James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I would like to ask Senator Sasse to join us for this colloquy as well.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the House passed both the pain-capable and the infant protection born-alive bills in prior months. The Senate has yet to take that up, and it is our hope in the Senate to be able to bring that up for real dialogue in conversations in the days ahead.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, all postcloture time on the House message to accompany S. 139 expire at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, January 18.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, a few days ago, our Nation stopped and remembered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is entirely appropriate for us to do so. It is a holiday set aside to be able not only to remember but to reflect and try to figure out: Where are we now? This year is especially significant. Fifty years ago this year, Dr. King was assassinated in April 1968. A lot of things have changed in that time period. Quite frankly, as a nation, we have learned a lot about race. We no longer as a nation talk about three-fifths of a man anymore--rightfully so, and we are appalled by our history in that. We no longer have separate water fountains set up in restaurants or tell certain people because of their background, their family, or their skin color that they can take food to go but they can't come in and sit down. We have come a long way in hiring. We have come a long way in just our communities and our schools. The work is not done. We still have a long way to go, quite frankly. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was bold enough to be able to challenge the church first, then the Nation, and then the world that we have an issue around the issue of race. He was going to challenge us to confront it--rightfully so. He challenged us on the issue of racial justice, on poverty, on education, but he also challenged us on the way that we speak out on issues, and I think we lose track of that as a culture. Quite frankly, as a Senate and as a Nation, we are losing track of one of the things Dr. Martin Luther King challenged us on: There is a right way to confront issues and a wrong way to confront issues. Dr. King did something revolutionary. He pushed a community to confront injustice the right way, and he won. He made radical statements like this: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Dr. King said: I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. For whatever reason, we lose track of Dr. King's statements about ``love is a powerful thing.'' We start as a culture responding with hate to respond to hate. When someone says something hateful, we respond back with something more hateful back at them. It doesn't actually solve anything, and we lose the great model that he really set for us in that. If we want to make enemies friends, only love can do that, only relationships can do that, only pressing a friend to do the right thing can do that. Now, is that happening in our culture? No. It is in spots, but it is not hard to go on any of our social media sites at any moment and be able to see the challenge in our social media sites, where it is not love driving out hate. It is hate attacking hate. It is remarkable to me. I just glanced at some of the things just of late as I was preparing for this conversation. I look backward at a few of the posts that are on my own social media sites--controversial statements that I made, like, on the 1st when I did a post that just said ``Happy New Year.'' It was a stinging controversial post that was responded to by someone saying: Loser. Liar. Traitor. How much money did you take from Russia, comrade? That was to my statement of ``Happy New Year.'' I made a statement about how kids who came in under DACA should be treated differently. These are kids who didn't break the law. These are kids who are like the 4-year old riding in the backseat of the car when their parent was speeding. When the parent is pulled over, they don't give the kid a ticket. I made just a quick post about that, and the response to that, among many, was this: What is with his hair color? Dude, get it done professionally. You look terrible. I just have to say to you: Dude, this is done by a professional. God gave me this hair color, and so there is no bottle involved in this one. It is His work, and I would call Him a pro. There is all of this talk back and forth about where we are going to go as a culture, and we are losing Dr. King's legacy that hate doesn't drive out hate, that only love does that. Now, there is a lot of conversation in this body, as well, saying things have never been worse in the Senate and in Congress. I would disagree. Just after Vice President Burr left office, he challenged the Secretary of the Treasury to a duel where he shot the Secretary of the Treasury dead in a duel. In 1850, in the Chamber just right down the hallway here, in what is called the Old Senate Chamber, they were working on a compromise and Senator Foote and Senator Benton were in an argument, and so Senator Foote reached into his desk in the middle of the argument and pulled out his pistol while screaming at Senator Benton, to which Senator Benton jumped on one of the desks that is in this room still today. He jumped on the desk and pulled open his coat, revealing: I don't have a weapon. Shoot me. Shoot me. That was on the Senate floor, and they wrestled Senator Foote to the floor and took his gun away from him. People can say it has never been worse. I can assure you it has been worse. But what we do have responsibility for is in our time and setting the tone for difficult debate in this moment. The arguments that happen on the Senate floor and the violence on this Senator floor, including Senator Sumner being almost beaten to death with a cane just before the Civil War, set a path into the Civil War for the Nation. What is the path we are taking the Nation on right now in our debate? As a nation, I have a simple reminder that is not mine. It is from a powerful American leader named Dr. King, who said: ``Hate does not drive out hate.'' For anyone who is looking at what is happening in our culture and in politics right now saying ``if only I say something more hateful than the last guy, this will get better,'' you have missed his point. Dr. King was deeply moved by Scripture, and there are multiple examples of it in his writings and in his speeches. He quoted passages over and over again, like from 1 John, Chapter 4: ``Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another''; Psalm 34: ``Taste and see that the Lord is good.'' Over and over again, he came back to Scripture as just a simple reminder that things can be different for us. He challenged the church at moments, like in his letter from Birmingham jail, and he challenged culture. In fact, we lose track of the fact that during the civil rights movement, Dr. King was working with both parties to establish platforms for both parties that would respect the dignity of all Americans. It is a good path that has been set for us. In the middle of our conversation about Dr. King, I would hope that we would remember it. Let me make one quick side note, as well. It is kind of a fun note for those of us from Oklahoma. The story of Dr. King, as many people may know, almost didn't happen the way that it did. In 1953, just finishing up seminary and in the middle of his doctoral work, when he was just Martin Luther King, not Dr. Martin Luther King yet--he was still doing his doctoral work at Boston University. He came to a small church in Oklahoma City that was well respected in the civil rights movement--Calvary Baptist Church. In fact, in 1952, Calvary Baptist Church hosted the national conference of the NAACP and had Thurgood Marshall there as a speaker. In 1953, Dr. King was interviewed there to be one of the pastors at Calvary Baptist Church. The elders in the church heard him, read about him, met him, and then turned him down. This is my favorite quote from one of the elders of the church. They said they didn't think he had enough gravy on him yet. He was too young, not experienced enough. That was in 1953. Ten years later, he was standing on the Mall right down the street saying ``I have a dream,'' leading the entire country. I say that to say that sometimes we have this assumption that we are in control. We are not. God is in control. He has a path and a plan. Sometimes when we hear no and when we hear hard things, we find out He has a path and plan that may look different from ours. I would only challenge us as a body to do the right thing the right way and to see where that takes us. As it says in Psalm 34, ``Taste and see that the Lord is good.'' Do it the right way, and let's see how this works out together. It is a simple reminder and a simple admonition to a body that could use some words from Dr. King and see if we can put them into practice together. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, once more I am coming to the floor to talk about the basic rules of the Senate and how we actually get on legislation. We have spent all of this week on four district court judicial nominations--the entire week, no legislation--because we can't get on legislation. In 2013, we were in a situation similar to this. The minority party, at that point being the Republicans, were slowing down the process in the Senate on nominations by the Democratic Party, at that point the majority. So Republicans and Democrats sat down together and said: This is a problem. We cannot get to legislation. The Republicans and Democrats together, with 70-plus votes, made a 2- year rule change in the Senate in the 113th Congress. It was a simple rule change: 2 hours of debate for a district court judge, 8 hours of debate for just about everyone else, and 30 hours of debate for circuit court, Supreme Court, and Cabinet nominations. It was a bipartisan agreement that worked very well for that 2-year time period. Then, at the end of that 2-year time period, it had a sunset on it, and it expired. The hope was that we would relearn how to be able to do this. I wasn't in the Senate at that time, but I have spoken to multiple people about that process. What happened instead was, during the first year of that, there continued to be ongoing frustration, so my Democratic colleagues used what is affectionately called the nuclear option to be able to change the rules of the Senate to say that they could bring individuals with only 51 votes--not 60--and then they used the rule, on top of what they changed, to bring people forward at greater speed, which they did. For the rest of the next year, they used it that way. We now come to this time period. Let me give an example of what I am talking about and the frustration it creates. Let me confirm my number and make sure I get it right for all of the Senate history. From 1967 until 2012, there were 46 cloture votes invoked. That means they requested a cloture vote, and it went all the way to be a vote--46 of those on judges and the executive branch from 1967 to 2012. Last year, there were 46 cloture votes in this body, just in 1 year. What was from 1967 until 2012 the total number, Democrats did to Republicans in 1 year--last year. The statement keeps coming up over and over again: Why can't we get on legislation? Because each day is full of dead time, debating nominations--nominations like what passed today unanimously in the Senate. But we had to have cloture time set aside for it. This has to be fixed. The rules of the Senate are set by the Senators. In 2013, the Senators stood up and said ``This has to stop,'' and they fixed it. I am recommending again that the Senate, once again, implement the same rule that Democrats led Republicans to do in 2013 now, in this year, and instead of doing it for one Congress, make it the rule. If it was a good idea for Democrats in 2013 and 2014, why is it not a good idea for Republicans and Democrats now? That simple rule is, when we can't agree on a candidate, we would have only 2 hours of debate on a district judge--remembering that for the entirety of this week, it took the whole week to do four of them. We could do 2 hours of debate for each one if it is a district court judge, 8 hours for just about everybody else, or 30 hours of debate for Supreme Court, circuit court, and Cabinet-level nominations. People would think that would be a slam dunk. So far it has not been. For some reason, my Democratic colleagues say: That rule was good for us, but it is not good for you, and it is not good for the future of the Senate. I believe it is. I believe it was a fair rule then, and it is a fair rule now. Enough debating about the rules of the Senate; let's get on to the business of the Senate and actually do what the American people sent us here to do. Interestingly enough, there is also a very obscure rule in the Senate called rule XXXI. If, at the end of the year, there are still nominations that are pending out there, those nominations have to be returned to the White House, and they have to start all over again. The Senate can agree by unanimous consent to say that we all understand these are all in process and, by unanimous consent, just agree to those things to be able to hold them on the calendar. Let me give an example. Under President Bill Clinton, at the end of his first year, only 13 of his nominations were sent back to the White House. After the end of George W. Bush's first term, only two nominations were returned back to the White House. After President Obama's first term, only eight were sent back to the White House. After President Trump's first term, 90 were sent back--Bill Clinton, 13; George Bush, 2; President Obama, 8; President Trump, 90. I don't think my Democratic colleagues understand that they are continuing to amp up the volume of obstruction, saying: Someone has obstructed us in the past, so we are going to do it 10 times to you. All that leads to is that the next time the Republicans are in the minority, we do it 10 times again, and it makes it worse. There is a way to fix this. We should come to that mutual agreement. We should resolve the rules of the Senate. We have to get on to the budget. We have to get on to the Children's Health Insurance Program. We have to get on to intelligence issues. We have to get on to immigration. We have to get on to infrastructure. We have to get on to a lot of other things, but we are stuck debating about people, and that should be an easy one for us. I am recommending to this body what my folks used to say to me: What is good for the goose should be good for the gander. If it was a great rule when Democrats were in the majority, it should be a great rule when Republicans are in the majority. Let's take clean, fair rules and apply them to everyone. Let's move on with the nomination process. Let's get back to the business of doing legislation so we can get this resolved. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, it is an interesting conversation we can finally have about immigration. This has been that topic which has been discussed for a while but not settled. For 20 years, this body has talked about solving some of our immigration issues. National security immigration hasn't been a partisan issue until of late. Suddenly, when President Trump brings it up, we have a bunch of folks who used to be for border security but are now against border security because President Trump wants border security--with some of the exact same ideas that have been in the Gang of 8 bill or were in previous versions or were even talked about with a secure wall or fence before. Almost every Democrat in this body voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. It is interesting to me the number of people who contact us saying: We do not want to build a wall. I have said: What about the 650 miles of wall that already exists and was put in place after 2006, which, by the way, President Obama, when he was Senator Obama, wholeheartedly supported and voted for? This is suddenly a partisan issue. I am trying to help our entire body take a step back and say: Immigration should be a humanity issue and a legal issue, not a political issue. I had a conversation with a friend of mine this weekend. We have known each other for years. He is a pastor. We started talking about the immigration issue. In that dialogue, he said to me: In the church, we look at every individual as an individual created in the image of God, and the church has a ministry to be able to reach out, regardless of legal status. Then he said, right behind it: But, in government, we understand there is a different responsibility. The church engages with every person equally, but the government has the responsibility of looking at laws--what is legal and what is not legal--and helping abide by those laws and enforcing those laws. He is correct. There is an issue of humanity in this. These are people caught in a system, and oftentimes those children in the DACA Program are caught in a gap in which literally they have no home country. They were brought as infants or as young children with a parent who violated the law but did so with a child who came in and has now lived in the country, in some cases 20 years, and they know only this country. They are literally caught in the middle. While we have great compassion, we are walking this interesting balance between compassion for people, which we as a nation have, and also consistency with the law. The law applies to every person. Whether you are the President of the United States or an undocumented individual who has come in, the law applies to everyone. What do we do with this? The first thing I think we need to do is take a deep breath and pull the politics out of this and to say border security--in fact, security as a whole is not a controversial issue. I will tell you, as a U.S. Senator, I have the privilege occasionally of going to do interviews. Let me give you an example. CNN has a great studio in Washington, DC. When you go to the studio in Washington, DC, you go through the front door of a big building. There is a security person there, and they will check your ID before you go any farther. Not only will they check your ID, they make sure you are already preregistered to be there to visit with CNN because you can't just walk in. You have to notify them ahead of time you are coming, even if you are the person being interviewed. Then, there is a physical barrier between you and the elevators. Once the security guard clears you, you go through the physical barriers, but you can't go up the elevator because the security guard has to clear you to actually go up that elevator and punch in a certain code to go up to the floor. When you arrive at that floor, you are literally in nowhere land because everywhere around you are locked doors until someone comes in and clears you. You go to another security guard, and you sign in with that security guard, again check ID, and then you have an escort who takes you into the studio. That escort stays with you because as soon as your interview is done, they will smile at you and say: Your time is up. We are going to escort you out. It is a shame CNN has to do that, but they do because not everybody who walks through their doors means to do them no harm. There are some people who mean to do them harm, and it is right for them to keep that level of security. For that level of security that we talked about for CNN, all of us see that as rational--unfortunate but rational. I would say to us as a nation, why is that rational at CNN headquarters, and it is irrational for us to be able to do the same thing with our own borders? Not everyone who crosses our border is there to help us. We can all admit, there are some individuals--a few thankfully--who do mean to cross our borders and do us harm. We should be aware of that. We have half a million people a day who legally cross our border, our southern border, alone--half a million people a day who cross back and forth, who legally go through the system. They are doing commerce. They are visiting family. There are all kinds of individuals who move back and forth through our gates legally every single day. We should ask the question: Why are half a million people moving through legally but yet there are thousands and thousands who are moving through illegally? What is the difference, and should we ask questions of some of those people? Should there be a physical barrier in some spots? We have seen some places like in Yuma, AZ, when there wasn't a physical barrier and there is a large city right on the border and someone would cross the border quickly, commit a crime, and move right back across the border. When a physical barrier was put in place a decade ago in Yuma, AZ, the crime rate dropped dramatically in that area. The physical barrier helped and did reduce crime. I have had people say, if you build a 30-foot wall, there will be a 31-foot ladder leaning against it. That is true, but it slows them down and gives enough time in remote areas or in heavily urbanized areas for people to be able to respond and be able to interdict those individuals. Walls don't stop people. They slow people down so you can actually do interdiction and ask: Why are you going over the wall rather than through the gates like half a million other people are doing today? Why is that happening? That is not unreasonable, but it has become heavily politicized. We need to step back and remove this from a conversation about Presidents and about political parties and move it back to some basic, commonsense things--things this Congress used to do with wide, bipartisan support--things like a physical barrier. There should be a wall in certain areas of the southern border that don't have a wall right now. There should be areas of technology in other areas. There should be an area to have watch towers with cameras that are there. We should add some additional personnel. We are talking about 3,000-plus miles on our northern border, 2,000 miles on our southern border. That is a lot of territory to be able to cover. Some of those areas don't even have broadband access to it, so just getting information to the agents who work there takes a very long time or is unreliable. We do need to have some technology improvements in some of those areas. Should every part of our border have a wall? No, I don't think so. It shouldn't all have a wall, but in heavily populated areas, it probably should because that provides greater security, quite frankly, on both sides of the border. Some of it is even more simple than that. There are areas where there are large amounts of cane that is growing up in the Rio Grande River, and the Border Patrol agents can't see on both sides of the river who is moving through because people can hide in the cane. Just eradicating the cane that is all through that area on the border, in the river area, would provide tremendous visibility. That would allow people to be able to see farther and, quite frankly, stop some of the drug movement and allow for more interdiction in those areas. It shouldn't be that controversial. That should be common sense--adding technology, adding sensors, adding greater visibility, adding a wall in areas where a wall is needed, and in other areas that don't need a wall, we don't. That is not just the issue. Some of the issue is fixing loopholes in the law that get exploited. There are some individuals who cross the border, and they know the rules. The coyotes in Central America who are actually humans smuggling them all the way through Mexico and getting them to the border have told them exactly what to say. When they encounter a Border Patrol agent, they say: Say these words, and you will get access to asylum, whether they are true or not. The way it typically starts is, they say those words the coyotes have told them to say, and they actually get a quick hearing and what is called a notice to appear for another hearing, which is usually 2 or 2\1/2\ years later. They disappear somewhere into the American system, and we have no idea where they are. They are somewhere among 300-plus million Americans in some town, and we don't know where they are. The vast majority of them never show up for the court hearings, but they have a piece of paper that says ``notice to appear,'' which also means they are given legal protections until that court date, and they can move around the country. That is a loophole in our system. It should be fixed. Nowhere else would they do that. Why do we do that? We allow ourselves to be exploited. There are some words and phrases that we need to be able to clean up in the law and some things that need to be done. Again, that shouldn't be controversial. It should be security related. There should be some basic questions about how we are going to handle immigration. We allow 1 million people a year to become citizens of the United States legally--1 million people a year. Yet the American system is also ignoring hundreds of thousands of others who are coming into the system illegally and pretending it is not happening. It is. For 20 years, this Congress has not paid attention to it. Say what you would like to about President Trump, but he is pushing this Congress to do something it has not done in two decades--deal with the issue of border security. This body will have to come to agreement on that. The House of Representatives will have to come to agreement on that, and the President will have to be able to sign it or it will be just another Executive action that will not last very long. If we are going to have lasting, real change in border security, it has to go through the legislative process. The President is pushing us to get that done before the first week of March. We had 6 months of time. Four months of that has already run out. It is time to get that document finished, to deal with the basic things the President has asked for--border security, a legal status for those individuals who are in the DACA Program whom the previous President just put into deferred action status--that we will not arrest them, but they are in some sort of legal limbo in between. President Trump wants to have a permanent answer for all of those families. Dealing with things on border security, not just the wall but the other exceptions to it. The President wants to deal with the visa lottery, which is a system where the names of 50,000 people somewhere in the world are just randomly drawn out of a hat to be able to become American citizens. Many of us said for a long time, that is a foolish way to do your immigration system. Our immigration system should be based on what we need in America--what jobs, what locations--rather than randomly pulling names of people around the world out of a hat. I understand there are millions and millions of people around the world who would love to be Americans, but in America, we want to be able to target those individuals who want to not just be Americans but want to be a part of us, not just culturally but economically, to be part of the fabric of whom we are, to make decisions for ourselves as a nation, and to do it not just in our own policy but also our own immigration policy. It is not too much to ask. There are basic things that should be done. Dealing with the DACA students who are literally caught in a place where they have no home is a compassionate thing to do, but along with our compassion, we also need to uphold the law. Those kids should not be held to account for what their parents did, but their parents should not have the same access to the American system of being naturalized as the kids do--only because the parents did intentionally violate the law. They chose to break the law and bring their child with them when they did it. The child didn't make that decision. Now they are growing up in a place where they have no country. They should have a shot at being in our Nation. I do not believe the parents of those kids--who broke the law-- should have that same access to our system. That may seem heartless, but I will tell you, that is the balance we have to have between compassion for people and upholding the law; that the law does apply to all people. Maybe there is a way to do some other work permits or some other things that could be there, but access to citizenship should be reserved for those individuals who are upholding the law, not violating it. There are some DACA kids who have done some remarkable stuff, some DACA kids who are pretty amazing individuals. I ask folks in Oklahoma when I am home, if I could identify for you 700,000 people somewhere around the world who speak English, who are excellent students, who have stood up every day in their school and pledged allegiance to the United States of America, who are in our military already, who are already working in our economy right now, are those the individuals you want to reach out to and be part of that 1 million people a year who become citizens? I have yet to have someone tell me: No, that is not whom we are looking for. Everyone says: That is exactly whom we are looking for. I get to smile at them and say: They are already here. They just happen to have grown up in this country already, but they have no home and would love to call this one their home. I would like to give them the opportunity to earn the ability to be naturalized--not automatic, to earn it--and go through the process, to get in line like every other person around the world, to get in line but not have to return to their home country because they don't know a home country, but get in line here to do it. There is a way to be able to do this. The President has been the first advocate for that. There is a way to be able to actually answer the problems we have dealt with for 20 years on border security so we don't continue to have another DACA Program in 5 years, in 10 years, and over and over again as we are right now. Let's solve it. Interestingly enough, in 2012, when President Obama announced the DACA Program, he made some pretty blunt, clear statements during that time period. One of them was, for individuals--this was in June of 2012--who are already here, he set a date. He said: For those individuals, our Nation wants to provide an opportunity to not be arrested, and we will work on your status, but for any future individuals who cross our border, you will not have access to this program. That is President Obama who made that statement in 2012. While I have heard individuals say we should abide by the words of our Presidents, when President Obama made those statements to those kids in 2012, I would remind us as a nation, we should honor all of those statements, if we do any of those statements, including President Obama's statements saying that this will end, and people who are crossing our border will be returned to their home country. As he announced publicly, there is a right way to be able to do immigration. Let's do it the right way. We already receive 1 million a year. Let's do it the right way, and you will find a very welcoming United States of America. That is where I think we can go, and I hope in the days ahead we can finish out a negotiation and be able to resolve some basic things--not everything in immigration but at least the core issues of immigration and border security so we can resolve the issue not only for the kids in DACA but continue to be able to work on how we are securing our Nation for the future. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, maybe my colleagues have heard through public and private conversations over the past year that I believe the Senate is moving gridlock from here on Capitol Hill to all across the city and across the Nation. The reason for that is how we do nominations and the length of time on nominations. It is time for the Senate to fix the Senate's rules. Here is how it works. As this body knows extremely well, we have over 1,000 nominees who come from the President. In the first year of a new Presidency, a vast amount of time is spent in getting those 1,000 people through the nomination process. Each one of those is selected by the White House. They do their own vetting, and then they send them over to the Senate. The Senate has the constitutional responsibility for advice and consent. When they come through the Senate, they will go through background checks, evaluations, and conversations with staff on both sides of the aisle. They then come to the committee, go through a committee process and a hearing, they are voted on in that time period, and then they move to the floor. When they move to the floor for debate, typically, for most of the years of the Senate, they have already gone through the committee process. Every Member of the Senate has the opportunity to be able to take a look at their information. And then they move through with a simple-majority vote. That is the way nominations have moved for most of the history of the Senate. A few years ago--20 or so--some individual Senators started asking for cloture votes. Those cloture votes started to slow down the process on about 3 or 4 nominations a year; then it became 9 or so nominations a year; then it moved to as crazy of a number as 13 or so a year, of the 1,000 or so moving through. That became such a nuisance that in 2013, my Democratic colleagues called for something they called the nuclear option, to say we will just take nominations not from 60 required to be able to get to cloture but just to 51. There was debate and internal conversation about that because Republicans, quite frankly, were holding up 15 or so nominations a year with the cloture process. So there was a big debate about that. In the beginning of President Obama's second term, Republicans and Democrats came together and they changed the rules of the Senate for 2 years and said: OK, truce. The simple rule of the Senate was for any cloture vote, if there was one called for--again, typically, you would never call for one, but if there was one called for, there would be 2 hours of debate for a district court judge, 8 hours of debate for most nominees, and 30 hours of debate for Supreme Court, circuit court, or a Cabinet-level appointment. But even Harry Reid, when he stood on the floor, said this would be only--his words--``extraordinary circumstances'' if you should ask for a cloture vote at all. But if they were asked for, it would be 2 hours, 8 hours, or 30 hours. Prior to that, all nominations were 30 hours of debate, literally taking up an entire day to move one person, knowing that you have to move 1,000. A few months after that, still in 2013, Democrats still frustrated that Republicans were calling for some cloture votes still, moved to have the nuclear option entirely and just transition all nominations, except for the Supreme Court, to just 51 votes. So now they had the rule of expediting 2 hours, 8 hours, and 30 hours, and the new ability to move them all with just 51 votes. Quite frankly, if you are going to change the rule to 51 votes, you probably need to change the cloture rule as well. They just did it in reverse. They changed the rule for how many hours it would take and then later changed the rule for how many people it takes to go through the process. Now what has happened? Remember I argued that we had 13, 14, 15 people held up in cloture in a year? This year, so far, there have been 64 nominations held up in cloture votes. That is 64 days in the Senate we could do nothing else but sit here waiting. Now, it wasn't for debate. It may sound as if it is being held for 30 hours of debate for that time period. Debate normally didn't happen. Most of the time, this Chamber was empty. It was just that 30 hours was demanded to shut down the body as a whole, 64 of those in this year. What has it brought us? It has brought us more animosity, more division, and more frustration. My Democratic colleagues a few years ago were screaming that we should have the nuclear option because Republicans were so irrational with 15 cloture votes. Yet we have watched 64 occur this year. Earlier this week, I sat down with the Rules Committee and brought a very simple option to everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, and we had a great turnout to be able to just talk through the process. My simple presentation was, let's take the rule that was agreed to in 2013, that Harry Reid and the Democrats brought at the beginning of the second term of President Obama, and let's have the rule for each nomination be 2 hours, 8 hours, and 30 hours. Let's move back to the tradition that Harry Reid had, which is to say let's make cloture votes only extraordinary on a nomination, if needed at all, but if they are, 2 hours, 8 hours, or 30 hours. To do the exact same thing now is what was agreed on in 2013 and 2014. By the way, Republicans joined with Democrats during that time period and passed that new rule, which would put us at disadvantage with 78 votes. I don't think it is too much to ask to say that if we are going to get the Senate back to work again, then let's actually get back to work again. Let's put us in a process that actually gets there. What happens in the meantime when that does not occur? I will tell you what happens. In the meantime, we have agencies all over this town that can't answer a question because the bureaucrats are waiting on a Senate-confirmed individual to be able to lead that agency--to be the Secretary, Under Secretary, Deputy Secretary, whatever the task may be, the counsel for that particular agency--so they sit and wait. So our constituents who are trying to get a permit in certain places or trying to get an answer or trying to get disaster relief--all they can say in the office is, we can't do that until we get a Senate-confirmed position in place. But we can't get Senate-confirmed positions in place until my Democratic colleagues will actually allow individuals to actually come up and be debated. What else happens? The other thing that happens is, we can't do legislation in this body; we can only do nominations. With 1,000 different positions that are open, typically they move through rather quickly and they move through the process. But when 64 days are held up just for that, during that time period, you can't do anything else but sit and go through what is called the cloture 30 hours. You can't bring up other legislation. Then what happens? Well, then my Democratic colleagues come to the floor and say: We haven't had a single debate in this body on CHIP. We haven't had a debate on infrastructure. We haven't had debate on any of these things. Why won't we move a bill on all of these things? At the same time, they know it is because they blocked the floor from being able to move legislation because of continual cloture votes over and over and over. It is a bizarre game that doesn't lead to solutions; it leads to greater animosity. It is the same frustration that has existed for a while; it is just getting louder. At some point, we have to put in a process and say: How do we get out of this? How do we fix this? I think the best way to fix this is to take a bipartisan solution that was agreed to before when Democrats were in the lead, to agree to it now and say that is going to be the permanent rule, just to be able to move a set of ideas. For what is historically called the greatest deliberative body in the world, wouldn't it be nice to actually get back to deliberating again, spending more time on legislation rather than more time arguing about why aren't debating it when everyone secretly knows the reason, which is because we can't get it to the floor? I do grow tired. I grow tired of hearing all the political statements and accusations. Republicans hate children. They want to throw them out. They don't want them to have health care. They hate people of color. They are trying to exclude people from voting. They are trying to keep people from having tax reform. They only care about the wealthy. Just over and over, when at the same time, the undercurrent is out there to keep anything from being discussed on the floor. It is an interesting strategy to paint your ``enemy,'' but it doesn't help the country--intentionally divisive without a solution. In 2001, the first year of a new President, there were 51 nominations pending that first year. There is an interesting thing in the Senate rules. It is the wonderful rule XXXI that no one has heard of. It states that at the end of a year, any nominations that are still out there can be automatically thrown back to the White House and they have to start all over again. They have to renominate them. They have to go through the whole process. They have to go through committees. At the end of the first year of President Bush, there were 51 nominations still sitting there at the end of that year. On 49 of them, this body, by unanimous consent, said: No, we will just hold them over. We are fine. We don't have to send them all back to the President. In 2009, in President Obama's first term, there were 72 folks. For 64 of those, this body--every Republican and Democrat--agreed to just leave them here and not make them go through the whole process again, which would have been absurd. As of now, we have 122 pending at the end of President Trump's first year. I am interested to know, when Republicans gave Democrats unanimous consent to be able to maintain their nominations in the past, what happens now. Will this be yet another sign of pure politics rather than actually helping the country get stuff done? I look forward to the day when we can work toward solutions, not just argue and banter back and forth with political statements. If we are going to get stuff solved, let's not pretend and play games and put each other down; let's actually sit down in a room and get stuff solved. Let's fix the rules of the Senate, whether they be the budget rules that keep us from actually having real budget debates or the rules of the Senate that keep us from actually working rather than allowing us to actually do work. The rules of the Senate and the process in the Senate are determined by the Senators, so we alone are to blame when the Senate is not working. There is no finger-pointing. There is no ``it is that party.'' There is no ``it is that person.'' It is all of us. So my recommendation is simple. Let's fix it. Let's resolve the issue. Let's do the right thing in the right way. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we commend Senator Hatch for his efforts on this most important bill. We would like to ask for confirmation on a question that will be of considerable importance to millions of seniors housing residents, including those living in assisted living and memory care residences and in continuing care retirement communities, CCRCs. As you know, capital for seniors housing, including assisted living and memory care residences and CCRCs, essentially comes from the same lending sources that fund other types of real estate. HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and commercial banks finance seniors housing through their respective housing related programs. Seniors housing competes with other real estate based investments for both equity and debt and it is critical that our tax law treat these seniors housing units in a manner that is comparable to other housing. Provisions relating to the deduction for business interest and to the deduction for depreciation in the bill include rules governing a ``real property trade or business,'' as that term is currently defined in the tax law. Under these rules, the conferees stated that they intended that a real property operation or a real property management trade or business includes the operation or management of a lodging facility. We would like to ask the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Finance if he agrees with us that the operation or management of residential rental property housing the elderly, such as an assisted living residential facility, memory care residence, or a continuing care retirement community, are not excluded from the definition of a ``real property trade or business'' merely because they provide necessary supplemental assistive services that meet the needs of aging seniors.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are in the middle of a very protracted conversation about tax reform. This conversation started in January. I have heard people say that it has been rushed through at the end. We started in January, and we are starting month 12 of this process: hearings in the House; hearings in the Senate; different drafts coming out, shot down, starting over again, and coming back and forth. Now we are starting our 12th month of going through this process. As we get close to the end, I want to outline a few things we are actually working on to be able to send back to this body and the American people--what is actually happening here. The focus of this from the beginning--from the very start--was two simple things: How can we reduce the rates for individuals so they can keep more of their own money and spend their own money, which stimulates the economy? The second aspect was this: How can we simplify the system? There is a lot of back and forth on the final details of it, but those two things are very clear. This dramatically simplifies the tax structure that we have, and it reduces rates for people, so that people have more of their own money to be able to spend, and businesses have more of their own money to be able to invest in their businesses, to be able to pay their workers more, to be able to buy more equipment, and to be able to expand their businesses. That helps everybody in the economy. Whether you save your money or whether you spend your money, you are able to keep your own money. So here is what this means for hard-working Americans and, in particular, in my State, for hardworking Oklahomans. Every bracket gets a tax deduction. In fact, as the Tax Foundation studied the Senate plan, going State by State, it looked at the middle-income family in Oklahoma, and the Tax Foundation stated that the middle-income family will have an increase in its take-home pay of $2,200 over the next year. People will see it in their own paycheck from what is not being withheld anymore, because they are able to keep more of their own money. The Senate plan doubles the standard deduction. For a single working adult, the first $12,000 of their money is not taxed at all. For a married couple, $24,000 of their income is not taxed at all. We also double the Child Tax Credit to $2,000, directly, to be able to protect the people who need the help the most. What does that look like for us? Take an Oklahoma family of four. That typical family of four in my State, with all incomes put together and with two working parents, makes about $73,000, combining all of their incomes together. That family of four, with $73,000 of total income for the family, will see a cut in their tax bill of $2,200 next year. Typically, they pay about $3,600 in Federal taxes. Next year, they pay $1,500 in Federal taxes. It is a pretty dramatic shift for them. Let's take a teacher in Oklahoma who has been teaching for a couple of years--a single mom, a couple of kids, with $41,000 in total income and trying to make ends meet. That single mom with a couple of kids will see a tax reduction of $1,400. That is incredibly significant in just her day-to-day life. I can assure you that every Oklahoman would be glad to see an extra $100 or $150 in their paycheck every single month. That buys a lot of groceries, and it sure does help. This is a process that really does affect real people, and it has been lost in the conversations. It has been interesting to hear the debate and all the noise on it. I am hearing things I am calling tax myths of this bill. The most common one is that it is actually going to increase taxes on those in poverty. So for people who are saying that this is going to increase taxes for those individuals, it does not. It actually does exactly the opposite--not only by reducing rates but by increasing the standard deduction, by increasing the child tax credit. It helps people that need help the most. I have also heard individuals in the media saying: This is going to hurt people because the individual mandate--something unrelated to tax policy entirely--has been snuck into the tax bill. The individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is a tax policy that was actually added to a healthcare bill. So this is a tax bill dealing with the tax aspects that were snuck into the original Obama healthcare bill. How does that work? The individual mandate says: If you don't buy the insurance approved by the folks in Washington, DC, then, you get an extra tax on you. Where does that tax go? In Oklahoma, 81 percent of the people who pay that extra tax make $50,000 or less. That extra ObamaCare tax--that penalty that was put on there--was targeted directly at the middle class, and the middle class in Oklahoma pays that fine. Eighty-one percent of the fine that is paid is paid by people making $50,000 or less, in my State. We want to see that tax rate go down for those individuals, and we want to allow people to have a choice. That is a significant change for those individuals, who not only are trying to make ends meet, but they don't want to see one more tax laid on top of them. Here is another myth I have heard. The tax cuts for the individuals aren't permanent. May I remind everyone that the tax changes for the individuals made by the Bush administration had the exact same effect. They had a 10-year life span. As we went out to the end of that 10-year life span, they were then renewed. This is the same type of experience, where this individual tax is put in place, and a future Congress will go back and evaluate: Are all of these tax rates correct? Is this the right formula that should be in place? And they will be able to evaluate them at that time--just like we did in 2011, when those tax rates were made permanent--look at them again, give them that future window, and evaluate: Is this the right direction? There has been an interesting one I have heard several times by people saying this will hurt teachers and it will hurt schools. I even heard someone this past weekend specifically say: The Senate bill takes away classroom expenses from teachers. The ironic part about that is that the Senate bill actually doubles the deductibility for teachers and classroom expenses. The lie out there is that the Senate bill takes it away. The truth, if you read the bill, is that it actually doubles it so that teachers have twice as much that they can deduct. Teachers make a limited salary already. The last thing we need to do is to hurt teachers as they are trying to take care of the kids in their own classes. So this doubles the deductibility for teachers for classroom expenses. It also puts in place an extension of the 529. Many parents set aside a little bit of money every month to go toward their child's college education. This would allow that to also be used for education, if they choose to have those expenses, in kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as college. It increases that opportunity. The House bill did have a portion in their bill about student loan interest and tuition waiver for graduate students. The Senate actually does not have those two areas, protecting graduate students in their tuition waiver expenses. I think that is important. There has also been a great myth out there that Republicans are cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with this bill. Can I tell you, there is nothing in this bill about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We are not trying to damage or change any of those programs. In fact, it was in one of the hearings just last month where JCT, or the Joint Committee on Taxation, was asked that question directly, and they affirmed that there is nothing in this bill that is trying to change those policies. That is just a myth that is sitting out there. What we need is a healthy, growing economy. Our economy has been flat for the last 8 years, growing at around 2 percent. Historically, the U.S. economy since World War II has grown at about 3 percent. That little 1 percentage point change may not seem like a big deal, but that is a lot of jobs across the country. It is increased wages across the country, and it is increased opportunity. I feel sorry for college graduates who graduated in the past several years because they are trying to land a job in this economy and finding out how difficult it is to get a job. They wonder: Has it always been like that? It has not. Go back just a decade or two decades ago, and people were graduating out of college and landing into great jobs because the economy was growing faster. If we don't do something to get this economy growing faster again, we will continue to have limited opportunities for all Americans, and people's paychecks will continue to be flat yet another decade. This is a way to nudge the economy, to say: Let's get it going again. Quite frankly, my Democratic colleagues 8 years ago passed a $1 trillion stimulus package and said that is what would nudge the economy, but the economy didn't budge at all. This is an opportunity to come back and say: Let's actually do this right, not having the government spend your money but allowing you to keep more of your money and allowing the free market--just from people spending, buying, and saving--to lift the economy. That lift makes a tremendous difference. One last interesting conversation. There have been a lot of folks who talked about deficit or debt effects in this bill, that this bill could be up to $1 trillion in addition to the deficit. This is typical Washington speak and the challenge of serving here in Washington. There are 130 economists that looked at this. All turned in reports. Everybody has a different outlook. Economists study hard, they look at the numbers, and they run their models, but everyone is guessing, and I get that. They are educated guesses, but they are all guesses. It is the responsibility of us here, in this Chamber, to look at the models, to look at the study, and to determine: Does this work? For instance, JCT in their study said there will be about a half trillion in deficit because of this bill. But what they didn't take into account, when you look at their actual numbers, is any real increase in international funding--any increase in our American businesses that do business here in America and across the ocean. That is not really taken into account in theirs. They also don't look at tremendous swaths of our economy because they don't have that in their model. But the JCT estimates that we will have half a trillion dollars in deficit spending. As I mentioned before, over the last 10 years, our economy is stuck at less than 2 percent GDP growth. In the context of the Senate bill, current policy assumes that tax extenders expire, meaning we start with a $500 billion headwind. Our tax bill should not have to cover the effects of current policy extensions. The $1 trillion gap that is left equates to around 0.4 percent increase in GDP over the 10-year budget window. CBO's current GDP baseline is 1.9 over 10, and given the pro-growth policies in our bill, we should fully expect to a .4 percent boost, getting us to 2.3 percent, which closes the deficit gap, and brings future growth much more in line with where we should be historically. Moreover, by JCT's own admission, eight one-hundredths of a percent could yield $500 billion in dynamic economic growth. So using those numbers, sixteen one-hundredths in boosted GDP should provide the sufficient revenue to cover any shortfall. The focus of this is that, when you look at the studies and you ask the questions, they all have very conservative estimates--as they should, as economists. But if our economy even goes up to maybe 2.5 percent--so a half percentage point, which is typical for us--we are far in the black. I understand that it is always a risk. My Democratic colleagues took a risk 8 years ago when they spent almost $1 trillion in the stimulus package, saying: I hope this works. And it did not. I understand it is a risk, but I think it is an appropriate risk, to be able to say: Let's allow Americans to keep more of their own money to invest in this economy on the risk that we grow the economy by 0.2 percent more to be able to break even. I think the American economy can grow much faster than that. She has for decades, up until the last decade. Let's get us back to our old normal and allow that to be our new normal. There are a lot of questions on the tax policy, rightfully so. It is important to all of us. Let's get it right, but let's keep moving. Over the next couple of weeks, this body, along with Members of the House, will do a conference committee. It is a back-and-forth about how we resolve the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill. When that is done, it will have to pass the House, pass the Senate, and go to the President's desk. In the days ahead, Americans will see the changes in their own paycheck as they see the rates go down and are able to keep more of their own money. The rates of the median family are set to go down by 60 percent in this bill. It will be a tremendous benefit to them. I think that opportunity is one we shouldn't miss. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I am honored to be here with several other Members to talk about the issue of immigration. This has become a very contentious issue. As soon as you say the word ``immigration,'' there is a whole group of people who immediately start screaming amnesty on every part of the conversation. Another whole group starts screaming ``jack-hooded thugs'' trying to take grandmothers out of their homes, and the whole conversation diminishes, and we lose the policy issues that are in place. There are obvious problems with immigration. We have not taken those obvious issues on in decades. They need to be resolved, and every year they are not resolved, this issue gets harder and it gets more complicated. We should address the issue of immigration. For years, the conversation has been out there, and for years, it has remained unresolved. I would challenge this body in the next 3 months: Let's resolve some of the big issues in immigration. Almost 4 years ago, I was in Central America with a group of other Senators and House Members. We were meeting with Central American leaders, and we were meeting with them to talk about immigration and about some of those individuals leaving those countries who were coming to the United States illegally. But also, we met with them in Central America to determine what they should do for immigration. Multiple countries that were there in the conversation were talking about how they were increasing their border requirements at their borders, how they were managing their workforce within their country, and how individuals from other Central American countries were traveling to their countries and changing the job structure and changing the pay structure. We somehow get this belief that the immigration issue is only an American issue. Every country in the world deals with immigration because every country in the world has the right and the responsibility to know who is in their country. Are they citizens? Are they noncitizens? I should have the ability, in my country, to be able to know who is coming in as a guest and to be able to say yes or no. That is a basic right. For some reason, that becomes lost in all of this conversation. When we fly anywhere else in the world, we have a visa or we have a passport because when we enter that country, that country requires it. That country, when we land, wants to know who is in their country and where they are. That seems normal to us when we talk about travel, but for some reason, it gets lost in this issue of immigration. This should be a normal conversation--that our country would know who is in the country, that we would know where they are, if they are a guest, and that we would know when they are leaving. After the 9/11 Commission finished, they challenged our Nation to resolve one of the issues of immigration that sat out there that is still unresolved to this day. It is entry-exit visas. Why can we not know if a person comes in under a legal visa? We know when they come in, but we don't know when they leave. That is still unresolved a decade and a half later. Year after year, when I talk to Homeland Security, they say: We are doing a pilot project. We are close. Year after year, that is unresolved. The vast majority of the people who are in our country illegally didn't cross a border illegally. They came with a visa, they overstayed it, and they never left. We are never asking the questions: Who is here, who is not here, and where do those connections come from? What I would like to find is a way to establish a group of foundational issues that are commonsense solutions to the obvious immigration issues that we face--and find common ground. We will have disagreement in this body, but we should be able to find common ground on immigration issues that we can all look at and say: That is a reasonable way to do it. Probably, every Member of this body would do it a little bit different, and we would have a different set of preferences, but we should all agree it should be done. We have to solve the obvious issues, and there are areas of common ground to be able to do it. Quite frankly, the President of the United States gave us quite a gift about 3\1/2\ months ago when he said to the DACA Program: That is an administrative program. It should be a legislative issue. I am not going to renew that any more as an administrative issue. That needs to be done in Congress. For the first time in a long time, Congress has a deadline to be able to deal with immigration. That is actually a very good gift because this Congress has punted the immigration issue year after year without a deadline to get it resolved. Now we do have one. That deadline is in early March. I would suggest to this body: Let's get it resolved. Let's find the areas where we can actually find common ground in this area. Some should be pretty obvious. Immigration courts, right now, have over half a million cases backlogged and pending. Currently, if you are going to hire a new judge to be able to be in the immigration courts, it will take 742 days to hire one immigration judge. That is not right. That is ridiculous. We should be able to get that resolved, to be able to add new judges to our immigration courts, and to be able to help deal with the backlog of over half a million people. The E-Verify system has been renewed in a bipartisan way year after year. Let's take it beyond the temporary program that it is right now. Some people don't know it is a temporary program. Let's move it from a temporary program to a permanent program. Let's do a permanent reauthorization. And let's make the tweaks and changes that are needed, whether it is to be able to move E-Verify into the hiring system, whether it is to be able to encourage individuals in their hiring--for more companies to be able to use it, for it to be a faster system that is more reliable. At times it can take up to 6 months to get a final answer from E-Verify. Again, that is absurd. That is a fixable issue that we should be able to do. We should be able to resolve the issue of chain migration. We somehow believe that chain migration is an issue that has existed forever. It has not. It has been around only since 1965. Prior to 1965, our immigration issues were tighter than they are now. But now it has formed into this system where you can have initially your nuclear family, and then as you gain citizenship, you can add parents, and you can eventually add siblings, and you can add other individuals, and it continues to accelerate. I am always frustrated when I hear people talk about our legal immigration system in the United States and say that we should be more open. We admit 1 million people a year through legal immigration--1 million a year. We are a very open country to legal immigration. We need to be more precise. We need to base our immigration not just on chains of family connections but actually what our Nation needs to grow economically. I am not anti-family--far from it--but we should have a reasonable system. Canada doesn't do it this way. Australia doesn't do it this way. The UK doesn't do it this way. We still do. We should be able to resolve this. We should deal with the issue of border security. There has been a lot of conversation about a wall. I don't think we should have a 2,000- mile-long wall on our southern border and a multithousand-mile-long wall on our northern border, but I do think we should be able to monitor our border and know who is coming in and out. Not everyone is coming just to work. There are individuals who are trafficking drugs and people. We do need to be able to monitor them. I have heard folks say that we don't need a wall anywhere. I totally disagree. This whole adage of a 20-foot wall just begs for a 21-foot ladder--if you talk to the homeland security folks and the border security folks, they would say: Fine, put a 21-foot ladder there because it slows you down in the process. A wall is not designed to prevent you entirely; it is designed to slow you so we can actually interdict you, prevent you from coming in. Yuma, AZ, can tell us the story about when they put up a wall, how it dramatically slowed down crime in Yuma, AZ, rather than just having an open border. There are areas where we desperately need a wall. There are other areas where we just need vehicular barriers. There are other areas where we need drones, and we need greater technology. But we certainly need more personnel in that area. It is one of the other challenges we face. The President said: Let's add 5,000 new people. Great. Do you know how long it takes to hire one Border Patrol person? It takes 450 days-- 450 days to hire one person on the Border Patrol. It is a broken system of hiring. We need to fix that. We need to do more rapid screening. We certainly need to take care of the issue of sanctuary cities. All of the Nation last week did a giant sigh for Kate Steinle's family. Kate was murdered in San Francisco--a sanctuary city--by someone who had seven felonies and who had been deported five times. Then a jury said that because the bullet ricocheted off the ground, it wasn't really murder. He can go free. We have to resolve the issue of sanctuary cities. That is unjust. We are better than that as a nation. We certainly should resolve the issue of DACA. We have kids who have been in this country and have grown up in this country. They get up every day, and they say the Pledge of Allegiance to this country. They speak perfect English. They have great grades and no criminal history. I asked people in my State: Who would you like to come into the country and be free to join this country? If they say the pledge every day, if they speak perfect English, if they are passionate about entrepreneurship and starting companies and getting engaged, if they have joined the military--that is exactly whom the people of my State would like to see immigrate to this country to be a part of it. Well, guess what. We have almost a million of them already living here, but they have no legal status. They were brought here as a child by their parents under no decision of their own. We should have a long- term legislative solution. This particular bill that is under discussion now has a short-term solution to that, something called the BRIDGE Act. It is a 3-year legislative solution. It cries out for a longer solution, but it at least gives additional certainty more so than what DACA has. I would challenge this body to look at all of these reasonable solutions and to say: If we can't decide on these, let's start the conversation. What can we decide on? How far can we get? How much can we resolve in immigration? Let's do it, and let's do it right. Let's start the conversation, but let's finish it this time. We should negotiate with the House. They have some great ideas. We should negotiate here. There are some tremendous ideas on both sides of the aisle. But let's certainly get it done. I look forward to that ongoing conversation. Let's get this resolved in the days ahead. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Cardin be recognized to offer a motion to commit, which is at the desk, and that the time until 2 p.m. be equally divided in the usual form on the motion; further, that at 2 p.m., the Senate vote in relation to the motion with no intervening action or debate. I further ask that following disposition of the motion, the majority leader or his designee be recognized.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to address this body and talk about an issue that we do not talk about enough--the deficit. It is an issue that, for whatever reason, we have stopped talking about in Washington, DC. We talk about tax policy, which we should. We talk about disaster relief areas, which we should. We talk about healthcare policy, which we should, and a lot of other things. We have stopped talking about the debt and deficit, and I think that is a mistake for us. You see, after 2011, the trend moved from a high point. Deficit spending that year was $1.3 trillion--overspending in a single year. After that point, the deficit went down a little bit each year until 2015. In 2016 our deficit number--that is a single year of overspending--started going back up. It went up in 2016, and it went up again in 2017. It is turning in the wrong direction. As you will recall and as many people in this body will recall, deficits were a major topic for us starting in 2010. Each year, Congress was trying to find ways to be able to reduce the deficit. That does not seem to be the issue anymore. What I bring is a set of solutions and a set of ideas. How do we get out of this? Are there bipartisan solutions to actually deal with deficit overspending? There are priority things that we need to spend money on, and we should spend money on those things. Yet, as to the things that are nonessential for us and on which we might all find some way to agree that there is a better way to be able to spend our dollars, we should. So this week I have produced our third annual ``Federal Fumbles'' book. We call it ``100 ways the Federal Government has dropped the ball.'' None of these should be all that controversial, though we will not agree with all of them. But there are simple ways to look at what the Federal Government is doing, what it is not doing, where we are spending, where we are overspending, and where additional oversight is needed. There is no problem in this country that can't be solved, and, certainly, our deficit is an issue that can be solved. We just have to commit to each of us making the decision that this is actually important and that we are going to try to resolve this to try to get us back toward balance. I have lumped all of these issues from this book back into a whole series of different process things because each one of the 100 things that we identify is not just a stand-alone; it is part of a bigger problem. So I have put them together into budget process reforms and grant process reforms, which allow for more transparency in how decisions are made and as to what decisions have been made. I would say, as well, that there are Senate rule changes that are going to be needed to be able to resolve any of these issues. We put together these four big blocks to be able to ask: What are we actually dealing with? Let me just give you a couple of ideas. If we are going to actually deal with some of the budget issues, we are going to have to actually deal with the budget process. We are not going to get a better product until we get a better process. Since 1974, the Budget Act has only worked four times, and every year the American people have asked over and over: What just happened? How come we are back in this budget fight? How come it is at the end of the year? How come this is not resolved? Because we have a bad process-- that is why. Our process is not constitutional. It is the product of a law that was put in the Budget Act. We need to be able to change that, and I think there are some basic ways to be able to resolve that. I would like to do budgeting and appropriations every 2 years. That would give us more time to be able to do more oversight, and that would give us more time for floor debate on it to be able to walk through this. There are multiple other areas that need to be resolved, like aligning our committees and other things that need to be done if we are actually going to get budget work done. In the meantime, we need to be able to push through what we can with the greatest efficiency, but, long term, we are going to have to fix the broken process that we have. We should fix the grant-making process. There has been a lot of pressure to be able to move dollars toward grants because now we have put more and more restrictions on contracting. Because there are very few restrictions on grants, a lot of agencies are now spending more on grants than they are on contracting, and they are pushing dollars out the door with there being very little supervision. We have to work on transparency. I am ashamed to say that for 6 years I have pushed on a very simple bill called the Taxpayers Right-To-Know Act. It passed unanimously in the House in 2 different years. It came over to the Senate, and it got tied up. The Taxpayers Right-To-Know Act is very simple. It asks every agency to list everything that it does. What a shocking thing it would be to actually know everything that every agency does--to be able to see what it does, what it spends on it, how many employees it allocates to it, and how many people it serves. Every business in America can give a list of everything that it does except for the Federal Government. We cannot. We should. It would give the opportunity for agency heads to find out, before they start a program, and to know if someone else already does it in the Federal Government. I have talked to multiple agency individuals now, under two different Presidents, who have said that they have started a program, gotten it developed, committed people to it, and then a couple of months or years later determined that somebody else was already doing it. Even our agency folks do not know what the other agencies are doing. This should be a simple, straightforward solution to be able to help our agencies and to be able to help all of us have greater supervision over the budget. The fourth thing is dealing with Senate rule changes. If we do not solve the issue of our nominations, we will never be able to get actual legislation on the floor and get back to debate again. We have stopped debating on major bills. We have stopped debating on small bills. Because it takes so much time, it is easier to just not do it at all. That is not what the American people sent us here to do. When we say that the Senate cannot debate a topic, no one can believe it. That rule doesn't get better based on inactivity. It gets better when we actually fix the basic problem that we have, and that is getting us back to debate and solving the nomination process. Let's actually get this resolved. In saying all of that, all of the things that are in this book this year are things that I and my staff and my team--and Derek Osborn, who has led in all of the compilation of this on my team--have put together. We have put together this basic package to say: Here are 100 items. Quite frankly, I would hope that all 100 Senators could go through budget areas and that everybody could find 100 items and could identify them and say: Let's compare our lists and then ask: What are we going to do to be able to deal with the debt and deficit? How are we going to deal with some of the spending and inefficiencies of the Federal Government? We would probably have 100 different lists, but I would bet that, of the 100 different lists, we would find a lot of common ground, and we would actually start to solve some things. What type of things did we find on our list this year? Let me give you some examples. The National Science Foundation did a grant this past year to study the effects and how things are going for refugees in Iceland. Now, I am sure that the country of Iceland would like to know how it is going for their refugees, and maybe even the U.N. would like to know, but I am a little stunned that the National Science Foundation used American tax dollars to study refugees in Iceland. The National Endowment for the Arts did a grant this past year to help pay for a local community theater in New Hampshire in its performance of ``Doggie Hamlet.'' ``Doggie Hamlet'' is an outdoor presentation in which a group of people yells and sings around a group of sheep and sheep dogs. I have watched the performance, and I think it is fine if the folks of New Hampshire want to do that performance. I am just not sure why the people of Oklahoma are being forced through their Federal tax dollars to pay for the production of ``Doggie Hamlet.'' Last year, the Department of Defense moved some equipment into Kuwait to be able to give it to the Iraqi army. So $1 billion worth of equipment was moved into Kuwait to give it to the Iraqi army--Humvees, small arms, mortars. All of that is fine, as we were helping to equip the Iraqi army to allow them to be able to defend themselves. The problem is that we lost track of them somewhere between Kuwait and Iraq, and the DOD doesn't know what happened to $1 billion of equipment after it was delivered to Kuwait. The IRS has had multiple issues that we have tried to identify in different segments of this. One is that several years ago we noticed that the IRS was rehiring employees whom it had fired--the employees who were not paying their income taxes but were working for the IRS or the employees who were using their positions to spy on other Americans and pull up their tax information just because of their own interests. It is a fireable offense at the IRS--and it should be--to violate an American's privacy. The problem is that the IRS has started rehiring those same people right back. I don't know many companies that fire somebody and then later decide they are going to change their minds and rehire him, but, apparently, the IRS has become proficient at that. We identified it several years ago. The IRS said it would stop it. We did a check on that last year, and guess what. The IRS is still doing it-- rehiring the employees it has fired, some of them even with their files that are stamped ``do not hire.'' The IRS hired them anyway. We have to be able to stop that. The IRS also did a study, through a program that it has, to be able to research tax compliance--not of changing tax rules, just of how people are complying with the tax rules and evaluating: Are they paying the correct amount of tax? Quite frankly, our tax system is so incredibly complicated that it is hard to be able to track what is the right amount, but the IRS should be able to look at it and determine whether someone is paying the right amount based on those figures. The IRS has developed some programs to be able to recommend, but the problem is that it has not implemented those programs. Over $400 billion of taxes has never been collected by the IRS because it has not implemented the recommendations that it has in front of it already. The IRS has also had an issue that we are trying to deal with, along with several other entities by the way: Who is alive and who is not alive? You see, the Social Security Administration keeps track of something called the Death Master File. It sounds wonderful; doesn't it? The Death Master File basically says who has passed away in America and what Social Security number is not functional anymore. The IRS is not fully implementing that list and, at times, it is still sending checks to people who died years ago. Then, some fraudulent people take a Social Security number from someone who has passed away and file a return on that Social Security number in January or February, and the IRS sends them a check simply because it has not listed that this person has passed away and that the Social Security number is not active. Yet the IRS is not the only one. We also identified in the SNAP program--what some people call the food stamp program--that there are thousands of retailers who are using these false Social Security numbers from people who have passed away. Last year, $2.6 billion was sent out to SNAP retailers based on the Social Security numbers of the people who had passed away or on the numbers that are not operable. Those are things that are fixable. There is $2.6 billion of fraud that is in the system. We have asked the question about immigration, and immigration has been an important topic here. We talk about immigration as well and not just of the financial portion of it but of the fumble portion of things that are actually going wrong in immigration currently. A lot of folks--and some folks even in this body--say: If we will just enforce the law as it exists and build a fence, we will be fine. The problem is that 66 percent of the people who are in the country illegally came into the country legally, with a legal visa, but they overstayed the visas. They never left. After 9/11, the 9/11 Commission said that one of the major aspects in dealing with immigration was to do an entry-exit visa system so that we would know who they were when people came in, and we would also know when they left. That was a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission, but it has still not been done a decade and a half later. If we are going to deal with immigration, one of the key things that we have to have is not just a wall or a fence or some sort of barrier. We also have to deal with when people come in and when they leave under legal visa systems. I have heard comments about hiring more Border Patrol folks and more ICE folks. That is OK, fine. I am good with that, actually, but here is the problem. With the current system that is set up, it takes over 450 days to hire one person as a Border Patrol person because the process is so convoluted--450 days. What if you would like to apply for a job and you wouldn't hear back about it for a year and a half--450 days? What about if we are going to add more immigration attorneys? We have a half-million-person backlog in our immigration courts right now. What if we were to hire more judges for that process? Great idea. Guess how long it takes to hire more judges in the immigration court? It takes 742 days right now to be able to hire a judge to add to the immigration courts. Our problems are not just in immigration. There are structural problems in the Federal Government right now in hiring, oversight, and in managing the reports. I mentioned the IRS's not implementing one of the reports they have. There is also an issue with some other agencies that will put on the back of Federal vehicles their phone number with this question: How is my driving? What a great idea that is for a Federal vehicle. The problem is that when we looked at it, we found out that the agencies never actually read the reports that came in. If people called in and said that this particular car number is driving crazy, no one is actually looking at it. It is the fear that Americans have that no one is really listening to them in the Federal Government. Claire McCaskill and I just worked to be able to pass something in this body to try to deal with solving this basic question: Can agencies ask: How am I doing? When most of us get a rental car or a hotel room online, we will get an email after we check out of the room or stop using the rental car asking: How is our service? How can we improve? Do you know that Federal agencies can't do that or that it has become so complicated that they can't produce a three-question e-survey to send out to people saying: How are we doing in Social Security disability? How are we doing in the Veterans' Administration? How are we doing in our HUD assistance to you? The reason for that is the Paperwork Reduction Act, of all things. An old law that was supposed to help us is actually now in the way, now in the modern age, of our trying to do basic surveys. We need to be able to resolve that. That is something this body can lead on to be able to change. There are a lot of things we want to be able to identify and to say that we can do better. This is our list. Quite frankly, this is our to- do list for the next year, just as the previous two volumes have been. We have seen some things that we have been able to accomplish over the last couple of years from previous ``Federal Fumbles'' books, but we can't get started on them until we actually identify them and say: That is a problem. How are we going to fix it? Our simple question for the rest of this body is this: Here is our list; what is yours? What are the things we are working on? What are the issues that we are actually going to get done and solve for the American people? What are the crazy stories and things we are wasting money on? If we only identified it and said: Let's stop that, we could and would. Let's do it together. There is no reason that reducing the deficit should have to be an issue that has become a partisan issue. Deficits and the growing debt affect every single American. So let's work on it together, and let's stop finding ways to not work on it and find areas of common ground where we can work on it. Let's fix inefficiencies in Federal Government hiring. Let's fix inefficiencies in our system. We have a tremendous number of great Federal employees who are all around the country and who work extremely hard for the American people every day and do great work, but they are trapped in a system that slows them down, that prevents them from being as efficient as they would like to be. Let's help them out by fixing the broken things that are in these agencies and systems. Let's set them free to be able to serve people the way they want to be able to serve people. There are things we can do. Let's get busy doing it. If you are interested in knowing more about ``Federal Fumbles'' go to our website at lankford.senate.gov. We will send a copy over. We will send you a link to our website because it is cheaper and we will not have to print it off, and you can look at it online. The issue of the day is this: Let's find out what your list is; we have started ours. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have 6 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 9:45 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Brian D. Montgomery, of Texas, Robert Hunter Kurtz, of Virginia, and Suzanne Israel Tufts, of New York, each to be an Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; to be immediately followed by a hearing to examine the nomination of Jerome H. Powell, of Maryland, to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Christopher Ashley Ford, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary (International Security and Non-Proliferation), and Yleem D. S. Poblete, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary (Verification and Compliance), both of the Department of State. Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 10 a.m. in room SD-430 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Examining Proposals to Simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)''. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226, to conduct a hearing entitled ``S. 1241: Modernizing AML Laws to Combat Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing''. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., in room SH-219 to hold a closed hearing. Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety The Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, November 28, 2017, at 10 a.m., in room SD-406 to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kenneth E. Allen, of Kentucky, A. D. Frazier, of Georgia, Jeffrey Smith, of Tennessee, and James R. Thompson III, of Alabama, each to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, our economy has been stuck between 1.4- and 1.9-percent growth over the last 10 years. Compare that to the 10- year cycles before that, over and over again, all the way back to the Great Depression. Every group in a 10-year block was at 3 percent or more growth. Literally, we have had half the growth in our economy over the last 10 years than we have had in any 10-year time period, going all the way back to the Great Depression. We have to be able to deal with that. I hear people over and over again say that regulations are choking our businesses and are driving up the cost of products for consumers. Yet our Tax Code is full of loopholes, and it is full of confusion. It is complicated. When I go through to fill out my individual taxes, it seems as though there are deductions for everybody else but for me, and people want to get that fixed. Quite frankly, no one likes paying taxes, and everyone wants to make sure that whatever taxes they pay are spent efficiently and are the lowest possible. I cannot tell them that right now because the spending is not on track and is not efficient. I also cannot tell them that they are as low as possible. We need to fix that. The tax reform that we are discussing in the Senate right now deals with some very basic things. It begins with more take-home pay for individuals. You can either be paid more by an employer or you can be taxed less by the government. Either one of those increases the take- home pay. This solves the ``tax less'' by the government so that individuals can have more take-home pay--around $100 a month. That is serious money for most Oklahomans to have going back to their families. The way that happens is by starting with the standard deduction that doubles, which is $24,000. To say it flat, if you make between zero and $24,000 as a family, you wouldn't have any tax at all on that first $24,000. That is a great help. Your tax does not even begin at all until after $24,000. You would be in that zero percent bracket. We double the Child Tax Credit. For families who are raising kids, it is exceptionally helpful for them to have a larger tax credit. Then we take out the individual mandate in ObamaCare. We have already had folks who have asked: What does ObamaCare have to do with tax policy? Let me tell you, very simply, that the individual mandate is a tax. That is what the Supreme Court labeled it as, and that is what individuals understand it to be. If you don't buy the type of insurance of which Washington, DC, approves--and you may sign up for different insurance--you will get an additional tax penalty on your taxes. Who pays for that? In Oklahoma, 81 percent of the people who pay the individual mandate tax penalty make $50,000 or less a year. It is a tax aimed directly at the middle class. I think that this is unfair. We want to remove that tax penalty from the middle class and say that they do not have that penalty and that they are allowed to buy insurance they can actually afford. What does this mean for jobs? If small businesses have a better Tax Code and their passthroughs, then they are able to hire additional people. That means more jobs. Based on where our economy is right now, the unemployment rate has continued to drop over the last several years. At the spot it is right now, that means that there is more competition; there is more hiring; and more people have to compete for those jobs. That means that employers have to pay a little bit more money to get the people to be able to do it. That raises wages for people all around the country and means additional people who are not working will actually get back to work. With more people working and actually paying taxes, it pays for itself. Getting a growing economy going is essential to us. The way you do that is you take care of the Tax Code for small businesses, and you take care of the Tax Code for corporate businesses. I have had folks who have asked me: If you drop the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, what does that really do? Again, it allows those big companies, as well as the small companies, to hire more people, to engage in more investment, to build more factories, and to buy more machinery. That is what it allows them to be able to do to grow their businesses. Yet, on the international stage right now, our Tax Code is 35 percent. Compare that to those in other countries that are somewhere around 22, 23, 24 percent. Some of them are less than that. Let me make this simple. If you are going online to buy a shirt and if you can see that shirt for $20 on one website or $35 on another website, where do you buy the shirt? It will probably be from the one that is selling it for $20. If you are starting a business or founding a business, and you can go to one spot where the tax rate is 20 percent or to another spot where it is 35 percent, guess where you will found the business. It will be where it is lower. We are the higher rate right now. If we don't fix that, businesses are going to continue to move overseas. We can make fun of them in the news. We can yell at them and tell them that they are un-American, but they are going to continue to move where they pay less, exactly as every American does with his online shopping. That is fixable. In the middle of all of this, we have to deal with the debt and deficit. We cannot ignore that reality. The things that I am still going through in the proposal that we are working through right now are the things that are unrealistic in the proposal because, at the end of the day, we have to get the economy growing again, but we have to deal with half a trillion dollars in overspending from this government right now. We can do both. We have to be able to do both. I am encouraging this body to take seriously a proposal to be able to deal with how we get our economy going again. Let's figure out how to get it done, and then let's actually solve this for the American people. I yield to the Senator from South Dakota.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have the opportunity to speak to this body today about Amy Barrett. Her nomination is currently pending to be a circuit court judge. There is a pretty high standard for those individuals because they handle some incredibly difficult constitutional cases. What is good about this is that Amy Barrett meets the high standard for those qualifications. Professor Barrett received her B.A. in English literature magna cum laude from Rhodes College and her J.D. summa cum laude from Notre Dame University Law School, where she served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. She currently serves as a research professor of law at Notre Dame University Law School. Professor Barrett teaches and researches in the areas of Federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation, publishing scholarship in leading legal journals, such as the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews. Those aren't easy areas to be able to publish in or an easy professorship to be able to land. Before joining Notre Dame, Professor Barrett clerked for Justice Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States and for Judge Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Following her clerkships, she was an associate, where she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases both in trial and appellate courts. Professor Barrett also served as a visiting associate professor at George Washington University Law School. She seems to be eminently qualified. Then what seems to be the issue? Interestingly enough, she faced a very odd set of questions during her confirmation process--questions not about her legal scholarship, not about her qualifications, but, oddly enough, about her Catholic faith. It wasn't about her temperament. It wasn't about her fairness. It wasn't about scholarship. It was whether her Catholic faith would get in the way of her being a good judge. Quite frankly, it wasn't about whether she had chosen a faith; it was the problem that she actually seemed to live her faith that became a big challenge during the questioning time period. It is odd for us as Americans because this seems to be an issue we resolved 200-plus years ago. We resolved it in article VI of the Constitution, which says that there is no religious test for any officer of the United States. There is no requirement to be of a certain faith or, if you are of a certain faith, to take that faith off if you are going to serve in the United States. We have in our Constitution a protection not of freedom of worship, which I hear some people say--they are free to worship as they choose--that is not our constitutional protection. Our constitutional protection is the free exercise of your religion--not just that you can have a faith, but you can both have a faith and live your faith according to your own principles. That is consistent with who we are as Americans, that we allow any individual to have a faith and to live their faith both in their private and public life or to have no faith at all if they choose to have no faith at all. That is a decision for each American. But we don't ask individuals--as has been asked of this individual-- whether faith will be the big issue and whether faith becomes a question in whether they are capable to serve other fellow Americans. What is so dangerous, quite frankly, about her Catholic faith and her Christian beliefs as far as her being a judge? Are people afraid that she will actually live out what the Book of Proverbs says--to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, speak for the rights of all who are destitute, speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and the needy? Is that what everyone is afraid of, that she will actually live out that Biblical principle? I am a little confused why comments, such as ``The dogma lives loudly within you,'' were said during her questioning in the committee, and there were other questions to challenge her Catholic faith. Faith is a choice that each individual has, and it is an extremely personal but also extremely important choice. Some individuals in America--myself included--choose to look past the mundane, day-to-day events and to think there is someone and something higher than us. We don't just look at the creation around us; we wonder about the Creator who made it. We don't just wonder about cosmic dust smashing into each other; we ask a logical question: If cosmic dust were to smash into each other in space and create all there is, who made space and who made the cosmic dust that smashed into each other, and how did that happen? Faith drives us to ask harder questions and to look a little longer at things that other people just see as plain in front of them. We ask what is behind it. A lot of Americans do. It is not irrational; it is a part of who we are and a part of how we are made. It is a challenge to us as Americans to be able to challenge an individual and to say: That person is so radical that they believe in things like do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, honor your father and mother, or even things as radical as, in whatever you do, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It doesn't seem that radical of a belief that we would have to challenge and wonder whether one was able to be a judge if they believe in those things. We dare to believe in something beyond us, as do millions of other Americans. I really thought that our Nation was past this, that our Nation that speaks so much of diversity and of being open to other ideas is somehow closing to people of faith. People who say they want to demand that everyone be included are afraid of people who have faith and live their faith. Why would that be? If we are going to be an open society, is it not open as well to people of faith to not only have a faith but to live their faith? We hit a moment like this in the 1960s, and I thought we had moved past it. There was a Senator at that time who was running to be President of the United States. We know him as John Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was speaking to a group of ministers in Houston, TX, in the 1960s, and he had to stand before them and explain his Catholic faith because, quite frankly, there was this buzz: Could someone be a Catholic and be President? What would that mean? Would you have difficulties with that? The questions that were asked of Professor Barrett were strikingly similar to the questions that were asked of Senator Kennedy when he was running to be President of the United States. Here is how Senator Kennedy responded: For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may some day be again, a Jew--or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril. . . . And in fact, this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died, when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches; when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom; and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. JFK had visited the Alamo that day. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey. But no one knows whether they were Catholic or not, for there was no religious test at the Alamo. Then he made this closing statement: If I should lose on the real issues [of the Presidential race], I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people. This should be a settled issue for us, not a divisive one. We are a diverse nation--diverse in backgrounds, perspectives, attitudes, and yes, diverse in faith. I look forward to supporting Professor Barrett in this position, and I look forward to seeing her decisions as they come out of that court, consistent with the law--as she is well trained to be able to do--and consistent with our convictions as Americans. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have 9 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on commerce, science, and transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 10 a.m., in room SR-253 to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Leon A. Westmoreland, of Georgia, to be a Director of the Amtrak Board of Directors, Raymond Martinez, of New Jersey, to be Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation, and Bruce Landsberg, of South Carolina, to be a Member of the National Transportation Safety Board. committee on energy and natural resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 to conduct a hearing. committee on health, education, labor, and pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., in room SD-430 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act: Achieving the Promise of Health Information Technology.'' committee on homeland security and governmental affairs The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``2017 Hurricane Season: Oversight of the Federal Response.'' committee on homeland security and governmental affairs The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``2020 Census: Examining Cost Overruns, Information Security, and Accuracy.'' select committee on intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 9:30 a.m.., in room SD-106 to conduct a hearing on the nomination of John C. Demers, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice. select committee on intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., in room SH-219 to conduct a closed hearing. subcommittee on oceans, atmosphere, fisheries, and coast guard The Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., in room SR-253 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Exploring Native American Subsistence Rights and International Treaties.'' subcommittee on crime and terrorism The Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 31, 2017, at 2:30 p.m., in room SH-216 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online: Working with Tech to Find Solutions.''

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are about to vote on a gentleman named Scott Palk, who was nominated by President Trump to serve as a U.S. district court judge for the Western District of Oklahoma on May 8. On June 15 of this year, he passed the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support. It has taken us this long, from June 15, going through the committee process, to finally getting this to the floor in the last days of October. This is the issue we face as a Senate right now. We have an opening with a judge who has already gone through the committee process, who has already been approved--who will be confirmed, I hope, with wide bipartisan support--but because of the ongoing delay of every nominee, of everything in the process, this is slowing down the wheels of our government across the country. Whether that be judges or whether that be individuals in the executive branch working in the agencies, we are seeing a constant slowing. We have to be able to correct this. I would state that Americans will be very pleased when they get a chance to see Scott Palk on the bench. He will be a fair judge. He comes from a great family and has a great passion to serve people, both as he served in the U.S. attorney's office in the past and at the University of Oklahoma, working at the law school there. He will make the Nation proud. I am glad we have finally gone through this extremely long process to finally get him on and to get him seated on that bench. In the days ahead, I look forward to the other positions in government being filled as well with other well-qualified individuals. I look forward to seeing this done. I look forward to seeing Scott Palk not as Scott Palk but as Judge Palk. With that, I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I rise to speak to the Senate about the nominee that is currently in front of this body and on whom we should vote in the next few hours. We just finished a cloture vote to actually start 30 hours of debate. In the past, we wouldn't have had 30 hours of debate for a district court nominee, especially a district court nominee like this. This would have been something that would have been done by consent. We would have had a vote on this individual, rather than burning up 30 hours of time in debate on a single individual who just passed a cloture vote 79 to 18. This is not a controversial nominee. Let me introduce you to Scott Palk. Scott Palk was actually reported out of the Judiciary Committee on June 15 of this year. He was nominated by President Trump on May 8. He has been pending since June 15 to get a vote on this floor because of the ongoing delays for each nominee as we go through the process. Why do I say Scott Palk is not a controversial nominee? It is not just the fact that he passed the cloture vote 79 to 18. Scott Palk, if you remember his name in this body, was also a nominee of President Obama for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. He is now a nominee of President Trump for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. There may be five things total that President Obama and President Trump agree on. Scott Palk is one of those five. This is not a controversial nominee, and he will be a great judge for us. He will also be a great judge in Western Oklahoma. He currently serves as the assistant dean for students and the assistant general counsel at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in Norman, OK, a position he has held since 2011. He has the strong support of the president of the University of Oklahoma, who happens to be former Senator David Boren, a Democratic Senator from this body, who is now leading the University of Oklahoma and has done that with great excellence for the past two decades. He is also strongly behind this nominee as well. Scott Palk joined the University of Oklahoma College of Law after 19 years of public service as a State and Federal prosecutor. He graduated in 1992 from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he began his legal career as a legal intern for the district attorney's office of district 21, serving in Cleveland, Garvin, and McClain Counties. After graduating and passing the bar, he became an assistant district attorney for Cleveland County, where he prosecuted a variety of crimes and death penalty cases. In 1994, he became the multicounty drug task force coordinator, initiating and directing the district's first wire- interception drug investigation and coordinating Federal and local resources, culminating in the successful prosecution of a significant multicounty methamphetamine distribution organization. The Association of Oklahoma Narcotics Enforcers awarded him the Prosecutor of the Year award in 1993. In 1992, he became the first assistant district attorney for district 21 and served in a dual prosecutorial and administrative role. In 2002, he joined the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Oklahoma, where we are pushing him to be a judge now, as an assistant U.S. attorney, prosecuting violent crimes, gangs, and domestic terrorism. In 2004, he became the deputy criminal chief of the U.S. attorney's office and served in the additional roles of violent crime, national security coordinator, anti-terrorism, advisory council coordinator, and crisis management coordinator. That same year, in 2004, the Oklahoma Gang Investigators Association awarded him the Prosecutor of the Year award. The Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys awarded him the Director's Award for Superior Performance. In 2005, the Drug Enforcement Administration awarded him the Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Drug Law Enforcement. In his most recent role at the U.S. attorney's office, he supervised administrative staff and assistant U.S. attorneys, handling a criminal caseload primarily consisting of national security and organized crimes and coordinating efforts with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI foreign counterintelligence squad, and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. His work in national security matters included both traditional criminal investigations, as well as investigations utilizing provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In 2011, the FBI awarded him the Director's Certificate of Appreciation for Assistance to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Scott Palk is eminently qualified for this task. He shouldn't be a controversial nominee, and he should already be a judge. We are missing three judges in the Western District of Oklahoma. President Trump nominated him on May 8, and it is now the end of October when we can finally get him to the floor to be able to move him. This delay tactic, this stalling tactic that is out there, this resist movement to try to prevent the President of the United States from getting his staff in every agency and to prevent judges from being able to actually go on the bench is delaying good people who are not controversial to be able do the job that is needed in each district. He is an individual who passed 79 to 18 on a cloture vote, and I am confident we will not consume the next 30 hours of debate about him. The hours will now expire as we sit in silence on the Senate floor, waiting for us to be able to have a final vote--just delays. I have made a proposal to my colleagues. It is not a radical proposal. Quite frankly, it was a proposal in 2013, first proposed by a Senator named Harry Reid: to be able to move the nominations time period from 30 hours of just wasted time on the Senate floor to 2 hours--2 hours for district court, 2 hours for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of whatever agency it may be, having 2 hours of debate. These are for individuals who have already gone through committee, already gone through extensive vetting, already moved to the floor, and who most certainly will pass because it is a simple majority to be able to move these individuals based on the change of rules that at that time Senator Reid led. Let's also do the same rule on time. Instead of 30 hours of wasted time on the floor when we could do other things for the American people, let's go back to the 2-hour agreement that we had in the past. It was a simple rule of 2 hours for individuals like for district courts and other individuals and agencies, 8 hours for higher tier individuals, who may be for a circuit court and such, and 30 hours for Cabinet officials. I don't think that is an unreasonable request to make. It is a rule that we have done in the past, and it is a rule that we need to go back to. The American people are frustrated with the block in timing on moving people, especially people with wide bipartisan support. No one understands why someone who President Obama nominated and President Trump nominated has to take up 30 hours of time on the floor on debate when no one will really debate him and it is certain what the outcome of these people will be. The American people are expecting us to debate and to engage on issues. I recommend again to this body: Let's go back to the Harry Reid rule--2 hours of debate for individuals like this in district courts, 8 hours of debate for higher tiered courts, and 30 hours of debate for Cabinet officials and the Supreme Court. We can do that again. We have done that in the past, and I recommend that we move back to that, not just for a single congressional body but as a change in the rules of the Senate, so that, permanently, we are able to be more functional again. A body that is dysfunctional can be fixed by its own Members, moving us to a functional set of rules. That is what I hope we would achieve in the days ahead. I look forward to voting for Scott Palk, whenever we finish with a 30-hour clock of time--of wasted time--to be able to move on a nominee and to see wide bipartisan support again for a good nominee. Scott is going to do a great job on the bench. We need him there to be able to get started. I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I want to be able to give a quick update to this body on a conversation that started yesterday and has been ongoing for months about Russia and their interference in our elections and how they are trying to engage with us in a way that much of Europe has seen for decades but that we just haven't seen in the United States. Yesterday, Senator Burr and Senator Warner stood up and gave an update of where we are in the status of the investigation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. They walked through some of the statistics. We have done over 100 interviews. We have 4,000 pages of transcript from those interviews. We have 100,000 documents that we have gone through so far, and there is more to go. We have completed some areas where we have interviewed everyone who we could possibly interview in that area. In other areas, as we do one interview, they quote a couple of other people, and we chase down those individuals, and it continues. So parts of the investigation are not done at this point, but some of it is. Several aspects are clear from the investigation, though, again, it is not complete, and we will have a final document at the end. Some of the areas that are clear are that Russia was trying to use active measures to engage us in our last election. That part is very, very clear. The question comes for many people: Why would they do that? Quite frankly, this is the way Russia has worked for a very long time--this asymmetric warfare they do where they try to constantly interfere in other people's thoughts and conflicts. They have done it across Europe for a long time. They are now doing it here. Some of this is a product of Russia's having a very weak economy and trying to find some way to bolster themselves up. In the last 2 years, the Russian ruble has dropped 40 percent in value. As they struggle with low oil prices and struggle in the way they function with their government with the oligarchs and have a select group of people who can succeed and other folks who continue to struggle around the country and as they struggle under that system where they have fake elections and such, they try to reach out to other countries and try to interfere in our elections to make us look like them. We have a free press that they try to engage in. We have free speech that they don't have in Russia. We have freedom of religion, which they don't have in Russia. We have the ability to be able to have disputes on political issues. They clearly don't have that in Russia. If you disagree with leadership in Russia, you will end up in prison. If you disagree with leadership in the United States, you will end up on TV. It is very different to be in an open society like ours. But they reach into what we consider a strength and try to make it our weakness. We are going to try to get the facts out on this over the next several months as we work through this process. We are going to expose what Russia is really trying to do. Do they use some overt propaganda networks like Sputnik Radio and RT? Is their Russian propaganda on multiple cable and satellite channels throughout the United States? Their version of the facts are designed to create discord in our Nation. That is what they do. They also have ways that are not quite as overt. They reach in on social media platforms. They have their trolls in Russia who have thousands of fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter and other social media apps. They use those thousands of apps to search around any news in America and find a place where there is conflict in America and then try to amp up the volume. To be clear, the Russians are not creating conflict in America. We have plenty of it. We disagree on issues. Again, it is our free society. When we disagree on something, we disagree on it publically and sometimes loud. That is who we are as Americans. We try to work things out, sometimes at a high volume. But just like two kids who are fighting on the playground in the fifth grade--remember those two kids that started a fight and their friends were watching them? Then, eventually, someone on the other side of the playground started yelling ``fight,'' and the crowd started forming. The Russians aren't starting the fight. They aren't even in the fight. They are the kids on the far side of the playground, trying to get more people to run to the fight. They are not starting the Twitter wars and the battles, but they look at where America is divided, issues like race. Their troll farms will try to find areas where we disagree, such as areas of race, and reach in and try to amplify the volume on that by repeating accusations and by trying to be even more hostile online. They are trying to stoke disunity in our Nation. It is important that we know that every time you see something with a high number of hashtag counts that goes up, it is not always Americans who are pushing that up. Occasionally, it is an outside body trying to raise the volume and make a conflict look even bigger than it already is in America because they are into sowing discord. That is what they love to do. That is what the rest of the nations have seen them do. We should be very clear that the Russians are trying to continue to sow chaos into us. They have reached into our election systems. In the previous couple of weeks, the FBI notified 21 different States that during the last election season, the Russians tried to interfere in their election process as a State. Now, that doesn't mean they did interfere. That means they reached in and tested systems. That means they tried to go into voter databases to see if they could access a voter database to see who was registered to vote. They tried to get into a secretary of State's office in a local State to see if they could figure out how they do their elections. That means they reached into systems in States to see what voting machines they used and if they tried to connect them in. They were trying to find out how they do elections, learn as much as they could about their process, and see how far they could get. Through all of our work, we have yet to find a single vote that was changed. The Russians didn't get into voting machines. They didn't alter the election in any way, but they were constantly probing through multiple States to see what they could get access to. Now, it is my belief that they are preparing for something else. They are trying to see what they could get access to in the last election to see if they could get back into it and do even more in the next election. We should be aware of that. We should be aware not only of their propaganda, but we should be aware that they are going after our elections to see if they can find a way, at the end of the election, to make us doubt the outcomes. What can we do about that? I will give you several ideas. One of them, I would say, is that we need to protect the primacy of States running the elections. There is absolutely no need for the Federal Government to go to States and take over their election process. It is a constitutional protection that those States have to be able to run their elections, but every State is also responsible to do it. Of the 21 States that I noted here that the Russians tried to engage in, they couldn't get to a single voting machine. The States are already doing a good job, but they need help. There is no reason the State of Oklahoma should have to work alone to be able to protect itself from the Russians trying to invade it in the cyber attack. They are going to need some allies to come along with them, but the States should still be able to run the system. There should be more sharing between the State and the Federal Government. There should be an opportunity for the Federal Government to be able to say to a State, earlier than 10 months after the election: Hey, you are being hacked. For the FBI to notify States a couple of weeks ago that they were hacked in the 2016 elections is a little late. When it is occurring, we need to have that engagement between State IT folks and Federal IT folks. We need to be able to have that conversation as it is ongoing so the State can take protective measures as it is occurring. We need to have that cooperation between States and the Federal Government. We need to be able to help States come up with ways they can audit their system after the election is over. When every election occurs, you should be able to audit it and make sure the machines that were running the election actually were not hacked. You can verify that. In Oklahoma, we have optical scanners. You fill out a paper ballot. You run it through an optical scanner at the end of the election time, and they can count everything from the optical scanner. If there is any question, they can go back to the paper and actually do a hand count. We can literally audit our elections and their process. It is a safe system that we have set up in our State. Every State does it differently, but I would encourage every State to set up a system where they can audit their system. We know this year that the Russians were trying to engage in our election. It could be someone else who could do it. Any number of groups could try to interfere in our process. It is basic common sense to say we should have a system of elections we can actually audit. Perhaps Russia, in the days ahead, hopes that our Nation will be more like theirs. We will not be. We are the longest constitutional Republic in the world. We still need the world. We still put out our values about free speech, free press, freedom of religion, and opportunities for individuals to actually engage and to have conflict with their own government and to be able to disagree publically on things. We still can disagree with each other. We need to be aware that they want to turn us into them. I would hope for the sake of the Russian people, in the days ahead, that they could be more like us. Ronald Reagan told a story about a friend of his who had a conversation with a Cuban refugee fleeing from communism and oppression in Cuba in 1964. He said that his friend, this Cuban refugee, said: If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. We are still a role model for the rest of the world. As much conflict as we have with each other, we are still a role model. I have no issue disagreeing at times with people on this floor. We can have our disagreements, but I don't want the Russians to interfere in our disagreements. They can keep their business over there. In the days ahead, we will continue to expose the things they are doing. So they can back off and go bug someone else because we are akin to what they are doing. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.