Climate Change
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we all know, President Trump will announce his nominee to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Senate is prepared to examine the qualifications of that nominee and hold a vote here on a timely basis.
This, of course, is set in line with the precedent set by Presidents and Senates that were elected long before we became Members of this body or were even born, and we are prepared to follow suit. There were 29 times when there was a vacancy during the election year where the party occupying the White House and the majority of the Senate were the same, and 29 times there were confirmation processes, and it will be the same again this year with the 30th.
As always, we will be thorough. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I have had the privilege of participating in a number of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justices. I know every member of the committee takes this job very seriously--our role of advice and consent under the Constitution. We will not rush the process. Every Member of this body will have an opportunity to vote for or against the nominee once the nominee is voted out of the Judiciary Committee.
But it seems that for our friends on the other side of the aisle, precedent is not enough. The prospect of another Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice has mobilized our Democratic colleagues to launch an attack that has been months in the making on our very independent judiciary.
One of the hallmarks of our Constitution and our democracy is an independent judiciary--an umpire, if you will--that will mediate the fight between the executive and legislative branches and rule on the very constitutionality of the laws that are passed. Long before this vacancy even existed, though, our Democratic colleagues were sounding the alarm, suggesting they would expand or pack the Supreme Court with liberal Justices that will rubberstamp the political results they could not achieve through legislation.
During the Presidential primary this year, candidates were especially eager to share their vision for a larger and solidly liberal Supreme Court. A number of our Senate colleagues were among those open to the idea, including the current Democratic candidate for Vice President, the Senator from California.
Over the last several months, Democrats in both the House and the Senate, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, have expressed an interest in upending the integrity of the Supreme Court and its role in leading the independent judicial branch. Once the Supreme Court vacancy went from a possibility to a reality, these comments have now turned into threats.
Over the weekend, the junior Senator from Massachusetts tweeted that ``when Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.''
The Senator from New York, the minority leader himself, reportedly told his Members on a call this weekend, which was reported in social media: ``Nothing is off the table.''
Now, mistreatment of conservative nominees to the courts is nothing new, including 2 years ago, when Democrats waged an all-out smear campaign against Justice Kavanaugh. But now, even before the nominee is announced, our Democratic colleagues are taking aim at the institution itself.
We know this isn't the first time that our colleagues have floated institutional changes to shift the political tide in their favor. When they lost the Senate majority, they decided they wanted to add new States. They are uninterested in bipartisanship. So they want to end the legislative filibuster. And now they threaten to pack the court with liberal Justices to give them a political outcome. They are taking the saying, ``if you can't win the game, change the rules,'' to a whole new level.
This isn't just political gamesmanship anymore. It is an assault on the Constitution itself, along with the integrity of our article III courts and our system of checks and balances. This court-packing threat isn't new. It preceded the death of Justice Ginsburg in the creation of the vacancy that we will soon consider, but they are now trying to rebrand the reasoning behind it.
Since the idea was previously viewed as too radical by members of their own party, with even Justice Ginsburg opposing it, they are trying to shift the blame to Republicans. By following the precedent of 29 judicial confirmation hearings occurring during an election year and undermining or challenging the Senate's constitutional duty to provide advice and consent, our Democratic colleagues claim that it is we who are responsible for an attack on democracy. They, in effect, are holding the Supreme Court hostage in saying: Don't make me kill the hostage.
Democrats aren't just trying to prevent a single conservative Justice from joining the Court. They are trying to dismantle the very institution itself. The Supreme Court has had nine Justices for more than 150 years. As the balance has shifted in many different directions over the years, Members of Congress have respectfully refrained from engaging in such dangerous threats.
This isn't just about a conservative Justice or a liberal Justice. It is about preserving one of our most basic institutions--a free and independent judiciary. Economic Growth
Mr. President, now on another matter, by virtually any measure our economy was booming at the start of this year. Successful reforms under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act allowed workers to keep more of what they earned and gave job creators the freedom to create new economic opportunities for the American people.
Within the first 2 years of these changes, we experienced record gains in employment and increases in household income for families across the country, including Hispanic and African-American households. New census data paints a clear picture of just how strong the economy was in 2019. The median household income reached an all-time high of $68,700. That is a 6.8-percent increase over the previous year. Not only that, if you look at the dollar amount alone, it is almost double the next highest dollar amount in annual growth.
As I said, Black and Hispanic Americans each experienced a higher than average growth rate and historically low unemployment rates. Median earnings increased 7.8 percent for women, compared to 2.5 percent for men, representing progress in the fight to close the pay gap.
The benefits of our booming market, though, didn't stop there. The new jobs and opportunities created during this boom drew more workers who had been on the sidelines into the labor market, and the result was spectacular. The poverty rate dropped to 10.5 percent, which is the lowest since 1959. Every population group made gains. Regardless of race, gender, age, disability status, or marital status, each group experienced a decline in the poverty rate.
Make no mistake about it. We still have a long way to go to ensure that no family in America lives in poverty, but we also ought to be willing to assess progress when progress is made. There is no doubt that our economic engine was humming and the American people were seeing and feeling the benefits of our strong economy every single day. And then, of course, the pandemic hit. Suddenly, after years of adding new jobs and creating economic opportunities for millions of Americans, it felt like the gains we made were erased in the blink of an eye.
Through no fault of their own, businesses were forced to close their doors to help slow the spread of the virus, and with no tables to wait on, customers to serve, or travelers to accommodate, millions of workers were left without a way to earn a living. Well-meaning employers, sadly, handed their workers pink slips and said they hoped to have jobs for them to come back to once the pandemic was in the rearview mirror.
Until that could happen, millions of Americans relied on enhanced unemployment benefits, which ended at the end of July, including an extra $600 a week in Federal benefits. But there are still families across Texas struggling to make ends meet, and there are workers waiting to return to their jobs with no end in sight.
While we have made progress against the virus, we have to make progress, too, in recovering our economy. In the beginning, restaurants and retailers began adding curbside service and delivery to regain some income, and throughout most of Texas now, these businesses are able to open to 75 percent of capacity. Gladly, we are seeing more and more workers returning to work and our children returning to school.
In Texas, unemployment has steadily declined from a peak of 13.5 percent to 6.8 percent in August. I think a lot of that progress is due to the success of the CARES Act and, especially, the Paycheck Protection Program, which sent more than $41 billion in more than 417,000 different loans to small businesses in Texas alone.
I am still hoping that we can come to an agreement on another coronavirus relief bill that would extend the Paycheck Protection Program and provide some enhanced level of Federal employment benefits, but those measures alone will not support our economic recovery. We know that regaining lost ground will not happen overnight. It is going to take time for our country to return to the pre-pandemic economy that the President and Republican Senate fought so hard to achieve.
As we consider the most effective ways to tune up our economic engine, our guiding principle should be that of the doctor-patient oath--the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm.
Raising trillions of dollars in new taxes, as a number of leading Democrats have suggested, would be counterproductive. It wouldn't grow the economy. It would kill the economy. In 2009, as the Nation was fighting to recover from the 2008 recession, President Obama was asked about the possibility of raising taxes, and he didn't mince words. He said: The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession.
That is exactly right, but that is exactly the opposite of what the leading Democratic candidates, including the Democratic nominee for President, are advocating. They are advocating for a huge tax increase, even as we are hopefully closer to the end of the pandemic than we are the beginning. It is just the wrong medicine for what ails our economy, as President Obama noted.
Families, we know, are still struggling, workers are still hurting, and the American people need more money in their paychecks, not less. We need to look at what made the 2019 economy such a success and try to ensure that those changes prop us up for a strong comeback, and I think the best place to start is with the success of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
After it passed almost 3 years ago, I traveled across my State and met with business owners and employees who were reaping the immediate benefits. Those were in the form of new hires, bonuses, raises, and 401(k) match increases. Employees at every business of every size were seeing the benefits of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While some of the provisions of that law are permanent, others are set to expire in 2025, and, without action, things like the lower income tax rate for individuals and the increased child tax credit will expire.
As we work to support our country through the recovery process, we need to emulate the reforms that made our booming economy a reality in the first place. As I said, I don't expect the road to recovery to be quick, but there are steps that we can take to make it easier.
First, we could do our job by supporting the individuals and businesses hit hardest by the pandemic. Time and again, our Democratic colleagues have objected to us even considering legislation to continue those important provisions of the CARES Act. We can take the government's boot off of job creator's necks, and we can fight to bring jobs back that were shipped overseas because we learned a lot about vulnerable supply chains and manufacturing that needs to be returned to the United States.
Following tax reform, millions of new jobs were created, and Americans brought home more of their hard-earned money. As a result, we reached 3.5 percent unemployment--the lowest unemployment rate in a half a century. That progress was possible because of the right policies that increased take-home pay for workers and unleashed the power of the private sector. So I have no doubt, as we rebuild our economy, that we will do so if we continue to embrace the policies that made 2019 a banner year.
Let me just conclude by saying that we must pass another COVID-19 relief bill. Time and again, Speaker Pelosi has refused to negotiate in good faith to come up with a compromise. In the meantime, airlines that employ tens of thousands of people in my State and across the country will begin laying off their employees beginning October 1. Businesses that were sustained by the PPP program have now run out of those funds, and they need to be replenished.
I get questions time and again about the lapsing of the enhanced unemployment benefit that was part of the CARES Act. We tried to extend that at some reasonable level, but our Democratic colleagues objected, blocked it, and stopped it.
What I fear, as Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve and Secretary Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, have suggested, is that the massive stimulus that we provided, roughly $3 trillion through four bills that were passed on a bipartisan basis--that has sustained our economy and brought us to where we are today, even in the darkest of times through this pandemic, but if we leave here with our Democratic colleagues having prevented us from providing another COVID-19 relief bill, I think it guarantees nothing but pain for the economy, American workers, and American families. We should not go down that path or tolerate it.
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