Continuing Resolution and Senate Accomplishments

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday we finally were able to move legislation forward that would keep the lights on here in Washington, at least until December, and provided very important relief that I want to emphasize.

There is flood relief for States like Texas, but not just Texas-- Maryland, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Iowa, all of which will benefit from the flood relief that is provided for in this continuing resolution that was passed yesterday and was passed by the House as well.

More importantly, perhaps, is the support for veterans programs and military construction. It is important that we pass legislation to meet our responsibilities to support our men and women in uniform wherever they may be serving, whether here at home or abroad.

Thanks to the leadership of the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from New Hampshire, we passed legislation that will provide additional funds to deal with the opioid epidemic that is ravaging many parts of our country. As a medical doctor, the Presiding Officer knows that people unfortunately get hooked on opioid prescription drugs.

Frequently, when that runs out, they often opt for cheaper, more plentiful heroin, which, when mixed with other ingredients such as fentanyl, makes it even more deadly and more likely that they will overdose with the use of this heroin laced with fentanyl. We have provided additional funds in this continuing resolution to deal with that.

Finally, but very significantly, we also were able to break the impasse over funding for Zika. As we have come to learn, Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that has the potential of causing terrible birth defects in children. We have seen pictures of children with shrunken skulls from the microcephaly caused by this terrible mosquito-borne virus.

We had been trying since last May to get that Zika funding done. For some reason, even though the amount of the funding, $1.1 billion, was agreed upon, our Democratic colleagues wouldn't take yes for an answer.
Finally, yesterday, they decided to give up their filibuster and allow this legislation and this important funding to be done. My point is that we could have done this a long time ago. In fact, we wouldn't have had to pass the continuing resolution taking us over to December--just 10 weeks from now, when we will have to start all over again--if it weren't for the obstructionism and filibustering of our Democratic colleagues.

Of course, the cause of this is a fight over Federal spending. We know there are caps on discretionary spending, and many of our Members, myself included, have become very concerned in this very dangerous world we live in that we have shortchanged our military and our national security support. So in order to get additional spending for our troops abroad and at home and to make sure that we are prepared for the next threat to our country, we increased spending for the Department of Defense, but the costs of doing that were increases in nondefense discretionary spending. Thus we get back into the same old fight, which unfortunately has left us $19 trillion in debt, where spending is simply out of control.

That is the reason we ended up in this posture. It is highly regrettable.

Nobody would have chosen this--certainly I wouldn't have--as a first option. Now we are going to be confronted with the responsibility in December of passing appropriations bills that will take us through the next year, through the end of the fiscal year. So we have this resolution taken care of. It is behind us now, and that looms large ahead of us.

I want to mention some of the good work being done in Texas by folks like the Harris County Mosquito & Vector Control unit. A few weeks ago, I had a chance to go on the rounds with them and set some of the traps for various mosquitoes.

Actually, I got this idea from listening to Mike Rowe, who has this ``Dirty Jobs'' series, and I noticed one of them happened to be mosquito control. It occurred to me that maybe there was something for me to learn about how local leaders like those in Harris County identify these mosquitoes that bear this Zika virus and how they deal with it. I got a firsthand look at how much work it takes for our local public health officials to protect our communities from mosquito-borne viruses.

It is not just about Zika. It is also about the West Nile virus, which unfortunately has taken the lives of some Texans in the past, as well as other diseases such as dengue fever. The Presiding Officer knows all of them.
Our folks at the local level do have their work cut out for them.

They trap these mosquitoes every day to test them for the virus, and they spend a lot of time educating the public about how to better protect themselves. I walked around with them, and they pointed out places where water has been pooled in old tires or in swimming pools in the backyard or perhaps birdbaths or other places where mosquitoes, if they are given an opportunity, will simply breed.

This is one way, by being better educated, that people can help protect themselves from these mosquito-borne viruses by eliminating the breeding ground for these mosquitoes. If you are a woman of childbearing age, being able to dress appropriately, spray yourself with mosquito repellant, and otherwise help yourself while we are waiting for the Federal Government to live up to its responsibility to provide the funds, which now we have finally done, would help.

It became clear to me in our visits to Houston that our local officials need more help. More specifically, what they need is the research that will lead to a vaccine. We went through this experience in another context with the Ebola virus not that long ago. It is important that our scientists and researchers develop a vaccine to particularly protect women of childbearing age from the consequences of the Zika virus.

We need a whole government response. We finally got one yesterday, one that deploys local, State, and Federal authorities.

The funding bill we passed yesterday outlines a way forward for the Federal Government to do its part that will provide funding for communities in Texas and throughout the country. They are already working diligently to safeguard folks against the virus. As I mentioned, it will go a long way in helping local and State officials with prevention efforts and even working to create a vaccine. I am pleased we finally were able to get that done and overcome the impasse created by objections, obstructions, and filibusters of our friends across the aisle.

Beyond getting this funding for the Zika research and prevention done, I wish to identify a few other things that we have been able to accomplish. As I came to the floor and said a couple of days ago, the senior Senator from Montana, who happens to head up the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was caught basically telling the truth when he said that one of the things they are depending on is a narrative to help Democrats in the selection, this false narrative that under the Republican majority, under Republican leadership, we simply hadn't been getting many things done.

We have been doing a lot to take care of the Nation's business during the events of the last 2 days, including the Water Resources Development Act that passed with 95 votes, which includes additional funding for Flint, MI, and their lead pipe water challenges.

I mentioned the opioid crisis and heroin crisis. Recently, we passed a bill called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act by more than 90 votes. As I mentioned, the junior Senators from Ohio and New Hampshire have provided such great leadership in that area.

We also passed other reforms for chemical safety, the so-called TSCA bill, which provides companies with regulatory certainty so they can continue to create products Americans use every day. This bill proves we can responsibly protect the environment at the same time we are growing our economy. This legislation passed the Senate by a voice vote and received more than 400 votes in the House.

We also passed legislation to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea in February. It sailed through this Chamber with one ``no'' vote.

Of course, we also took care of intractable problems that we had trouble getting any traction on for a long time, major reform bills such as the Energy Policy Modernization Act to help bring our Nation's energy infrastructure up-to-date, as well as to expedite the permitting of liquefied natural gas exports, which the Presiding Officer has worked on a lot. I was just at Sabine Pass. Cheniere has a huge export facility for natural gas. Golden Pass and others are in the process of trying to get their permits, but they have been waiting a long time.

This legislation will provide a shot clock, which will hopefully expedite that process. The energy we have been able to produce in this country is a great natural resource for the United States and a great economic engine. To make it available to our friends and allies around the world is very important. The Energy Policy Modernization Act as well as lifting the ban on crude oil, which we did last December, have been very important steps.

I was discussing with the senior Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, the important work we did reforming the bill known as No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act. This legislation was very important because many people had the impression that Washington had simply taken control of our K-12 education system. Under his skillful leadership, working with Senator Murray in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, they were able to write a piece of legislation that passed with overwhelming bipartisan margins that would devolve the control of K-12 education back to the States, local school districts, parents, and teachers. It literally removed the common core mandate that so many people had chafed under.

We also finally have passed a Medicare payment reform system that had long plagued our medical community. I know many physicians in Texas told me they simply would not be able to take any more Medicare patients--which of course are our senior citizens--because the Federal Government kept cutting their payment rate and the uncertainty created by that. We finally fixed that on a bipartisan basis.

Under the new majority in this Congress, we also saw President Obama sign other important laws, such as the Freedom of Information Improvement Act, a bill that will make our government more transparent and more accountable to the people we serve. By an overwhelming 99-to-1 vote, we passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, a bill that will help victims of human trafficking recover.

We will support law enforcement in their fight against active shooters by passing and signing into law the POLICE Act, legislation that allows existing grant programs to be used for police training to deal with active shooter situations. I have traveled all around Texas with local police departments in both urban and rural areas, and they find this training very useful and timely.

Unfortunately, it is necessary, in times such as these where we have had to learn from hard experience--if an active shooter is loose, they will continue to kill and people will continue to die unless the police can crash that site, stop the shooter, and then rescue, with emergency medical people, the people who are injured.

By all accounts, I have to say the Senate, under Republican leadership, with cooperation from our Democratic
colleagues--because of course nothing happens around here unless it is bipartisan. That is the way this place is constructed. That is the way the Constitution is written. I am grateful that under the leadership and steady hand of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, we have gotten back to work and taken care of the country's business.

Of course, we still have disagreements like we had over spending bills that led up to this continuing resolution, and in the lameduck it will leave us with having to deal with the long-term spending bills this December, but I simply want to make the point that leadership matters. Under the leadership of Senator McConnell, our committees are now actively producing legislation on a bipartisan basis that is then available to the majority leader to bring to the floor for us to debate, for Senators to offer suggestions for improvement by way of amendment and allow everybody to participate in that process to vote on the legislation and then bring it to the President's desk.

I hope we can continue to put sound policy over the sort of partisan politics that left us in the uncomfortable and unenviable position we were in yesterday, trying to meet a deadline to keep the government up and running. With a little cooperation and a little elevation of responsibility to our constituents and the people we serve, rather than partisan politics, I think we can continue to do better.

Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.

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