John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have 8 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Jonathan R. Cohen, of California, to be the Deputy Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, with the rank and status of Ambassador, and the Deputy Representative of the United States of America in the Security Council of the United Nations, and to be Representative of the United States of America to the Sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations, during his tenure of service as Deputy Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, Joseph Cella, of Michigan, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Fiji, and to serve concurrently and without additional compensation as Ambassador to the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru, the Kingdom of Tonga, and Tuvalu, and David B. Cornstein, of New York, to be Ambassador to Hungary, all of the Department of State, Eliot Pedrosa, of Florida, to be United States Alternate Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank, and Jackie Wolcott, of Virginia, to be Representative of the United States of America to the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the rank of Ambassador, and to be Representative of the United States of America to the Vienna Office of the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador. Committee on Indian Affairs The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 4 p.m. to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Tara Sweeney, of Alaska, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Interior. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations. Ryan Wesley Bounds, of Oregon, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, J. Campbell Barker, and Jeremy D. Kernodle, both to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas, Susan Brnovich, to be United States District Judge for the District of Arizona, Chad F. Kenney, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Maureen K. Ohlhausen, of Virginia, to be Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 9:30 a.m. to conduct a closed hearing. Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining The Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management The Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Multilateral, International Development, Multilateral Insitutions, and International Economic, Energy, and Environmental Policy The Subcommittee on Multilateral, International Development, Multilateral Insitutions, and International Economic, Energy, and Environmental Policy of the Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``A Multilateral and Strategic Response to International Predatory Economic Practices.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, when I was a kid, I used to like to read the comics in the newspaper every day. Usually, it was some interesting caricature of real life that was particularly funny. Yet the sorts of caricatures we have been seeing in the past few days about the President's nominee to the CIA are not funny and are not comical at all. What we have seen is a gross caricature of this woman's distinguished 33-year career. I am talking about Gina Haspel at the CIA. Our Democratic colleagues are stuck in the past. They are trying to, really, tag her with some of the more controversial episodes during the aftermath of 9/11. The fact is, that is a caricature of her three decades of hard work and service in spanning the globe while working in the intelligence community and trying to keep America safe. They, of course, need to get their facts straight regarding the episodes they complain about. The fact is that they have all been investigated, and Gina Haspel has been exonerated. They are wrong to ignore everything else she has done in her career, as well as the fact that she will be the first woman Director of the Central Intelligence Agency--someone enormously popular with the rank and file in her having come from within their ranks. The particular episodes that we will hear talked about tomorrow at the open hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence involve enhanced interrogation techniques that were used in isolated instances in the days immediately following 9/11. These programs were, of course, vetted by all appropriate legal advisors and were depended upon in good faith by intelligence officers and the Department of Defense. Congressional leaders were briefed on them and had no objection because the threat immediately after 9/11 was that al-Qaida had been meeting with some Pakistani nuclear scientists, perhaps with the objective of getting a nuclear device that they could use to kill more Americans and more innocent people. This was, truly, an emergency situation, and policymakers were demanding that our military and intelligence community do everything they could to prevent another 9/11 attack. It is fundamentally unfair for some to want to change the rules after the fact now that we are feeling safe and secure, and it is obscene to hold intelligence officials responsible for policy decisions that they did not make but which they were charged with executing. We expected them to be executed--``we'' being the policymakers in the executive and legislative branches. I mentioned the declassified 2011 Michael Morell memo yesterday, which exonerates Ms. Haspel from this allegation that she somehow played a part in destroying videotapes of enhanced interrogation. In the memo, Morell, who was then the Acting Director of the CIA, found no fault with Ms. Haspel's performance and indicated that she acted appropriately in her role as it related to carrying out her supervisor's orders. Again, she was not the one who actually destroyed the tapes but, rather, acted on her supervisor's instructions to draft a cable that she expected to be vetted with the appropriate authorities and policymakers within the CIA structure. Mr. Morell himself added a statement following the memo's release that Ms. Haspel did not destroy the videotapes of the enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on post-9/11 detainees. He said that she did not oversee their destruction either, and she did not order their destruction. Nevertheless, I will bet one is going to hear a lot about this at tomorrow's hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is unfair to focus on an isolated event in an attempt to try to suggest that she acted inappropriately when her supervisors, including the Acting Director of the CIA, found no fault with her actions, and any allegations that she bore personal responsibility for destroying the videotapes have been affirmatively disproven. We know from her career timeline that was produced by the CIA that Ms. Haspel spoke French and Spanish prior to joining the CIA and learned Turkish and Russian. That is interesting because, in fact, we can't know a lot in a public setting of some of her classified activities as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency. That is the nature of the work, that being that intelligence officers willingly accept the responsibility to keep classified information secret so as not to expose sources and methods that would endanger lives and undermine our ability to get intelligence to our policymakers so they can make good decisions. Clearly, she is a student of languages and cultures around the world--exactly the kind of person you would want to lead an agency that operates internationally, like the Central Intelligence Agency. We know from declassified documents that she had field assignments in Africa and Europe in the late eighties and nineties and then went on to become station chief at multiple locations before becoming the Deputy Director of the CIA. When she worked abroad in the eighties, she encountered none other than Mother Teresa and helped arrange a phone call between Mother Teresa and President Reagan. Then she visited a local orphanage with the famous nun. Of course, as I said, we can't talk about all of the details of her invaluable years of service here on the Senate floor because much of that information remains classified. Indeed, tomorrow, we will have an open, declassified setting, followed by a closed, classified setting so members of the committee can get answers to their questions. Yet we do know about some of the successes that the CIA and the U.S. Government achieved during the 30-plus years she served, and some of those are worth mentioning here. I am talking, first and foremost, about killing al-Qaida's key leaders and undermining the terrorist group's operations. We, of course, remember the raid that killed Osama bin Laden 7 years ago, which was the culmination of many years of advanced intelligence operations by people just like Gina Haspel. The CIA is responsible for collecting the dots and then connecting the dots so that policymakers can make important decisions, as in President Obama's decision to take out Osama bin Laden once he had been located. The CIA and Gina Haspel deserve tremendous credit for the indispensable role she and they played. There are also things like the disruption of Najibullah Zazi's plot to bomb the subway in New York in 2009--another major intelligence and law enforcement success. An al-Qaida recruit, Zazi trained with the group in Pakistan and returned to the United States to build explosives for what could have been a devastating attack. According to news reports, it was through our intelligence collection efforts that we identified Zazi and that he was eventually arrested and convicted. The CIA is involved in far more than just counterterrorism operations. It deserves credit for all other equally important work, as well, some of which Ms. Haspel and her colleagues, undoubtedly, participated in. We know the intelligence community targets all aspects of international criminal organizations, for example, and, of course, there are many more successes that will never see the light of day because those wins must be kept secret so that ongoing operations and sources that supply information and tactical methods are protected so they can remain useful in the future. As Jane Harman--a 9-term former Democratic Member of the House of Representatives--wrote not long ago: The [Intelligence Community] has been the tip of America's spear for decades. Selfless men and women have put their lives on the line--often doing work their families are unaware of--to keep us safe, and they have. Yes, there have been some tragic failures, but far more impressive successes. That is from one of our former Democratic colleagues. Her words, of course, apply to Ms. Haspel's career as much as they do to any other intelligence professional's. Ms. Haspel has put her life on the line to keep us safe, not for the glory, because most of what she has done has happened undercover in a way that does not reveal important sources and methods or expose other people to retaliation or attack. When we consider her nomination this week, we must see it in the light of all of the CIA's successes, not as a caricature and misrepresentation of a couple of events that occurred post-9/11. Men and women like her do what they do not because of the notoriety. It is just the opposite. They do it because they love their country and want to prevent it from harm. Ms. Haspel is no exception, and she is deserving of our profound appreciation. To demonstrate that appreciation, we need to get her confirmed.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, one of the items on our to-do list is continuing to confirm the President's nominees, which have faced an unprecedented level of obstruction and downright foot-dragging. It is maddening to see our Democratic colleagues insisting that we go through all the motions and the time limits set out in the rules, when nominees are confirmed 99 to 1 or 100 to 0. In other words, these are not controversial nominees, in many cases, and there is simply no reason to drag their feet and to prevent the Senate from doing other important work, including confirming more nominees.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motion with respect to the Grenell nomination be withdrawn; that the time until 1:45 p.m. be equally divided in the usual form; and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; further, that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we have just voted to confirm Mike Pompeo to be the next Secretary of State for the United States--an essential member of the President's Cabinet. There has been a tradition of sorts in this deliberative body to give some deference to the President on his pick for chief diplomat, recognizing that foreign governments view the chief diplomat or Secretary of State as being the personal representative of the President himself, the thought being that whoever wins the election deserves the ability to assemble their own team and build a Cabinet with top brass whom he respects and can work well with. That is how the system has worked. The party that lost the election accepted Cabinet nominees--absent some glaring or egregious reason not to--and agreed to leave ongoing political battles for another day. This is not just some ancient history, by the way. In fact, this week I have discussed at length many modern-day instances of it. For example, Condoleezza Rice passed with 85 votes. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton passed with 94 votes. Secretary Colin Powell sailed through the process, needing only a voice vote--not even a rollcall vote--to be confirmed. All of these men and women were confirmed because all of them had the qualifications to do the job, and so does Mike Pompeo. It is absolutely clear that he has both the credentials and the character required to be a successful Secretary of State. I won't recite all the lines of his stellar resume because you have heard them before, and we have just confirmed him. The point is simply that the man has what it takes for the job. That is why the ``no'' votes by our Democratic colleagues rang so hollow. All of their statements have been lacking in any real, substantive critique. It is clear that their ``no'' vote is primarily a way to lash out at President Trump because anybody President Trump chooses, they instinctively and reflexively oppose. It was disappointing, but in today's environment, it is not all that surprising. Their obstruction was not only a sad break from the tradition that I mentioned a moment ago but was also a sorry continuation of the hyperpartisanship that they have been engaging in with so many of the President's Cabinet nominees since he took office. Not long ago, Mike Pompeo was one of the exceptions. Fourteen Democrats and one Independent supported his confirmation as CIA Director. Yet now, 1 year later, after his unblemished service as CIA Director, only three are voicing their support for him. Nothing has changed about the man, about Mike Pompeo himself, but everything has changed about the way Democrats view their responsibility in this Chamber, not just to their constituents but to the Senate as a whole. What has changed is their disdain for the President himself. It has grown, and they have decided to take it out on his nominees, which is unfair, of course, but it is also unwise. Any frustration they have is all the more reason why they should support a man like Mike Pompeo, who throughout his career has shown his capacity to exercise good judgment. He is no mere lackey or political shill--anyone would tell you that--and his experiences speak for themselves in that regard. The worst part of this whole debacle is that those who have suffered the most while we get our act together are the American people. They are aware--more so, maybe, than some of us--of what is happening across the world: threats posed by Russia, China, and North Korea, the unravelling of Syria. They are right to wonder why in the world the Senate would dawdle and politicize the confirmation of a well-qualified person and leave the rest of the world in doubt as to who is going to be representing us as our diplomat in chief. The American people understand how precarious our situation is in North Korea, which Admiral Harris of the U.S. Pacific Command has called ``the greatest threat we face.'' This is not a time for partisanship, for hyperpartisanship, or for voting reflexively against everybody the President has proposed as a nominee. The next Secretary of State will play a vital role in the negotiations with North Korea. In fact, as we now know, Mike Pompeo has already taken the initial steps, laying the groundwork and the foundation for what we all hope will be a successful negotiation on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Those are some of the reasons I strongly supported Mike Pompeo's nomination to lead the State Department, and I hope our colleagues will somehow find a way to overcome this reflexive opposition to everything the President has proposed and their hyperpartisan response every time the President proposes either a nominee or some policy provision. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

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

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 text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee will begin to consider their version of a bill I have introduced here in the Senate with the junior Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, called the CORRECTIONS Act. This legislation addresses prison reform--an issue at the forefront of how justice is administered in this country--by focusing on reducing rates of recidivism, or repeat offenders, and ensuring that those reentering society can become productive members of our communities without threatening the crime rate. Our efforts here are important, as reoffense rates in our country remain at high levels. In other words, our criminal justice system has become a revolving door, with reoffense rates of more than 75 percent for State prisoners and nearly 50 percent for Federal prisoners. So there is a 75-percent chance that somebody who goes to State prison will end up going back and a 50-percent chance that a Federal prisoner will end up going back unless we do something about it. In law school, students are taught that the bedrock principles of our criminal justice system are deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. The reality is that somewhere along the way, we forgot about rehabilitation, and our prisons have literally become a warehouse for people who have been convicted of criminal offenses. That reality is part of the reason that my State of Texas and several other States have led the way not just to be tough on crime but to be smart on crime too. Texas focused on the important role rehabilitation can play by implementing statewide prison reforms to help offenders learn to overcome the reasons they went to prison in the first place--whether it is a drug or alcohol habit or an addiction, whether it is simply being unprepared to enter the workforce because they dropped out of school or, perhaps, they have some sort of learning disability. By using recidivism reduction programs like job training or alcohol and drug rehabilitation and letting prisoners go to school while they are in prison to earn a GED or to learn a marketable skill, Texas has reduced its incarceration rate and crime rate by double digits at the same time. Let me say that again. We have reduced our incarceration rate and our crime rate by double digits at the same time. The end all and be all, in my view, of our criminal justice system must be to reduce the crime rate. In other words, whatever else we do, if the crime rate doesn't go down, we are not getting it right. As a result of the State-based reforms that I am talking about, we have actually been able to reduce incarceration rates and crime rates too. I must say that when we talk about rehabilitation of prisoners, we are not talking about something we do to them. They have to want it. They have to want to turn their lives around, and they have to take advantage of the opportunities we provide them to do so, because that sort of personal transformation requires extraordinary commitment. Again, it is not something the government can do to somebody. They need to do it for themselves with the help we provide. By doing so, we found that we can save billions of dollars for taxpayers, and we spared countless victims from further criminal activity. You have to wonder, from the time somebody comes out of prison to the time they reoffend and go back, how many crimes have they committed? How many people's lives have changed forever? Finally, when they get apprehended for committing a crime, we tend to look at that in isolation, but the truth is, for people who live lives of criminality, this is what they do full time. They commit numerous crimes against property and against people. If we can reduce the crime rate, we can help them get back on their feet and become productive members of society, and we can save money at the same time. It strikes me that this is a pretty good deal. For years I have tried to bring the successful State-based experiments and models to Washington, DC. That is why I felt it was important to reintroduce the bipartisan CORRECTIONS Act with the junior Senator from Rhode Island. Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, my cosponsor of this legislation, and I have very different perspectives on the world. He is a Democrat. I am a Republican. I am a conservative, and I would say he is at least a liberal. I don't know if maybe he would call himself a progressive. The fact is that we tried this and it works. Rather than having the Federal Government and the entire country be a laboratory for experimentation when it comes to things like this, isn't it better to let the States do what they always were conceived of being capable of doing, which is to be the laboratories of democracy? See what works and then take those successful experiments and scale them up so the whole Nation can benefit--that is what this legislation does. This bill requires the Department of Justice to develop assessment tools that will assess the recidivism risk on all eligible offenders. In other words, we are not going to give hardcore multiple offenders-- violent criminals--the benefit of these programs. What we will do is to start with the low-risk and moderate-risk offenders. We have scientific tools, tests, and the like that can help us make better decisions on who ought to be eligible and who should not. We also shift the Federal Bureau of Prisons resources toward those most likely to commit future crimes. In other words, if we take low- level and mid-level offenders and we give them a way out to turn their lives around and become productive and we reduce the crime rate, that gives us more opportunity to focus on the hardcore violent criminals that are the greatest threat to our communities across the board. Focusing on less restrictive conditions for lower risk inmates and focusing on the hardcore violent criminals gives us a chance to concentrate our efforts on the people most likely to commit future crimes and to reoffend. Our bill requires the Bureau of Prisons to partner with private organizations, including ones that are not-for-profit or faith-based, to promote recidivism reduction. We have had some very successful programs in Texas where religious organizations will go into the prisons and offer people a chance, not only to learn the skills they need in order to succeed on the outside but to turn their lives around by recognizing a higher power in their life. This is the sort of experience that causes many people' lives to be transformed forever. Again, it is not because of something government does to them but because of what they embraced and have done for themselves. I am more encouraged than ever that we will see some positive momentum on prison reform as the President and some of his closest advisers see prison reform as a top priority. Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, had a piece today--I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal--talking about this initiative. He has been a great partner, working with House colleagues and Senate colleagues to try to make this a priority, as well as urging the President and the Attorney General to do so as well. Earlier this year, the President held an important meeting on this subject after 6 months of exploring the issue with his team. Attorney General Sessions attended, as did my friend and fellow Texan Brooke Rollins, the head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, whose Right on Crime Program has been on the leading edge of those prison reforms in Texas and, then, taking that message nationwide. That meeting with the President was very productive. In my discussions with colleagues and at the White House since that time, what we have repeatedly come back to is the idea of taking those success stories at the State level and scaling them up into a Federal reform package. Our State began this effort back in 2007. A number of States have done the same thing. Over the last decade, we closed or consolidated multiple prisons, saving significant taxpayer dollars. The crime rate has fallen Statewide, even while our State's population has exploded during that same period of time. Something is clearly working back home in the Lone Star State. It has worked in places like North Carolina, where the Presiding Officer played an important role in the reforms in his State, as speaker of the house. It has worked in places like Rhode Island and Georgia, just to name a few. That is part of the reason why prison reform has enjoyed such broad bipartisan support. It is an issue that unites liberals and conservatives around shared principles of saving money, reducing crime, and successfully reintegrating our citizens into society upon release. I believe in the essential dignity of every human life. If there is a human life we can help salvage by giving people access to some of these programs and by changing the way we look at incarceration as--not just a warehouse where we put people, but also by providing people who are willing to take advantage of these programs the opportunity to turn their life around--it strikes me that we are giving people a second chance. It seems to me like the right and just thing to do. Are we going to be able to save everybody? I am not naive enough to think that we are going to be able to save everybody. Some people are simply going to have to be incarcerated and kept off the streets so our communities can be safe, but that is not true for everybody. Looking at low-level and mid-level offenders, doing the sort of risk assessments I am talking about, giving them access to these programs where they themselves can turn their lives around while making our communities safe, and giving them an opportunity for a second chance and to save money--that strikes me as something we need to do. Every day we fail to act on this issue we allow our prisons in the United States to become more bloated, more inefficient, and more wasteful. State and local governments spend more than $200 billion a year on criminal justice, and a large fraction of that is spent on locking people up. I know there are some people who think we ought to lock them up and throw away the key, but that doesn't happen. People get out after a few years. The question is, Are they going to be prepared to reenter lawful society or will they simply go back to the same old lifestyle, reoffend, and end up back in prison? There are even more consequential and less tangible costs on our communities when people continue to reoffend, because they don't find a way out of their life of crime. There is the cost on strained and broken families, on lost incomes and savings, on children who have to grow up without one or both parents. Those are some of the collateral damages of our criminal justice system when we don't take advantage of commonsense, proven reforms like I am talking about. When people go to jail, the ripple impact affects all of us. It affects all of our families, all of our friends, and all of our neighborhoods. Some people need to go to jail. They need to stay there to pay for their crime and to be separated or segregated from law- abiding society to keep our communities safe. Again, if we can help address the problems by expanding programming like substance abuse treatment and vocational training, which have been proven to reduce recidivism, these programs can help break the vicious cycle of imprisonment. For people who want a better life but simply have not found a way out of it, by investing in programs that focus on job training, education, drug rehabilitation, and mental health treatment, we can save taxpayer dollars and lower crime and incarceration rates and decrease recidivism. More importantly, in the end, I think we can help people to change their lives for the better. We can give them hope and give them some opportunity and let them accept the power of transforming their lives and the promise that provides to them and to all of us. I applaud the administration and the Attorney General's efforts to refocus our criminal justice reforms on the prison reform issue and for their work so far. I am encouraged by Speaker Ryan's meeting with members of the President's staff last week and by the House Judiciary's action starting today. I know it will not end today, but they are taking up a version that closely mirrors the CORRECTIONS Act, which I have addressed in these remarks. I also greatly appreciate the leadership of my cosponsor, Senator Whitehouse. I know that other people have other ideas--perhaps about sentencing reform and the like--but in this political environment, I am for doing what we can do rather than spinning our wheels being frustrated about things we can't do because there is simply not the political support in the House, the Senate, and at the White House to get it done. The prison reform bill, I believe--the CORRECTIONS Act--is the way to go. I am looking forward to working with all of my colleagues in the House and the Senate, as well as the President, to get this done. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday, after some drama and a rare act of civility on the part of Senator Coons, for which I applaud him, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. This is despite Chairman Corker repeatedly pointing out how qualified for this appointment Director Pompeo actually is, but, apparently, it fell on deaf ears. This sort of treatment is unprecedented, in my memory certainly, for a Secretary of State. Director Pompeo was, in fact, first in his class at West Point and led the Harvard Law Review. He served his country in the military and served the people of Kansas in Congress, not to mention the fact that Mike Pompeo already serves in one of the most sensitive and important positions in the Trump administration as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I spoke yesterday about the confirmations of some of the most recent Secretaries of State, not just Secretaries Clinton and Kerry. Secretary Kerry got all but three votes in the Senate, and Secretary Clinton lost only two votes in the Senate, but I also spoke of Secretary Powell and Secretary Rice. All were confirmed overwhelmingly because the Senate has always had a tradition, until now, of showing some deference to the President when confirming nominees to positions like this that have national security importance. The world needs to know that this President has confidence in this nominee, and he does. That is the key to his effectiveness in international diplomacy--knowing he has the President's ear. Our Democratic friends once upon a time acknowledged that, in the words of the senior Senator from Delaware: The President, regardless of what party they are from, needs, for the most part, to have the team they want to put in place. They have been elected to lead. Let's give them a chance to lead. The opposition we are seeing breaks with this longstanding tradition in a shameful and partisan way. Of course, our Democratic colleagues have been slow-walking and obstructing qualified nominees since the President was sworn in, just to hinder progress for hindering progress's sake alone. This is the kind of hyperpartisan approach to foreign policy that threatens to harm our national security because this is an important national security post. Not only should we confirm Mr. Pompeo so the President can have the support of his full Cabinet, but also so the American people can have the assurance that our national security is not being treated like a pinata that our Democratic colleagues are whacking with a stick. The American people can see through this kind of concerted effort to prevent the President from filling Cabinet roles that deserve to be filled. In fact, that seems to be the approach: wherever, whenever, however to block President Trump from accomplishing anything he seeks on behalf of the American people, even though he was elected President of the United States. Several editorial boards have already pointed out the importance of filling this position and have urged our Democratic colleagues to allow Director Pompeo to be confirmed expeditiously. USA Today editorial writers penned a piece saying: Unless a nominee has clear ethical or competency failings, presidents should be accorded wide latitude to select top aides whom they trust and agree with. Pompeo passes that test and merits approval. The Washington Post writes: ``Mr. Pompeo should be deployed to Foggy Bottom in the hope that he will fulfill his promise to revive and reassert U.S. diplomacy.'' The Chicago Tribune writes: ``Pompeo knows well how to work with both Congress and the president--who trusts him so much he sent him on a secret mission to Pyongyang to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un'' in advance of the President's meeting with him in a few weeks. It doesn't stop there. There are nearly a dozen editorial boards that say the same thing these newspapers have--that Mr. Pompeo is undoubtedly qualified and the President trusts him, and on these two points, the Senate should confirm him. The flip-flop our Democratic colleagues are doing from last year, when 15 of them supported Mr. Pompeo's nomination to the CIA, should be a source of embarrassment. To say that somehow the job of the Secretary of State is more important or more sensitive than that of the CIA Director--both of them are extraordinarily important. If they had the confidence in him to vote to confirm him to the CIA and are now searching for reasons to support a ``no'' vote for Secretary of State, it is pretty clear what is happening. Some of the most radical activists in the Democratic base are clearly getting to some of these Senators. There is still time to put country above politics, national security over the next election, and principle over posturing. I urge all of our colleagues to give this nominee the same treatment the Senate gave Secretaries Powell, Rice, Kerry, and Clinton, and confirm Mr. Pompeo as our next Secretary of State. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, article II, section 2 of our Nation's founding document grants the Senate the prerogative to confirm the President's Cabinet nominees. One of those nominees--the current administration's most important nominee, at least today and this week-- is Mike Pompeo, the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Director Pompeo has been asked to become the Nation's chief diplomat, the Secretary of State, and now filling this post is entirely up to the Senate. The relevant questions couldn't be graver or more obvious. Do we as a country, with so many longstanding relationships around the world, really feel the need for, the utter necessity of a Secretary of State or not? Do we believe in furthering international diplomacy by filling this post expeditiously or not? Do peace talks--for example, in North Korea--rank among our highest national priorities? Do we want to demonstrate as much by confirming Mr. Pompeo so that those talks can proceed, or is this Chamber too self-absorbed in partisan divides to see the much bigger, global picture? It is time to be serious about Director Pompeo and what this nomination represents. The stakes are high, and the time is short. So why is it, then, that some of our colleagues, all of a sudden, seem to have suffered from sort of a situational amnesia? Take this, for example. Our colleague from New Hampshire said last year that Mike Pompeo's nomination for CIA Director demonstrated his ``strong condemnation of Russian aggression'' and ``gives [her] confidence'' that he can step into this role and effectively lead the CIA. Now she seems to have forgotten those previous positive statements. Frankly, it is hard to reconcile what she is saying now about her vote on the nominee for Secretary of State and her vote on the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now our friend from New Hampshire says she has deep concerns and cannot support Director Pompeo's nomination to the State Department. How is it that you support a nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency--the leader of the intelligence community and an Agency so important to our national security interests--and then turn around and say you cannot support the nomination for Secretary of State of the same person whom you have just spoken so highly about? Well, like I said, it is hard for me to reconcile the differences. Perhaps that would make sense if there were some allegation that Director Pompeo had done a bad job leading the CIA, but no one thinks that. Indeed, we have learned--from leaks, unfortunately--that he traveled to meet with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, to lay the foundation for the talks that will now occur between Kim Jong Un and President Trump on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. I can't imagine a more urgent, a more dangerous, and a more necessary negotiation than the negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong Un. Having been in Seoul last September and seeing how close North and South Korea are, it is not just the nuclear weapons that could be put on intercontinental ballistic missiles that we have to be concerned about but the conventional weapons that are laid right there along the demilitarized zone that could literally cause enormous loss of life and bloodshed just across the border in South Korea. So I applaud Director Pompeo going, at President Trump's request, on that clandestine mission to try to pave the way to denuclearize North Korea. If anything, my confidence in Director Pompeo's fitness to serve as Secretary of State is enhanced by his role as a diplomat, even during his current role as Director of the CIA. Well, people are practically unanimous in their praise for Mike Pompeo's conduct as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is public knowledge that he has great rapport with the President. When you are representing the U.S. Government to foreign governments, the knowledge that the Secretary of State has a close working relationship with the President of the United States is the coin of the realm. That is why foreign leaders talk to the Secretary of State and take the Secretary of State seriously. Mike Pompeo has earned the President's trust through his hard work and mastery of the intelligence work done at the CIA, and that has been the reason why the President now seeks to elevate him to the office of Secretary of State. The objections of our colleague from New Hampshire, and by extension her party, are not about anything substantive. Nobody is pointing to something he did wrong or something they wish he would have done differently as a reason to vote no. They think Director Pompeo is too close to the President and asked whether and to what extent the Director will be able to exercise independent judgment. This is the chief diplomat of the United States, the chief representative of the President of the United States, and our colleagues are asking: How can he exercise independent judgment and separate himself from the person who appoints him and at whose pleasure he serves? It just doesn't make any sense. Our other colleague, the senior Senator from California, has come close to saying this very thing. She has said about Director Pompeo that he is smart and he is hard-working and devoted to protecting our country. This is our colleague from California, Senator Feinstein, who voted to confirm him as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. She knows a lot about it, having been chair of the Committee on Intelligence here in the Senate, but now she says she senses a certain disdain for diplomacy in Mike Pompeo that she believes disqualifies him to be our senior diplomat--the same person who over Easter flew over to see Kim Jong Un to lay the groundwork for this negotiation, which could well save hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of lives that would be lost in the event there were military conflict between North and South Korea and the United States and our other allies. Now, like our friend from New Hampshire, I admire the Senator from California and enjoy working with her, but frankly I don't understand her turnabout. Mike Pompeo is thoughtful, careful, and has a remarkable ability to see the world through multiple lenses at once. That is because of his time at West Point, his service in the U.S. Army, and his experience practicing as a lawyer. It is because he has worked as a leader in business and he has represented the men and women of Kansas in Congress. He knows the intelligence community inside and out, not only from his service as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency but also as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He is indisputably smart, and he sees all the angles. That is precisely what will serve him so well when the State Department and others work tirelessly to untangle and resolve some of the most intractable of issues--arms control, international security, human rights violations, and religious freedom, just to name a few. Well, what has happened since our friend from California said Mike Pompeo is smart, hard-working, and devoted to protecting our country? What has changed since then? Well, nothing has changed, except for perhaps the political calculation that it is perhaps in the Democratic Party's best political interest to oppose every one of President Trump's policies and nominees because that way they stay out of trouble with their political base. One reason Senators are elected for 6 years from a whole State is, presumably, that we can get beyond those sorts of parochial political concerns, particularly on matters of such national and international import. Our Democratic colleagues have made it no secret that they are not fond of the President and some of his instincts and decisions, but isn't that all the more reason for them to not sacrifice rational judgment in the case of this highly qualified and widely revered nominee? After all, defeating a Secretary of State nominee would be extraordinary, historically speaking, and it would send a terrible message to our friends and allies around the world. This is nothing to be trifled with. President George W. Bush's first nominee, Colin Powell, was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote. And his second, Condoleezza Rice, had 85 Senators vote in her favor. Hillary Clinton received only two no votes, and John Kerry only three. Every Secretary of State nominee since 1925 has been reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably. That may change today. This body and this institution should not forget its own history and traditions, and we should not give up on the tradition of bipartisanship, goodwill, and fairness to the opposition. I am proud to support Mike Pompeo as our next Secretary of State and hope that all of our colleagues across the aisle will have the political courage to join those of us voting yes. I note that there have been some press releases, some announcements, and a number of our colleagues have stepped forward and said they will vote yes for Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. I applaud them in their political courage for standing against the tide. For those who refuse--especially for the ones who have flip-flopped in the matter of a year--Mike Pompeo is a human being, a public servant, and somebody well trained and well prepared to be the Nation's top diplomat. I just simply don't understand how they can reconcile those two polar opposite positions, or perhaps they can explain it to the American people. I cannot. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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