Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act,

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I fear that sometimes here in the Senate we get bogged down in the minutia and the process and don't really talk about the why of how things are done here. We talk a lot about the how, but we don't talk about the why. I just want to speak for a couple of minutes about why it is so important that we pass the regular appropriation bills and put what we are trying to do here in a larger context.

Our colleagues will remember that last year we were unable to pass the 12 regular appropriation bills because our Democratic colleagues filibustered those pieces of legislation in order to force a negotiation to raise the spending caps on discretionary spending. I regret that. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did and there is not much we can do about it. But in the process, what happened is that we ended up having to pass a fiscal year-end omnibus appropriations bill that lacked any basic transparency. There was about $1 trillion-plus worth of spending, and I think most people's reaction is this: Why do you have to do business in such a terrible way that lacks transparency, doesn't let people know what is in the bill, and doesn't let all 100 Senators contribute to the product? The reason is because our Democratic colleagues blocked those bills.

I hope it is different this year because now those top-line numbers for discretionary spending are fixed in law. What we are trying to do, starting with the Energy and Water appropriations bill that Senator Alexander and Senator Feinstein are working through the legislative process, is to begin the process of passing those regular appropriation bills. I hope and trust we will conclude with this piece of legislation this week and then we will move on to the next legislative vehicle, which will probably be the transportation, housing, and urban development legislation, the so-called THUD bill around here.

We have actually demonstrated that by providing an open process, we can actually get some things done. We all recall last Congress--a year and a half ago. The fact of the matter is that a decision had been made by the then-majority leader, Senator Reid, not to allow Senators to participate in the amendment process on the floor. As a consequence, it wasn't just those of us in the minority who were prohibited from offering legislation that would actually improve the product that was on the floor, it included Members of his own political party. So they had to go home at election time and explain to their constituents back home: I may be in the majority, but I couldn't get an amendment voted on, on the Senate floor.

Having learned from that experience, Senator McConnell and we decided that the best thing to do is to have an open process by which Members of the majority party and minority party, Democrats and Republicans alike--anybody who has a good idea--can come forward and get a vote on that legislation. We had a couple of recent bipartisan successes. Yes, I know in some corners ``bipartisanship'' is a dirty word, but the fact is, you can't get anything done around here unless it is bipartisan. Our Constitution was written in a way to force consensus to be built. In an absence of consensus, nothing gets done.

So we have had a couple of recent successes, in addition to our work on appropriations bills, including the Energy Policy Modernization Act. One of the most important parts of that legislation from my perspective is that back in Texas we saw an expedited process for the approval of liquefied natural gas export terminals. That is very important to our economy and something that takes advantage of an incredible resource we have in America--natural gas--which we would like to sell to our allies and friends around the world when they don't have it. That is something that builds jobs in America. It helps grow our economy. It helps provide a lifeline to many of our allies around the world, for whom energy is being used simply as a weapon by people like Vladimir Putin.

We also voted to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration bill. Obviously, this is important for public safety--to make sure our skies are safe--but also to provide the appropriate regulatory regime for the airline industry.

Looked at individually, these bills may not seem like an end-all or be-all, but they are part of a bigger picture and part of a larger goal, which is getting this legislative body back to work again, as it was meant to do, considering and passing legislation that will impact our country for the better. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes the right answer is to stop bad ideas. Sometimes the right idea is to stop bad ideas, but where there is an opportunity for consensus and where we can actually craft something that helps move our country forward--I believe all 100 Senators came here with that sort of goal in mind.

The bottom line is, we are working again to advance the priorities of the American people. In the same way we debate and discuss the Energy and Water appropriations bill, we have to keep the bigger picture in mind. It is not just about passing a single appropriations bill or to check items off our to-do list, it is part of a larger process, which is to fund the Federal Government in a fiscally responsible way, hopefully--that is our goal--and to make sure we review the programs that are funded by Federal appropriations and make sure they are still the priorities we believe they should be. If they aren't, then they shouldn't be funded. That is part of the process--to go back and look at what the programs are, whether they are still working, whether they are still necessary, and if they are not working or no longer necessary, then we simply no longer fund those as part of the appropriations process.

We know this sets our country's priorities by giving guidance on everything we support--from our veterans to how we provide for our energy structure needs, to how we equip and train our troops. Funding the government is actually one of the most important and basic duties of the Congress. As the Senator from Tennessee has pointed out, one of the biggest problems we have--one we are not going to solve here today or this week, unfortunately--is that so much of the money that gets spent by the Federal Government is on autopilot--so-called mandatory spending. In other words, it is not even subject to the appropriations process in the Senate. Currently, only about one-third of the money the Federal Government spends actually goes through this sort of transparent and open process, where everybody knows what is going on and can offer their input. The rest of the money is spent on autopilot, and it is projected to rise, according to one recent projection I saw, at a rate of roughly 5.3 percent over the next 30 years.

We know that is far beyond the rate of inflation, and it is an unsustainable amount of spending. Some of the most important programs that are government funded, such as Medicare or Social Security, cannot be sustained at the current level of spending unless we do everything we can within our ability to shore them up and save them for the next generation. That is what we actually need to be doing in the larger picture.

Until that day, we can continue to do what we can to deal responsibly with discretionary spending, and that is what we are trying to do. If we don't deal with these appropriations bills in a methodical and deliberate sort of way--all 12 of them--we are going to find ourselves at the end of September, at the end of the fiscal year, back in the same situation we were in last year--with the need for an omnibus appropriations bill or a continuing resolution, which is something I know there is not a lot of appetite for. Zika Virus

Mr. President, let me just say a word about the Zika virus and the emergency funding request made by the President. Some of our colleagues--notably the Democratic leader and the Democratic whip-- talked about this this morning and raised the question of whether we are going to responsibly deal with this threat of the Zika virus. I can tell my colleagues we will. We are committed on a bipartisan basis to try to make sure we respond responsibly both from a public safety point of view and from a fiscal point of view.

The President requested $1.9 billion. Thankfully, there is money that has been identified that was left over from the Ebola threat--some $500 million--that can be used as a downpayment to make sure our world-class scientists, like the ones I have met at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston and just this last week at the Texas Medical Center, are doing the research that is necessary in order to identify how to stop this threat by controlling the mosquitoes that bring it into the country. We know the mosquito that carries the Zika virus is common in more temperate and warmer parts of the country, and that is why it has been primarily a threat in Brazil and places like Haiti and Puerto Rico. We also know that in places like Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, this mosquito is present and there are already established cases of Zika, primarily occurring in, I believe, either people who have traveled to Central America or South America and who have been bitten and brought it back with them or, in the case of--apparently it has now been discovered that this virus can be sexually transmitted. So one of the things we need to make sure of, particularly for every woman of child-bearing age, is that they get the sort of protection they need so these horrific birth defects that we have seen in the news don't occur. We are all committed to doing that.

We also ought to make sure we don't overshoot our goal and write a blank check for something when we don't even know what the plan of attack is. In some ways, this is like the President asking us to fund a war without telling us what his strategy is for fighting and winning that war. I think that is the sort of commonsense question our constituents want us to ask, and which we should ask.

I realize not everything is knowable. Hopefully, within a couple of years, our scientific community will have developed a vaccine which can protect people from this virus, but in the meantime we need to continue to fund the basic research. We need to continue to fund at the local level the mosquito eradication, and we need to keep our eye on this emerging threat.

We can do that, and we will do that in a responsible sort of way. We don't need our colleagues on the Democratic side to say we have to do it right here, right now, without even having a plan from the administration on how we will fight and win this war against the Zika virus and hold up the regular appropriations process. I can tell from the saber-rattling going on from some of my colleagues across the aisle that they are looking for a reason to disrupt the regular appropriations process and that can be a mistake. First of all, it will not accomplish anything that can't otherwise be accomplished in terms of funding our research and the fight against the Zika virus. We are committed to doing that in a bipartisan sort of way but in a responsible sort of way that doesn't add to the national debt and pass the bill on to the next generation, as well as a proportional response to the threat. Just throwing money at it without a plan does not seem like a responsible thing to do.

I implore our colleagues across the aisle, do not try to use the Zika crisis to hold hostage our ability to do our regular appropriations work. It is too important to avoid the year-end Omnibus appropriations bill that nobody says they like, and it is important for us to demonstrate--as we have tried to and I believe succeeded in doing, in large part--that we can continue to do our work day in and day out on a bipartisan, responsible basis, not that we are all going to agree on everything--that is just not the way people are built--nor do they want us to agree on everything. This is the place where we have the great debates on the issues that confront our country, both now and in the future, and that is appropriate. Nobody should take it personally. We need to have those debates. We need to have those verbal confrontations so we can get to the truth and figure the best path forward for the country.

So we are not here to kick the can down the road. We are here to do the Nation's business, and we are here to deliver results to the American people. I hope we can continue to do that by carefully discussing, debating, and then voting on all 12 appropriations bills.

In addition to talking about how, I hope to explain a little bit of the why it is so important that we do this now in order to avoid that year-end rush to an omnibus appropriations bill later on.

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