Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague from Utah for his generous remarks about our friend, Senator Bob Bennett. I had the opportunity to serve with Senator Bennett for a number of years. Those of us who are of a certain age, who were raised in the Star Wars period--sometimes I think about Bob Bennett as the Jedi Master, the Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the wise men of the Senate whom it has been my pleasure to come to know and learn from. Certainly, we will miss him. We send our very best wishes and condolences to Joyce and their entire family, along with 20 grandchildren. It is a huge, wonderful family of which I know he was very, very proud. Working Together in the Senate and Criminal Justice and Mental Health Reform

Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about the Senate's work and what we have been able to do and what we still have to do. In the past we knew there had been an experiment, principally under the leadership of the former majority leader, now the minority leader, Senator Reid, of basically not allowing the Senate to function and not allowing Senators, including Members of the majority party, to offer amendments, lest people be forced to vote on things they later would be held accountable for by the voters. What a concept that is.

In fact, we have seen a different approach at work under the leadership of Senator McConnell, the Senate majority leader in the 114th Congress, over the last, roughly, year and a half. It is one where everyone gets to participate, and when people have a better idea, they are allowed to offer that by way of an amendment and constructive proposal to improve legislation and to try to do what they can to build consensus, to get legislation passed in the Senate and the House, and get it on the President's desk. We are going to have differences. Of course we are. But it is important that we try and that we not just come here to make speeches and vote no on everything, but we actually try to find some way of getting to yes, particularly where it doesn't violate our principles and where we are able to make incremental progress on the work we have been sent to do.

Fortunately, we have seen the Senate get back to work. We just recently passed important legislation, such as the Energy Policy Modernization Act--a bill that will update our country's energy policies. This follows on the heels of a vote late last year where we lifted the antiquated ban on crude oil exports. It is something to give our domestic producers access to global prices for their products, something that encourages domestic production and helps us become less dependent on foreign imports and helps us help our friends and allies around the world who are sometimes dependent for their source of energy on some pretty unsavory characters who can cut it off, using energy as a weapon. But, particularly, it is important in terms of getting Americans back to work.

While the unemployment rate continues to tick down to roughly about 5 percent, the untold story is the percentage of people actually participating in the workforce is at a 30-year low, and people have, unfortunately, given up looking for work in too many instances, making that 5-percent unemployment statistic a little bit misleading. We learned again last week, I think it was, that our economy grew at 0.5 percent.

I remember when we used to talk around here about the economy growing at 4 percent or 3 percent, at least. In other words, as population increases, the only way more jobs get created is for our economy to continue to grow. There are not a lot of problems that America has that couldn't be made better by a growing economy. Unfortunately, we have seen the negative consequences of some of the policies, particularly of the executive branch when it comes to regulation, which have made that very difficult. We have been making some progress in the Energy Policy Modernization Act as part of that. It has passed consumer-friendly legislation that will help people get access to energy help and provide the incentives for them to conserve.

We have also done things such as pass a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Act, the FAA. That may not seem like a big deal unless, of course, you fly in an airplane and care about safety. The legislation we passed--I think the Senate has done that--has helped regulate the growing number of remotely run aircraft or drones to make sure those don't conflict with passenger planes, so those will be safer. That is just another example.

We have also passed important legislation to deal with this prescription drug abuse crisis. Many call it the opioid abuse crisis, which happens too often. When people can't get access to the addictive prescription painkilling drugs they have been prescribed, they turn to the cheaper forms of addictive drugs such as heroin. We were able to pass the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act back in March, and I know the House of Representatives--I believe this week--is taking up this same legislation. My hope is that we can continue to work together to bring relief to those struggling with addictions and to help save those who would otherwise suffer from a fatal overdose of drugs. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.

We started the appropriations process last month, which I know has been an enormous frustration to a lot of people. I remember all too clearly, as the Presiding Officer does, the alternative, which was doing it in a 12-step process. The regular appropriations process was to do an omnibus appropriations bill at the end of the year, which is a lousy way of doing business. We would have one bill that would spend roughly $1 trillion. That process lacked the transparency and accountability that necessarily goes into a step-by-step process, where we move 12 separate appropriation bills across the floor. We all said we wanted to do this. This basic work is done by the legislature so we can pay the bills according to the limits we have agreed upon in terms of spending, but we keep running into roadblocks.

Last night we had a vote to try to get back on the Water and Energy appropriations bill. The obstacle appears to be that our friends on the other side of the aisle don't want to vote on the germane amendment that was offered by the Senator from Arkansas. As a result of their objections to proceeding in the normal way to consider germane amendments like that one, the fact is, the majority leader had to file for cloture on that bill in order to guarantee that there will be a vote on that amendment. Hopefully, once that is resolved, we will get back on final passage of that appropriations bill and then move on to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. After that, I believe the plan is to move on to the VA-Military Construction appropriations bill. In other words, it is not fancy work, but it is our work, and it is something we should be doing in a transparent and methodical sort of way.

These bills actually represent the fundamentals of legislating--the sort of blocking and tackling. They include resources to fund our military, which is something we all say we are for. We need to keep our commitments to our veterans, which is a sacred obligation, and we need to help provide the necessary infrastructure across our country. We need to keep the folks who serve our country in diplomatic posts abroad and those who protect our borders here at home safe. I hope we can grind our way through this so we can take up and pass all 12 appropriations bills. The people who have elected us deserve that and not some end-of-the-year mad dash to the finish line, where everybody comes away pretty much dissatisfied by the process.

Beyond the appropriations process, I also want to point out some important work being done at the committee level in the Senate. I serve on the Judiciary Committee under the leadership of Chairman Chuck Grassley from Iowa. At the end of April, I was proud to join a number of my colleagues, on a bipartisan basis, to announce major proposals to reform our criminal justice system. Back when I went to law school, more years ago than I would like to recount, we were told the criminal law was supposed to be used to punish people who violated the law, to deter others who might be tempted to commit crimes in the future, and to rehabilitate people who made a mistake and ended up in prison. My experience and observation has been we have largely forgotten the rehabilitation process.

Beginning in 2007, in Texas and other States, we began to provide incentives for low-risk offenders who were in prison who, if given the opportunity, would begin the process of turning their lives around. They might be dealing with a drug or alcohol addiction or an education deficit, such as the fellow I heard about when I was in a prison in East Texas recently. The shop teacher at that prison said: I have guys in my shop class in this prison who can't even read a ruler. How in the world are they supposed to get a job on the outside? How in the world are they supposed to turn their lives around once they get out of prison? We simply seem to forget that people who are in prison will usually get out of prison, and the only question is: How well equipped will they be to work in civil society and to hopefully turn their lives around and become productive members of society.

I am not naive enough to say or to think that everyone will take advantage of those opportunities, but we know that many will take advantage of those opportunities. That is not just conjecture, that is based on the experience of States like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina.

As former attorney general and long-time Federal district judge in New York, Michael Mukasey, said: The gold standard in terms of criminal justice reform is the crime rate. I know there has been some discussion about the incarceration rate, and some people want to talk about other things, but he said the real question has to do with the crime rate. If the crime rate is going down, you are doing something right. If the crime rate is going up, you are doing something wrong. The good news is the crime rates in places like Texas have gone down as a result of some of these programs which help to prepare those who are willing to take and accept this help so they can turn their lives around. It has also helped us deal with the ballooning prison system cost. Indeed, in Texas alone we have been able to shut down three prisons as a result of reducing the population, slowing down and in many cases eliminating this turnstile, where people go to prison, get out, commit other crimes, and end up right back in prison again. This is an example of criminal justice reform which I know the President is for.

There is another component of sentencing reform which I think very sensibly deals with some of the mandatory prison sentences that were passed many years ago with the best intentions but some of which have really overshot the mark. The most important element, when it comes to a criminal sentence, is the certainty of the sentence, not the length of the sentence. Again, Judge Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States said: Many times people who commit crimes have impulse- control problems, and they are not thinking about what is going to happen to them 25 years from now or 50 years from now. They are thinking about what will happen to them next week, today, or later tomorrow. So I believe the certainty of punishment is a more important consideration than the length of the punishment.

It may make some people feel good to say we are going to put somebody away for the rest of their lives, and in some instances that is the appropriate punishment, but when it involves a nonviolent offense and they are stacking mandatory sentences in a way that is disproportionate to the offense that was committed, I think it is appropriate to consider changing the mandatory minimum sentencing.

We also created a safety valve. Nobody who is currently in prison gets the benefit of the changes in the mandatory minimum sentences without appearing in front of the same Federal district judge who sentenced that person to prison in the first place. That Federal district judge will be able to not only consider the circumstances of the crime but the postconviction and postincarceration conduct as well as the comments and input of any victims of the crime. This way they can determine--based on all of the circumstances--whether you ought to be given the benefit of that reduced mandatory minimum sentence. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It gives that person a right to be considered by a Federal district judge as long as it does not involve a serious crime as defined by Federal law. We categorically excluded that to make sure this is focused primarily on nonviolent offenders, those who are least likely to put the community at risk.

There is one other area that I think we have an opportunity to work on and perhaps succeed with because there seems to be no real objection to the idea; that is, how to deal with people who have mental illness in our society. Back in the old days, people with mental illness used to be put in institutions. They were basically locked up and the key was thrown away. Well, we know that didn't work very well. It was basically warehousing people with mental illness. Someone had the idea to deinstitutionalize those with mental illness. That way they would get to live in the community and would then receive the sort of followup help, assistance, and care they needed in order to maximize their potential, whatever it might be. It was good in theory, but after the deinstitutionalization took place, people ended up living in the streets--the homeless whom all of us see. They are obviously mentally ill, but they live on the streets or end up in our criminal justice system because they are not getting the treatment that might help them to become more adaptive and productive.

I told this story before, and I will repeat it briefly now. I have a friend who is the sheriff of Bexar County, in San Antonio, TX. While at a meeting recently here in Washington, DC, he said: How would you like to meet the largest mental health provider in America. I said: Sure. She said: Let me introduce you to the sheriff of Los Angeles County. In other words, the person who runs the LA County jail. In addition to the homeless who are living on our streets or crowding our emergency rooms with a variety of illnesses--real and imagined--a large number of people end up in our jails.

Thanks to great innovative programs like that in Bexar County, San Antonio, TX, and as a result of what Sheriff Pamerleau and others have done, we began to address the problem at its root and are making sure that people who need help are not just warehoused in jail but are actually diverted to a treatment facility. I have introduced legislation which I think might help the situation, and that is called the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act. The fact is, Adam Lanza's mother--Adam Lanza was the shooter at Sandy Hook who stole his mother's gun, killed his own mother, and then went on to murder those poor, innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary School--basically had two choices: One is she could seek an involuntary, temporary commitment to a mental institution, after which he gets out, he is angry at her, their relationship deteriorates even more, and she has nowhere else to turn or we could have a mechanism where she could go to a civil court and ask a judge to enter a court order requiring her son to undergo outpatient treatment, to make sure he saw a psychologist or mental health professional and was actually compliant with the doctor's orders in terms of taking his medication.

One of the biggest problems in the mental health area is that people will simply start to feel better and then quit taking their medicine. As a result, they end up becoming sicker and sicker and sicker. In Adam Lanza's case--because his mother really didn't have any mechanism to make him comply with his doctor's order to take his medication--he basically became more and more mentally ill until this tragedy occurred. I am not saying this would have necessarily prevented that tragedy, but I think it would provide another tool that loved ones can use, and I believe need, when a member of their family suffers from symptoms of mental illness and simply refuses to deal with it and comply with their doctor's orders.

This month is actually National Mental Health Awareness Month, and it is an appropriate time for us to talk not only about the solution--or at least something that will improve the status quo, when it comes to mental illness in our country--but it is also a time to educate people about mental health issues and to highlight ongoing efforts and to support those who are struggling.

I dare to say that there is not a single family in America that is not affected by this problem or, perhaps, if it is not an immediate family member, then it is somebody they know or somebody with whom they live in the community. So we have a lot of work to do.

Criminal justice reform and mental health reform are two issues that are absolutely the opposite of partisan; they are nonpartisan issues. There are issues where people have different points of view, and that is fine. Let's see where we can build consensus and what things we may have to leave for future legislation. The basic point is that, even though the media is obsessed with what is happening in the Presidential race and the primaries on both sides, we have been able to continue to do the people's work here. There is a lot to be done, and, frankly, there is a lot more that we can do. But we have an opportunity to build on nearly a year and a half of a strong bipartisan record of accomplishment, one that has benefitted both those in the majority and the minority. Frankly, the focus shouldn't be on us--on who is up and who is down-- but on what we are able to do together to pass legislation that helps the American people.

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