John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining votes in this series be 10 minutes in length.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr) and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action with respect to the Johnson nomination. I further ask consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we have been hit with some hard news in recent days. The toughest of all, perhaps, was losing our friend and colleague John McCain this past weekend. He was a man who loved his country and was beloved in return. One of the things I appreciate the most about our friend Senator McCain is he truly believed in all his heart, in all his being, in all his soul, in American exceptionalism and that America had to lead in the world because in the absence of American leadership, that void would be destabilizing and even dangerous. We know that John cast a long shadow in Congress over the last four decades of American politics, and we will continue to honor and remember him this week and into the future. But tears and sentimentality are not what he would want from us. Today, instead, we should try to remain a little more grateful than we otherwise would be. We should be grateful for his example. We should be grateful for his daring skill as a pilot and lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. We should be grateful for his tenacity and resolve as a prisoner of war in Vietnam--a prisoner subject to unbelievable cruelty and torture but one who endured all of these unspeakable torments and one who was quick to remind us of what that was endured for; that is, our freedom. I think he was one of liberty's best ambassadors. We should remain grateful for our friend John McCain's willingness and ability to serve his State of Arizona for so many years and to serve our great country, by running for public office, for radiating such a sense of purpose, such a sense of moral seriousness each time, even during tough, grueling political races. And they didn't always turn out the way he would have liked. We should learn from the dignity and honor that he displayed even in defeat after his Presidential campaigns did not work out in his favor. Like all of us, he was an imperfect man. Let's just say he was a work in progress, as we all are. He won many political battles, and he lost a few along the way, but he always responded admirably. After slipping with some run-in with adversity, he got back up, dusted himself off, and tried harder the next time. We should also be grateful for Senator McCain's dedication to our Nation's Armed Forces throughout his political career, including as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, where I served with him for a number of years. We should cherish his friendship. We should remember that at the end of the day, the Senator many called a maverick had a gruff, sometimes intimidating exterior, but he also was a compassionate man and one who displayed not only tremendous loyalty to friends but a tremendous love for his family, who are now grieving. As our Nation mourns the loss of John McCain and as my colleagues and I are all too aware of his absence here today, we are all challenged to be stronger patriots and better citizens. That is what he would want from us. As Senator McCain told cadets during a 1993 commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy, ``My time is slipping by. Yours is fast approaching. You will know where your duty lies.'' Our duty now lies in continuing the difficult, courageous work Senator McCain devoted his life to, and it is not a burden that we take lightly. We do so gladly, and we mourn for those for whom the last few days have been most difficult. As we express our condolences to Senator McCain's mother, his seven children and five grandchildren, and, of course, his wife Cindy and the entire McCain family, we want them to know that we continue to think of them. We continue to pray for them. We continue to celebrate with them the great, larger-than-life, and distinguished life of Senator John McCain. It is hard to lose one of your best teammates, but I know the legacy John McCain leaves here in the Senate will long remain. I want to echo a few comments made by the majority leader earlier today. John McCain was a lion in the Senate and in American politics. That is why I believe we should put together a bipartisan group who can bring together the best ideas on how we can memorialize his service to his country and his legacy here in the Senate. We should do this carefully and consider all options about what the best form that tribute should take. Doing this in a collaborative and a deliberate way I hope is how Senator McCain would have wanted it. I can't tell you how many times he always advocated for regular order. He didn't want ideas cooked up in some back room and then sprung on the Nation and the Senate; he wanted the committees to do their work because he knew that by doing so--by thinking about them, by testing ideas in a committee process--we improve the chances of a better product. Despite our heavy loss, we can't lose sight of our other work, either. I think Senator McCain would want us to keep pushing the ball forward and achieving more on behalf of the American people. We all remember him as a fighter until the very end, and staying in the fight and making progress for the American people is what he would expect of us as well.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), and the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this Saturday marks the 1-year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey making landfall on the Texas gulf coast. What began as a wave in the Atlantic in early August of last year morphed into a tropical disturbance and then strengthened into a full-blown hurricane, category 4. This is not your average hurricane by any means, dropping a few buckets of rain, maybe soaking through floorboards or tearing off a shingle or two on a roof. This was a juggernaut. First it crashed into the San Jose Island off the coast of Rockport, with wind gusts measured as high as 145 miles an hour. It is hard to know what that means until you see it up close and personal, or so I am told. Two days after landfall, I saw the wreckage firsthand with Mayor C.J. Wax and Governor Greg Abbott. On Broadway and North Austin Streets in Rockport, you could smell the natural gas in the air. Storefronts had been leveled. Windows had been shattered. Power lines had fallen to the ground. Entire boats lay upside down on the side of the road, their sails torn to shreds. Roughly 94 percent of the homes in Rockport were damaged, and 30 percent were destroyed outright. Keep in mind, this was just the small town of Rockport. This was only the beginning. Port Arthur, Beaumont, Victoria, Houston, and many other communities soon faced the brunt of this terrible storm. Harvey was relentless, dropping more than 60 inches of rain over the course of several days in some of those places. Unlike many hurricanes, it parked itself and stayed put after making landfall. Trapped between two high-pressure systems with nowhere to go, the storm went on to shatter records. Some people called it a storm that comes only once every 1,000 years. Others dubbed it the most extreme rain event in U.S. history. For people who don't live on the gulf coast of Texas, who didn't see the shelters firsthand, as I did with my friend and colleague Senator Cruz at the NRG Center in Houston, it is really hard to imagine what it looked and felt like--all the closed roads, flooded homes, and exhausted faces of people praying for life to return to normal. Over in Friendswood, which is right outside of Houston, I helped out what is known as Texas Rubicon, a terrific nonprofit made up of military veterans. We removed sheetrock and hauled debris off a resident's yard. I remember having to wear a protective mask and gloves because of the contamination, but it was also in the context of intense heat and mosquitoes and the mud. All of this was just a small taste of what those in the community had to endure for days on end. Then there were folks like Amy, a single mother in Houston. This is a scene of her house after the hurricane. You can see on August 22, 2018, a very nice suburban neighborhood, and this was her house or what is left of her house and the interior of her house after the hurricane hit. I think these pictures speak to the resiliency of the Texans I got to know in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Their attitude was, well, we have been dealt a major setback, but there is no use crying about it. We have to dig ourselves out of this mess. And that is exactly what they did, with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers, donors, philanthropists, business leaders, and Good Samaritans across the country. We are grateful to the many rescuers, people like Dan LeBlanc from Port Arthur, Doug Barnes from Dallas, and Robert Bode for managing evacuations at the Cypress Glen Nursing Home, which was no easy task. Here is a picture of those three gentlemen and the great work they did at the Cypress Glen Nursing Home. These three had no special expertise in search and rescue, but they saved close to 100 patients, some of whom were bedridden and required special boats that could power their life support systems. Then there were the bakers at El Bolillo in Houston, who provided bread to flood victims. Then there was a man we have come to know in Houston as Mattress Mack, who opened his showroom for the displaced. There was Officer Steve Perez, a 34-year veteran of the Houston Police Department, who paid the ultimate sacrifice during rescue efforts. After the storm hit, he knew the conditions were dangerous, but he insisted on doing his part to help save those he was sworn to protect and defend. He said simply: ``We've got work to do.'' We remember Officer Perez today and always. And we remember all of those courageous first responders who swung into action. The outpouring of Texans helping their neighbors over and over again reminded me of a saying I heard years ago at another natural disaster, that being a Texan doesn't describe where you are from, it describes who your family is. During those tough days and long nights that followed, people were hurting after losing so much, not only their homes but schools that their kids attended, schools like Aloe Elementary in Victoria, which I visited with Principal Hurley and Dr. Jaklich, the district superintendent. In the wake of all this devastation, they and many others were wondering what was being done to recover and rebuild. The short answer is: a lot. First came the initial response. Unlike Noah, we didn't have an ark, but we had 104 boats courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard, which rescued more than 11,000 people. FEMA--the Federal Emergency Management Agency--had prepositioned supplies before the storm and worked to coordinate temporary housing after it hit. Led by Administrator Brock Long, FEMA did a good job. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency worked to restore drinking water. The Department of Energy worked to restore power. The Small Business Administration approved disaster loans. The National Flood Insurance Program expedited claims. Gradually, ports reopened, schools and roads started to as well. And Governor Abbott immediately formed the Commission to Rebuild Texas and wisely appointed a great Texan, John Sharp, to chair it. Following the emergency response, our job here in Washington was just beginning. In the weeks and months following landfall, Congress passed three separate aid bills totaling $147 billion. Of course, this wasn't just for Hurricane Harvey, it was for the wildfires out West and the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida as well as Texas. We also passed a new law allowing Texans to receive tax deductions for hurricane-related expenses and successfully encouraged FEMA to reverse a policy that prevented houses of worship from accessing disaster relief funds. Afterward, we codified this change into law. Meanwhile, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to use $5 billion of the disaster funds to help homeowners rebuild through the Community Development Block Grant Program. These resources will help pay for buyouts, the construction of rental property, and reimbursements for repairs incurred in the wake of the storm. Once HUD finalizes an additional $5 billion, those funds will flow to Texas for mitigation purposes. Of course, there isn't much sense in rebuilding without ensuring the region can withstand another major weather event in the future. That is why we made sure that the third disaster aid bill, a response to multiple hurricanes and wildfires across the country, designated roughly half of the relevant U.S. Army Corps of Engineer construction funds for Texas-specific projects. The Corps, of course, is a Federal entity primarily responsible for flood mitigation, and after Harvey laid bare just how vulnerable the Houston region truly is, its expertise became an increasingly valuable asset. Thanks to the Corps, as well as State and local partners, as well as our colleagues here in Congress, some of the most pressing infrastructure improvements are underway. Across more than 4,000 square miles between Sabine Pass and Galveston Bay, a series of storm surge and flood protection measures will update levy systems, and in some cases, construct new ones. In places like Clear Creek and Brays Bayou, meanwhile, the funds will be used to widen channels, construct detention basins replace bridges, and renovate dams. Importantly, these projects include cost-share requirements reflecting the partnership between Texas, local officials, and the Trump administration to rebuild. Instead of a single infrastructure project, the result will be a new, multilayered system of improvements to address our most acute vulnerabilities. At the same time, the long-term planning with the Texas General Land Office, as well as the Governor's office and the entire Texas delegation continues. Adding to these efforts is the Corps' ongoing Coastal Texas Study, which Congress has funded and which will provide a comprehensive strategy for flood mitigation, which is the necessary next step toward coastal protection because this is not the last hurricane that will hit the gulf coast of Texas or the huge economic engine known as Houston. I am confident that having the smartest minds study our coast will ultimately result in recommendations that Congress can then authorize. Once that happens, and in coordination with State legislative and local officials, who, let's not forget, play a very large role, will fight to ensure our coastal communities flourish and are protected for generations to come. We have to face the facts: Harvey was an unthinkable catastrophe, one of a kind. I can't believe it has already been a year. But for some down there, though, I am sure it feels like a whole lot longer than that. It is my privilege to serve the people of the great State of Texas, and as part of my job, I have unfortunately had the occasion to see plenty of heartache and tragedy over the years. Few disasters, however, have impacted so many Texans and in such a devastating way as Hurricane Harvey. Over the last year, working together, Texans have begun to heal and rebuild, but the job isn't finished, so I pledge my efforts to work to ensure our State remains protected, and I appreciate the work and support of all of our colleagues as we have met this terrible disaster with an appropriate Federal response. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, the Paul amendment is a germane amendment. It should be taken up and passed with a majority vote in the U.S. Senate. This counterproposal asks that a 60-vote threshold be set for the Paul amendment, which, obviously, would make it much less likely to actually pass. What I think makes a whole lot more sense is to have a vote on the Paul amendment as a stand-alone to defund Planned Parenthood with a majority vote of 50, but I believe that the Manchin amendment has problems as well. Firstly, this Manchin amendment inserts itself into pending litigation in Federal court, which is being led by my home State of Texas, by intervening as a party only a few weeks prior to there being oral arguments. This is a role that is generally reserved for the executive branch, and I believe that the legislature--the Senate-- should exercise caution and deference to the constitutional role of other branches before injecting itself into a contested lawsuit at a late hour. Secondly, the Manchin amendment asserts that the Senate should defend all provisions of the Affordable Care Act. While that may be the position of the senior Senator from West Virginia, I have a number of concerns and objections to ObamaCare which are well-known, as do so many of my Republican colleagues. There are many problematic and possibly illegal provisions of ObamaCare that should not be defended by this body, as the Manchin amendment would urge. Finally, I strongly believe in protecting Americans who have preexisting conditions and in ensuring they have access to affordable healthcare. Our friends across the aisle act as if the only way you can protect against preexisting conditions is through ObamaCare. That is demonstrably false. There is a much better and more reasonable way to protect Americans who have preexisting conditions other than to shackle them to ObamaCare. I believe the best way for us to address this is by legislating--by working together and coming up with legislation that will actually solve the problem--rather than by injecting ourselves into ongoing litigation against ObamaCare. While I am opposed to the extraneous amendment by the senior Senator from West Virginia, I am completely in support of voting on Senator Paul's amendment. Frankly, I am a little confused by his statement that Republicans oppose his amendment when, at this point, I renew the request of the Senator from Kentucky. Yet I ask that it be set at a 50- vote threshold as a germane amendment to the pending legislation.

Mr. CORNYN. I object.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Nebraska (Mrs. Fischer), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, before I talk about what I came here to talk about, let me add my congratulations once again to the vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Leahy, and to Senator Collins, both of whom are critical members of the Appropriations Committee. They have gotten us much further than we have gotten in the last 15 years when it comes to the appropriations process. I am optimistic that we will be able to wrap this up tomorrow. If we do, the Senate will have voted to fund 87 percent of discretionary spending. The last time we sent him an appropriations bill, the President told us: Don't send me another omnibus. He is exactly right. Omnibus appropriations bills are the worst way to do business; maybe close behind that is a continuing resolution. We are not doing our job if we don't act in a bipartisan way to move these appropriations bills forward, especially since we have agreed to the spending caps. I would just congratulate all the members of the Appropriations Committee--Chairman Shelby and all of the committee--for their good work. Army Futures Command Mr. President, tomorrow I will be heading back home to Austin where, on Friday, I will be attending the activation ceremony for the new Army Futures Command. The establishment of this command, which began operations last month, is the most significant Army reorganization since 1973. Its new headquarters is in the capital of Texas--Austin. It will make that the epicenter of Army technology development. So what does the Army Futures Command do? How does it fit into the existing organizational structure? Why is it necessary? Let's start with what it does. It seeks to modernize the Army, period. It will do this by leveraging commercial innovation, science and technology, and delivering them to warfighters in useful, cutting- edge ways. In a world with rapidly evolving threats distinct from others we have faced throughout our Nation's history, the Futures Command could not come at a more pivotal time. The Army chose Austin because it wanted to be close to a hub of innovation, which Austin certainly is these days. It has roughly 6,500 high-tech companies nestled among what is affectionately referred to as ``Silicon Hills.'' We have Silicon Valley and Silicon Hills. There are major academic institutions nearby, like the University of Texas in Austin, St. Edward's, Texas State, and Texas A&M, with thousands of students graduating each year with degrees in STEM fields--science, technology, engineering, and math. It is also worth noting that Austin has become a hub for startup culture and is ground zero when it comes to useful talent, technological ingenuity, and path-breaking ideas that are changing industries, institutions, and what our normal ways of doing things were in the past. What sometimes people refer to as ``disruption''-- certainly, we have seen that. But Austin, let's not forget, is also a military city. We know Camp Mabry is there, the headquarters of the Texas Army and Air National Guards, and the Texas State Guard. Not far away is the ``Great Place'' called Fort Hood, as well as Joint Base San Antonio to the south. Those military installations will now be joined by the Army Futures Command in Austin, giving the bustling, live music capital of the world an entirely new brand and reason for attention. If San Antonio, my home town, is ``Military City, USA,'' you might call Austin ``Military Innovation City, USA.'' You might be wondering how the Army Futures Command fits into the existing organizational designs of our military. In short, it complements the Army's three other four-star headquarters: the Forces Command, Training and Doctrine Command, and Army Materiel Command. The first of those trains and prepares combat-ready soldiers. The second is essentially the Army's architect. It recruits, designs, and builds the Army. And the third sustains the Army by providing the necessary equipment. Now the new fourth command will modernize the Army by integrating technology as it is developed in research labs and other facilities. When staffed at full capacity, the Austin headquarters will be home to 100 soldiers and 400 Department of the Army civilians. That is just a start. Leading them will be GEN John Murray, who was nominated and confirmed just 2 nights ago to be the commanding general of the Futures Command. My friend and our colleague, Senator Cruz, said it well. He said: ``Just as Austin is uniquely positioned to ensure the Army succeeds in this new mission, General Murray's long career and dedicated service in uniform makes him the right leader for Army Futures Command.'' I agree wholeheartedly. General Murray and others will help create cross-functional teams designed to focus on specific things that the Army wants to build or improve--for example, next-generation combat vehicles, soldier lethality, or cloud and network capabilities. The next question I want to answer is, Why is it necessary? I think the only answer is because our country's future military readiness depends on it. That is why it is necessary. Our ultimate goal here is to increase the Army's lethality against near-peer competitors in the global conflicts that could arise at some point down the road. So the Army Futures Command is really the hub of modernization efforts for the Army. It takes new concepts from the realm of the abstract, and it puts them to use concretely in the form of real-world technology that the Army can acquire for its own purposes. Then it helps the warfighters implement and use these new tools in the field. There is a rough consensus in Congress that the Army's acquisition machinery needs to operate faster and more efficiently--certainly, more cost effectively. It is my hope that the many entrepreneurs, the college graduates, and the military reservists collaborating with the Army Futures Command in Austin will provide innovative ideas to help remedy these problems. The Futures Command could reduce redtape, making it easier to make decisions or changes quickly, particularly ones involving the purchase or upgrade of equipment and systems. In a world still marred by conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, strained by escalating cyber security threats, and threatened by the increased belligerence of China and Russia, the U.S. military must keep pace with evolving technologies in order to maintain our strategic advantage and to maintain the peace. Modernization is the key to deterring aggression, promoting peace, and projecting American strength around the globe. Secretary of Defense Mattis has made it clear that this ranks among his top priorities. In closing, let me say that the Army Futures Command is aptly named. When it comes to our national defense, we should always be looking toward the future. It is incredible to think that starting in just under 3 weeks, young people born in the aftermath of 9/11 will be eligible to enlist in the Army with their parents' consent. That is an amazing statistic. That tells you something about the rapid pace of modern life and some of the transitions that are occurring right before our eyes. These young people born right after the terrible events of 9/11 have grown up in a world that sees new forms of conflict, as well as terrorism, the likes of which the Founders of this great Nation could never have imagined. It is imperative, as brave men and women continue to answer the call to service, even in such harrowing times as ours, that we do our part to give them the tools they need to be successful. The Army's Futures Command, therefore, is most definitely a step in the right direction. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this week marks the continuation of a bipartisan effort to actually do the work we were elected to do. The New York Times recently published an article that said the Senate got its groove back. I don't know if I would go that far, but certainly we are making some progress when it comes to these important funding bills. These two appropriation bills are two of the largest ones in the Federal Government. One, of course, is for the Department of Defense which, appropriately, is the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government-- to maintain the peace and keep our Nation safe. The other funds the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. After we pass these bills this week, which we will, we will have passed 9 of the 12 appropriations bills, which cover 87 percent of discretionary spending. I might add that when I mention discretionary spending, it is noteworthy that about 70 percent of what the Federal Government spends is not discretionary spending. It is mandatory spending, which is another story in and of itself. But insofar as the Congress's responsibility to appropriate the funds in discretionary spending, we will have covered about 87 percent of that. I want to express my gratitude again to Chairman Shelby and Vice Chairman Leahy for their efforts in facilitating such a relatively smooth process on all of our appropriations bills so far. They have done a good job of managing the bills and, even more importantly, of managing the people and preventing this process from devolving into a quagmire, as it occasionally does. To give you an idea of how difficult this can be, it bears mentioning that it has been 15 years since the Senate last passed the Labor- Health-Education bill in time for the start of the fiscal year. So hats off to Mr. Shelby and Mr. Leahy. As the majority leader, Senator McConnell, said yesterday, these two bills represent big strides toward avoiding another omnibus, which the President said he wanted to do, and appropriating the taxpayers' money the right way. The funding bills we are working on this week are important, but they are not the only developments worth noting. Remember, recently we heard that in the second quarter of this year--the second 3-month period of this year--our economy grew at an astounding 4.1 percent after years of economic stagnation and wages that never seemed to go up. We were able to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of last year, which helped provide a needed stimulus to the economy by putting more money into the pockets of the people who earned it. We were successful in lowering rates across the board and doubled the child tax credit and standard deduction. Over the last 9 months, my constituents in Texas have been writing to me about the effect it has had on their lives. These are men and women like Virginia Davis, a small business owner who said the changes will help keep expenses down and help her company buy new equipment. Then there is Suzan Casey, a widow in New Braunfels, TX, which is north of San Antonio, who is working part time even when facing health issues. She wrote and said that she appreciated our efforts at reforming our outdated Tax Code and that every little bit helps, especially when she has been saving up the money to go visit her grandson in California. In Texas, our economy has been robust for a long time now. We heard that last month, more than 23,000 jobs were added--the 25th consecutive month of job growth in my home State. In some places, such as Midland in the Permian Basin, which is the center of the universe when it comes to oil and gas production, it seems, the unemployment rate was as low as 2.2 percent. It is hard to find anybody who will work in the Permian Basin, in the Midland-Odessa area, because the economy is so strong that every able- bodied, willing worker is essentially employed. These are positive signs, although obviously there are stresses and strains that go along with it. Tax reform and the good economic news are complemented by other legislative victories we have had on behalf of the American people during this Congress. We funded rebuilding efforts following natural disasters, such as Hurricane Harvey. We enacted the Fix NICS Act and the STOP School Violence Act to help protect Americans from gun violence. We delivered real healthcare choices to American veterans with the VA MISSION Act. We passed occupational licensing reform, as well as banking reform, which helped our small banks, credit unions, and community banks get rid of some of the rules that never should have been applied to them in the first place because they weren't the cause of the huge crisis that led to the great recession just a few short years ago. It wasn't the community banks--it was Wall Street and some of the overreach there-- but community banks in small towns in and around Texas and elsewhere were the collateral damage. This last year and a half, we fought sex trafficking by passing legislation targeting internet predators, and we have worked hard and I think helped to reduce the rape kit backlog. We have confirmed a total of 53 judges this Congress, including 26 circuit court judges, 26 district judges, and a Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch. Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh Mr. President, 2 weeks from today, we will start the confirmation hearing of the next Supreme Court Justice we will consider, and that is Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who has been nominated to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. As I said, his hearing is set for the first week of September, and I hope we will move quickly to vote on his confirmation after the hearing. His confirmation process includes the largest production of documents ever in the Senate's consideration of a Supreme Court nominee. I appreciate Chairman Chuck Grassley's spearheading the effort in such a transparent, efficient, and thorough manner. To see how a judge will behave once elevated to the Supreme Court, the best evidence of how they will perform their job is how they have performed as a lower court judge, as Judge Kavanaugh has been over the last 12 years in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The best way to find out about his judicial philosophy, his temperament, and how he actually handles cases is to look at how he has done each of those things during the 12 years he has served on the DC Circuit. Yet we have heard some of our colleagues on the other side, including the minority leader and the former Judiciary chairman, Senator Leahy, who actually used to agree with us that the best way to evaluate a nominee--for example, during Justice Sotomayor's hearing--was by looking at their judicial record, but now they have changed their tune. In Judge Kavanaugh's case, what the rulings show consistently is that he is a diligent and thoughtful judge. His rulings are clear, they are impartial, and he strives to achieve justice in each one. Yesterday, I mentioned some of the cases in which Judge Kavanaugh's opinions, whether written as part of the majority opinion or the dissent, were vindicated by an adoption of that position and that opinion, essentially, by the Supreme Court on a 9-to-0 basis, but I would like to talk about another couple of arguments that have now started to bubble up. As I like to say, a false charge unrebutted is sometimes a charge believed, so we have to work hard to remind people that just because someone says something about Judge Kavanaugh's record, it is not necessarily true. The first claim that has now popped up is that he is somehow an ``anti-worker radical.'' This is a phrase coined by the pundit Paul Krugman of the New York Times. It sounds pretty ugly. I guess it means that the judge is predisposed, when deciding cases, to find against employees and hard-working men and women in favor of management and big business. But the fact is, Judge Kavanaugh's record indicates exactly the opposite. In one case, a pro se litigant had been terminated after filing a discrimination complaint. Judge Kavanaugh joined the majority in a ruling for the employee, finding that a reasonable jury could have found unlawful discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against the plaintiff. That doesn't sound like an anti-worker radical to me. Judge Kavanaugh wrote a separate concurrence that a racial epithet that may have been used could create a hostile work environment, even if uttered a single time. In another case, involving a terrible accident involving a trainer of a killer whale at a theme park, Judge Kavanaugh did not simply defer to large corporate interests. In fact, the strict question of liability, which would have implicated State and Federal tort law, was not even before him, nor was the question of whether the work environment at the theme park was unreasonably dangerous. Instead, the question before the court and before Judge Kavanaugh was one of administrative law. Judge Kavanaugh argued persuasively that a Federal agency had ignored congressional intent when interpreting a statute in self-serving ways to give itself, the Federal agency, authority that Congress had not conferred. He argued that this agency had made arbitrary distinctions between different kinds of sporting and entertainment events and departed from longstanding agency precedent. That actually was the crux of his decision, despite the mischaracterization from some of the critics. We can count on Judge Kavanaugh to appropriately consider overreach by the administrative state and to enforce the rule of law that protects both corporations and individual workers. I think we have plenty evidence of that. One additional line of attack is that the judge has somehow been insufficiently protective of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, but one expert at the libertarian Cato Institute who has analyzed the judge's record in detail found that Judge Kavanaugh is a ``big step forward for constitutional liberty.'' Among other things, this expert noted that Judge Kavanaugh had been a leading advocate of interpreting statutes to include robust mens rea protection. In other words, in criminal statutes, before you can be convicted of a crime, you have to have criminal intent. That is mens rea. Judge Kavanaugh has authored 307 opinions on the DC Circuit and has attracted praise from across the ideological spectrum for the clarity of his thought and expression and the precision of his legal reasoning. He respects the roles and responsibilities that are assigned to the different branches of our government by the Constitution, and he sees the proper role of the judiciary as a narrow one, albeit an important one. It does not make policy. It interprets the law and applies it to individual cases, one at a time, impartially, with no eye toward the outcome or the politics of the case. The truth is, I believe that after the hearing we will have the week of September 4, the American people will conclude, as I have concluded based on my knowledge of Judge Kavanaugh for the last 18 years, that he is an eminently qualified and well-respected jurist by all those who know him and are familiar with his work. I look forward to confirming him as a Justice early this fall, hopefully in time for the October term of the Supreme Court, the first Monday in October. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.