Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know we are going to be voting on the budget that was negotiated by Senator Murray and Paul Ryan. Sixty-seven Senators voted for cloture on that, so we will have a vote on passage this afternoon, I think about 4:30.

But I wanted to raise an issue that has been raised previously--yesterday; that is, the process by which the Senate is operating where no amendments are being allowed either on the budget or on the Defense authorization bill, which is the next bill we will turn to by the decision of the majority leader.

I have congratulated Senator Murray and I congratulate Congressman Ryan for their negotiation. But I do think there is an error that has been identified that needs to be corrected in the bill and which could easily be corrected if the majority leader would reconsider his decision not to allow any amendments. This specifically has to do with the discriminatory way in which Active-Duty military pensions are being penalized in a unique way that not even Federal workers who are going to be treated differently prospectively, not even civilian Federal workers, are being treated in the same way our Active-Duty military are.

Several of my colleagues came to the floor yesterday--the Senator from New Hampshire, the Senator from South Carolina and others--and pointed out the discriminatory treatment which could easily be fixed. I do not have any doubt but that the Senate would--as we attempted to do yesterday, the Senator from Alabama offered an attempt to take down the amendment tree the majority leader has filled.

For people who do not follow the minutiae and the detail of what happens here in the Senate, the majority leader has basically blocked any opportunity to offer an amendment that would remedy this discriminatory treatment for our military servicemembers.

I have heard at least two of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: We can come back and do it next year.

Why do it next year if we could do it now? I believe that if the Senate was given an opportunity to make this correction--I don't blame the Senator from Washington and Congressman Ryan in their efforts to come up with a budget to do what they did. I do blame us if we don't fix it this week when it is within our power to do so, and it is within the power of the majority leader to allow us to vote on that and to make that happen.

I don't have any doubt whatsoever that if we were able to come up with an appropriate pay-for and a substitute for this cut in military pensions, it would pass like a hot knife through butter in the House of Representatives when they reconvene.

Unfortunately, this is a product of the way the majority leader has decided to run the Senate. I have another example of that, which I wish to turn to. This has to do with an amendment that I have offered on the Defense authorization bill, which is a bill we will turn to after authorization of the budget. The Defense appropriations bill is a very important piece of legislation, and I congratulate Senator Inhofe and the House, both in the majority party and the minority party, for coming up with a pretty good bill. The problem is once again the majority leader has decided to transform the Senate into basically a railroad and to jam this bill through this week, probably by tomorrow night, without any opportunity to offer any amendments.

That is a terrible mistake. The last time in recent memory that the majority party decided to jam through a piece of legislation was ObamaCare. I remember voting on Christmas Eve--something I hope we don't repeat this year--and that was a party-line vote in the House and the Senate.

We are discovering, as ObamaCare is being implemented, that a lot of the promises that were made to the American people, such as: If you like what you have, you can keep it, and the cost of your health care will go down an average $2,500 for a family of 4--all of those were false.

That is what happens, the kinds of mistakes that are made, when there are not bipartisan efforts to come up with compromise legislation. Instead, the majority party uses the power it has to jam things through. We make mistakes. Things aren't adequately considered.

I don't care who you are; we all can benefit from other people's ideas and suggestions, and that is the genius of the checks and balances under the Constitution and under our form of government. But the majority leader has decided to put all of that aside.

I read today in Politico that he has said he doesn't care that people are complaining about his ``my way or the highway'' approach. But it is not only about our rights as Senators to participate in the process--it is not only
about the rights of the 26 million people that I represent in Texas, who are essentially being shut out of the process--this is about making mistakes that hurt people, mistakes that we would not make if we had taken the time in a bipartisan way to try to address some of these concerns. This discriminatory treatment of the military pensions is one example.

Another example is when members of Al Qaeda struck our Nation on September 11, 2001, they made it clear they viewed the entire American homeland as the battlefield.

We were reminded of this again about 4 years ago when a radical jihadist, who happened to be wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army, MAJ Nidal Hasan, opened fire at a Fort Hood Army base in Killeen, TX. That shooter killed 12 American soldiers, 1 civilian, and shot and injured 30 more.

This is a terrible tragedy. I remember President Obama coming down for the memorial service where we honored the lives of these people who lost their lives in this terrible attack. But no matter how we slice it, this was a terrorist attack on American soil, not much different--except in the means by which it was carried out--than what happened on September 11, 2001.

Prior to committing this terrible terrorist attack, the Fort Hood shooter exchanged no fewer than 20 emails with a senior Al Qaeda operative, al-Awlaki, who was subsequently killed by a U.S. drone attack in Yemen by the President of the United States.

The shooter, Major Hasan, had become more radicalized over time--and this is a problem with our military that seemed to have turned a blind eye. But there is also a problem when the Federal Government calls this workplace violence and doesn't call it a terrorist attack, which it actually was. He opened fire in the name of global jihad in the hopes of defending the Islamic empire and supporting his Muslim brothers.

That is why he asked the late Mr. al-Awlaki if Islamic law justified ``killing U.S. soldiers and officers,'' and that is why he yelled out ``Allahu Akbar'' before committing this massacre.

If a U.S. soldier is killed in Afghanistan by an Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist alongside the Taliban, he or she will posthumously be given a Purple Heart award and his or her family will receive the requisite benefits that go along with losing your life in service to your country.

Yet the U.S. Government has chosen to discriminate against these people who lost their lives at Fort Hood 4 years ago at the hands of a terrorist, who tragically happened to be a member of the uniformed military of the United States, MAJ Nidal Hasan, who has subsequently been convicted of these crimes.

Even though Major Hasan saw himself as an Islamic warrior serving the cause of an officially designated terrorist organization, the U.S. Government has chosen to treat this as something that it is not, which is an ordinary crime or, in the Orwellian use of the phrase, workplace violence. It is an exercise in political correctness run amuck. But the government's argument is that because the Fort Hood shooter was not acting under the direct and explicit direction of a foreign terrorist group, the victims of this terrorist attack 4 years ago were not eligible for the Purple Heart awards or the benefits that they deserve.

Al Qaeda, as we know, doesn't issue business cards or staff IDs, so sometimes it is a little bit difficult to say which terrorists are ``officially'' part of Al Qaeda and which ones are not, but the distinction is irrelevant. The war on terrorism, as we know, has evolved considerably

since September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda has evolved too. Whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, or now Yemen and in other places, Al Qaeda has morphed.

Several months ago, the group's top leader, al-Zawahiri, urged his followers to conduct exactly the kind of terrorist attack that occurred at Fort Hood and occurred in Boston in 2013. Zawahiri said, ``These dispersed strikes can be carried out by one brother, or a small number of brothers.''

Let us imagine that a radical Islamist heard these words, contacted an Al Qaeda cleric to ask about killing Americans, and then went on to slaughter a number of U.S. soldiers. It shouldn't matter where those killings took place, and it shouldn't matter whether the killer had ``formal'' ties with Al Qaeda or not. There really isn't any doubt about Hasan's ties to Al Qaeda or his being inspired by someone who the President of the United States put on a kill list for a drone because he knew they were recruiting and inspiring attacks against the American people.

If it is good enough for the President of the United States to order a drone attack on an American citizen in Yemen, it ought to be good enough for this body to recognize this was a terrorist attack because of Hasan's inspiration and communication with this very same terrorist. We ought to award these families the Purple Heart awards that these servicemembers are entitled to and the benefits that they deserve.

It is clear that these casualties at Fort Hood were part of America's struggle against Al Qaeda and the global war on terrorism. They were casualties of a war that continues to rage in Afghanistan and that only recently claimed an additional four American lives. It also extended to places such as Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans were killed.

Whether or not the Fort Hood shooter had Al Qaeda stamped on his forehead is irrelevant. He was unquestionably a disciple of Al Qaeda's poisonous ideology, which has fueled death and destruction around the globe and here in our homeland.

As I have indicated at the beginning, I have sponsored legislation that would make the Fort Hood victims eligible for the honors and benefits available to their fellow U.S. soldiers and troops serving in overseas combat zones. I offered a modified version of that bill as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill, which we will take up immediately following the passage of the budget legislation this afternoon.

The majority leader has refused to allow a vote on it. We may recall, before the Thanksgiving recess, we had, I believe, two amendments to the Defense authorization bill, and then the question was what other amendments might be offered. The majority leader made clear he wasn't going to allow any other amendments--except of his own choosing--thus denying the minority any opportunity to help amend and improve the Defense authorization bill, one of the most important pieces of legislation this body takes up every year.

So cloture was not invoked, and now in the waning days before the Christmas holidays, the majority leader seeks to jam through this bill that was agreed upon by basically four people behind closed doors and deny me--representing 26 million Texans--and deny those of us who care about calling a spade a spade when it comes to terrorism an opportunity to offer an amendment on the Defense authorization bill. It is a mistake, no less a mistake than denying an opportunity to fix the mistake of discriminatory treatment of our servicemembers whose pensions are being cut as a result of the budget negotiation.

Not only has the majority leader refused to allow a vote on this Purple Heart awards amendment, he has refused to allow any other amendments, both on this budget negotiation or on the Defense authorization.

As I said, the budget agreement passed by the House of Representatives would slash military retirement benefits by about $6 billion over the next decade. I have heard on cable TV at least two Members of the other party of this body who said we need to fix that. The Senator from New Hampshire has offered legislation, I believe. I heard the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Kaine, say we could come in and fix this with a scalpel after the fact.

We don't need to wait; we could do that today. I am confident that we could reach an agreement in this body today to remove that discriminatory treatment for our active duty military contained in this underlying bill, if the majority leader would only listen, listen to his own Members, listen to the American people, and listen to those who care about our servicemembers and want to make sure that they are not treated in such an unfair and discriminatory fashion.

But, instead, the majority leader has decided ``it is my way or the highway.''

We know these cuts will even affect combat-wounded veterans who have been medically retired.

My State is the proud home to more veterans than any other State other
than California, and many of my constituents are outraged that the majority leader won't even allow us to vote on this issue.

I would tell my friends across the aisle, it is going to come up again. It came up yesterday, and it will come up again. We will be reoffering these amendments to fix this discriminatory treatment as long as we are in session, and I hope Members of both parties can put politics aside for 1 minute, come together, and address the needs of our military families and those who have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to preserve our freedom.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. CORNYN. Reserving the right to object, Madam President, it is unfortunate that the Senate's schedule is completely full with pending cloture motions on controversial or completely nonurgent nominations. I ask if the Senator would consider amending his request to withdraw all of the pending cloture motions on executive nominations and that the Senate would proceed immediately to consideration of S. 1797, the unemployment insurance extension, and that the majority leader and the minority leader would be recognized to offer amendments in an alternating fashion so that these important issues can be considered this week. I ask the Senator to consider amending his request and reserve my right to object.

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