NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this Friday is our deadline to fund 25 percent of the Federal Government, which remains unfunded as a result of the short-term continuing resolution that was passed to keep it open until February 15, pending negotiations to deal with border security measures.

During the last shutdown, for 35 days, we know that 800,000 Federal workers were not paid, including some 36,000 Texans. During that time, we heard about families who could not afford to buy the necessities of life, whether they be medicines or providing the funding to run the heat in their homes and to keep their utility bills low--families who went from donating food at food banks to then being a recipient of food at those food banks.

Even though this all began as a battle over border security, the impact was much bigger. Employees from the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration--the folks in the blue shirts who usher us through security at airports--NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, and a whole host of other Federal Agencies were caught up in the crosshairs of our disagreements here and forced to deal with financial uncertainty for weeks on end.

I personally believe that we were sent here to govern, not to preside over shutdowns, and that we make tough decisions every day here by negotiation and compromise. That is the way the Constitution contemplates how the legislative branch will act.

None of us are dictators. None of us can dictate 100 percent of what we want on any given occasion, so that means we have to negotiate. We have to compromise, and obviously a shutdown represents a failure to compromise.

I have to say that compromise and negotiation require good faith. They require a desire on the part of all parties to actually solve a problem, not to play ``gotcha'' and point score when it comes to politics.

Unfortunately, this last shutdown was a result of some outlandish positions taken by the Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, and the Democratic leader here in the Senate, Mr. Schumer. They said, for example, ``Let's be crystal clear. There will be no additional appropriations to pay for the border wall. It is done.'' That was the Democratic leader Senator Schumer.

Then Ms. Pelosi said, ``A wall, in my view, is an immorality.'' She said it is immoral.

I agree with President Trump when he said what is immoral is allowing the poison that is imported across our borders from the South, which has contributed to the 70,000 drug overdose deaths we saw last year as monitored and reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; that is immoral--not doing anything about that, not dealing with the human trafficking, the sex slavery, and the involuntary servitude of young women and children. That is immoral.

I realize we have gotten caught up in this silly game of semantics. Some people call a wall a fence, and others call a fence a wall. But we all know what we are talking about are physical barriers that form a necessary part of border security.

Again, I go back to the experts. I come from a border State with 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. I look to the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security to answer this most basic question. My question to them is this: What do you need in order to accomplish the mission we have asked you to accomplish?

What the experts have always told me is that they need a combination of three things. They need physical barriers in some locations that are hard to control. They need technology to scan the trucks and the cars that come over the ports of entry; they need ground sensors and radar in the places between the ports of entry. Then they need the boots on the ground; they need the Border Patrol, the law enforcement agents, in order to detain people who come across the border.

I really find this debate over this one component of border security, this physical barrier component, surreal. It really is hard work to try to avoid a solution where the solution is staring you right in the face, where we know that if people of good will were willing to talk and to work through them, we could solve these problems, just as we do so many other problems every day.

I was glad to learn that last night the negotiators on the conference committee reached at least an agreement in principle to fund the remaining Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government. I know we are all eager to see the final details of the agreement and to learn exactly what was included, and I understand, based on reports we heard at lunch, it will probably be tomorrow before we can see the language and make sure the language reflects what we see reported in the press.

As I said, again, I hope this agreement takes into account what we have reportedly heard from the experts--that smart border security is a combination of barriers, technology, and personnel.

I also hope it includes funding for our ports of entry to promote the legal movement of goods and people across the border without compromising security.

I think we all know that a lot of the high-end drugs--what I am talking about are heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the like--that come across the ports of entry are secreted within compartments in trucks and cars, and what we need is to have the scanning devices to be able to locate those places within those vehicles so that we can find those drugs and hold the people smuggling them accountable. But that means that at our ports of entry we are going to need the personnel and the technology in order to do that. So I hope the negotiators on the conference committee have provided adequate funds for that, in addition to the physical barrier.

For my constituents in Texas, a secure border is not just a political talking point, it is a vital part of their lives. Our communities depend on Customs and Border Protection to stop both dangerous people and goods from crossing illegally. But they also depend on Customs and Border Protection to facilitate legitimate trade and travel, which fuels our economy. About $300 billion of goods were transported both to and from Texas ports of entry along the border last year alone. So I hope this agreement includes funding to strengthen our border and to protect our people.

I want to thank all of our colleagues who have been engaged in these negotiations for their continued commitment to finding a solution that everybody can support, and I plan to review the text as soon as possible.

I happened to come back from El Paso last night with President Trump, who was reviewing the bare bones of this proposal, and he has not yet said whether he will sign it, but I want to make a couple of points.

First of all, if this agreement does, as I believe it is reported to do, provide for 55 miles of additional physical barriers along the border, then the President has won, and Ms. Pelosi has lost because she said not one penny more--I am sorry, that was Senator Schumer--for border walls or border barriers. Ms. Pelosi called them immoral.

But if Democrats on the negotiating committee have now agreed to 55 miles of additional physical barriers, it sounds to me as though they are not in the same place Ms. Pelosi is. I don't say that to try to blow up the deal because, frankly, I believe a shutdown would be a mistake. But what I would encourage the President to do is to count his victory here and then to build on that. He has additional authorities, particularly under the Defense authorization bill, on a nonemergency basis, to reprogram money that has been appropriated already for the Department of Defense.

There are other areas that Congress has already approved the President's reprogramming money through previously passed legislation, so I would encourage the President to bank the win and then to build on that and to do what is necessary to protect our country and to secure our border. Nomination of William Barr

Madam President, on another matter, this week the Senate will vote on the nomination of William Barr to serve as Attorney General of the United States.

It is hard for me to imagine a better qualified person for that job. It is particularly impressive to me that some 27 years after he last held the job as Attorney General, he would be willing to step forward and accept the responsibilities of that job once again. But that is exactly what he has done.

More than two decades ago, he was nominated and unanimously confirmed for three incredibly important positions at the Department of Justice, culminating in the very position he is being considered for right now.

Since he first held the job of Attorney General, times have changed-- something he acknowledged during his hearing. But his steadfast commitment to the rule of law has not shifted. That is undoubtedly why Mr. Barr has received the endorsement of former Attorneys General, Department of Justice alumni, State attorneys general, and several important law enforcement groups.

He has also received support from some of the toughest critics in Washington: the editorial boards of some of the newspapers. Following his hearing, the USA Today editorial board wrote a piece called ``Confirm William Barr as attorney general,'' and that says it all, although they went on to say:

There are times for Democrats to confront President Trump and times not to. The nomination of William Barr to be attorney general, pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, is an example of the latter.

In that piece, the editorial board discussed something that was a major focus during Mr. Barr's hearing--the Mueller investigation. Our Democratic colleagues were eager to hear him say that he would allow the special counsel to continue his investigation without intervention, which he did repeatedly.

At one point, Mr. Barr said: ``I believe it is in the best interest of everyone--the President, the Congress, and, most importantly, the American people--that this matter be resolved by allowing the special counsel to complete his work.'' I agree with that, and I agree with the conclusion of USA Today's editorial board that the sooner he is on the job the better.

We saw, I would note, pieces from the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Daily News to the same effect. Even the Washington Post believes that Democrats should vote for William Barr. They wrote that he ``came across as a highly qualified person and committed to the traditions, procedures and mores of the Justice Department.''

Good for them. The headline of that editorial was ``Confirm William Barr--and hold him to his pledge of independence.''

I have said before, and I will say it again, that being Attorney General is probably the most difficult job of the President's Cabinet because not only are you the chief law enforcement officer for the country, you are really a political appointee of the President. But I am satisfied that Mr. Barr can balance those two responsibilities in a responsible and ethical sort of way. I believe he will bring the same independent voice to the DOJ that he did more than two decades ago and will continue his longstanding reputation of being an unwavering defender of the rule of law.

I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will judge this nominee based on his qualifications, not on the person who nominated him.

It has been common, it seems these days, that anyone or anything that President Trump is for, our Democratic colleagues reflexively oppose without thinking about the issue at hand or the qualifications, in this case, of the nominee.

I hope, rather than a reflexive, partisan rejection of President Trump's nominee to be Attorney General, that our colleagues will give him the fair consideration that he is due and will provide, as the Constitution provides, advice and consent on this nomination, and join me in consenting to this nomination, and confirm William Barr as the next Attorney General of the United States.

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