James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, let me do a quick history lesson with this body. In 1773, the Colonies we were getting more and more frustrated with King George. There were a lot of issues we raised with him--a lot of taxes, a lot of changes, things that were happening in the judiciary, things that were arbitrary that were coming down. Then it boiled to a head. In December of 1773, a group of American colonists went out to Boston infuriated with the tariff policy over tea. The British East India Company had special access that no one else had. They had no taxes and everyone else had a tax--a tariff. It pushed out all of the other companies except for the British East India Company. A group of American colonists went out to one of the ships, grabbed all the tea in the harbor, and threw it overboard, creating the legendary Boston Tea Party. That was an argument about tariffs. It was an argument about international trade. It was an argument about American companies and fair trade, and we still talk about it today. It is interesting to note that in our letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776, which we now call the Declaration of Independence, in the long list of grievances that we wrote out to King George, we included this line: We are cutting off our trade with all parts of the world as one of our big grievances. That grievance fell between the grievance of the British Government allowing British soldiers to murder inhabitants in America and our taxes without consent. In between those was cutting off our international trade. We have been free traders as a nation since even before we were a nation, and we have been passionate about keeping it fair but keeping it free and keeping it open. Free trade is a big issue for us, and for some reason it has become this big national conversation again. Should we have free and fair trade? Should we continue to engage? What does it mean to have a deficit in our trade? Does it have to be equal with every country, that they buy from us as much as we buy from them? Suddenly, this has become a brand-new dialogue again. I wish to bring a couple of real world moments to this, beginning with the history lesson, by stating that trade--and international trade, specifically--was important to us even before we were a country. We were gathering supplies from all over the world to be able to do our basic production. We are still doing that today. For some reason I run into people that think this international supply chain is something new in this generation. I tell them that they should look at our history and see that the United States has always had an international supply chain. We are also 25 percent of the world's economy. There is no nation in the world that can afford to buy as much from us as we buy from them. We are the largest economy in the world, by far. We are going to buy more from other countries. The issue is, How does this work in our economy and how do we make sure we protect American manufacturing and the American consumer at the same time? Let me walk through what this looks like. Charlie and Mary Swanson are Oklahomans and third-generation farmers and ranchers who live in Roosevelt, OK, with a whopping population of 241. The agricultural products they produce help feed the world. They raise wheat, cotton, cattle, and milo. Every year their crops are harvested using John Deere equipment. We look at the John Deere tractor and its beautiful green and we think: That is a great American company, except that parts of the equipment also come in its original form from Mexico. Parts come from India, and parts from Germany. Most of the parts come from the United States. They employ 60,000 people in the United States. It is a great American company--John Deere--but their cabs are made in Germany. Their hydraulic cylinders are made in Mexico. The castings from the foundry are from Iowa, but the guidance products are from California. Some of the transmission and electronic parts come from India, and other parts are from Missouri. We see that as a great American tractor. The crews that harvest some of the Swanson's crops are folks that come in--legally, by the way--from New Zealand, Ireland, or South Africa. The wheat they produce goes to export markets all over the world. Some of it goes to Egypt, some to India, Japan, and South Korea. Their cotton is used all over the United States, but it is also shipped to China, as well, to produce fabrics. Some of the fabrics end up being made into garments that are shipped from Vietnam. Some of them end up right back here in the United States again, having started from the cotton from Roosevelt, OK. The milo they raise goes to feed. Most of that feed goes to Texas. If you are from Oklahoma, you may consider that international trade, but it is still domestic trade. A lot of the feed goes to China. They raise cattle, our great American beef. We eat as much beef as we can possibly eat in Oklahoma, and the rest of it we ship all over the world. Their beef is used in Oklahoma and all across the United States, but it is also sent to Japan, Korea, and Mexico. Understand this, just as an aside: In 2017, U.S. beef producers exported 1.2 million metric tons of beef worth $2 billion. That is just American beef going around the world. Two leading partners in that are Canada and Mexico--$980 million in exports. It is a big part of what they do. Charlie Swanson drives a Ford F-150 pickup. It is a great American product; isn't it? It is a great Ford truck. That F-150, by the way, is a fantastic vehicle. It is completely assembled in the United States, but the aluminum in that great American truck comes from Canada. About 15 percent of the components in that great American truck come from Mexico. Some parts even come from China. That F-150 is not only used extensively in the United States, but it is also shipped around the world. There are a lot of F-150 trucks on the roads in Mexico, Canada, and, yes, even in China. That F-150 rides on four good, solid American-made tires, but the steel cord in those good American tires comes from all over the world. The steel in most of our tires is not made in the United States. A lot of the chemicals that go into the production of those tires are from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They are good American tires. A lot of them are made in Oklahoma in the Goodyear facility--a phenomenal facility--or the Michelin plant in Ardmore. They make great American tires for a lot of vehicles all across the United States, but they have parts and pieces from around the world in those American-made tires, and they are shipping them out as well. So just speaking about Charlie and what is happening in Roosevelt, OK, population 241, the products they produce are going all over the world. The products they use, such as the John Deere tractor and the Ford F-150 with the Goodyear or Michelin tires are American-made, but are dependent on trade from all around the world. I could talk about Dr. Brent Hancock, born and raised in Kiowa County, OK. He left Kiowa County and went to the big city of Stillwater to attend Oklahoma State University, where he received his doctor of veterinary medicine degree. He returned back to Kiowa County and opened a veterinary clinic in Hobart in 1995. For over 20 years, Dr. Hancock has been taking care of vaccinations for sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, cats, and dogs. It is also rumored that Dr. Hancock can operate on your rabbit, but that is a whole different story. He vaccinates these animals with vaccines to provide some of the safest agricultural products in the world. Some of those vaccines come from companies like Bayer, which is an international company based in Germany. He also uses products from Merck. They have offices in 50 countries, and they produce and ship their products to 140 countries around the world. Again, we look at him and say that he is a good American veterinarian. He must be all American, but he actually depends on products from all over the world to provide basic things. I cannot talk about Oklahoma without talking about oil and gas. Most of the pipe that goes down the hole in most of our wells is produced from steel that is not made in America. That particular type of steel that is down holding those wells is produced around the world but not here. We are dependent upon oil and gas that goes in the F-150 pickup and the John Deere tractor, and a part of it relies on steel from around the world. I can take you to Tulsa, OK--slightly larger than Kiowa County, I would say--to a manufacturing plant called SWEP. They employ 100 people and produce components for refrigerators and air conditioners. They import products from Europe, and they combine them with products that they are making in the United States and assemble them. That final product is sold all over the country and is also sold to Canada and Mexico--all from one company in Tulsa, OK. Drive up the road from Tulsa to Bartlesville to a manufacturing plant operated by ABB. They create a lot of products that are in wells, pipelines, and refineries all across America. That company imports products from suppliers from Canada and Mexico, and they create a final product that is sold all over the United States, and they sell it right back to Canada and Mexico as well. This shouldn't be shocking to anyone. This is the same structure that we have had since the 1700s as Colonies. We produce some of our products and ship them out. We buy some to be able to use in manufacturing. This is a nation that is very interconnected to the world, and it is exceptionally important that our trade agreements get resolved as fast as possible. I want fair trade. We had unfair trade in 1773 that we protested in the Boston Harbor. We still want fair trade agreements right now, but those trade agreements need to be resolved as fast as possible. Farmers and ranchers in Oklahoma cannot wait a year to find out what is going to happen in our trade policy. Some of them are on the edge of the knife right now of bankruptcy. They can't get anything on the futures market to try to figure out what is happening in the now to be able to make the basic investments they need to make for this year's crops. Predictability helps us, just like fair and free trade does. So while I understand full well that the administration is engaging in trade negotiations around the world, I encourage them to move from talking about these trade agreements to settling them--getting them resolved with Mexico and Canada and getting the best deal that we can have, resetting this agreement with NAFTA for another generation to prepare us for the future. Let's get that resolved. Those are our two largest trading partners. Resolve our trade agreement with Korea, locking that one in and finishing out all the area around Asia as well. Twelve of those nations have already resolved the trade agreements they are into, putting us behind. Those nations are forming contracts now. We need to engage as soon as we possibly can. There are big issues with China and trade. They have not been fair in all their trade agreements. We need to resolve our issues with China, and I am pleased that this administration is leaning in to resolve a long-term issue with China trade. It is about time someone does it, but we also need to get it resolved. We don't need retaliatory tariffs moving across every industry in our Nation destabilizing what we are doing in the economy. Let's get these issues resolved. Quite frankly, many of the trade issues that we have with the rest of the world aren't their tariffs, but they are our regulations. When our regulations and American redtape from our own government slow down our own economy, let's deal with our own house to make sure what we produce is competitive around the world, but in the meantime, let's move our trade conversations to trade agreements so we can continue to move on toward doing the same thing we have done since the 1700s as Americans; that is, trading with the entire world and leading the world with it. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I wish to talk a little bit about election security, but on a day like today, I have to at least mention where we are with the giant omnibus bill that got dropped on us last night at about 8:30--about 2,300 pages of legislative text--to try to deal with all of government spending, all of discretionary spending. If people don't know what an omnibus is, it is where we are supposed to pass 12 individuals bills dealing with 12 different topics of our spending. An omnibus is when you take all 12 of those and just do it at once. It is supposed to be the exception to the rule, but for the last 17 years, we have done some version of an omnibus. Today's vote will be the 18th. We have 2,300 pages with technical legislative language and less than 24 hours to be able to go through it. There is no way to be able to discover what all is in it. There is another historic event that has happened this past week, as well, which I think connects to this omnibus. Last Friday, the Treasury Department announced that we just crossed over $21 trillion in total debt--$21 trillion. I have had some folks who have caught me and said: Now that we have gone over $21 trillion and it looks like we could be rapidly approaching $1 trillion of deficit this year alone--which would mean that in the next 12 to 14 months, we will go from $21 trillion to $22 trillion in total debt--gosh, that looks terrible. It has to be this Republican tax plan that is causing it. Well, there will probably be some deficit spending with the Republican tax plan that went in because it will take a couple of years for the income to be able to accelerate with it, but this omnibus alone is $300 billion of additional spending--just this, $300 billion. So we go up to over $600 billion in deficit spending this past year, and this omnibus will add another $300 billion to that. The disaster relief funding that was done this year was $140 billion on top of that, and the interest payment increase--just the increase--from last year to this year was $54 billion. It is not just some Republican tax plan that made this change. This is a very rapid acceleration in overspending that is happening right in front of our eyes, and the omnibus is not slowing it down. It is accelerating it. We have to change how we are doing budgeting and the trajectory that we face. There are 16 of us who have started meeting last month--8 Democrats and 8 Republicans, half from the House and half from the Senate--to evaluate how we do budgeting. The 1974 Congressional Budget Act that we are currently operating under created this incredibly complicated system that has not worked in a decade. Every year we come up and try to do it again, and every year we end up with some omnibus package, and none of us has an amendment. None of us has an opportunity to be able to see it, read it, or go through it. It is just this: Here is the number. There it is. Vote for it or not. We have to be able to fix that process. There is no long-term strategy. There is no regular order. There is no opportunity to be able to make changes. There is no plan. My hope is that by the end of the year, this bipartisan group will have the opportunity to be able to present a different way of doing budgeting. That is not trying to be partisan but just to be able to put a neutral process in place in which we can actually be strategic about where we are going, because we are accidentally stumbling into more and more debt every single month, and it will happen again today. Election Security Mr. President, I wish to chat with this body a little bit about election security. Just to give a quick update, as many of you know, the Department of Homeland Security has been actively engaged in trying to fix what they can on election security leading up to the 2018 time period. I have absolutely zero doubt that the Russians tried to meddle in our elections in 2016. They started in 2014 trying to strategically plan for how they were going to try to interfere in our elections--the social media, the false news, and as many different ways as they can to be able to get out information and misinformation. They started the process early. Quite frankly, they planned and executed well. They exposed a weakness in our system. We are an open society that is exceptionally trusting of each other, and we are not used to having a foreign entity try to reach in and try to influence us like that. What the Russians exposed in 2016, we should be well able to push back against in 2018 and 2020 and not be caught off guard again. The Russians reached in and scammed multiple States in their election systems. They were looking at voter rolls, trying to figure out if they could get access to those. Now, they can't change votes by just looking at voter registrations, but if they could look at and download those files, they could also change those files, edit names, edit addresses, and then, suddenly, when people show up to vote, they are not really registered anymore or they are registered at a different precinct. They could create chaos on election day just by going in and editing those names. They could go into the unofficial results websites of secretaries of State and during the day of the election actually start putting up false election results or changing algorithms and numbers, so that when numbers are added, they are actually counted wrong, just to create uncertainty in the process. So when the actual election day comes, the unofficial results come out, and they are not reliable and everyone doubts the system itself. Again, that doesn't change votes, and it doesn't change outcomes, but it certainly destabilizes the system. We should be aware of that. We have multiple States--there are not many, but there are around 10 to 12 States--that cannot audit their elections when Election Day comes and goes. That means that they are completely counting on the machine to be able to keep an accurate count. Now, that machine is not attached to the internet. In fact, there is no State that has their election equipment attached to the internet on the day of the election, but for almost every one of them, there is a software update right before the election. If any entity were to be able to get into any one of the third-party software companies when the update is done and just put a bit of software in there that just messes with the machine, you would literally not know if that election result was reliable or not. Did that happen last time? No. Were the Russians looking to try to find different software companies and the different makes and models of those companies that make our election machines? Yes, and we should take that as a warning sign. Last time they were looking, and next time they may be looking to mess with it and change it. We should be well prepared for that. We have a piece of legislation. It is a very straightforward piece of legislation about secure elections. Myself, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins, and most of us who are all engaged in this one simple issue say: How do we stabilize our elections system? Elections are run by States and should be run by States. There is no reason for us to federalize elections, but the Federal Government should walk alongside States and say some simple things: We are going to have quick communication between the States and the Federal Government. So if a foreign entity is trying to reach into your State to mess with your system, we can quickly let you know about it, and we can help you in the process of protecting your State. The last time this occurred in 2016, it was months before the Department of Homeland Security was able to actually engage with those States to let them know that what was really happening was a foreign actor and to be able to help them with their security. We have to be faster on that. We want to be able to streamline that communication. We want to encourage States, when they buy election equipment or they get election equipment, that they be able to audit their results on the day of the elections. The Federal Government should not pick their equipment. Those States should because it is a State responsibility. But we should incentivize them to actually lean in and make sure their equipment is good, because at the end of the day, in a Presidential election, we are all counting on every other State to make sure their election system is good. If it is not, it is a problem for all of us. We want to make sure that there is not only streamlined communication and that there is not only good and auditable equipment, but that we actually give classification to individuals so that they can deal with classified information. That didn't happen last time, and so, again, it was months before there was any contact back and forth, because the Federal Government wanted to notify the States of what was happening, but no one had the clearance to be able to get the information. Let's fix that. DHS is in the process of fixing that, but we would like to put in legislation that just remains, so that in the future, we don't lull ourselves to sleep again. Last time, it was the Russians. Next time, it could be the North Koreans. Next time, it could be the Iranians. Next time, it could be a domestic activist group that is just mad at somebody for something, and they have learned the vulnerabilities that the Russians pointed out. In the days ahead, we need to secure our system for our election. It is not a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a partisan issue, but it should be something we learn the lesson on. We are quickly learning the lessons about our vulnerabilities--cyber vulnerabilities in our pipelines, in our electric grids, in our phone systems, in internet fibers, in our election systems, in our banking systems, and in multiple other areas. We should learn this lesson and learn it well. There are people who mean to do us harm. They are not necessarily going to attack us bodily, but they don't like our growing economy, they don't like our values, they don't like our openness, and they want to use our openness against us. We can't imagine doing that to someone else. They practice doing that to us. We need to put up a basic guard, and we need to communicate to nations and nation-states around the world: If you come and attack us, this is going to be our response, so that they clearly know what they are facing when they come after us next time. It happened once. It will happen again. Let's make sure that we are ready. Let's pass this bill about safe elections and get our elections secure so that we can trust the results year after year after year, as we have in the past. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, when I was in college, I remember watching a State of the Union speech by President Reagan in which he took a 43-pound stack of papers and set them on the podium. As he was giving his State of the Union Address, he said: This is the budget bill that has been given to me--43 pounds of it, all stacked up. It was a famous moment when the President said: Do not send this to me again. Republicans and Democrats alike stood and cheered. They said: That is a terrible way to do government. For 5 of the next 6 years there were no more Omnibus appropriations bills, but that did not last. Since 1986, there have been 22 Omnibus appropriations bills. People may ask, what is that? By law, Congress is to do 12 appropriations bills. Each part of that has a section of the budget, and each one of those is passed as a stand-alone. First, they go through subcommittee, then committee, then to the full floor, and then they pass. But 17 times since 1998 and 22 times since 1986, all of those bills were just looped together to make one giant document--the 43-pound document that President Reagan dropped in 1988. What is going wrong? We have another one of those omnibus bills next week, in which all of the appropriations bills have been looped together to try to simplify the process, but this actually provides even less transparency. What do we do with this? How did we get here? The short story is that the Budget Control Act of 1974 was created right after Watergate in a fight between Congress and President Nixon over the fact that President Nixon was told that Congress wanted to be able to spend certain amounts of money in certain areas, and President Nixon basically didn't want to spend it. So Congress pushed back and put additional requirements on him to actually do what Congress was compelling him to do in that 1974 Budget Act, to try to create more transparency and provide greater leadership for Congress. Out of that was born this Budget Act, but also the House and Senate committees and the Congressional Budget Office were born. All of those things were to create more input and create a system in which, each year, the President would create a budget and would submit that budget to Congress. Then that budget would lead to authorizing bills from the different committees. And then, from the authorizing, it would lead to appropriations bills and final passage. Well, how is that working for us? It is not. It created a process so complicated and so slow that, although it makes sense on paper and in legislative language, it doesn't actually work year to year, and it pushes us into what is called continuing resolutions--or, as is commonly thrown around here, CRs. Every year since 1995, Congress has had at least one CR--one continuing resolution; that is, taking last year's appropriations bill, just changing the date on it, and moving it over. There is no strategic planning, nothing. That is a problem for us. The budget process itself has broken down and has fallen into omnibus spending bills, with 12 bills, all combined. Some years, we fail to get budget bills done at all. The authorizing process that is supposed to go between the budget and the appropriations process has completely collapsed for us. In fact, in the 2017 appropriations, it happens that there were 256 expired authorizations in the final appropriations bills. About $310 billion of what was appropriated was not authorized even last year. Some of those things hadn't been authorized for more than a decade. Finally, we have passed all appropriations bills only four times in the last 44 years. We have a major problem with the way we do budgeting. Year after year, people visit me or people bring this to me in townhall meetings or at the grocery store or at Taco Bell; people catch me and say: What is going on with the budget process? I can tell you that if it sounds as if you say that every year, it is because you have said that every year now for a couple of decades. How do we get out of this? There is a bipartisan, bicameral committee that has been put together and met for the first time last week. There are 16 total--8 Democrats and 8 Republicans, 8 from the Senate and 8 from the House. Our mission is to revise the way we do budgeting. A lot of Americans probably will not watch this process, but it will be extremely important that we actually fix it. I am convinced that we are not going to get a better budget product until we get a better budget process. This committee itself is designed in such a way that it takes out the partisanship, not just with equal numbers on both sides, but the agreement from the very beginning is that if we don't have a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans signing off on the final proposal, we will not bring it to the floor. If we do, we hope to fix the budget process itself. The budget process is set up to create gimmicks in the budgeting rather than to fix them. We have a 10-year budget window, and there are all these gimmicks that have been created to try to move spending outside the 10-year budget window to make things look as though they are actually going to balance when they actually don't balance. I would like for us to consider some things like biennial budgeting. Twenty States budget every 2 years. It gives budget certainty for 24 months. We should get that. That helps our economy. That helps our businesses. That helps our agencies. That helps in contracting. That helps us avoid these continuing resolutions--if we can actually do budgeting in 2-year cycles. I would like to get out of the perpetual focus on government shutdowns and the countdown clocks that happen. I proposed a bill 5 years ago called the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. It is designed to get us to a spot where we actually put the pressure on Congress to get the job done but hold agencies and hold the American people harmless while we work through the process. Quite frankly, I think the President's budget is a meaningless document. It has never been passed by any President of any party. I don't mind the Presidents releasing their budget priorities--ways we can save money, duplication that they see, key aspects. That is entirely appropriate. But the President's budget every year just becomes a big fight, and when it is late, it throws the process off even more and gives Congress one more reason to say that they are not getting their job done because someone else was late in doing theirs. We should reform that. We should reform the way we do debt limits. We are the only country in the world that does this. We have had some kind of debt limit since the 1920s, actually. But originally, when it went to the form that it is in now in the late 1930s, it was established as a way to protect us from adding more debt, and it did work for decades. It has not worked for decades. It has been another fiscal cliff out there that has not resolved anything. We have to fix that so it does what it is supposed to do or take it away, but we can't destabilize international economies because we can't get our job done here. We have to have some sort of focus on both revenue and spending. We should deal with real consequences when we don't get things done on time. We have to build internal processes that actually get things done. We have to pay attention to $20 trillion, and growing, in national debt. These are things we can get done, but they will not get done if we don't actually fix the process. There is no moment to actually get the big things and hard things done. My hope and my commitment, with this body and with this group of 16 of us who have grouped together from the House and the Senate-- Republicans and Democrats--is this: Bring a proposal to us that is a fair, nonpartisan proposal that is not focused on what party is in power at that moment but looks at the fiscal health of the Nation, how we can plan for the future, and how we can actually get off this endless cycle of nonaction and get back to a process of predictable budgeting and appropriations. We will bring some of those solutions in the days ahead. Right now we are meeting and talking. I invite any Member of this body who wants to contribute to catch any one of us in this group. We are not saying that the 16 of us are exclusive to solving the problems. I also say the same thing to the American people: Anyone in my State or anyone around the country who wants to contribute good ideas, bring them. Let's add these good ideas together. Let's fix the process. Let's get back to actually talking about how we solve the budget issues rather than how we solve our internal processes in the House and the Senate. That is the last thing we should be arguing about and the first thing we should fix. With that, I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have 12 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 9:30 a.m. to conduct a hearing. The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Rebuilding Infrastructure in America: Investing in Next Generation Broadband.'' 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, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The Agriculture Creates Real Employment (ACRE) Act.'' The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 4:05 p.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: John F. Ring, of the District of Columbia, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board, Frank T. Brogan, of Pennsylvania, to be Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, and Mark Schneider, of the District of Columbia, to be Director of the Institute of Education Science, both of the Department of Education, Marco M. Rajkovich, Jr., of Kentucky, to be a Member of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, and other pending nominations. Committee on Indian Affairs The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 2:30 p.m to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Opioids in Indian Country: Beyond the Crisis to Healing the Community.'' Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``See Something, Say Something, Oversight of the Parkland Shooting and Legislative Proposals to Improve School Safety.'' Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, after the first vote to conduct a hearing on S. 526, to amend the Small Business Act to provide for expanded participation in the microloan program, S. 791, to amend the Small Business Act to expand intellectual property education and training for small businesses, S. 1538, to amend the Small Business Act to establish awareness of, and technical assistance for, the creation of employee stock ownership plans, S. 1961, to amend the Small Business Act to temporarily reauthorize certain pilot programs under the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, S. 1995, to amend the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 to improve the number of small business investment companies in underlicensed States, S. 2283, to amend the Small Business Act to strengthen the Office of Credit Risk Management within the Small Business Administration, S. 2419, to amend the Small Business Act to improve the technical and business assistance services under the SBIR and STTR programs, S. 2527, to amend the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 to increase the amount of leverage made available to small business investment companies, and the nominations of David Christian Tryon, of Ohio, to be Chief Counsel for Advocacy, and Hannibal Ware, of the Virgin Islands, to be Inspector General, both of the Small Business Administration. Committee on Veterans' Affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a joint hearing. Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans The Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Strategic Force The Subcommittee on Strategic Force of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy The Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy of the Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Somalia's Current Security and Stability Status.'' Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy and Environmental Policy The Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, 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, March 14, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Why Food Security Matters.''

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, let me tell you about Farmers State Bank of Allen, OK. I know exactly where Allen, OK, is. I bet a bunch of folks in this room do not. It is a small town, and this a small bank. There is $43 million in total assets in that bank. That is a pretty small bank, as banks go. It is located in a town of about 900 Oklahomans in total. The town has a number of small business owners, farmers, and ranchers--folks that some people in this room fly over. There are good families who live in that great town. Many of them have great credit scores and have a good family history of repayment back to the bank when they have taken loans, because that is the bank in town. They have been longtime customers of this bank. In many instances, the bank employees and the people in the bank have grown up together. They know each other, but they also understand seasonal income. When you are a farmer and rancher who doesn't come in with a W-2 every single week or every month--it comes in seasonally--they understand the credit restrictions there. A banker, named Debbie, at the Farmer State Bank of Allen wrote me this and said: Between the Ability to Repay and Global Cash Flow analysis, particularly for a bank of this size, these new rules take our time away from doing what needs to be done--caring for our customers. We have 12 employees and we're treated the same as JPMorgan Chase, or Goldman Sachs--both of which have an entirely different business model of operating. They do not operate in towns of 900 [people]. . . . That's not their business model or their kinds of markets One of our key employees now spends most of her time on compliance issues. Total costs for this employee, together with the cost of the annual compliance audit [and everything that goes with it is], now exceeds $100,000 annually. Again, folks in big towns may not think it is a big issue to have $100,000 in appliance costs, but the total net income of this bank for the year is right at $500,000 a year, and $100,000 of it is now spent on compliance. How did this happen? This happened when Congress decided in 2010 to pass something called Dodd-Frank. Dodd-Frank was a bill signed into law in July of 2010 to deal with the financial crisis that happened in 2007 and 2008, which was real. The largest banks in our country took some incredible risks. It caused a financial domino effect all over the country, and it caused great risk for our international markets. In response to that, Congress rose up with a strong Democratic majority, and President Obama ran to it and said: We need to do something. They looped together as many different financial restrictions as they could. They created a new thing called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with no oversight at all. They created a whole litany of new regulations and said: This will only be for the biggest banks because they were the violators. They put it out there, and then the regulations started flowing after that. Guess what. Farmers State Bank of Allen, which was not the cause of the financial collapse in America, is now caught up, and they are struggling to survive as a bank. Because Congress decided they were going to do something, the something ended up being something that is devastating rural economies in my State. Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, we have seen a 16-percent decline in the total number of Oklahoma bank charters--just in my State. There is a 35-percent decline in Oklahoma charter banks with less than $100 million in total assets since Dodd-Frank. The effects of Dodd-Frank were felt pretty quickly in Oklahoma. It was passed in 2010. By the 2013-to-2014 reporting time, more than 40 percent of the banks in Oklahoma no longer did mortgage lending at all. Let that soak in for a minute--banks that don't do mortgages. If you are in a rural community, that is the bread and butter of normal lending in that community--going to get a mortgage. But 40 percent of the banks in Oklahoma, starting in about the 2013, 2014 reporting cycle--just 3 or 4 years after Dodd-Frank passed--had already said the compliance costs were so high and the complexity was so great that they no longer offered mortgages and mortgage lending. There are folks who say: We will just drive to a big city and go to a big bank and get it, and they will still take care of that. Quite frankly, that is what is happening. Dodd-Frank has done an excellent job of increasing the size, power, and strength of the biggest banks in America and has targeted the smallest banks in America. We are watching mergers all over my State, as the smallest banks struggle under the compliance costs. It almost looks like the design of Dodd-Frank was to cause biggest banks to get bigger because the smallest banks would not be able to survive under the compliance burdens that were then created for them. What does that look like in real life? Let me tell you about a gentleman who I bumped into early Monday morning. He was flying out of Oklahoma. I was sitting next to the gentleman, and were striking up a conversation. He is a farmer and rancher in Oklahoma. He owns about 200 acres in North Central Oklahoma. He started to go through the purchase process to actually buy that acreage and couldn't get mortgage lending for it. No banks in the area would do it. Why? The Dodd-Frank requirements. Suddenly, a guy in Oklahoma trying to buy 200 acres had to find a way to scrape together $100,000 of cash to buy a ranch. Now, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, if you wanted to get that same ranch, you would go to the bank in town. Now the bank in town has to tell you that you have to go somewhere else or find some other way to do it because the restrictions are so high that they can't do it anymore. Local customers don't want to deal with someone else in another State or in another city. They would like to deal with their local bank, but they can't anymore. Oklahoma's community banks had nothing to do with the financial collapse in 2008. Yet they have been penalized all the way through this process. In total, Dodd-Frank required more than 10 Federal agencies to write more than 400 new rules, imposing 27,000 new mandates on financial institutions of every size. Just process that. When you are Farmer State Bank of Allen and you have 12 employees, you now have to track 27,000 new mandates to keep up with it. How are you doing with that? That is what real life looks like. I have had folks say to me: This is some giveaway to the biggest banks. What we are dealing with in this reform package is pretty straightforward. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial earlier this week saying that the bill ``eases administrative burdens on 5,000 community banks that make up 98% of the financial institutions but only 15% of the assets.'' Let me run that past you again. What we are dealing with deals with 98 percent of the banks, but of total banking assets in the country, it is only 15 percent of the assets. That means the top 2 percent of the banks in the country--the largest top 2 percent of the banks in the country--have 85 percent of the assets. I understand the higher regulations on those. They are significant. If they fail, they take down the global economy. For the other 98 percent of the banks in the country that have only 15 percent of the total assets in the country-- these are the smallest banks in the country--why are they being dragged into this? All we want to say is to allow local banks to be local banks again and to be able to loan to their neighbors. These are the folks with whom they go to church and are in Rotary Club, and with whom they have grown up. They know their kids, and they know their families, but they are dealing with all these arcane requirements. They are dealing with 27,000 new rules, and they just can't make it. What does this look like in real life? Let me give you an illustration from Legacy Bank in Elk City. Damon, from Legacy Bank in Elk City, OK, said: As a community banker, my job has become much more difficult and burdensome to our customers. Legacy has always strived to offer the best customer service a bank can offer. I used to be a lender to all. However, with the changes that have come about with this bill, along with the fines and penalties that are a potential and, at times, don't use common sense, I am now a commercial lender only. Let that soak in for a second. At Legacy Bank in Elk City, he used to make loans to everyone, and now he is a commercial lender only. What does that look like in real life? I have folks who come to this floor and people who catch me and say: Banks are still making lots of money, and banks are doing just fine. Why is Dodd-Frank a problem? Yes, banks are going to find a way to still do business. What has happened? The biggest banks are loaning to corporate customers, and the smallest banks that used to do small business lending and mortgages and took care of their community can't do that anymore. So the big is getting bigger and helping the biggest, and the small is not able to help the small. I thought we were supposed to be a country that helped everyone-- corporations or individual farmers and ranchers and citizens who are trying to start small businesses. Let's get back to doing that again. Let's not put 27,000 new restrictions on a small community bank and tell it that it has to abide by everything that JPMorgan Chase does and treat it as if it is the same. It is not. There is Frazer Bank in Altus, about which my wife and I have a longstanding saying: Everywhere you go in the world, you are going to bump into somebody from Altus, OK. Try it sometime. A local banker wrote: This past week in Altus, we had a local small business owner who applied for a home mortgage loan. The customer had a down payment and closing costs, but one of the key issues preventing our bank from making this personal loan was the time constraint of 2 years of history. This is someone to whom we would have made a home loan prior to Dodd-Frank, but now we cannot. So a small business owner with closing cost money and with an ability to repay is now blocked out. How serious is that? Jim Hamby from Vision Bank in Ada wrote me and was trying to describe exactly what this looks like. He made the statement: Overly prescriptive rules on mortgage lending are the big issue. The ability to repay and the rules governing that topic are geared for people who are W-2 wage earners, not small business people. Many small business people have already been denied credit who would have otherwise qualified for a mortgage, and that is bad policy. Any mortgage bank keeps its own books and should automatically define what is a qualified mortgage. This would help alleviate the ``ability to repay'' rule and allow us to take better care of our customers. Don't miss what he is saying there. The rules are written for people who get a paycheck from week to week, not for the small business owner and certainly not for the farmers and ranchers. Here is a statement from a banker in Northwest Oklahoma who asked a simple question: What about a $60 million bank in the northwest corner of Oklahoma? What about other rural markets where smaller, traditional community banks have completely abandoned lines of business and products because the cost of regulation makes it so unprofitable or because the price of regulation and risk from examiners and lawyers bring so much additional scrutiny that you can't afford it? One thing is certain. When banks are forced to leave lines of business due to government regulation, both customers and communities suffer. Even in markets in which there are other participants in the abandoned product line, the reality is, with fewer competitors, customers pay higher rates and higher fees for a simple service. This is not a hard issue. For the 2 percent of the largest banks that have 85 percent of the banking assets, I understand there is systemic risk there. For the other 98 percent of the banks in the country that cover 15 percent total of all of the banking assets in the country, why are they considered so systemically important that 27,000 new regulations would need to come down on their 12 employees? This is a good moment in which to get small towns in rural America working again and to allow people to go down the street to the bankers they know and went to school with rather than to have to drive to some big city and talk to the biggest banks in America and have them try to understand more about rural America. We can fix this. I am looking forward to passing this reform and allowing our banks not just to make money--they will find a way to make money; they are businesses--but to actually get back to serving the customers they want to serve again in a fair way--farmers and ranchers and small businesses. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I do object.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. There is no question that I want to see legislative solutions here, and I am actually glad to stand with my colleague from Arizona to talk about how we get a solution on this issue. As we have seen from Congress, especially over the last 20 years, the challenge has been, if Congress does a temporary patch once, it will do it 20 times again. My concern is for the 7,500 DACA kids who are in my State of Oklahoma. They are looking for an actual solution. They want a sense of permanence. Their status has been in limbo since 2012. The question is, Can we actually resolve this for them? I have put forward a presentation--Senator Flake has been passionate about this as well--for those individuals to actually end up toward naturalization, not to have a temporary patch of just being in limbo status again. It would be to work them through a process to get them in a line in which they actually end up in naturalization at the end of it. At the same time, there would be border security and some other things that we think would be connected to it. I would like to see us work through this process to actually get to a resolution. A couple of Federal courts have pushed back on the administration and have bought Congress a little more time to be able to resolve this issue. I would like for us to use the better wisdom of that to actually get to a solution during this time period. The goal is: How do we get this resolved? I am pleased to say the President has moved a long way on this issue. The President has laid out naturalization for 1.8 million people, has dealt with border security, and has engaged in a conversation to actually get it resolved. We had a completely failed effort a couple of weeks ago with four different proposals coming up, with all four of them getting bipartisan support, but with all four of them failing. I would love to see us get on any one of them and start amending it. The Senator from Arizona and I have already had conversations about changes that I would like to see even in some of the bills that I supported, but the way to resolve that is get on one of them. Let's actually start amending one, and at the end of it, let's let this body work its will. The frustration I have had with this body in these 3 short years that I have been here is, most of the time, we fail to even debate an issue. When it requires 60 votes to even open debate on something, we just, simply, start the process, never get 60, never debate it, never resolve it. Then this body just moves on to another topic. I commend my colleague from Arizona for reminding this body again that we have an unanswered issue still sitting out there that needs to be resolved. I agree with him completely on that one. Let's get on it. Let's resolve it long term, and let's provide a sense of permanency to this solution, not another temporary patch that will end up being the same temporary patch we will do 3 years from now, 3 years after that, and 3 years after that. May I remind our body that we are on our fourth continuing resolution just this year. We need to resolve this and take the moment to be able to do that. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2579 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator modify his request so that the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2579. I further ask that the pending amendments be withdrawn with the exception of the Grassley amendment No. 1959. Finally, I ask that the Grassley amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it was an exceptionally moving service in the Rotunda today. For a man to be able to lie in honor in the Rotunda, for the Nation to pause for a moment, and for the leadership of the House and Senate, on both sides of the aisle, and the President of the United States to all stop and for a moment look at a wooden casket, simple as it was, and remember the legacy of a man who gave his life telling people that Jesus loves you, it is a remarkable day. It is not a common day in the U.S. Senate, in the House, to break in the middle of the day to be able to go to the Rotunda and just contemplate this simple fact: There is a God whom you can know who loves you. It is interesting to think back on some of the legacy of Dr. Graham. He had been to Oklahoma many times. In 2003, I had the opportunity to be the chair for the Youth Night of that mission. It was a moving night, and there were a lot of people there, as there were at all of his events. That night, there were thousands and thousands of teenagers there, and Dr. Graham unpacked a message about Solomon, a person who had everything. He challenged them--for this person who had everything--but he always came back to say all of these things were vanity, and, really, at the end, it is knowing God that is going to matter. He even challenged people of power. In that message that night in Oklahoma City, he said: People like power and prestige. Solomon had more power than any man in his generation. No nation dared to defy him. But he looked upon all his mighty military power and said that even power brings no sense of fulfillment, or joy, or peace. The Bible talks about another power--the kind of power that helps when the crisis comes. 2Timothy 1:7: ``God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.'' And then he said this: Jesus Christ said, ``All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me.'' Then he quoted Paul's words: ``For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation.'' That night, many students responded to that simple invitation to be able to know a God who doesn't give you power, but He is power. If you asked most Oklahomans, though, what was the moment they remember most about Dr. Graham coming to Oklahoma, they would say it was in 1995 after the Federal Building was destroyed by a domestic terrorism event. Dr. Graham was there the Sunday after that tragic attack on Oklahoma and on the Nation. He gave a message to Oklahoma City, to Oklahomans, and to the Nation, and he laid out a sense of hope. Toward the end of his sermon he said this: This event also reminds us of the brevity and uncertainty of life. It reminds us that we never know when we're going to be taken. I doubt that even one of those who went to that building to work, or to go to the children's place, ever dreamed that it was their last day on earth. That is why we each need to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves to God. It's ironic that this terrible event took place just three days after the churches of this city were filled with people celebrating Easter. Just one week ago today. And throughout the world, the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Easter on this day. And Easter always brings hope to all of us. For the Christian, the Cross tells us that God understands our suffering, for He took upon Himself at the Cross all our sins and all of our failures and all of our sufferings. And our Lord on that Cross asked the question: ``Why? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'' And he received his answer. He knew: To redeem the world. To save you and me from our sins. To give us assurance that if we died we're going to heaven. He was saying from the Cross, ``I love you!'' And I know the heartaches and sorrows and the pain that you feel. Easter points us beyond the tragedy of the Cross to the hope of the empty tomb. It tells us that there is hope for eternal life, that Christ has conquered death. And it also tells us that God has triumphed over evil and death and hell. This is our hope, and it can be your hope as well. Dr. Graham ended his conversation by saying: ``My prayer for you today is that you will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around you and will know in your heart that He will never forsake you, as you trust Him.'' This was a significant day for Oklahomans to begin the healing process together. It is quite remarkable to have America's pastor be laid to rest. Dr. Graham would assure all of us that the same hope he experienced, that he shared with as many people as he possibly could, was not unique to North Carolina. It wasn't unique to his family. It wasn't even unique to America. It was God's great affection for all people. The offer of that love that could turn around a heart like his, could turn around the heart of a nation, and it could turn around the heart of all people. It is a good day to remember. It is a rare moment for us to be able to stop and pause in the way we have today. I think it is a significant message that should not be forgotten. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I join with many others who are praying for the families in Florida today as they grieve--an overwhelming grief that most parents would never contemplate--because they do not have the opportunity to take their kids to school today because their lives were taken yesterday. I continue to pray for, engage in, and help in any way that we can through this process. I know so many of the schools in my State have taken active steps over the past many years to provide greater security in the schools, with lockdown access and other things that they have done intentionally to provide greater and greater security. There is no explanation for an individual who is a former student of a school to return to the school with a gun and with who knows what motivation. So we will continue to pray, engage, and work with schools on security, as we have done from this body in the past, as well as to provide financial resources to help schools and their security systems, to help provide advice and counsel--to do what can be done. We will pray along with the families who struggle deeply, and we will walk with them through their incredible, inexplicable grief. Mr. President, this is a week that has been set aside for the immigration debate, but today is the first day there has been any real immigration debate on the floor. It is Thursday. All week, this floor has sat mostly empty. For months, there has been the preparation to put immigration bills on the floor, but as of earlier this week, there had only been one bill that had actually been proposed--the President's bill--to be able to say: Here is a middle-ground position. After months of negotiation and the White House meeting with everybody--both sides of the aisle from the House and the Senate--the White House laid out a proposal and said: Here is a middle ground. I would say that the White House has moved a tremendous amount in this and has dropped a tremendous number of issues. Over the course of the past several months, the White House has moved away from a lot of things. First, it moved from legal status to saying: OK, let's do citizenship. It is not citizenship for just the 690,000 individuals who are currently in DACA, but the White House opened this up--and I agree--to 1.8 million individuals who are not only DACA students but to those who are also DACA-eligible, those who did not sign up for the process but who could have been eligible for it. Interestingly enough, the President even moved from President Obama's position. President Obama's position for DACA was that you had to be in the country by 2007. President Trump has moved that and said he will be more open. You will have had to have been in the country by the time President Obama announced the program in 2012. That was a significant concession which has opened up the program for almost 1 million more individuals. The trade-off was pretty straightforward. He had a long list of items to be able to provide border security--both interior enforcement and border security. Yet, over the past couple of months, the President has backed up and said OK. The Democrats have said they absolutely do not want any interior enforcement of any immigration laws added in any way, so the President backed up and said: Let's start with border security. We want to do interior enforcement in the days ahead, but let's start with border security. The President wanted to address the issue of sanctuary cities, but that is not addressed in this bill. He has dropped that. The President wanted to deal with asylum reform, but he has dropped that issue from his proposal. There is no conversation about refugees and changing how that structure would work. There is no conversation about the H visa programs. He has dropped a lot of issues that were important to the White House and has said: OK. We will deal with those on a different day. Let's limit the issues to this narrow group of four issues, and that is all we will deal with. He dropped a lot of other issues for it. Border security, dealing with citizenship for those individuals who are in DACA or who are DACA- eligible, dealing with the issue of family migration and how that works together, and then dealing with the issue of the diversity lottery-- that is it. Everything else dropped away. It is not comprehensive--it is small--but border security had very clear definitions. Border security is not just a wall. I have heard some individuals say, even on this floor today, that a wall will not accomplish anything. I would say the President agrees with that. A wall by itself doesn't accomplish anything. A wall is needed in some sections of the border to slow down illegal crossings, especially in urban areas, where there are urban areas on both sides of the border. It is needed in those areas, but a wall by itself doesn't accomplish anything. You can go around it, and you can go over it eventually. What you need are additional agents. What you need are additional enforcement authorities. What is needed is to be able to break down some of the legal loopholes. Some proposals that have come out in the last few hours have said they want to strike a bipartisan compromise and say: OK, we will provide for wall funding, and we will allow for the large legalization and naturalization of individuals who are DACA and DACA-eligible. That is a fair trade-off, they say. The problem is when you read the fine print of what that means. I go back to the same statement: If they say a wall doesn't accomplish anything, and all they provide is really a wall and a few technical things around it, then the question remains, What is missing? What would make the difference? What would make the difference are some very basic things to be able to close legal loopholes. That is what is in the President's proposal-- none of them onerous, none of them out of line. They are just dealing with the basic legal loopholes. We all have to admit, when you see the records from the Department of Homeland Security and from Customs and Border Protection, that there are individuals who cross the border, both adults and unaccompanied minors, who are coached by coyotes as they move through Mexico: When you cross the border, here is what to say. If you say these things, then you will get access into the government. They know that if they say certain phrases, they are in. I hate to say that is actually true, and it is unaddressed in any of these bipartisan compromises. I don't think it is unrealistic to say that if you go around one of the barriers or even through one of the gated entrances and cross through and immediately get caught by someone on the other side but say the magic phrases, you are in. We have to resolve that, and there are some basic ways to resolve it. If you come in and have a credible claim of fear or a claim of asylum and cross the border and immediately speak those words, currently you are allowed into the country for 2 or 3 years while your trial goes through the process. Only about 30 percent of those are actually successful. That 30 percent number is significant. What do we do to resolve it? Why don't we add additional judges and additional courts, and instead of waiting 3 years before you have that hearing, you have that hearing within 3 weeks? No evidence has changed in that time period. You are still allowed to have counsel, and you are still allowed to have insight. But we actually resolve it instead of allowing people to come into the country for 3 years and telling them ``Here is a court date and a court location to appear,'' and you do not know if they appear. In fact, the majority of them do not appear for their court dates, but they are somewhere, at a location unknown, in the country. It is not unreasonable to resolve this issue; yet it is unresolved in all of these bipartisan proposals. There is no fix to deal with criminal aliens or those individuals who come into the country who are gang members. It is a small minority, but there are those individuals, and there seems to be no fix for those things at all. There is no dealing with the issue of the hiring process for the Department of Homeland Security. If you are in remote areas on the northern border--there are requests to add additional compensation to some of these areas or to give additional benefits to some of these Customs and Border Protection folks because they work in very remote areas along the border. They ask for this year after year after year, and there is nothing addressed in the bipartisan agreement. It is just the wall and asking: Shouldn't that be enough? It is not. There is no dealing with drugs like fentanyl and trying to interdict those in the border areas. It doesn't provide any deterrence for the visa overstays. About 40 percent of the individuals who are illegally in this country right now came on a tourist visa or on some other kind of visa and just overstayed it. We have to resolve those issues as well. That seems to be an obvious issue. There is no dealing with some of the basic statements. What do I mean by that? Under some of the bipartisan bills that are coming out, you prove yourself to be a DACA-eligible individual by your own verbal statement that you are eligible. No documentation is required. I think that is an obvious loophole. If you are DACA-eligible, even, in fact, under President Obama's proposal, you have to show documentation that you are DACA-eligible. Yet, in these new proposals, you don't. You just have to say that you are eligible, and suddenly you are eligible. That is a major problem. The structure of how some of the bipartisan agreements have come out has also become a big issue for me because it doesn't really deal with just this 10-year. In one section of the bill, it says it is a 10-year path toward citizenship. I have no issue, if we can do border security, with having a 10-year path toward citizenship. It allows us to have 10 years to deal with the basic border security things. It gives certainty to those individuals who are in the country that they are headed toward citizenship. I have absolutely no problem with that, but the bipartisan agreement that has come out doesn't do that. In one section, it says a 10-year path to citizenship. In another section, it gives the recipients the opportunity to get legal permanent residency--green cards--much faster, which then moves them on to a much faster track. It is a little bit of a sleight of hand that we say 10 years in one part and in another part say that it is actually 5 to 7 years. Say what you mean. Don't try to say two different things and have two different paths. I was also interested in a change that was slipped in at the very back of the bipartisan bill that makes an enormous change to the status of every single individual in the country. Let me just read this. It is being said that this bill is just about a wall and just about DACA, but let me read this section in the back of the bill: In carrying out immigration enforcement activities, the Secretary shall prioritize available immigration enforcement resources to aliens who have been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor, three or more misdemeanor offenses, pose a threat to national security or public safety, or are unlawfully present in the United States, and--that is an important word in there, ``and''--they arrived in the United States after June 30, 2018. Do you know what that says? That says the Department of Homeland Security can't go after anyone in the country illegally who arrives here before June 30, 2018. In other words, the race is on. If you can get into the country and across the border before June 30 of this year, you are in, and you have amnesty--for millions. That is not about DACA; that is every single individual in the country unlawfully present. If you are in the country unlawfully present before June 30 of this year, according to this bill, you are in until you commit a felony. As long as you don't do that, you will never have any enforcement of any type. I was stunned to see that slipped into the back of the bill. This was dropped last night, and we still have the opportunity to go through it, but I am quite surprised at the number of people who have pushed back on the President and have either not read his proposal or have ignored what he put on the table. It is not an unreasonable proposal. It is a straightforward, commonsense proposal. I would encourage those folks who oppose it to read it first and to see what it actually says. There has been pushback on the issue of chain migration or family reunification. Let me set this in context. Right now, we have a 20-year backlog for individuals coming into the country legally. That is an incentive not to do legal immigration because if you are going to wait in the line 20 years long, many are just not going to go through the process. Unless we reform how we do the family integration, once 2 million additional people are added to this in the 10-year time period, I have no question we will move from a 20-year backlog to a 25-year backlog as family members also reconnect with those individuals coming in. What happens at that point? A bad situation gets even worse in our immigration policy. The issue of family reunification and the proposals that were laid out have not been partisan proposals in the past, but suddenly because President Trump put it out there, it is suddenly an unrealistic partisan proposal. May I remind everyone that this issue was also dealt with in the 2013 Gang of 8 bill that got around 70 votes in the Senate--this very similar issue of family reunification and how this would work. In 1995, during the Clinton administration, a proposal was made by Democratic House Member Barbara Jordan, leading the Commission on Immigration that made almost the exact same proposal in 1995. This was just not a partisan issue until now. For some reason, because President Trump wants to propose it, it is an angry Republican issue. It has been a bipartisan, commonsense issue for a long time on how to deal with an obvious issue in our immigration reform. I would encourage my colleagues to read the bill and see what is in it, not what is being said in the media about it. See what is really in it, and if there is a question and a dialogue about it, let's amend it. Let's go through it because it is a very unique and powerful opportunity to set it right for those individuals who are in the DACA and DACA-eligible population to finally not be in limbo but to finally have permanence and to know they are home in this country where most of them have grown up; that they are not just long-term guests, they are home. This is the way to resolve this but at the same time do what Americans have cried for, for a long time--actually secure our borders and start the process of reforming our immigration system in a way that makes sense for everybody--for the immigrant, for the born citizen of the United States, for the naturalized citizen, and to make sure it is fair for everyone. That is not unreasonable. In fact, it is a good idea. If it were only proposed by someone else, I think a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle would agree with it. Take the politics out of it and look at the policy. Let's resolve this for the country. I yield back. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the Senate is probably interested in the status of the debate on immigration. This debate started in September in hallways, committee rooms, and in our offices--opportunities for us to talk about these issues now for months. Several weeks ago, there was a government shutdown demanding that we actually have a vote on immigration right now or that we don't reopen the government. After 3 days of government shutdown, the government was reopened, demanding that we move the immigration debate earlier to make sure we would get this done earlier. Now it is Wednesday of the week that it was supposed to occur, and the proposals are not out on the table. It has been a frustrating journey. I can't even begin to count the number of hours I have spent in bipartisan conversations trying to circle around a simple set of issues. How do we resolve a small group of issues related to immigration? I thought this was resolved in some ways. Back in early January, there was a large bipartisan meeting with the House and Senate to discuss what was widely televised as the scope for immigration and the key issues we were going to address. It came down to four issues, and there was agreement among the leaders, among those in the room, that these are the only four issues we are going to deal with: DACA and those DACA-eligible and how we move them toward citizenship, border security and all the things around border security, diversity visa lottery, and family reunification. All of those have been dealt with in legislation before--in fact, for decades, in one version or another-- except for the issue of DACA. That one is new. That is the only one that hasn't been done with legislation before. The others all have. The Gang of 8 bill in 2013 had border security and all kinds of different issues related to both construction of walls, technology, and legal loopholes. It had diversity lottery. It had chain migration in it. If you want to go back to an immigration study during the Clinton administration, in 1995, there was a proposal put out by Barbara Jordan, the Democratic House Member from Texas, who led that particular study during the Clinton administration dealing with chain migration, dealing with how we transition to merit-based immigration. This has been dealt with literally in hearings for decades, but what I have heard for the past several months is that there is no time to do any of those things. The only time that we have is to deal with DACA. We can't even discuss anything else. Meeting after meeting after meeting since early November, I have heard the same thing: There is no time. There is no time. There is no time. Now we are getting down to the day, and there is still a conversation about how we deal with these four simple issues that we have talked about for months, that the House and Senate have debated for decades, and on which we have had an untold number of hearings for decades to try to actually land them, to get legislation ready, and to get this resolved. Let me just focus on a few things, because a few of us have put out a proposal that covers those four areas that was a middle-ground proposal. It is certainly not everything that I would like to have in border security, and it is certainly not everything that Democrats would like to have, but it is a middle ground between all of those. It is one the White House has already announced that they will certainly sign. It has 1.8 million people moving into naturalization, or citizenship. These are the individuals whose parents brought them illegally, but they were children at the time. Those individuals came into the country. They have now lived here for years. They know no other country, on the whole. Those individuals are offered an opportunity to become citizens of the United States 10 years from now. Why 10 years from now? That gives a time period of 10 years, which is commonly agreed that it will take to be able to secure the border. In that 10-year time period, the border security could be put in place to make sure we have a secure border. It is not an unreasonable thing. In that same 10-year time period, about 2 million people are going to move, actually, into citizenship. How does that affect the rest of our process? Well, let me tell you first how it affects it. Right now we have a 20-year backlog to be able to come into the United States legally--20 years to be able to come through that process. Once we add another 2 million people in that process and all the family that will be connected to them, in all likelihood, that backlog moves from 20 years to 25 years. It is ridiculous at 20 years, and it is even worse at 25. We all know that this issue of family migration and the broad allowance of people coming in, not based on what skills they have but based on being someone's brother-in-law, is not the best way to do immigration, and we are the only country that does it like this. Seventy percent of the people who come into our country legally come through a family connection--being someone's brother, being someone's sister, being a relative in some way that they are able to come into the country. Canada, just to our north, is exactly the opposite. Sixty-three percent of the people who come into Canada legally through their immigration system come because they are bringing a work skill. Now, I don't want to oppose anyone coming from anywhere in the world. There is a uniqueness to the United States and how we handle immigration, and we allow people from all over the world, from every country, to come. That should remain the same, but we should have one simple requirement: They come to bring something to the Nation. I don't think that is too hard of a hill to climb. It is not a matter of who you are related to. You certainly should be able to bring in your spouse and your children, but brothers and sisters and other adults and such that would be in your family, maybe, should come based on their own merit, as well, for them to be able to come and be a part of our great culture, as well, or they are able to come visit and come stay long periods of time but not necessarily come for citizenship, unless you are coming to bring them. Again, that doesn't seem too difficult. The diversity lottery hasn't been the challenging issue. Quite frankly, that has been an issue that was in the 2013 Gang of 8 bill, saying: Why do we have 50,000 visas for individuals from anywhere, from around the world, who can come who don't necessarily bring a skill at all? Why don't we just add a skill requirement or an educational requirement? We could say that you are welcome to come from anywhere, but at least we should know that those who are coming from anywhere and everywhere bring something to the American economy. Again, that hasn't been controversial nor partisan in the past, and now, suddenly, it has become that. The border security part of it has been the most confusing part of the debate for me on this thing. Months ago, some of my Democratic colleagues over and over said: The wall will do nothing. There is no benefit in the wall. If you put up a 20-foot wall, there will be a 21- foot ladder. It will do absolutely nothing. Now, the conversation is this: Well, we will give citizenship to DACA, and we will give you some money to build a wall, and we will call it even. That has never been the request, and everyone knows it. The request has been border security, not just a wall. I am very aware that the President has talked about a big beautiful wall a lot. I get that. But it has always been about border security, not just about putting up a wall in certain places. There has never been an emphasis to build 2,000 miles of wall. There isn't a need for a wall in certain urban areas, but what is really needed is border security and everyone knows it. I don't understand why border security has suddenly become a controversial issue. What we have asked for and what we have laid out in a proposal seems to be a very middle-ground proposal. It doesn't do interior enforcement. Quite frankly, our Democratic colleagues have said: Absolutely no additional interior enforcement--we are open to border security, but nothing that secures the interior of the country. So we have said: OK, that will be a future bill dealing with interior enforcement, but we do feel like border security is very important. So they have said: OK, we will give you some money to build a wall in sections. Can I say what they are trying to exclude? Border security, when you lay it out, is also the legal loopholes. So here are just a few of the things that we have laid out, which I don't think should be that controversial, that we have included in our language and said: If we are going to do border security, let's be serious about it. For instance, we have asked for additional penalties for people who do human smuggling. Right now, it is a slap on the wrist if you do human smuggling into the country. So coyotes and others are able to do human smuggling into the country in transit. There are also people who are individuals in our country watching out for Border Patrol agents, radioing other people saying: Hey, Border Patrol is here. Go a different direction. They are actually helping to divert people away. We think we should increase the penalties. Our Democratic colleagues have pushed back and said no on that. It doesn't seem unreasonable to increase the penalties for human smuggling and the same for drug smuggling. To increase the penalties for those who are spying out and redirecting people who are doing drug smuggling doesn't seem too hard to be able to accomplish. We would like to allow an individual State and their National Guard to be able to participate with Border Patrol. Now the National Guard is not law enforcement. What does the National Guard bring, though? They bring helicopters that have infrared technology. They are able to fly over sections of the border to be able to see the area below and to help direct Border Patrol to it. To participate with the National Guard and allow them to bring some of those resources those States already have shouldn't be that difficult. That is just a part of border security, but our Democratic colleagues are pushing back on that. We would like to do an initiative to be able to work with Mexico and provide Mexico some additional funding and support and consultation on their border between Guatemala and Mexico, the southern border of Mexico--what is literally kind of our first border. It is their southern border. We have been pushed back, though, to say that is not border security. It is slowing down people illegally trafficking through Central America into Mexico. We think that is part of it. How about this one? All along the Rio Grande in Texas, there is Carrizo cane that are there--this large cane that grows in the river in that area. In that area, you are able to hide people, drugs--whatever it may be--in this tall cane because you just disappear in it. It is on both sides of the border. We think we should do an eradication of that cane so that you can actually see through it. It hasn't been controversial in the past, but suddenly it is controversial: No, we don't want to eradicate the cane. That cane is only there because it is hiding people and contraband. We think we should be able to do that. We think we should be able to add an electromagnetic spectrum at our border ports of entry so you can look through a vehicle, looking for chemical parts of the spectrum and to be able to see if we can eradicate drugs that are being trafficked into our country. I don't think that should be that controversial. There is getting secure communications so that our individuals and the Border Patrol can talk to each other and can interact with other law enforcement to make sure no one from a transnational criminal organization is listening in. We should have license plate readers at the port of entry to be able to help track that and speed it up. Doing biometrics at the entry and exit is something that has been required since the 9/11 Commission. So we can accelerate that process that as people come in and out of our country we know when they come in legally, but we also know when they depart legally. There is dealing with what is sometimes called catch and release. Individuals who come into the country and cross illegally into the country are held in detention for a short period of time until they get due process, and every individual gets due process. This is not trying to remove due process from anyone. But as they cross into the country illegally, we are able to pick them up, detain them, and make sure they have due process. Some of them make claims for asylum or make claims of credible fear or other things. Instead of doing a hearing on that, we actually give them a piece of paper that is called a notice to appear and release them into the country and say: We will see you in about 2 years for your hearing date--instead of actually doing the hearing right then. Nothing has changed. No facts have changed. No information has changed. Nothing has changed during that time of delay. We just release them because we don't have enough judges or enough courts or enough attorneys or enough advocates to be able to accomplish that. So they are released for years in the country. You may be surprised to know that most of the individuals never show up for that hearing. They are just released into the country. There is also a statement saying: Well, what about unaccompanied minors? Again, you might be interested to know that three-fourths of the unaccompanied minors who cross into the country are actually 14 years old or up. These are not 6-year-olds who are crossing in and 5- year-olds who are crossing in. Most of them are older teenagers. Two- thirds of the people who are coming in as unaccompanied minors are actually teenage boys, and most of them come in to be able to work. So the question is this: How do we handle that? I think we do fair detention. I think we go through the due process and make a decision right then. Again, you will be interested to know that for individuals who actually do show up for their court hearing, which is a small group, about 30 percent of those who go to the court hearing do get asylum once they finally get to the court hearing. But we are not getting to the court hearing for most of those individuals. That shouldn't be that controversial. We should be able to handle how we go through that process in an equitable and fair way. I would like us to be able to deal with the cost, quite frankly, of detention. We have asked for a simple part of this process on border security, to honor the taxpayer, to say that we will not spend more than $500 a night on housing individuals whom we have in detention. Now, I think most Americans--certainly most Oklahomans--would like to stay in a hotel that costs $500 a night. Putting a cap on how much we spend on that per person per night, I think, is a reasonable thing to be able to put into it, but we have had pushback. We have asked for emergency immigration judges. Right now there are almost 700,000 people in a backlog in our immigration courts--almost 700,000. We don't think it is unreasonable to ask for emergency judges to come in to help us with the backlog. We are not talking about untrained judges. We are talking about judges who are in the Federal system who are knowledgeable of these issues and to do a surge of judges to help us get caught up. We should be able to do all of these things. None of these issues should be controversial. This is what it means when you start talking about real border security, not just adding a wall in some places, not just adding a couple of additional agents but actually putting the things around them that they need to actually be able to enforce the law. I think people lose track of the fact that ICE folks and Customs and Border Patrol are not enemies of our State. They are American law enforcement. They work for our country to keep us safe and to enforce the laws of our Nation. I am appalled at the way they are spoken of on this floor and treated in conversations. They are American law enforcement enforcing American laws. If there is a problem with what they are enforcing, this body should vote on it and fix the law, not beat up on the people who are enforcing the law and doing what we have asked them to do as a Congress. I hope in the days ahead we can actually get this passed. I hope we can actually move toward citizenship for 1.8 million people, which the President has asked for, and I think it is a reasonable thing to be able to do for those individuals who came into our country as children. But I also hope that this time we don't say that we are going to do citizenship and not do border security. I hope we don't just throw some money and pretend we are doing it. I hope we, as a body, can have a serious conversation and say: Let's actually do border security and help us as a nation to establish a secure border. I hope we actually deal with some of the biggest issues on immigration and can walk through this debate in a reasonable way without the emotion and heat, but thinking this through because this affects the future of our country for a very long time. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, if we go back over the past 20 years, it is hard to find an immigration debate that occurred that ended with making law. Immigration issues have been contentious over the years-- unnecessarily so. They have been emotional over the years-- unnecessarily so. It is connected to families, to people, to real lives, and to real stories. I get that. But now we are at a point again where we will be debating immigration on this floor all of this week. The DREAM Act was proposed 15 years ago. Three different times it has come up before the House or the Senate or both. All three times in 15 years, it has failed--just dealing alone with those Dreamers. Then a very, very large package was tried in 2013. That included not just the Dreamers but their parents and every other person illegally present in the United States--wholesale reform of every part of the immigration system. That was tried in 2013; it also failed. Now it is time to find that middle ground. Where can we find the basic issues here? In September, the President of the United States challenged the House and the Senate to get a legislative solution for the recipients of DACA and those who are DACA-eligible. At the time, the President was decried as throwing people out of the country, but he was very clear at that point: He did not feel President Obama had the authority to give a wholesale Executive answer for those individuals on what they called deferred action for childhood arrivals. But President Trump said: I want a legislative solution. I want certainty. I don't want these individuals to sign up every 2 years and be at the whim of some future Executive and go through the process. Let's get a permanent answer to all of this, but with that, we have to pick up the issues around it at the same time. The President actually gave the nation a great gift at that time: a deadline. For two decades, immigration has been well known to be a problem, but there has been no deadline. The President set the deadline of March 5 to have this resolved. We are nearing that now. It is time to move from just debating it in the hallways and in our offices to debating it on the floor of this Chamber and trying to get this resolved. Here is what I have proposed, along with Chairman Grassley, John Cornyn, David Perdue, Thom Tillis, Tom Cotton, and Joni Ernst: to lay out a commonsense solution, to say, let's stick to four items--four items that the White House has also identified. Those things are all connected. Those four items begin, obviously, with DACA and those who are DACA- eligible, about 1.8 million individuals who are currently living in the country, who grew up literally speaking English, pledging allegiance to our flag, going to our schools, and engaging in our commerce. In every way, they have lived and functioned as Americans, except they are not. They were brought into the country illegally. So now what do we do about that? President Obama set a time period. He set a 2007 time period. You had to have been in the country by 2007, be under a certain age, and then you were eligible. We actually advanced that since it has been so long now and said: From the time President Obama announced that--which was June 2012--if you were in the country at that time or before and you are under that time period and that certain age, you are eligible for it. Apply. Go through the process. We think that is not only entirely fair, it is also entirely compassionate. But it also sends out a warning to those who are going to rush at our border and say: The easiest way to illegally cross into the United States is to bring a child with you. We do not want that to occur. That is a dangerous crossing in many places, many children have died, and individuals have had horrible things happen to them on the way. We want to discourage that. So we set the June 2012 date--that is when President Obama first announced the program--and said that is a reasonable time period. But with that, we said it would take 10 years for those individuals to be able to cross into naturalization. That is in line with other individuals around the world who are currently getting in the line right now. There is no one jumping ahead of anyone else but holding those individuals harmless who are already here and saying: Let's start you through the process, and 10 years from now, you will get naturalization. At the same time we put them in line, we also put in a process for border security. The reason we currently have 11-plus million individuals in the country with no legal status is because our border security process has been so bad. This is no great shock to anyone. So what we are doing is taking those individuals in DACA and saying: Let's take 10 years to move you into naturalization. During that 10-year time period, we also want to set up the basics of border security. That gives us time to get security first and naturalization second for those individuals but both with great certainty. It is not just a wall, although there should be sections of wall. In areas where it is highly populated on both sides of the border, we need a wall as a demarkation. But in most areas of the border, it is not highly populated on both sides; it is open desert or mountains. We need cameras. We need technology. We need interaction with our National Guard, who can bring resources to the battle as we try to interdict drugs. We need increased ability in our laws dealing with terrorism, drug smuggling, human smuggling. We need consistency in how we handle immigration. Right now, there is one policy if you come from Cuba, another policy if you come from Honduras, and another policy if you come from Mexico. Why don't we be consistent with our immigration policy? We need additional Customs and Border Patrol agents. We need additional ICE agents. My colleagues immediately recoil from that and say that is interior enforcement. Actually, it is not. If you have additional Customs and Border Patrol agents and they pick up someone at the border, they are immediately transitioned into ICE custody, where they are detained as they go through the process. But you can't just detain people. You also have to have judges and attorneys. You have to have advocates for those individuals. So we need to increase the number of judges, attorneys, and advocates to be able to help. We need to increase the number of translators to make sure that we get good response from those individuals and that they understand what is going on. Right now, there are 600,000 people in a backlog waiting for their day in court, for due process--600,000. That is absurd. One of the reasons we have such an open, porous border is that individuals know that if they get across the border, they will only be detained a couple of weeks and then they will be released into the United States with what is called a notice to appear. Some people appear at their court date sometimes 2, 3, 4 years later, and some people do not, but they have been released into the United States in the meantime. We need to accelerate that process. We have individuals who come across the border and they claim asylum, but they don't get an asylum hearing for a couple of years. We should have that as a rapid process. They should get due process, and they should be able to make that claim. As we have said over and over again, justice delayed is justice denied. We have some interesting things that we put out in this dealing with the cost to the taxpayers. We put a cap on the amount that we can spend per person, per day in housing individuals, and we set the cap at $500 per day, per person to actually do detaining. We think it is a reasonable amount, and, honestly, it is one of the things I think should be universally accepted, both by the taxpayers and by this body. We put in additional penalties for those who are doing human smuggling and human trafficking and trafficking drugs across our border. We deal with some nation-states that will not accept criminal aliens. Many people in this body, and certainly across the United States, may be surprised to know that for countries such as Cuba, if there is an individual picked up in the United States who was convicted of armed robbery and is illegally present in the United States, even though they have committed a violent offense, typically in other countries, they would have to suffer the consequences of being in prison here for their offense, and then they would be deported back to their country, but Cuba does not accept them. Even though they are illegally present in the United States and they commit a violent offense, they do their time period here, and then they are released back into the United States. Why would we do that? We need to establish a process to resolve this. That is basic with border security and also dealing with naturalization for DACA. We have had individuals who have said: Where does the diversity lottery and the issue of family unification come into this? Let me tell you how it connects--and they absolutely do connect. Right now we have 4 million people waiting through the process to legally come to the United States. That is a 20-year backlog--20 years. That is irrational. What we would like to be able to do is to fix the process. Before we add another 2 million people into this and take a 20-year process to maybe a 25-year or 30-year process, once we get to that backlog time period, let's fix what is obvious. Quite frankly, this issue of family reunification is not a new issue. In 1995, Democratic House Member Barbara Jordan led a study on what to do on immigration and made a major proposal on what to do on what they called--at that time, in 1995, in this Democratic-led group--chain migration. It said that adult siblings and adult children should come in under their own merit, not under their family and that we should target skills for individuals who are coming in, not just ``It is my brother-in-law; so he gets a chance to come as well.'' This would allow us to empty out that backlog--the 20-year backlog-- to come into the United States at a faster pace. The diversity lottery is not a challenge with diversity--far from it. We have people from all over the world who come into the United States, and we continue to welcome people from all over the world. I am fascinated watching the Olympics. I watch people march in from many countries. Everyone looks the same under their flag until you get to the United States. When the United States marches in, you can't pick out which one looks American. We are American. In many countries around the world, they all look the same because you are not welcome if you don't look like them. That is not so with us. We welcome people freely from around the world, but we also want them to bring a set of skills. We believe that we can use those same numbers to encourage people from around the world and bring their skills into the United States, to repurpose the diversity lottery and say: Yes, come. Come from everywhere around the world, but come bringing your skills because we need it as a nation. You are always welcome to come. It is far from making the Statue of Liberty cry or polishing up her torch. It is saying: We are open to the world. Come and bring your talents and abilities. We will need it in the days ahead. If we want to prevent a 20-year backlog from getting even worse, we have to fix the family migration issue. If we want to deal with border security and deal with the very real threats that we face, as well as just individuals who want to come to work, we have to deal with the basics of border security, and we should address the issue of DACA recipients. We can do this. We will walk through this journey together. Over the course of this week, I hope we can keep this civil and open and fact-based, rather than charged with emotion and accusations. We all want to help the country. Let's work on helping the country together this week. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the resolution of the Senate of January 24, 1901, the traditional reading of Washington's Farewell Address take place on Monday, February 26, following the prayer and pledge; further, that Senator Peters be recognized to deliver the address.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Tuesday, January 30; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; further, that following leader remarks, the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Stras nomination; finally, that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m., and that all time during recess, adjournment, morning business, and leader remarks count postcloture on the Stras nomination.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Casey.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, there are a lot of important things the Senate is taking up right now. Obviously, there is the issue of immigration, the budget, and disaster relief. There are a lot of pertinent issues that need to be resolved. One of those things that was in the middle of the conversation came up today. It is part of a conversation that, quite frankly, doesn't come up often in this body, but this seemed like a reasonable piece to be able to come up. It came up to the Senate to open debate on it, and it failed to get the 60 votes to support the beginning of what should be an easy conversation on a hard issue--this issue about children and life. In 1973, when Roe v. Wade passed, the Supreme Court at that time determined that for children that were viable--and that is the definition they left out there--there is a governmental interest in being able to engage with those children. Well, viability in 1973 was very different than what it is now, decades later. In 1973 viable was a much older child. Now that we know a lot more, a lot more children survive. Children who are born at 22 weeks of gestation have between a 50-percent to 60-percent chance of survival now. That was not true in 1973. The rest of the world has caught up with this technology, and their governments have acknowledged of this issue that a child who has 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart--they suck their thumb in the womb, they yawn, they stretch, they move--is a child. I understand there is wide argument about a child that is at 8 weeks of gestation, whom I believe is a child, but others look at it and say: It doesn't look like a child yet. But a child at 20, 22, 24 weeks of gestation even looks like a child when you look at the child in the ultrasound. It is hard to disagree, especially when children are born at that age prematurely and they survive, and many of us know kids that were born at 22 weeks. The bill that came up today on the Senate floor, which had bipartisan support and had a majority of support but not 60 Senators' support to be able to discuss this, was a very simple, straightforward bill. It asked just one question: Will we as Americans continue to allow elective abortions when the child is viable? The Supreme Court said in 1973 that the government has a right to be able to step in and protect a viable child. There is no question that they are at that age of viability. There is no question, at that age of 20 weeks, that science shows us they experience pain in the womb, and that if surgery happens for a child in utero like that, that child is actually given anesthetic to be able to calm their pain during that surgery because they have a developed nervous system and because they have a beating heart. This body refused to even take up the issue and debate it. There is no question that I am very passionate about the issue of life and about children, and that we should as a culture protect children. But this one confuses me--for this body, more than any other issue. There are only seven nations in the world that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. There are only four nations in the world that allow elective abortions after 24 weeks. We are in that elite club. We are in the elite club with three other nations that allow elective abortions that late--Vietnam, North Korea, and China--the worst human rights violators in the world. There sits the United States in that very elite club. Why are we there? Because we can't even discuss the possibility that a child is a child, and anyone who has ever seen an ultrasound at 24 weeks cannot deny that is a child, and if that child was delivered prematurely, they would survive and grow and develop into a person. The only difference between that child at 20 weeks and an adult now is time. This issue will continue to come up, and it should because we as a culture should promote a culture of life and of honoring people--people at their most vulnerable moment. There is no more vulnerable a moment than that for that child. We have to get out of this club of elective abortions and the only group that allows it--North Korea, China, and Vietnam. When will we wake up to the fact that the entire rest of the world--all of Europe, all of Africa, all of Central America, all of South America, every one of those countries--sees that plain? A child is a child, and we need to be able to guard its life. So I am sad that today in a bipartisan vote with more than 50 votes to be able to get into it and pass it, we didn't have enough people even to want to discuss it and to be able to bring up the bill. We will bring it up again for the sake of those children and their futures. We will bring it up again, and we will keep bringing up the facts of the argument, not the emotion but the facts of the argument, and we will win people over. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Presiding Officer of the Senate be authorized to appoint a committee on the part of the Senate to join with a like committee on the part of the House of Representatives to escort the President of the United States into the House Chamber for the joint session to be held at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, January 30, 2018.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 497.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, Senator Tillis and I have come to the floor today because we have just some incredible frustration and wanted to be able to bring some facts to this conversation. I absolutely grieve for the Federal workers in my State. I mean, there are some phenomenal people who do an amazing job. Most people will never know their names, but, every day, they are getting up to serve the American people. Every day, there are folks who are in our military who are serving the American people. The civilians who surround them, though they are not listed as Federal employees, are intimately connected to what we are doing for the Federal task--for people. They are trying to figure out this afternoon what is going to happen to them this weekend and next week. They are frantically getting together in offices all over Oklahoma and, quite frankly, all over America and are trying to piece together the ``now whats?'' of a government shutdown, which is distracting them from getting all of the things done that they already need to get done that they are backlogged on now. For what? The frustration of this whole focus on ``let's do a government shutdown over not having to have real discussions about DACA and immigration'' is not only not accurate, but it is also something that is already in the process that is somehow being short-circuited. All of these Federal workers and all of these civilian employees who are going through all of this turmoil in trying to figure out why DACA is not resolved and why the deadline for DACA is in the first week of March, yet it forces them to be out and have all of this chaos now, at the end of January, has brought utter confusion to everyone, especially when you know the history of this dialogue. Let me walk everyone backward through a span of a few months here. In September, the Nation was surprised when President Trump announced that he was not going to renew DACA and that he wanted a legislative, long-term fix for DACA. The very day that he made that announcement, I released a statement, saying: In America, we do not hold children accountable for the acts of their parents. We don't do that in American law. Just a couple of days after that, the President called me late one night. He said: Hey, I saw your statement in a report about that. Can we talk about it? We spent about 20 minutes late that evening just talking about immigration policy and his interest in getting a legislative, long-term resolution for DACA, for these kids who have to renew every 2 or 3 years, and they have no idea what is going to happen. He wanted to have some semblance of permanence for them but, at the same time, also resolve some of the issues around border security that were not controversial a few years ago. He said that we need to deal with some issues with border security, and we need to deal with the issue of DACA and give them some semblance of permanence. Can we put this together? Actually, at that time, Senator Tillis and I were already working to get something together because, for the last 15 years, the DREAM Act has come up before the House and the Senate, and for 15 years, it has failed every single time. The DREAM Act failed when there was a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House of Representatives. That bill was not going to pass. We knew that, so we went to work, asking: What is a better solution that will provide some semblance of permanence on this? Our conversation was about a lot of the pushback as to why the DREAM Act had not passed in the past. A lot of Americans feel like: I understand this group of individuals has grown up in our country, pledges allegiance to our flag, speaks English, is passionate about where they live, that this feels like home to them, but it is not home. They wanted them to be able to have that opportunity, but they didn't want them to be able to cut in line. So we put in a process to say that here is a way those individuals can earn the right to be naturalized citizens of the United States, but they have to earn it through a process, just as someone who is international would have to go through that process to be here. The exception would be they are already here, and they wouldn't have what DACA provided. DACA provided 2 years of ``we will not arrest you'' but no legal status. This would provide immediate legal status and an opportunity after 10 years to be able to earn naturalization. That had never been offered like that before. We worked through all of the details of that and laid out a proposal and said: This is a section of a larger bill. We feel that this is a way to get past what has blocked the DREAM Act year after year after year and what has been the biggest frustration for many of the people in the country with the DREAM Act. Yet our caveat was very consistent. We wanted to be able to resolve this, but it had to be resolved with border security attached to it. I didn't think that was an unreasonable request. I was surprised to hear that it might have been since, in the previous Gang of 8 versions several years ago that had come out of the Senate, there had been a large section in it about border security. I assumed this would be a nonissue to be able to pair those issues together. It seems irresponsible to deal with the DACA issue and to not address: How did that happen in the first place? To say that we have a secure border and that we don't need to address anything would be to ignore 12 million examples in our country of that rule being violated either through visa overstays or through individuals coming across the border who want to be in our country but who have crossed illegally instead of through a legal process. We are a very open, receiving country. Every day, a half a million people cross our southern border legally--a half a million every day. A million people a year legally become citizens of the United States. We are not a country that is anti-immigration. We just want it done the right way. We think the law should apply to everyone equally all the time and don't like anyone circumventing the law. So here is a history lesson. On September 5, the President makes that announcement. Within days, we have conversations with the President about it. He agrees we need to be able to have something that is a long-term solution for border security and for DACA. Within about 2 weeks, Senator Tillis and I release the SUCCEED Act and say this has to be part of our border security. Thankfully, in our conference, at the same time, Senator Cornyn is also working through border security to be able to partner it with this. At the same time, Senator Cotton and Senator Perdue are also working on other areas dealing with chain migration, knowing these could all be partnered together to be able to put into a final bill. They were individual titles of a larger proposal. We were bringing those out. In October, the President of the United States released a long report, saying here is what he would like to have in a bill. He put great detail into it and said that this is what he expects the bill to be like when it is resolved. So now it is October. He said that we have to get this resolved. We release three different bills, and the President releases something. We want to start negotiations. In November, we are in negotiations in a bipartisan group, and every day in the bipartisan group, all that our Democratic colleagues want to talk about is DACA--every day. Our staffs meet every day. We are meeting every other day as Members, going through this--sometimes every day going through it. Every day, it is DACA, and, every day, we bring up: Hey, there are other aspects of this that we have agreed to. Yet, every day, they say: Well, let's work on DACA some more. It finally hits a point in December that I ask: When are we going to get to talking about border security? We have to talk about that. Well, guess what happened. The next meeting I was not invited to attend. Neither was I invited to the next one. Neither was Senator Tillis. Our staffs find out they are still meeting and contact them and say: Hey, we are still interested in getting to a bipartisan agreement. They do not respond to our staffs' emails. They will not even tell us when or where they are meeting. We didn't walk away from the negotiations. We were kicked out of the negotiations because we believed that this deal needed to have border security in it and DACA. For a group that said, basically, we don't want to deal with border security, they were no longer interested in us, which took us to a stalemate of really getting this resolved, which took us to 2 weeks ago. On Tuesday, the President invites us over in a bipartisan, bicameral conversation to say: We have to get a plan here. This is stuck. During that meeting with the President, with 26 House Members and Senators together from both parties, we make an agreement that there will be four areas of this final agreement and that these will be the negotiators to be able to pull it together--the Republican and Democratic whips from both the House and the Senate. Those four individuals will be the individuals to pull it together, and they are going to get that done. That was on Tuesday. By Thursday of that week, a smaller subgroup of the group that I had been kicked out of went back to the President and said: No. We have a better idea. Let's try to do this instead. I know, on Tuesday, we agreed to the other process, but we have another idea to kind of end- run that whole process. Clearly, it upset a lot of us to say that we are trying to do a bipartisan deal, that we are trying to work this through the process, that we are trying to be of good faith in this. So far, there have not been good faith negotiations on border security at all. We cannot deal with the issue of individuals who are in our country illegally, even if we as Americans see them as neighbors and friends and future citizens of our country, and ignore how it happened in the first place. That would not be responsible of us. Now, there are some who want to say, ``This is because you are just, simply, a racist,'' which is infuriating and inaccurate and belittles the conversation. To stand up and say that the only reason you think this is because you are a racist is trying to shut down the conversation, not engage in it. These are my friends and neighbors as well, but we are legislators, and we have a responsibility to solve issues, not to belittle each other and not to make false accusations. There are millions of people who have crossed our border to be able to work or connect with family. I fully understand that. Many of them live around my place, go to church with me. I get that completely. There are also many people who cross our borders because of crime, and we would be foolish to ignore that reality as well. There are people who cross that border to be able to traffic drugs, to be able to traffic in terrorism, to be able to move people--human trafficking, labor trafficking. We should have a secure border set up for that. Again, this used to not be a partisan issue. In 2006, Senator Schumer and, at that time, Senator Obama voted for the Secure Fence Act, which put in 650 miles of fencing on the southern border. Let me say that again. Senator Schumer and Senator Obama and a lot of other Democratic Senators, who are still here, voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006 to put in 650 miles of fencing on our southern border. This didn't used to be a partisan issue, and it shouldn't be today. Border security is not partisan. It is national security. The proposals that have come out at times amaze me. Let's actually get serious about trying to resolve these issues. Basic border security issues should involve not just some fencing in some areas or walls in some areas or technology in some other areas or adding additional manpower in other areas. Those are reasonable things along our border that every country in the world has organized. It also involves dealing with some of the gaps in our law if someone crosses into the United States. These are things that need to be addressed--for instance, the removal of multiple felony criminal illegal aliens. Why is this controversial? This shouldn't be a controversial issue at all, but for some reason, it is. To end the practice with greater fines and penalties for people who smuggle in people for profit, why would that be controversial? For some reason, it is. We are dealing with additional judges because we have 600,000 people in a backlog in our immigration courts--600,000 people in our immigration courts in a backlog. Why would that be controversial to have to deal with a backlog? We are behind on family members who have petitioned to be a part of this country but who were--get this--20 years in a backlog. Why would that be controversial to say that we need to divert some of our attention to catching up on the backlog? There are a lot of issues that we need to deal with, and this is a complicated issue. But for other Members, can I just say that we are very close to negotiating this, that people have actually acted in good faith in negotiations. But saying ``We will shut down the government until you do it our way''--and their way was an end run around the whole stated process that we all agreed on--seems absurd to me, and it certainly seems absurd to the Federal workers in my State who are now going through chaos this afternoon because some people wanted to make an end run around the process that was already in place. Let's finish the process and not create some artificial cliff and chaos to try to say ``Do it my way, or I will shut down the government.'' Let's finish the process. There are willing partners on both sides, and there are reasonable proposals to finish out what we have already started and worked on for months to get through this process. I thank Senator Tillis for the engagement he has on this because he and his team have worked exceptionally hard. My team and I, both in my State and here, have worked exceptionally hard on these issues, and we want to get them right. Senator Cornyn and his team have worked exceptionally hard on these issues. Let's do it, and let's get it right, but let's not shut down the government while in the middle of negotiations because people want to have it their way and not actually finish the negotiations we started. With that, I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to get a chance to address an ongoing conversation that is happening in Washington, DC, right now and will be over in the next 36 hours. As unusual as this may sound, with all of the drama that is happening here, just outside this building there are tens of thousands of people--most of them students--who are gathered in Washington, DC, preparing for something called the March for Life. This has happened for decades now. Students and adults come from all over the country to Washington, DC, to quietly speak for those who cannot speak for themselves--children still in the womb-- and to be able to speak out for the protection of life. It is an interesting conversation that has a tremendous amount of science, a tremendous amount of faith, and a tremendous amount of heat around it, as some individuals don't want to discuss the issue of abortion or would simply say: That is a woman's choice; we need to set that aside and ignore it. There is a whole group of students who arrive here saying: Wait a minute. That child in the womb has 10 fingers and 10 toes, unique DNA that is different from the mom and different from the dad. The child feels pain in the womb and has a beating heart. That doesn't sound like tissue to me; that sounds like a child. They are raising great issues that, quite frankly, science reinforces as well. Last week, I had the opportunity to be able to stop by one of the great research facilities in Oklahoma. They are doing tremendous research on cancer, on MS, on Alzheimer's, and a lot more. I stopped by one of the labs and talked to one of the scientists there. They are actually doing research on zebra fish. Now, as odd as this may sound, they are actually taking zebra fish eggs and developing those eggs. As they are first beginning to hash out of the eggs, they are injecting them with a gene that they know to be cancerous in humans, allowing that to be able to develop in the zebra fish and seeing the abnormalities there. Then, they try to treat it with different drugs to be able to see if once they get the abnormalities, they can reverse it. They are literally taking the zebra fish, creating problems, and seeing if they can fix them. They are going into great detail. The microscopes, the work, the millions of dollars that have gone into this research are all for one simple thing--the ability to be able to cure diseases that affect human life. As a culture, we have determined that life is valuable. Human life, especially, is valuable and precious. The challenge that we have is determining when that life begins. I and millions of others believe that life begins at conception, when that child has a different DNA than the mom or the dad. That tissue is not just the mom's tissue at that point; it is growing independently. There is no difference in that child in the womb and the child that is in the backyard playing, laughing, and going down the slide, other than time. There is no difference. Last year, Cleveland Cavaliers' guard J.R. Smith and his wife had little Dakota. When I say ``little Dakota,'' I mean little Dakota. She was born at less than 1 pound at 19 weeks of development. She left the hospital 5 months later at 7 pounds, 4 ounces--7 pounds, 5 ounces, actually. When she left the hospital, it was a remarkable event. It was celebrated all over social media--this guard with the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers and this beautiful child leaving. Dakota is now 1 year old, and it has been interesting the stir that happened around her birth as a lot of people stopped and thought about a child that small and that young. It was interesting. The CNN articles that came out at the same time as little Dakota's birth noted that a child at 23 weeks of development has a 50 to 60 percent chance of survival now. Science has changed a lot over the last several decades. A lot has happened. It is remarkable to hear the stories of surgeries that are happening in utero. In 1995, Roberto Rodriguez actually went through surgery still in the womb. He had major problems in his left lung, and at 20 weeks, they went in and did surgery in utero, fixing his left lung. It allowed him to finish out his term, and 13 weeks later he was delivered healthy. Little Roberto Rodriguez is now 22 years old. This technology is not new anymore. In many ways, the science has far surpassed what were our conversations here in America dealing with policy around children. Back in 1970, when the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade, they had this whole conversation about viability and that government has a right to be able to step in and protect children at the moment that they are viable. Well, in the 1970s, that was very different than what it is now. Now we see children at 21, 20, 22 weeks of development being born and being natural, healthy, great children. We need to be able to catch up in law. We may disagree on a lot of things on life. As I have already stated, I believe life begins at conception. In this body, I know there are a lot of conversations, saying: How do we actually get to a sense of commonality and common ground on these issues. Well, let me just lay down three different areas where I would say that maybe we could find some common ground on these three areas. Though we may disagree on when life begins, can we at least agree that Americans have the freedom of conscience? Can we at least agree on the late-term abortions, when a child is clearly viable? And can we at least agree that when a child is born alive, they should be protected? Let me just hit those three very quickly. The first one is just basic freedom of conscience, allowing an individual to be able to live out their conscience. I spoke to several nurses just a few months ago. When those nurses were hired at the hospitals they worked in, they told the individuals in HR and the physicians they worked with that they believed life begins at conception and they had a moral and conscience belief that they wanted to protect children. They were told at that moment: You will not have to participate in abortions. We understand your conscience belief, and we will protect your conscience belief. For years, they did not. Then, suddenly, they ran short in nurses at one moment, and they pulled each of them in at different times and in different hospitals and in different States. They told the stories that they had been pulled into a procedure, being told on the way in: We need you in this procedure-- arriving only to find out it was an abortion they were being forced to assist with. They were appalled to be part of the death of a child rather than protecting the life of a child. Each of them was told: You will lose your job if you don't participate in the taking of this child's life. That is an unfair place to put them in. Individuals should be able to have the freedom of conscience and should be able to live out their moral and spiritual beliefs. I would never go to an abortion doctor and force him to peacefully protest against his own abortion clinic. That would be absurd. But for some reason, pro-abortion hospitals see no issue in at times compelling a staff member to participate in something they find objectionable, even when they made their stance clear. We should never force a person to administer a lethal injection in a prison if they have a moral objection to the death penalty. That seems only reasonable. We are rightfully furious when a man threatens a woman with firing if she doesn't respond to his advances. No one would say that if she doesn't like his advances, she could just go find another job. But for some in our culture, they want to look away when that same man threatens a woman with firing if she doesn't violate her conscience and help perform an abortion. They are willing to tell her: Just quit and go find another job. What is the difference? We wouldn't compel a vegan to eat meat at the company barbecue, would we? Why would we compel a person to assist in the taking of a life when they are personally offended by the practice? The right of conscience should be protected for every person. Religious intolerance is a personal choice, not a legal requirement in America. Late-term abortions are another area where I think we should be able to find common ground, and we should be able to protect these children. We should agree that elective late-term abortions should be ended in America. This is an elective abortion after 5 months of pregnancy. When the child's nervous system is fully developed, they can feel pain at that point. We in America, because of the pro-abortion lobby and the activists who are around them, have lost track of this simple fact: We are one of seven nations in the world that allow elective abortions after 22 weeks of gestation. In fact, of these seven nations that allow abortions after 22 weeks of gestation, three of them--Canada, Singapore, and the Netherlands--allow elective abortions only until 24 weeks, just 2 weeks later. But there are only four countries in the world that allow elective abortions at any moment. Are you ready for this club? There are four nations that are like us: the United States, Vietnam, North Korea, and China. That is it. Those four nations allow elective abortions at any stage. That is a horrible club for the United States of America to be in. Those countries are some of the worst human rights violators in the world, and that is the elite club in which we find ourselves. The pro-abortion lobby is so powerful and so wealthy, and they are so engaged, they are not willing to relent that even one child's life could be protected, even when they are clearly viable, leaving the United States in this horrible collection with Vietnam, North Korea, and China on abortion policy. At 5 months old, a child in the womb can kick, stretch, yawn, smile, suck its thumb, and feel pain. It is a viable child. Late-term abortions represent only 1.3 percent of all abortions in America. I would contend we should stop this practice altogether. There are 191 nations that don't allow this--191 nations. There is no reason we should not as well. This is interesting. The Washington Post heard several people quote that statistic about seven nations are the only nations that actually allow any abortions at this late stage. Those three that I mentioned-- the Netherlands, Canada, and Singapore--allow them up to 24 weeks but not after that. So they ran their famous Fact Checker on this issue. The Washington Post ran through all of it and looked at it and said: This sounds like this is not correct. They ran through the whole study, looked at it, fact-checked the whole thing, and at the end of it came back and said: No, it actually is correct. What seemed a dubious statement in the beginning they fact-checked and gave what the Washington Post calls their elite Gepetto qualification--that means no Pinocchios; true statement. We should be able to resolve this. I have made no secret that I believe that life begins at conception, but I would say to this group that not everyone agrees with me on this, but we should at least be able to protect life when it is viable. Let me add one more detail to this that is painful to even discuss. Of those late-term abortions that occur--those 1.3 percent of abortions that occur during this late time period--the child is too large and too well developed to actually have a traditional abortion procedure, so the abortions are done by the abortion doctor reaching in with a tool into the womb and literally pulling the child's arms and legs off, allowing the child to bleed to death in the womb and then pulling its parts out a piece at a time. Why do we allow that in America? As I said, 191 other nations do not. All of Europe does not. When is the last time you heard me say our social policy needs to catch up with Europe? We are better than this. One last statement, because I have some colleagues who want to join me in this conversation. We should be able to agree on a simple principle: that if an abortion is conducted and it is botched and instead of destroying the child in the womb, the abortion doctor actually induces the delivery--in those rare cases, the current practice is, when the child is delivered, everyone in the operating room backs away and allows the child to die of exposure on the table, because they can't actually take the life anymore; it has been fully delivered. Kermit Gosnell sits in prison right now because, as an abortionist in Philadelphia, he was in the practice of delivering children and then killing them after they were delivered. It is already a crime to physically take the life of that individual, so the current practice is, if they mess up the abortion and deliver instead of destroy, they just allow the child to die on its own, crying on the table. Can we as Congress and as Americans at least agree that it is barbaric to watch a crying child on the table slowly die; that at least at that moment of delivery, we would agree a child is a child when we can see all 10 of their fingers, see all 10 of their toes, and hear their voice crying on the table? This is an issue that shouldn't be controversial. This is an issue for which we should find great compassion. I would challenge this body, when we deal with conscience and when we deal with late-term abortions and when we deal with children who are born alive, that we find resolution in those areas. I am aware this is a difficult topic. I understand that for many people, this conversation is painful to even consider and that for the millions of American women who have experienced abortion in their personal lives, this is painful to even consider. But I am also aware that until we talk about these hard issues and resolve them, they will continue to advance. We are better than this as a nation. Let's prove it in the way we treat our most vulnerable. With that, I ask unanimous consent for colloquy time with some of my colleagues, and I would like to be able to recognize Senator Blunt from Missouri.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, there has just been a dialogue--a colloquy--here on the floor. I thank Senator Daines from Montana, Senator Blunt from Missouri, Senator Ernst from Iowa, and Senator Sasse from Nebraska for joining in a dialogue of this basic issue of life. In 1973 this week, Roe v. Wade was passed by the Supreme Court in a split decision. We are still having this dialogue, and there is still an ongoing argument about looking into the womb. We know a lot more now--about times now--than they knew in 1973, and we know a lot more about the development of a child now than they knew in 1973. We are still having this ongoing debate that, I think, is a righteous debate, quite frankly. I think it is entirely appropriate for us to be able to talk about these kinds of difficult issues and try to find some resolution. The American people have these dialogues, and we should have them here and be able to bring the debate to the forefront. This is not about people whom we hate. It is always interesting to be able to get the dialogue and pushback from people who say: You just hate people because of whatever reason. It is not true. It is, actually, that we love children. That is really the issue. There is a vulnerable child in the middle of this conversation, and sometimes they don't seem to come up in the conversation about protecting rights or about giving people privacy. All of those things are wonderful euphemisms, but in the middle of that, there is a very small child who is being discussed. We are trying to elevate their voice--to literally speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. We think that is an appropriate role for government--to speak out for the most vulnerable and see if we can find justice for those individuals. This week is not only the week that we have the anniversary of Roe v. Wade; it is also the week that we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I would say that he is a terrific role model in this conversation. His basic teaching is that hate doesn't win over a friend, that only love can do that. Only love can transform an enemy into a friend. That is what we are trying to do. To the people who oppose this idea, we get it. We can have that dialogue. They are not our enemies, though. Quite frankly, we want to respond to their comments in love and say, ``Let's sit down and have a reasonable dialogue. Let's express our affection for children,'' and be able to talk about how valuable they really are in our society. Let's talk about adoption. Let's talk about ways to be able to continue to take care of them. In the middle of it, let's talk about a child as a child, not just as tissue that is random, because tissue that is just random doesn't suck its thumb and smile back at you. It doesn't stretch and yawn. It is a child who does that. We want to be able to have that conversation. I would urge this body to stop ignoring what millions of the American people see as the issue. Let's talk about the child, and let's see where we are going to go. I think a good first step for us to be able to talk about this is with the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, what we call the pain-capable bill, which deals with late-term abortions-- very late, 5 months and later--and the issue of conscience. Are we really going to compel people to perform procedures they find morally reprehensible in the destruction of a child rather than in the protection of a child? We should be able to find common ground on those. Let's then keep the conversation going because it is a reasonable thing for us to be able to discuss. If we cannot talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this place, where can we talk about it? Again, I thank my colleagues for participating and for their tenacity and their compassion and their affection for all Americans whether they agree or disagree on this issue. I appreciate very much their engagement. I appreciate very much the volunteers who are scattered around the country right now who are serving women in some of the most difficult moments of their lives at crisis pregnancy centers, at women's resource centers, and other locations. They are volunteering; they are providing clothes; they are providing help; they are providing sonograms and pregnancy tests; and they are walking those families through those tough days. Thanks to those volunteers as well today, wherever they may be, and bless them for the ongoing work that they do. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this is a difficult issue for so many people because it is intensely personal for so many people. We understand full well the grief some families have when this topic comes up because there are millions of men and women who they know their child has been aborted. We get that. We want to have incredible compassion for them as they struggle through some of the most difficult decisions of their life. We understand that when they go to the mall and they watch a small child laugh in the food court of the mall, they wonder in the back of their head, ``Would that have sounded like my child when they laughed?'' We get the grief they live with for the rest of their life as they process through what some physician told them was tissue, but in their heart they know was a child. This is a nation that can set some basic principles to help those individuals, to promote adoption, to be able to encourage those families and help walk alongside them. We are good at grace and compassion as a nation. We can continue to be better at it. One of the ways we have to be able to express that is for the most vulnerable, for those children who have yet to be born. I would like to invite the Senator from Montana to also join in this colloquy.