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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, the House will pass a bill today called the Jobs for Our Heroes Act, which I hope will be quickly signed into law by the President. This bill streamlines a process by which Active-Duty military, reservists, and veterans can apply for commercial driver's licenses. As the Presiding Officer knows, and as people may know generally, there is a shortage of people who can get a commercial driver's license and fill these well-paying jobs. This bill will also allow States to permanently waive license requirements for current servicemembers and National Guardsmen if they have military experience in driving comparable vehicles. That way, members of the military will not have to go through the same old rigmarole twice, wherein they get trained in the military, then get out, and the civilian world ignores the fact that they had been trained and had gotten qualified in the military. This bill fixes that. I am honored to have a broad range of bipartisan support for this legislation. One would hope something like this would. I thank Congressman Rob Woodall, who played a key role in helping to get this bill through the House. I hope, with this bill being signed into law, more members of our military will be able to utilize the skills they acquired while they were in the military to be able to qualify for well-paying jobs in our communities. We continue to use our best efforts to keep faith with our veterans who have done so much for all of us.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the second matter I would like to address is the historic vote that the House will take today and that we will take later on this evening on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This bill will dramatically reduce taxes on American families and incentivize the creation of new jobs. It is a major victory for all Americans who want to know that Washington has their best interests at heart. It does exactly what we told the voters we would do in 2016, and it is important to keep our word. We are delivering tax reform in a way that is real, comprehensive, and substantial, and we are doing it through what we usually refer to as regular order in the Senate. I know that ever since the Affordable Care Act was written in then- Democratic Leader Harry Reid's conference room and was brought to the floor, there has been a lot of concern about the way the Senate conducts its activities. Senator McCain, who unfortunately will not be able to be with us today, has been a stickler for returning to regular order--by that, meaning introducing a bill, having it marked up and debated in the relevant committee--in this case, in the Finance Committee--then having it brought to the floor, where it is amended, and then debating it until we finally pass it. Then we go to a conference committee with the House and reconcile the differences between the Senate version and the House version. That is exactly what we did with this piece of legislation. I have spoken at length about certain provisions in the bill before, but I want to make one point abundantly clear. For the American people, this represents the very best kind of Christmas gift we can offer them--one that will actually make their lives better and one from which they will benefit right away. This tax reform may not bear the ribbons and bows of a Christmas present, but the men and women who are trying to make ends meet will benefit from having lower taxes, bigger paychecks, and a resurgent economy that will produce more jobs and better opportunities. I will refer to an article that came out in January of this year which cited a shocking statistic, really. The statistic is, most Americans remain one misstep away from having a financial crisis. Fifty-seven percent of Americans don't have enough cash on hand to cover an unexpected $500 expense. These findings from this CBS News report shed light on how many households continue to struggle with their basic finances more than 7 years after the official end of the great recession of 2007. A typical American household still earns 2.4 percent below what it brought home in 1999. When people talk about less purchasing power and flat wages, that is what they are talking about. At the same time, we know costs for essentials, such as housing and childcare, have surged faster than the rate of inflation, which puts even more stress on these household budgets. That is one of the reasons we will pass this conference report later on this evening--because we believe these families deserve to keep more of what they earn so as to make sure they don't go into debt when they suffer an unexpected financial expense of $500, like the 57 percent of the respondents to the poll said they would, which was reported by CBS News. That is why it is a big deal. For example, a typical family of four who earns the median family income of $73,000 a year will receive a tax cut of $2,058, which is a reduction of nearly 58 percent. Now, that may not seem like a big deal inside the beltway, but to those families who are living paycheck to paycheck and who cannot deal with unexpected financial expenses, this will help them in a real and meaningful way. Consider the single mother--or father, for that matter--with one child and an annual income of $41,000. That parent, that family, will receive a tax cut of $1,304.50, which is a reduction of nearly 73 percent. This may be shocking news to most people who are listening because all they have heard about is what is bad in this bill. There are a lot of very good things in this bill, but it could have been made better if our Democratic colleagues had worked with us rather than resisted us at every step along the way. I guess they are satisfied with the status quo--the fact that purchasing power for the average family is actually 2.4 percent below what it was in 1999. The message I would like to convey is, we are not satisfied with the status quo. We think life can be better, and one way it will be better is to start with letting people keep more of what they earn. For a married small business owner with an income of $100,000, he will receive a tax cut of $2,603.50, which is a reduction of nearly 24 percent. So you can see, across all incomes and among people in very different circumstances, each of them will benefit from the bill we will pass tonight and send to the President. This bill also does something for which Barack Obama had argued in 2011, that of having a bipartisan consensus formed to cut the corporate income tax rate. I know people aren't necessarily immediately attracted to the idea of cutting corporations' taxes, but the fact is, America has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. What that means is, it is cheaper for businesses to move to other countries, to invest in jobs there, and to keep the money overseas that they earn abroad. By reducing it to 21 percent, as we do in this bill, we will basically have achieved the average tax rate in the industrialized world, and we will move from a worldwide tax system to a territorial one. This really is a bipartisan consensus move. When our Democratic friends criticize us for corporate giveaways, we are embracing the very same reforms they have advocated in the past, whether it is President Obama, Democratic leader Senator Schumer, or the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Wyden. All of them have advocated reducing the corporate tax rate and making our corporate business tax more competitive because they recognize, as we all recognize, the fact that the status quo kills jobs and encourages businesses to move overseas. We want to grow jobs in America, along with investment, and encourage those businesses to come back home. I daresay that all Americans from every walk of life will benefit from this stimulus to our economy. Janet Yellin, who was last appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve by Barack Obama, said that in part as a result of this tax package, the Federal Reserve has raised its projection on growth of the U.S. economy from 2.1 percent next year to 2.5 percent--four-tenths of 1 percent. That is a big deal. Every American will feel the benefit of that economic growth in terms of the wages they earn, the opportunities they have, and their ability to protect themselves against unexpected financial expenses, as I mentioned earlier. What could someone do with $2,600 more in their paycheck? Well, you could install concrete countertops or laminate flooring in your house. When it comes to a cell phone--everybody seems to have a cell phone-- you can pay your cell phone expense for 2\1/2\ years. You can go online at a Texas college and pay for your education for a full year. You can breathe a little bit easier in Dallas by having enough money to pay for 2 months of average apartment rent. You can drive down Interstate Highway 35 in Texas, knowing that almost 5\1/2\ months of an average car payment is taken care of. If you need a little dental work done, you can go to your dentist for a little tune-up and pay for that out of the savings you will achieve as a result of this bill. Stories like these, stories of how busy, hard-working and multitasking Americans will benefit from our plan, simply leave me with confusion as to why our Democratic colleagues have simply refused to participate in this process and have blocked and dragged their feet every step along the way, trying to stop us from providing this relief, from keeping our promise to the American people. It seems in the process they have given up on the American dream, they have settled for the status quo, and they are even rooting for failure. This bill's final passage won't wait for our Democratic colleagues to wake up. We are simply determined to get this win even without them because American families need more take-home pay, they need higher wages, they need greater job opportunities, and they need a competitive economy and the benefits it brings. American families should not have to settle for anything less, and we will make sure they don't. There is one more aspect of the bill I want to bring up. Our tax reform plan strengthens our long-term energy security by opening up an area in Alaska to responsible energy development. At the invitation of Senator Murkowski, I traveled to the North Slope of Alaska about a year or so ago, and I am amazed at the technology they were able to deploy in extracting oil from the North Slope. They literally have ice roads that don't exist except during the coldest part of the year in order to protect the environment and allow equipment to travel overland. Thanks to directional drilling, they are able to occupy basically a very small footprint and literally drill hundreds of wells in a multitude of different directions and pump the energy from that location. It creates jobs, it creates wealth, and it helps create energy security for the people of Alaska and for the United States. I come from a State with a huge energy presence, and I understand the importance of developing our natural resources responsibly. Limited development with modern technologies will not ruin this area, as some of the critics have charged, because a very small portion of the acreage is allowed. It will provide jobs. Let's not forget why we are doing this. One reason we are increasing our domestic energy production is because we want to make ourselves less dependent on foreign energy sources. It also helps lower the price at the pump for millions of hard-working Americans. So I can't wait to vote on this bill later today, and I can't wait to hand-deliver to the President's desk this important bill this week and for him to sign it into law. We will all benefit from passage of this Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

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. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) would have voted ``yea.'' (Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries.)

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, listening to my friend, the Democratic leader, leads me to conclude that he and his party have given up on the American dream. They want to settle for the status quo, which is stagnant growth of our economy and jobs where people haven't seen an increase in their wages for years. They even seem to be rooting for failure. That seems to be the attitude of our missing-in-action congressional Democrats on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We, on the other hand, think American families need more take-home pay, higher wages, more jobs, and a competitive economy, and we believe they shouldn't have to settle for less. I will come back to that in a moment. I do want to talk about tax reform and make the perhaps obvious statement that tax reform is hard. That is the reason it hasn't been done since 1986. It is even harder when we have a political party that is determined to fight against every single proposal we have made in our tax cut and tax reform bill, including ones they themselves have championed in the past. I have heard the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, talk about corporate giveaways, and the Democratic leader just alluded to the same thing. Yet we are embracing the same sort of approach they took in previous proposals and that President Obama advocated for in his State of the Union Address in 2011, when he asked Republicans and Democrats alike to work together to lower the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world because he knew it was chasing jobs overseas, and he knew it was important to bring that investment and those jobs back to the United States. That is exactly what our bill does. My friend Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, called tax reform a Rubik's Cube. He is right, but now, thankfully, we have figured out how to solve that Rubik's Cube. We confess that this legislation is not perfect, but it is good, and it is much better than the status quo, which our Democratic colleagues seem to have settled for. Last week, the conference committee met between the House and the Senate, and members, including myself, had many difficult conversations about how to reconcile the differences between the two bills. Those discussions were necessary, they were prudent, and they were productive. We now have a consensus about how to get this bill across the finish line and to the President's desk before Christmas. We will vote on this final bill after the House does tomorrow-- hopefully by tomorrow night. Perhaps it will carry over into Wednesday morning, but we will get it on the President's desk for him to sign into law before Christmas, as we pledged. I want to talk for just a few moments about why I am so excited at the prospect--and so are so many other people across the country-- because oftentimes their words get lost in the chatter, some of which is designed to mislead and presents an inaccurate picture of just how consequential this tax reform will be. Their voices--those who believe this good bill will help them--deserve to be heard. Let me first talk about manufacturing. There was a survey released last week that showed historically high optimism among 14,000 small and large employers in the manufacturing sector. How long have we heard that we need to bring manufacturing back to the United States rather than outsourcing it to Mexico or China or other places around the world? Well, we tried to address that, and I think we met with some success because more than 94 percent of manufacturers are now positive about their company's outlook. Nearly 64 percent said that tax reform would encourage their company to increase capital spending. Capital spending is what goes into infrastructure, equipment, and things that allow them to become more productive and to create more jobs. A majority of these manufacturers said that they would indeed expand their businesses and they would hire more workers after this bill is signed into law by the President. In fact, manufacturers predict that the number of jobs could surge to 2 million by the year 2025. Now there are roughly 350,000 American manufacturing jobs, so a leap to 2 million is almost fantastic--hard to contemplate--but very exciting if true. The second group I want to mention that is very excited about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is small businesses. We know small businesses are the economic engine of the country. Indeed, 70 percent of new jobs are created not by Fortune 500 company businesses but by small businesses. As one piece in the Houston Chronicle recently pointed out, the 2.6 million small businesses that call Texas home are enthusiastic because tax reform will provide them much needed relief. Small businesses, of course, all have to pay taxes, which is burdensome enough, but they also have to spend hours and money to comply with our unnecessarily complex tax laws. According to a 2017 survey by the National Small Business Association, 58 percent of small businesses reported that the administrative burden of Federal taxes posed a greater challenge than the cost of the taxes themselves. The burden of compliance was worse than the check they had to write to the Federal Government. The Houston op-ed put the matter succinctly. It said: For large corporations that can afford a small army of lawyers and accountants, the tax laws are a nuisance. For small businesses, they are a nightmare. Now that situation will change. Our bill will simplify the Tax Code by eliminating many special deductions and credits while broadening the base and bringing down rates. To those cynics here inside the beltway who roll their eyes, who think that changes to the business provisions of the code don't matter, I would point out two more important pieces of news. First, the Federal Reserve, an independent government institution, recently said that this tax package is one of the factors that led them to increase their projections for growth next year. That is welcome, to say the least. Tax reform, said Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, last appointed by President Obama, will boost spending and could do the same for productivity. So the Federal Reserve has raised its growth projections for next year, particularly in response to what we are doing. For those who worry about deficits--that we are cutting taxes too much--and who don't believe the economy will grow to compensate for those cuts in taxes, all they need to do is look at the projection of the Federal Reserve. They currently project the economy to grow at 2.1 percent, but she said that next year it could go to 2.5 percent. So even if you believe that very conservative estimate, that is enough growth to compensate for the cut in taxes and the loss of revenue next year, but we expect that will continue and will grow over the next 10 years. It is another thing to note how the rest of the world is reacting to what we are doing here. To name but one example, China is worried, which should tell us something. According to a Wall Street Journal story printed last week, China sees these tax plans as making the United States a much more attractive place to invest, which means less investment will occur in China. One official in Beijing has called our tax plan a huge and imminent danger that can't be ignored. China is worried that job creators will relocate here in America, which is a well-founded concern and one of the goals of this tax bill. That is exactly what they will do when we lower the corporate rate and go to a territorial system. Rather than taxing these businesses twice and encouraging them to keep the money they earn and the jobs they create overseas, we encourage them to bring them back to America by making our businesses more internationally competitive. So to summarize what we are seeing already, and we haven't even passed the bill yet--the conference report, at least--we have passed the Senate bill, the House bill, and now the conference report, which is the reconciled version between the House and the Senate versions, was released Friday. To summarize what we have seen already, nationally, manufacturers are raving about the tax plan. In places like Texas, small businesses desperately need the relief this bill offers. The Federal Reserve, an independent financial body of the Federal Government, has increased their growth estimates, in part, based upon the tax relief provided in this bill. And our chief competitor in the global economy is startled by what we are doing and afraid of what it might mean in terms of America's competitiveness globally. Put all this together and what do you have? A brief snapshot of the huge economic impact of the tax overhaul that will be signed by the President in the next few days. Signs of that impact are all around us, almost everywhere I look. I know of at least one major airline--Southwest Airlines--that has already announced big plans as to what they plan to do with their tax savings. With the benefits afforded by this tax reform, they said that they will purchase new aircraft. Well, this means more jobs for the people who build those aircraft. It means more jobs for the pilots and the flight attendants who travel on them. It means better customer experiences, and it may even mean lower fares for consumers. Let's talk about what this bill does for Americans who get up and go to work every day and just try to eke out a living, providing for their families. Well, I will tell you, for those worried about how tax reform will affect real people's actual lives, let me give you a couple of concrete examples. Let's take a single teacher making $50,000 a year. She will see a significant reduction in her tax burden--between 17 and 20 percent--less taxes that she will have to pay. This comes from a lower marginal rate and a higher standard deduction. How about a married couple with three children and with median earnings of $75,000 a year? Well, their tax bill will decrease, as well, by as much as $2,000 from a lower rate and a higher child tax credit. As I have said before, maybe some of our Democratic friends don't believe this is a big deal; maybe they don't care about those American families living paycheck to paycheck, who would welcome an additional $2,000 each year. Their actions make me think they are OK with the status quo because they have refused to even participate in the process, and they have been rooting for failure every step along the way. Well, we saw the latest example of this over the weekend when a leftwing website, masquerading as a legitimate news outlet, led by a former staffer of the junior Senator from Vermont, published what it advertised as a breaking news story about the final bill. This story breathlessly claimed, without a shred of evidence, that a provision had been airdropped into the final draft in secret in order to secure the vote of a Member who would supposedly personally benefit from it. This is a salacious tale from beginning to end. It was also completely false and invented. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have joined with my colleagues over the last year to investigate the efforts of Russian intelligence operatives to undermine public confidence in our last elections. Well, the way this phony news story broke and was picked up on social media and in the mainstream media would make a Russian intelligence officer proud. The whole purpose of this exercise--this false and invented story--was to undermine public confidence in this tax reform package that we will pass, perhaps as early as tomorrow, to be signed by the President, perhaps before Christmas. Some of our friends on the other side of the aisle and their allies in the so-called mainstream media ran with it in a dishonest attempt to derail us from passing the bill and undermine the reputation or integrity of one of our fellow Senators--all from a made-up story. Again, the Russian intelligence officials--it is well-documented by now--through a combination of cyber theft, propaganda, creative use of social media, and a gullible mainstream media, undermined American confidence in our most basic obligation, an institution of our government, which is our election system. But what we saw happen this weekend, as I said, would have made a Russian intelligence officer proud. As a letter from Chairman Hatch, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, makes clear today, this website, which, by the way, also posted a false report about an amendment I had introduced several weeks ago and later had to correct it, spread a false story irresponsibly and dishonestly. In his letter, Chairman Hatch writes: It takes a great deal of imagination--and likely no small amount of partisanship--to argue that a provision that has been public for over a month, debated on the floor of the House of Representatives, included in a House-passed bill, and identified by [the Joint Committee on Taxation] as an issue requiring compromise between conferees is somehow a covert and last-minute addition to the conference report. It reminds me of another quote sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, perhaps apocryphally, who supposedly said: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. Well, a lie can travel even faster than that today because of social media. Shame on those who would perpetuate lies in an effort to deny the American people a much needed tax cut and tax relief. Thank goodness that attitude isn't shared by most Americans and by the Texans I represent who want and deserve much better than the same old same old. They don't believe we have to settle for the status quo. We are going to give them something better. We are going to keep our promise, and I can't wait until this bill gets on the President's desk. Let me just close by saying that I am a proud son of a World War II veteran. My dad was in the Army Air Corps, flew B-17s out of Molesworth Air Force Base in England over Nazi Germany during the end of World War II. He was a member of the 8th Air Force, 303rd Bomb Group. On his 26th mission, he was shot down and captured as a prisoner of war. Thank goodness he survived, came home, met my mom, married, raised a family, and became a productive member of civilian society after his military service. But I remember, as if it were yesterday, what my parents said they wanted for me, my brother, and my sister. It is what parents of that entire generation wanted for their children and grandchildren. They wanted to know that their sacrifice, their willingness to fight and win America's wars against terrible tyrants, such as Adolph Hitler--that the consequence of their sacrifice and their service would be a better standard of living, a safer world, and a better quality of life. In short, what they wanted for us and what I want for my children and what I believe every American parent wants for their child or their children is exactly what my parents wanted for me and my sister and my brother. We sometimes call that the American dream. Some of us believe that the American dream is still alive, that we don't have to settle for second place. We don't have to settle for the status quo. We don't have to settle for flat wages and fewer jobs. We can do better. We believe we have done better in this piece of legislation, which will help reawaken the slumbering giant of the American economy. It will put Americans back to work. It will mean more take-home pay. It will mean a better standard of living, but, surprisingly--and disappointingly--our colleagues across the aisle want no part of it. I hope they haven't given up on that American dream. I haven't given up, and I don't believe Americans have given up on that dream. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from Chairman Hatch be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain). Further, if present and voting the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) would have voted ``yea.''

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, on a separate and happier note, today is a great day for our Nation's Federal judiciary. Yesterday afternoon, we confirmed Justice Don Willett, who currently serves on the Texas Supreme Court, who has been nominated by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Soon we will be voting on Jim Ho, the former solicitor general of the State of Texas, who has also been nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. These are two outstanding nominees, and they reflect the best of Texas. They are each fathers, lawyers, scholars, public servants, and active participants in their communities. I wish to take just a few minutes to discuss each of their unique stories, as well as their sterling records of professional accomplishment. Don Willett was raised in Talty, a small town outside of Dallas, TX. He was adopted at a young age and raised by a single mom for most of his life. She must have been one heck of a lady because her son went on to achieve great things from those humble beginnings. He attended Baylor for undergraduate and Duke Law School. He clerked on the same court to which he has been nominated and now confirmed, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He worked in private practice and served Governor, and then President, George W. Bush. That is not all, though. He went on to work at the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Policy and later served as deputy attorney general of Texas before his appointment to the Texas Supreme Court. He was elected to his first full term in 2006 and reelected in 2012. While serving on my State's highest court, Justice Willett was recognized for his excellence by the Texas Review of Law and Politics, which named him as its ``Distinguished Jurist of the Year'' in 2014. Justice Willett's confirmation now is good news, and, perhaps, the best news for him personally is that he will no longer have to run for election, as he has had to do as a member of the Texas Supreme Court, because, of course, his appointment now is for life tenure. Jim Ho's story is no less remarkable. Jim was born in Taiwan, and his parents immigrated to New York when he was a toddler. Jim learned English by watching Sesame Street. When he was young, his parents moved to California, where Jim later attended Stanford before moving on to law school at the University of Chicago. As an adult, in his professional life, Jim clerked for Judge Jerry Smith on the Fifth Circuit, the court to which he has now been nominated and will be confirmed, and he later clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. Jim has worked in a variety of legal capacities in the private sector. He has also served at the Civil Rights Division and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. It is when he was at the Civil Rights Division that I first met Jim and I offered him a job on my Judiciary Committee staff, where he served as my chief counsel. Later, serving as solicitor general, he had the highest win rate before the U.S. Supreme Court of any person who has served in that role. When I was attorney general of Texas, we created this position of solicitor general because we had line lawyers who would, literally, handle cases for State agencies and who would handle those cases all the way to the Supreme Court, but really they didn't have the experience or training as an appellate advocate that we needed to speak with a single voice for the entire State before the Federal courts. Jim held that role and performed with distinction. As I said, he was enormously successful in his appellate advocacy. Jim also bears the distinction as the first Asian-American solicitor general of Texas, and he has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas and is published in numerous scholarly journals. Simply put, Jim Ho and Don Willett are two stars in the Texas legal firmament. They were extensively vetted by the bipartisan Texas Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee, appointed by Senator Cruz and myself, as well as the Office of White House Counsel and the Department of Justice. I am glad we are now elevating them to the Federal bench. I wish to commend the President on these excellent nominations, and I thank my colleagues for their votes to support these two exceptionally qualified men. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as the Presiding Officer knows, today I am submitting a resolution, joined by the junior Senator from Alaska, the Presiding Officer, and the senior Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, as well as Senators Risch, Inhofe, Rubio, Tillis, and Strange. The purpose of this resolution is to expressly declare that Congress is unified in its condemnation of the increasingly hostile and perpetually intransigent behavior of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. North Korea, as the world knows, has been dangerously pursuing its nuclear weapons capabilities for a long time. Since dictator Kim Jong Un took power 6 years ago, he has ordered at least four nuclear tests, including the September detonation of what his regime and outside experts generally agree was a hydrogen bomb. Despite great efforts made by the United States, including a recent Executive order by our President, North Korea's history as a bad-faith negotiator continues unabated on the world's stage. It obstinately violates diplomatic norms and human rights at will and was recently redesignated as a state sponsor of terrorism. We simply can't afford to wander naively down a path of appeasement when lessons learned over more than half a century have laid bear North Korea's behavioral patterns. They have exposed the regime's militant refusal to cooperate with the world community and simply denuclearize. Our resolution asserts that the United States, as well as the United Nations Security Council and our regional allies, should continue to implement the strictest of sanctions regime possible required to change the bad behavior of North Korea. Further, we have to continue to exhaust every reasonable diplomatic option to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic programs. Our resolution recognizes that the President has constitutional responsibilities to protect the United States, but it emphasizes that a congressional authorization is necessary prior to committing U.S. forces to sustain military operations on the Korean Peninsula. Of course, we hope that the worst outcome--open military conflict-- will never come to pass, but, as it continues to increase its nuclear yield and ballistic missile capabilities, North Korea has become one of, if not the single, greatest threat to peace in the world. As the resolution makes clear, the United States must continue to take all necessary precautions through a mix of diplomacy, economic sanctions, and contingency planning. Our focus should be on exerting as much pressure as we can on North Korea to end its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs. I hope our colleagues will join us in adopting this resolution in short order to send a very important and clear message about the gravity of the threat and the severity with which we are confronting it.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) 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 the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran) and 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, I approach this topic with a little bit of trepidation. Ordinarily when people make outrageous, outlandish, and unbelievable statements, I usually think it is best just to let them go because when people make these kinds of statements, I think they lose their own credibility, and maybe it doesn't bear any particular comment by anybody else or a desire or an attempt to refute it. But on the subject of tax reform, there have been some incredible statements that have been made, and I am going to mention a few of those because I think they really paint an ugly picture of what is supposed to be a debate on tax reform policy, but I think probably they relate more to sort of the nature of what passes for debate here in Washington, DC-- and particularly the Congress--on matters of important public policy. In other words, there isn't a lot of debate. There is accusation after accusation. It gets repeated on social media, then the press picks it up, and then people just assume, well, it must be true since nobody has ever denied it or offered any contrary narrative. For example, the House minority leader apparently had the time to read every bill that has ever been written since the year 1789 because she felt comfortable calling this tax bill, which is still in the process of being written--reconciling the House and Senate versions-- she called it the ``worst bill in the history of the United States Congress.'' She has been busy if she has read every bill since 1789. Then she went further because that apparently wasn't enough for her. She said that our tax bill isn't just poor legislation; she said that it is an existential threat to the Nation and possibly the entire planet. Can you believe that? An existential threat to the Nation and possibly the entire planet. Well, you can see why perhaps I was reluctant to come address these accusations, because I think anybody who would make those kinds of accusations has lost all credibility. But acting either as a prophet or an amateur astrologist--we are not quite sure--she called the prospect of passing tax reform ``Armageddon.'' Well, it is hard to know what to say or do in the face of that sort of rhetoric because, frankly, this tax reform bill is a good thing. I wish our friends across the aisle, the Democrats, would join us in trying to make it better. That is what happened the last time we tried to do this or this Congress tried to do it. In 1986, a Republican President; a Democratic Senator from New Jersey, Senator Bill Bradley; Dan Rostenkowski from Chicago, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a Democrat; and other Members of Congress came together to try to reform our Tax Code, and they were successful in doing it against all odds. But today, we have an entirely different scenario. We have Republicans seeing that the economy is growing at a very slow rate and that wages for most workers have been flat for the last 10 years and realizing that our current Tax Code is counterproductive when it comes to encouraging investment, job creation, and wage growth in our country because we have the highest tax rate in the world for businesses that do business internationally. We thought, we need to do something about it, and so we set about reforming our Tax Code with three goals in mind. One is to simplify the Tax Code. Everybody knows how complex it is and how much money people spend hiring an accountant or H&R Block or somebody to help them figure it out. Secondly, we figured that it would be important to give hard-working families a tax cut. So we have succeeded in reducing the tax break for every tax bracket in the Tax Code for working families. For example, for low-income families, we have a zero tax bracket now. For a joint-filing husband and wife, on the first $24,000 they earn, there is no tax at all. And thanks to some great work by Senator Rubio and Senator Lee, we have doubled the child tax credit. Those are good things. We have doubled the standard deduction--so fewer people have to itemize deductions to get the full benefit of the code--while maintaining the charitable deduction and the mortgage interest deduction and popular items like that. We have also said, for example, that a family earning roughly $70,000 a year--the median income in America for a family of four--would see a benefit of roughly $2,200 less tax liability. I would think those would be good things that our friends across the aisle would want to work with us on. How do we simplify the code? How do we let people keep more of what they earn, more take-home pay, a better standard of living? How do we make America's economy more competitive since we have the highest tax rate in the world and we are seeing investment in businesses flee to other lower tax jurisdictions? You would think those would be the sorts of things on which our friends across the aisle would want to work with us but apparently not. Instead, what we get are these sort of reckless and really buffoonish allegations that cause the speaker to lose all credibility in any sort of debate we might be having. Unfortunately, the media tends to pick up on some of this rhetoric and jump on the bandwagon, but the media's worst claims are at least a little closer to Earth than what I recounted earlier. For example, the Washington Post said the tax reform ``took place behind closed doors.'' Well, that is a tired old rhetoric and talking point. You would think the Washington Post could come up with something a little better than that and actually something that is a little more accurate than that. One columnist at the New York Times sighs that the package benefits donors at the expense of voters--what does that mean?--and that it ``only modestly addresses the central socioeconomic challenge of our time.'' Well, I wonder what this reporter or columnist for the New York Times thinks is the central socioeconomic challenge of our time. I think one of those is for people to be able to pursue the American dream, to be able to find work, to be paid a decent wage, and to be able to keep more of what they earn, but that apparently isn't good enough for this columnist at the New York Times. Certainly, these charges deserve a little more attention than the minority leader's asteroid attack, but they, too, are misguided. When it comes to tax reform, the drafting process did not take place behind closed doors. I wonder why the Washington Post was so ill- informed and ignorant of the legislative process that they didn't see the 70 Senate hearings we have had on tax reform since 2011. They apparently didn't bother to turn on C-SPAN to see the debate and the amendment process in the Senate Finance Committee that produced the Senate bill, and they apparently are not paying much attention to what we are talking about here on the Senate floor as we are trying to reconcile the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill. So I guess they are just not paying much attention, which I thought newspapers and reporters were supposed to do. The second major allegation--that we are ignoring working Americans and the middle class--is demonstrably false. Many are wondering why tax cuts for families are temporary and the ones for corporations are permanent. Well, we know that businesses need long-term assurances about the tax environment so that they will invest and make plans. We wanted to make tax cuts for individuals permanent, too, but that requires 60 votes in the Senate, and every single one of our Democratic colleagues voted against the bill and they refused to participate in the process. So with only 52 votes to work with, we were unable to meet that 60-vote threshold. So on the one hand, they criticize us for not making those tax cuts for individuals permanent, but then they deny us the votes we need in order to make that happen. It is not that we don't want to make these tax cuts permanent for the middle class; it is that the Democrats are preventing us from doing so. I agree with my friend and colleague, the junior Senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio, who has said that when it comes to debating tax reform, Republicans can't be the country club party. I certainly agree that is not who we are, but that is also not who we should be helping in this bill. We ought to be addressing low-income and middle-class Americans first. Yes, we do lower the corporate rate, but historically that has been something Democrats have called for. I remember that in 2011, President Obama, in a joint session of Congress, called for reducing the highest corporate tax rate in the world, and he called upon Republicans and Democrats to work together to make that happen. And we have had others, like the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, who cosponsored a bill that would have reduced the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 24 percent. We do a little better than that in this bill. We take it down to 20 percent, which is close to the industrialized world average on tax rates, but the Senator from New York, the Democratic leader, has also called for lowering the corporate tax rate and making us more competitive in the global economy. Do you know what will happen when we do that? We will see investment come back to the United States, along with the jobs that go along with it. Who will benefit from that? Will the businesses that create those jobs benefit? I suppose they will, but the people who will really benefit will be the people who perform those jobs and who earn those wages: hard-working American families. A group of nearly 140 economists say that, on balance, they believe the bill will enhance economic efficiency and result in most households enjoying lower marginal rates. That is economics talk for tax cuts. But what about fairness and simplification? Don't we all want a fairer tax code and one that is easier to navigate? I believe, once again, our bill delivers. Those economists I mentioned say fairness would be served by reduction differences, and the tax treatment of individuals with similar incomes and simplification would be served by reducing the number of individuals who itemize for Federal tax purposes. That is exactly what we do by doubling the standard deduction. Right now, about 3 out of 10 individual taxpayers itemize. Under our doubling the standard deduction, only 1 out of 10 will find it necessary to itemize. The simple truth is, the Senate bill will lower tax bills on millions of working-class Americans. It will lower taxes, not raise them, on the working class. Again, by nearly doubling the standard deduction and lowering rates across the board and doubling the child tax credit, the Senate tax reform plan will lower taxes for every income group. The Senate tax plan was written with working families in mind, and the legislation reflects that goal. As I said earlier, and I will say it again, a family of four earning a median income of about $70,000 will see a $2,200 savings in their tax bill each year. It may be easy for folks living in the rarified air in Washington, DC, to shrug that off and say $2,200 is no big deal to me, but to the people I represent, $2,200 in tax savings a year is a big deal. It can mean the difference between being able to save for retirement, help pay for a college education, or maybe take a vacation for the first time in a long time. That is the money they have earned, and we are simply saying you can keep more of it under this bill. Finally, I want to mention the Federal deficit. Will the tax bill increase it? Well, yesterday the Office of Tax Policy at the Treasury Department released an analysis of expected tax revenue associated with the administration's economic growth initiatives. Among the key findings is, $1.8 trillion of additional revenue would be generated over 10 years based on expected economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office uses the baseline of 1.9-percent economic growth. That is because, during the entire Obama Presidency, the U.S. Government and economy experienced an unprecedented low rate of economic growth since the Great Recession of 2008, but, historically, dating back to World War II, we have seen the economy grow at 3.2 percent. So why should we settle for 1.9 percent or 2 percent? We shouldn't. Our friends on the other side have suddenly become deficit hawks after seeing the national debt double during the Obama administration. Let's not forget, they supported lowering these same corporate tax rates year after year and embraced other parts of our plan which we have incorporated. That is why their attacks, their histrionics, their screams of Armageddon are laughable, and, frankly, they insult the intelligence of Americans who are trying to figure this out. It is hard to figure out what is actually happening when you have somebody crying like Chicken Little that the sky is falling. It is hard for people to sort all of this out. Well, as we continue to work on a conference committee report to reconcile the differences between the House and the Senate versions of the bill, our focus will be on those hard-working American families I mentioned earlier--people of modest income, people of average income. Yes, we are going to make our businesses more competitive globally because that will benefit the same families we are trying to benefit by the individual tax cuts. You can see why I perhaps was a little reluctant to come address some of these histrionics and outlandish and unbelievable claims, but I have also learned that if you don't respond--if you don't counter falsehood with truth--some people are simply going to believe the falsehood, so I thought it was important to do so. Let's remain clear-eyed, and let's get this work done. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

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