergencies Act. I am going to continue to come to the floor to argue with my colleagues about what we need in that unique part of our country, which is the border region, not only to have a prosperous region in America but also to have a safer America. It is not as simple, frankly, as some people would have it be, and it should not be the subject of partisanship and game-playing, like we have seen the debate over border security under the President's request become. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. We yield back all time.

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, this week, the Senate will continue to fill vacancies across the Federal bench. This afternoon, we will vote to confirm Paul Matey to be U.S. Circuit Court Judge for the Third Circuit, and then we will move to the nomination of Neomi Rao for a seat on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals-- the seat that was vacated by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Throughout her career, Ms. Rao has served in all three branches of government. She clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Harvie Wilkinson on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. She also worked here in the Senate on the Judiciary Committee for then-Chairman Orrin Hatch. She has worked as Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and in her current position as Administrator for the Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs--one of the most important and least understood Federal Agencies. In addition to her outstanding career in public service, Ms. Rao was also an associate professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and is a leading scholar in the field of administrative law. Knowing her impressive background, it was no surprise to see that the American Bar Association, once hailed by the minority leader as the ``gold standard by which judicial candidates are judged,'' rated her as ``well qualified.'' When considering this particular seat, it is hard to imagine anyone better prepared. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has sometimes been referred to as the ``second highest court in the land'' and is unique because its caseload is disproportionately weighted toward administrative law and litigation involving the Federal Government. Despite her outstanding qualifications, our Democratic colleagues have attempted to tank Ms. Rao's nomination over decades-old writings. That sounds pretty familiar, although, as I recall, Justice Kavanaugh was excoriated for things in his high school yearbook. At least we have moved on to college when it comes to Ms. Rao. During her confirmation hearing last month, critics reverted back to that Kavanaugh playbook and began criticizing her for things she wrote in college rather than asking her productive questions about maybe what she has learned since that time or how her views may have changed or how she has functioned as head of the OIRA or how her office has reduced regulatory costs by more than $23 billion. Instead, critics chose to focus on her decades-old writings in college. Over the years, Ms. Rao has done what we have all done: She has grown and learned from her experiences. She has repeatedly said that she no longer holds the views that she wrote about back in college. I believe we should judge a nominee not by views they expressed in high school or college but what they have done since that time as mature adults and professionals. So just add me to the long list of people who believe Neomi Rao should be confirmed for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Two dozen former Supreme Court clerks who worked alongside Rao sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee, touting her qualifications. They said: Many of us have worked in government, at both the federal and state levels, some for Democrats and some for Republicans. . . . While our professional and personal paths may have diverged, one of things we have always shared is admiration for Neomi. We are confident she will serve our country well on the DC Circuit. We have seen similar letters from her classmates at both Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, as well as a group of more than 50 of her former law students. Her former students wrote: Our views span the political spectrum; we have differing positions on the role and work of the Federal judiciary; and we have gone on to work in law firms, government, public interest organizations, and judges' chambers. Yet despite her differences, we all agree that Professor Rao would make an outstanding addition to the bench. We have no doubt that, if confirmed, she would be a brilliant and fair arbiter of the cases that came before her. I agree. I supported Ms. Rao's nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I will once again look forward to supporting her nomination when the full Senate votes on her nomination this week.

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, in thinking about some of the debates swirling about here in Washington, DC, as to whether capitalism or socialism should be a preferred economic model, I recall a story that involves Boris Yeltsin, who went on to become the Russian President, who happened to be in Houston, TX, in 1989, visiting the Johnson Space Center--a very important part of NASA in Houston--when he decided to visit a grocery store in Clear Lake, TX. Though it sounds like it could be, this isn't the beginning of a Wes Anderson film. It was nearly 20 years ago, in 1989, when the Soviet Union had not yet imploded and when the Berlin Wall was still standing. It would be 2 years before Yeltsin would be forced to take steps to begin to transform the Soviet economy. As I said, he was in the Houston area, finishing a tour of the Johnson Space Center, when he made an unscheduled stop at a Randalls grocery store before he headed to Miami. The Houston Chronicle reported at the time that Yeltsin gawked at the abundant produce, the selection of fresh fish, the checkout aisle, and especially the frozen pudding pops. He roamed the aisles, according to the story, stared at the frozen food section, and took advantage of the free samples of cheese. He actually talked to some of the customers there and asked questions about what they were buying and how much it cost them. He was stunned--absolutely stunned--as this was a far cry from the grocery stores in the Soviet Union. Yeltsin said: ``Even the Politburo doesn't have this kind of choice, not even Mr. Gorbachev.'' That day, Boris Yeltsin learned something that the overwhelming majority of people in our country already know--that socialism cannot provide the bounty, the prosperity, or the choices that capitalism can. Leon Aron, who wrote Yeltsin's biography, quoted one of his associates. He said: For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ``What have they done to our poor people?'' he said, after a long silence. He told his fellow countrymen who were traveling with him that if their people were to see the conditions in American supermarkets, ``there would be a revolution.'' Make no mistake about it. If the most radical Democrats in our country today get their way on the outlandish socialist policies they are pushing, the American people will be calling for a revolution. The Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and economic security for those who are able-bodied yet who are unwilling to work are policies that are not going to raise up the most economically disadvantaged people in our country. They are going to pull everyone else down. Socialism promises not prosperity for all but what Winston Churchill called the equal sharing of miseries. Though these self-proclaimed democratic socialists make big promises on how their policies will deliver fairness and equality for all Americans, that could not be further from the truth. The first thing these policies would do is to bankrupt our country. These unworkable economic policies will kill jobs and outlaw our most reliable, affordable energy sources. ``Medicare for All'' will turn into ``Medicare for none'' when the entire system crashes and when those who are unwilling to work will lose any incentive to even try. It would subsidize a nation of slackers. This threat of the seductive embrace of socialism isn't an exaggeration. Some of our friends across the aisle are actually critical of the equal opportunity, ``pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,'' hard-working economic system that has made our country the envy of the world. They say: You didn't create your success; the government did--what a bunch of hooey. Over the weekend, one Democratic Member of the House who was speaking at South by Southwest in Austin, my hometown, referred to capitalism as ``irredeemable'' and tried to blame capitalism for every problem that exists in our society. I admit that we are not perfect, but capitalism isn't the cause of every problem that exists in our society. Of all places to complain about the perils of capitalism, there is more than a little irony in her having chosen Texas--the most successful, free- enterprise economy in our Nation. Instead of talking about this socialist, Big Government approach that we all know will fail, let's look at how the Texas model has led my State to become an economic powerhouse and the envy of the Nation. We keep taxes low, government spending restrained, and regulations at a rational minimum to give people and the small businesses that provide jobs the freedom to pursue their dreams and to prosper. I must say that it is obvious that it is working. The unemployment rate in Texas is 4 percent, which is among the lowest in the Nation. In Midland--in the Permian Basin, the heart of the energy boom in my State--unemployment is 2.1 percent. You are hard-pressed to find anybody to take the jobs that do exist because, essentially, everybody who is willing to work is fully employed. The biggest problem that job creators have is getting the workers they need. Yet there is a silver lining for the workers. This pushes wages higher as businesses compete for their labor. Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released international trade data that showed Texas, for the 17th year in a row, as the top State for exports. We make stuff, and we sell stuff. We grow things. We raise cattle and agricultural products, and we sell them. We are the top State for exports. In fact, our exports account for nearly 20 percent of the exports of the entire Nation. In 2018, that totaled more than $315 billion of exports--more than double that of California's, which is the second highest exporter. These earnings not only fuel the economy of our State, but they boost the entire Nation. Our export dominance is only part of the reason Texas is thriving. Together, with lower taxes and less burdensome regulation, businesses and dream seekers are drawn to our State, which creates opportunities for everyone who is willing to work. Instead of growing government and increasing the tax burden, we allow businesses--small, medium, and large--to invest in their workforces, in our communities, and in our way of life. In Texas, we believe that less government is more. We don't try to centralize power in the statehouse. We give businesses, entrepreneurs, and hard-working Texans of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and races the freedom by which they can create their own opportunities. We know that the more you tax, the more there are government controls and that the more you regulate, the greater the burden is on new ideas, investment, and opportunity. The socialist policies being espoused by some members of the Democratic Party are not going to make our businesses and our economy stronger or more competitive. Indeed, history has shown that these are failed policies that will stifle innovation, discourage hard work, and make us look more like that 1980s Soviet grocery store. Instead of our grocery stores being filled with a selection of beautiful produce, fresh meat, your favorite snack foods, they will be stocked with whatever the government says it wants you to have. Instead of making an appointment with your doctor when you are sick, you will wait for Lord knows how long to get an appointment with a government- run clinic and have few, if any, options. Instead of forcing ourselves out of bed in the morning to go to work, people who are able but who don't want to work will stay in bed, knowing they can receive food and medical care that will be subsidized by your labor and your hard-earned tax dollars. That is what these old--but now, somehow, dressed up as something new--failed ideas that have been proposed by our Democratic colleagues would do. Forget government ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' They want a country by the government, for the government-- the people be damned. In his autobiography, Yeltsin wrote: ``When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people . . . that such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty.'' I pray that our country never sees that day when it is brought to ruin because of these 21st century socialists. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, at the risk of sounding like the mutual admiration society, let me express my appreciation to the Senator from North Carolina, who gave an outstanding presentation, talking about the crisis that exists at our southern border. I really can't improve on it, but I will try. Fortunately, Senator Tillis is one of those rare Senators who actually has traveled down to the border at my invitation. As he said, he rode horseback as we tried to find our way through the carrizo cane, which obscures visibility for the Border Patrol, and he saw it for himself. I appreciate his bringing the benefit of that experience here to the floor and adding to this important debate. I was struck by a hashtag I saw being used in the House of Representatives. It is ``FakeEmergency''--hashtag ``FakeEmergency.'' Well, let's mention two sets of parents. For the 7- and 8-year-old boy and girl who recently died in CBP custody at the border who made their way from Guatemala, I don't think this is a fake emergency for them. As Customs and Border Protection Commissioner McAleenan said, many of these immigrants who come all the way from countries like Guatemala suffer from exposure, including dehydration. Many of them are physically or sexually assaulted. Then, there is the danger of infectious diseases, because many have not been vaccinated for common childhood diseases that American citizens would be protected from. Unfortunately, they are a commodity to the criminal organizations that transport people for roughly $5,000 per person. The cartels--the criminal organizations--are commodity agnostic. They will just as soon usher a migrant from Central America up here who wants to join a family member and perhaps find a job. They will just as soon charge somebody who will ultimately be trafficked and become the victim of modern-day slavery, involuntary servitude, or sex slavery, or they will be happy to move drugs, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana--you name it. In fact, 90 percent of the heroin that comes into the United States comes from Mexico, and of the 70,000-plus Americans who died from drug overdoses just last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, a substantial portion was from the opioids. In other words, that came from Mexico--whether they be pills, fentanyl, or heroin, which is perhaps the cheapest form of opioid. The Senator from North Carolina and I serve on the Judiciary Committee, and we heard at length from the Commissioner McAleenan of Customs and Border Protection. The picture he painted was pretty bleak, but it bears repetition. Unfortunately, around here it is hard to know when people are listening. Sometimes you have to say the same thing over and over and over before it begins to penetrate people's consciousness. But this is important. So we need to emphasize this. Many migrants make this arduous journey for days, weeks, or sometimes for months, traveling without food or water. When they arrive, they are often sick and require extensive medical treatment. Of course, there is, as I indicated a moment ago, the horrific stories of physical and sexual abuse. The percentage of women and girls who are sexually abused en route from their homes in Central America is revolting, to use a word. The Border Patrol spends a vast amount of their time dealing with the human needs of children. In other words, these are law enforcement officers who are basically trying to supply diapers and juice boxes to children who are coming with their families and overwhelming our capacity at the border. While the cartels exploit the fact that the Border Patrol is tied up with this sort of processing of asylum seekers, the drugs come into the country. That is part of the cartel's plan. They have studied our laws. They know where there are gaps in coverage. They know what they can do to distract law enforcement officers so that drugs and human trafficking can get through the border. Despite all of this and despite the facts that the Senator from North Carolina detailed, we still hear our friends on the other side refusing to engage or offer any solutions whatsoever. As a matter of fact, one of our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee yesterday said: We need to preserve the two things that are the biggest obstacles to getting to a solution. We need to preserve those. In essence, what she was saying is that we need the Border Patrol not to secure our border. We need the Border Patrol to just wave people on through, like a traffic cop. As long as we have these gaps in our asylum laws where we treat people from noncontiguous countries differently than we do from Mexico or Canada and as long as they can wait for years before their asylum claim can be finally adjudicated by an immigration judge, the criminal organizations are winning. They have won because they can successfully place a person in the United States, notwithstanding our laws, by overwhelming our resources at the border and in our interior. I have talked about the need to increase border security many times on the floor, and I know I risk sounding like a broken record, but as long as we have people in the other body sending out hashtags on social media calling this a fake emergency--when President Obama himself, in 2014, called this a humanitarian crisis--it is going to be necessary, I am afraid, to keep telling the story and talk about what is necessary in order to bring security to our southwest border. My State has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. Our relationship with Mexico is very important because they are one of our main trading partners. There are a lot of good and important things that come back and forth across the border in terms of people legally visiting the United States and in terms of commerce and trade. I have seen one estimate that about 5 million American jobs depend on trade with Mexico. It is not just Texas, either. But the toll that the current status of our immigration laws has on the lives of immigrants crossing our border is real, and the strain it puts on our ability to engage in legitimate trade and commerce to flow freely through our ports is real as well. All of these need to be addressed and without delay. Let me talk a little bit about the records that have been broken. We saw last month alone that 76,000 people illegally crossed the border and were apprehended by U.S. Customs and the Border Patrol--76,000 people. According to the Commissioner, we are on track to see 600,000 to maybe 650,000 during the next calendar year. This is an 11-year high and averages more than 2,000 people a day. This is not a record we want to be proud of. We have seen a growing number of family units. The reason why the cartels and criminal organizations bring family units is because they know what our law requires in terms of separating the children from the adults and then placing the children with a sponsor in the United States, only to have them raise their asylum claim in front of an immigration judge years hence. As I said, many simply don't show up for that, and so game over. We have seen a growing number of family units coming across the border, a 338-percent increase in 2018. The cartels have studied our laws. They are advertising down in Central America, saying: If you want to come to the United States, all you have to do is come as a family unit. We have studied American law, we know where the gaps are, and we are going to exploit them. Already Border Patrol has apprehended more family units than in all of 2018, and the border regions of Texas are feeling the strain. Our local officials--the mayors, the county judge--and our medical facilities are just not designed for this massive influx of humanity. In the Rio Grande Valley, family unit apprehensions have increased 209 percent since this time last year. Here is a staggering figure: In El Paso, TX, it is a 1,689-percent increase. As Secretary Nielsen said yesterday, testifying in front of the House, our border is at the breaking point. Our capacity to deal with this influx of humanity is creating a genuine crisis. These are not just percentage points or numbers; they illustrate the human misery and the challenges of the dedicated law enforcement personnel along the border and also the folks who work trying to deal with the children, whether it is providing them medical care or trying to find them a safe place to live in the United States. This is not a manufactured crisis. This is a real crisis. In a normal political environment, these numbers would raise the alarm bells, and we would take action--we would actually do something about it--but we aren't operating in a normal political climate, to be sure. Back in 2006 and 2008, Republicans and Democrats voted on something called the Secure Fence Act. It wasn't particularly partisan or political. This year, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called physical barriers ``immoral.'' The Democratic leader of the Senate, the Senator from New York, said not one penny was going to be appropriated for any physical barriers along the border. For those who would argue this is a fake crisis, I would ask them to check with the Texans who live across the border and deal with this every day. I recently got an email from a friend of mine who has a ranch outside of San Antonio, my hometown. He said he and his wife basically have to arm themselves, and they have to take precautions against people coming across their land because they don't know whether it is going to be some hungry migrant who is just simply looking to find their way to San Antonio or to Houston and then north or whether it is going to be people wearing backpacks carrying fentanyl and heroin. They just don't know, so they have to prepare. They basically have to lock their doors, and they are captives in their own house. So what has changed since we talked about this back in 2006? What has changed? My question is more of a rhetorical one because we know Democrats will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from delivering on his promise to provide border security, even if it means turning their backs on something they have historically supported. As you might imagine, I have made a point to spend a lot of time in communities along the border. I have talked to the experts--our Border Patrol agents, sheriffs, mayors, landowners, and countless others--on how to best deal with this security and humanitarian crisis. These are the people who know best. They are the experts. They know how best to secure the border. They will be the first to tell you that when it comes to border security, one size does not fit all. I have mentioned before my friend Judge Eddie Trevino from Cameron County. I was in a meeting with Senator Cruz--my colleague from Texas--local stakeholders, elected officials, along with Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol. What Judge Trevino told us then was: Look, if it is the experts, the Border Patrol agents, telling us what we need, we are all in, but if it is people from Washington, DC, trying to micromanage the border, who don't know anything about it, then count us as skeptical. What we have heard from the experts is that border security is a combination of three things: barriers in hard-to-control places, people, and technology. While a physical barrier may work best in an urban or high-traffic area, it doesn't make any sense in places like Big Bend National Park. Anybody who has been out west to Texas knows the cliffs over the Rio Grande River, in parts, can rise to 30 feet. It doesn't make much sense to put a physical barrier there. The determination of what is needed and where it is needed should not be a top-down Federal mandate. It should come from the experts who know the threats and the challenges along every mile of the border and whom we entrust on a daily basis to secure it. We should continue to listen to our vibrant border communities, which are the economic engine of the region, and ensure that we can maintain the flow of legitimate trade and travel also through these areas. Implementing a solution that would allow our law enforcement experts to work with the Federal Government on the right combination of technology, people, and physical barriers is what we ought to be focusing our attention on. I would add just a footnote to that on dealing with this problem of people abusing our laws on asylum. Again, the cartels have figured this out. I have worked with my friend Henry Cuellar, who is perhaps one of the last remaining Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives. He represents Laredo, TX. We actually introduced a bill called the HUMANE Act, which would establish parity of treatment of immigrants coming from noncontiguous countries like Central America. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get that passed. We could fix this pretty quickly, but it requires our Democratic friends to drop their Trump derangement syndrome and come to the negotiating table in support of something they have historically been for during this time of need. The crisis is staring us in the face, and it demands action. I can only hope our colleagues across the aisle will answer that call. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President.