A resolution improving procedures for the consideration of nominations in the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, my Democratic friends from the other side of the aisle often come to me and ask me to cosponsor bills so they will be bipartisan, making it more likely we will get a result. Sometimes they come to me on a difficult issue, and they ask me, in their words, ``to rise above politics'' and support the institution and the Constitution, and often I do that. I think my reputation for that here is pretty secure.

So I have an offer, an invitation I made earlier to my Democratic friends to invite them to join me in rising above politics--it will be a harder vote for them than it will be for me--and help us change the Senate rules in the correct way to restore the Presidential nomination process to the stature that it deserves and work together to try to achieve what we did in 2011, 2012, and 2013.

On March 14, the Democratic leader came to the floor, and he said the following words:

There are times when loyalty to America, to our

Constitution, to our principles, and to what has made this

country great should lead Members to rise above and rise to

the occasion.

He was talking about the vote on the national emergency declaration President Trump made.

The Democratic leader continued:

I hope and I pray that this moment is one of those times

when Members choose country over party and when Members rise

above politics for the sake of fidelity to our constitutional

principles and this great United States of America.

That was the Democratic leader, the Senator from New York.

The next day, 12 of us did just that. We voted for the resolution to overturn the declaration of emergency, or, as I have explained to many of my constituents who have said something to me about it, I voted for the Constitution.

A month or so earlier, we were encouraged by the Democratic leader and our friends on the other side to vote to open the government. It was the same sort of speech, the same opportunity to rise above politics. Six of us did--six of us on this side of the aisle.

In 2011, 2012, and 2013, when Barack Obama was President and Harry Reid was the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, it occurred to me and others that the Presidential nominating process was in shambles. It was embarrassing to ask distinguished Americans to be nominated for a position and then say ``You are innocent until you are nominated'' or drag

things out for a long period of time. It was a bad process.

The President of the United States has 1,200 nominations to make to Federal appointees--1,200 today, but then, it was more like 1,400. One of the most important and perhaps the best known function of the Senate is advice and consent. Our advice and consent to the Presidential nominations is a crucial part of the checks and balances in our constitutional system that was established to keep one part of our government from having too much power. In other words, if the President wants somebody and we don't, that is it. If he does and we confirm, then that person knows us, knows this body, and knows about article I, and when he or she wants money for their Department, they have to come to the Congress elected by the people. That is the Presidential nominating process. That is why it is so important to the Senate and to the people of this country.

So in 2011, 2012, and 2013, Senators Reid, McConnell, Schumer, Barrasso, Levin, McCain, Kyl, Cardin, Collins, Lieberman, and I all, along with some others, worked to change the Senate rules to make it easier for President Obama and his successors to gain confirmation of Presidential nominees. As a Republican Senator during a Democratic administration, I spent dozens of hours on that project to make it easier for that Democratic President, with a Senate majority that was Democratic, to form a government.

We changed the rules the right way. In other words, we followed the rules, and the Senate passed standing orders, with large, bipartisan margins, to do a number of things. We ended secret holds. We removed 163 major positions from the necessity of advice and consent. We removed 3,163 minor positions from advice and consent. We created 272 positions that are Presidential nominations and made them privileged so they could come to the floor and then go on to be voted on if no one objected or required them to go to committee. We made it easier to bring legislation to the floor. We made it easier to go to conference. We simplified the forms you have to fill out if you are a nominee. We did all that in a bipartisan way.

One more thing: By a vote of 78 votes, we decided we would reduce the postcloture debate time for sub-Cabinet members to 8 hours and for district judges to 2 hours. As a practical matter, that means if the majority leader brings up a sub-Cabinet member on Monday, we have to wait an intervening day--that is Tuesday--and then we vote on cutting off debate on Wednesday. And how many more hours do we need to debate it? Then it was 30. Today it is 30. We said: Then let's make it 8 for sub-Cabinet members and 2 for district judges. That expired at the end of President Obama's time because we made it for just one Congress, but that is what we did.

I might add, Republicans did not insist that these new rules should be delayed until after the next Presidential election, when there might be a Republican President. You might say we rose above politics.

I might also add that today some people say: Well, they don't want to vote for anything that might seem to support President Trump because he is not popular in the Democratic primary. I can tell you that in 2013, President Obama was not all that popular in the Republican primary in Tennessee or in any other of the primaries, but we thought it was more important to defend this institution and preserve its traditional and constitutional role of advice and consent.

So, on February 25 of this year, I came to the floor and, in effect, invited my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to rise above politics--the same thing they often say to me. I invited them to work with me, Senator Lankford, and Senator Blunt to speed up the confirmation of Presidential nominees, to rise above partisanship and to rise above politics for the benefit of the institution. It was a pretty easy ask, I might say, because I am basically inviting them to do what 78 of us agreed to do in 2013, which is to reduce the amount of postcloture debate time for sub-Cabinet members and district judges.

I don't think rising above politics ought to be a one-way street. At a time when many complained that the Executive has too much power, the Senate is deliberately weakening itself when we undermine our advice and consent role. What is the result of that?

Well, it diminishes our constitutional role to advise and consent because what happens in the executive branch is it just is loaded up with acting appointees who have never had to go through our confirmation process.

President Trump is probably pretty happy with that. He could just put an acting person in a particular position. That person doesn't have to go through the process and doesn't have to answer a lot of questions. He or she is just there and immediately there. Such as John Ryder, the TVA board member from my State, who doesn't have to answer a lot of questions or such as two district judges from my State--excellent individuals--who waited 10 months to be confirmed or such as the U.S. marshal for the Middle District of Tennessee, who had already been the U.S. marshal before, who had to wait more than 1 year. There was none of that. Just put in an acting person and run the government without regard to the Senate.

As the Democratic leader said to me 2 weeks ago and 6 weeks ago, I would ask him and others to rise above politics for the benefit of this institution and change the rules the right way to speed up the confirmation process.

The Senate Rules Committee gave us the right way. They adopted a resolution in the regular order. Basically, it is the same resolution, with a few differences, that we passed with 78 votes in 2013.

In my February 25 speech, I said to my friends on the other side: If you don't like it in exactly the form it is, please suggest something reasonable back. That is the way we do things. Let's amend it. Let's do it exactly the way we did it before in 2013.

I have been encouraged by some discussion by some Members on the other side of the aisle but nothing certain. The proposal offered by Senator Blunt and Senator Lankford would not reduce the number of hours we debate Supreme Court Justices, wouldn't reduce the number of hours we debate Cabinet members or certain Board nominations, but it would divide the 30 hours of postcloture debate equally between Republicans and Democrats. Basically, it would put the Senate back in the place where the Senate has always been throughout the history of the Senate.

Nominations have been decided by 51 votes--not 60 or 67 but by 51-- and they have been decided reasonably promptly. Sometimes they were defeated, but they were decided. The Blunt-Lankford resolution would do just that. Nominations would be decided by 51 votes, and they could be decided reasonably promptly so we would not be diminishing the advice and consent role of the Senate.

Everyone in this body knows what the problem is. One hundred and twenty-eight times the majority leader has had to file a motion to cut off debate--we call that cloture--in order to advance a nomination. Let's say it is for a Tennessee Valley Authority part-time board member. So he will file the motion on Monday. We don't do anything on Tuesday. Nothing would change with that. We vote on cloture on Wednesday--that is 51 votes--and then we have 30 hours of debate. Now it is Thursday. So we could take a whole week dealing with a part-time TVA board member. That has been done 128 times. That was almost never done for previous Presidents.

We are faced with a truly miserable choice. We know this has to change. Our friends on the other side know it has to change. They know if they have a Democratic President in 18 or 20 months, there will be at least one Republican Senator who will do to them what they are doing to President Trump. The Democratic President will not be able to form a government, and so we will further diminish the Senate in its role. So we have a truly miserable choice: either we continue to diminish the constitutional advice and consent role of the Senate--we could do that--or we use what we call the Harry Reid precedent to change the rules of the Senate by a majority vote.

The problem with the Harry Reid precedent is, it doesn't really change the rules. It just says the rules don't mean what they say. It is as if the referee said: Well, the rule book says first down is 10 yards, but I am going to rule that it is 9. It is a Senate precedent, and the majority may do it, but we should avoid that if we possibly can.

I don't like the Harry Reid precedent. I believe it presents a truly miserable option, but even more miserable is continuing this debasement of the advice and consent role of the Senate--one I worked to do more about in 2011, 2012, and 2013 with the distinguished Democratic leader, the Republican leader, and so many Senators.

As my friend the Democratic leader, who I see has now come to the floor, said to me and other Republicans 2 weeks ago: ``I understand the politics are difficult--much harder for you than for me--but our nation, our Constitution, the beauty of this government, demands that we rise to the occasion.'' Well, on the declaration of the national emergency on that occasion, 12 of us did; and on reopening the government a few weeks earlier, 6 of us did; and in 2011, 2012, and 2013, 78 of us voted to reduce the postcloture time for sub-Cabinet nominees.

I know it can be a difficult vote in the Democratic caucus, but I earnestly hope that between now and the time we vote this week, that we will not be presented with this truly miserable choice of continuing to debase the advice and consent tradition of the Senate or using the Harry Reid precedent to change the Senate rules by majority vote.

If some of us can rise above partisanship on article I to vote against the declaration of emergency, to vote to reopen the government, and to remove the delay in Presidential nominees when there is a Democratic President and a Democratic leader of the Senate, it is my hope that some of my Democratic friends will agree to do that this week and help us avoid what I have described as a truly miserable choice.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on the floor for no more than 15 minutes.

Mr. President, there is an issue coming up before the Senate this week which really goes to the heart of this institution and why it exists. The Constitution spells out responsibilities for Congress and specific responsibilities when it comes to this Chamber. The 100 men and women who serve today, among other things, have a responsibility to advise and consent on nominations that have been sent by the President for our consideration. The Constitution assigns the Senate the role of questioning these nominees, of checking into their backgrounds, and then of deciding whether to approve or disapprove their nominations.

Over the past 2 years, we have seen many of the guardrails in this process disappear. For example, the Republican majority has stopped respecting blue slips on circuit court nominations. Blue slips, which are a Senate tradition, say that if a person is nominated to serve on the circuit court, which is the second highest court in the land, the Senators from the State within which that person would serve would decide with a thumbs up or a thumbs down as to whether the nomination will go forward--the so-called blue slip. For a number of years now, that has been the U.S. Senate's standard practice, its tradition. The Republican majority has decided to stop the blue-slip process when it comes to circuit court nominations.

It also has stopped moving bipartisan board and commission nominations in pairs. We used to say: We have a more trusting relationship if you get your Republican nominee and if we get our Democratic nominee. Let's do it together. That used to ensure that both parties would be equally represented on important Agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to name a few.

Now we have a rules change before us that is being proposed

by the Republican side of the aisle--again changing the

rights of Senators by limiting the debate time on

nominations. This would further tilt the balance of power

away from the Senate, away from Congress, and back towards

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Executive. It runs the risk, of

course, of diminishing our constitutional responsibility.

When it comes to executive branch nominations, this administration has had a different approach than what we have seen before. We have a President who says he likes to have administration officials serve in an acting capacity.

In January, President Trump said:

I sort of like acting. It gives me more flexibility. Do you

understand that? I like acting.

Given that approach, perhaps it is no surprise that we have seen long delays in filling leadership positions in important Agencies and ambassadorial posts. We have also seen the highest rate of turnover in modern time with these administration positions. People aren't placed in these positions, and if they are, they are looking for the exit way too soon.

We also have suffered from a lack of proper vetting and examination of a person's background before a nomination is approved, and we have seen a lack of bipartisan cooperation in moving board nominations when there is supposed to be an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Despite that, we are trying to do the work we were assigned by the Constitution to advise and consent.

If the majority wants to move Executive nominations faster, it can do what all administrations have done in the past and start working with the minority to negotiate packages of nominees. As long as I have been here, that has been done by the leaders of both political parties-- fair, bipartisan packages of Executive nominees who have been well vetted. None of us wants the embarrassment of putting a person in the position for which one is not qualified or when there is any question of one's ethical standards. That bipartisan

work can lead to less debate time on the floor if we agree at the outset to work together.

I am particularly opposed to the Republican proposal before us to shorten the time for debate on President Trump's nominees who will serve lifetime appointments in Federal district court. Imagine serving a lifetime appointment on a court--beyond this administration--and making day-to-day decisions, some fundamental to the criminal justice system and some to the civil justice system.

We understand what is really going on here. We understand when the other side says we are obstructing it from confirming judges. The facts don't tell the same story. In fact, my Republican colleagues have been bragging for months about what Senator McConnell called the ``record number'' of judges the Senate has confirmed under this new President Trump.

In President Trump's first 2 years in office, the Senate confirmed 85 article III judges. During the first 2 years of President Obama's Presidency, it was 62. Eighty-five to sixty-two. The number of judges confirmed in the last Congress was nearly four times as many as the number confirmed under President Obama in the previous Congress.

The pace of judicial nominations and confirmations has been extremely fast. So why are the Republicans now pushing for a change to the Senate rules to make it even faster? It is not like the Senate has been busy with legislation here on the floor.

Senator McConnell had a moment of candor last November after the election.

He said:

I think we'll have probably more time for nominations in

the next Congress than we've had in this one. . . . I don't

think we'll have any trouble finding time to do nominations.

Senator McConnell, McClatchy News, November 7, 2018.

Of course, Senator McConnell was frustrated that one Senator put a blanket hold on judicial nominees at the end of last year, and he expressed his frustration publicly. That Senator, incidentally, was not a Democrat; he was Republican Senator Flake of Arizona.

It seems the real reason the Republicans want to change the rules now on district court nominations is so, in the words of Senator McConnell, they can ``plow right through'' with confirming nominees whose records and views are incomplete or extreme.

The reality is that all too often, these judicial nominees just don't stand up to scrutiny. Already, under President Trump, we have had six judicial nominations in which the American Bar Association's peer- review process found these nominees sent by President Trump to be ``not qualified.'' I might add that there were no--zero, none--``not qualified'' nominees under President Obama.

Last year, two nominees, Thomas Farr and Ryan Bounds, were withdrawn on the floor by the Republicans after the Senate had voted to move forward on their nominations. Disclosures about their backgrounds led Members even on the Republican side of the aisle to say they wouldn't vote for them. They were withdrawn because information came to light that caused these Senators to change their minds about confirming them to lifetime appointments. That shows the importance of having some time--30 hours currently--to debate these nominations and to make sure that a lifetime appointment is not going to someone who is unqualified or who shouldn't be in that position.

So who are the district court nominees for whom Senator McConnell wants to change the rules so as to move them through more quickly? Let me tell you about a few of them.

There is Texas district court nominee Michael Truncale, who called President Obama an ``un-American impostor'' and described the Shelby County case, when it came to voting rights, a ``victory.''

There is Nebraska nominee Brian Buescher, who ran for elected office in 2014 and said: ``I will focus on fighting ObamaCare.''

There is Texas district court nominee Matthew Kacsmaryk, who has repeatedly written in his personal capacity about his opposition to LGBTQ rights and the Obergefell case.

There is Oklahoma district court nominee Patrick Wyrick, who is a protege of disgraced former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's. He allowed an energy company to ghost-write a letter from Pruitt's office when he was Oklahoma's attorney general.

These are just a few. There are many other Trump judicial nominees whose views are far outside the legal mainstream, and Republicans are determined, with these rule changes, to speed up the process so we don't ask questions.

I have to say it is stunning to listen to Republicans complain about obstruction of judicial nominees after watching the unprecedented Republican obstruction of nominees under President Obama.

Under Senator McConnell, Republicans would not even give an appointment for an interview, let alone a hearing, to a well-qualified Supreme Court nominee--Merrick Garland.

In 2013 Republicans pledged they would filibuster anyone who President Obama nominated to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the second highest court in the land. No matter how qualified the nominee, they pledged to block him or her because President Obama was making the choice.

Republicans filibustered President Obama's judicial nominees 82 times in the first 5 years. Under all Presidents before President Obama, there had been a total of 86 judicial filibusters combined with all Presidents. Under President Obama, in the first 5 years, there were 82, and throughout history leading up to that, 86.

Now that the Republicans control the White House and the Senate, they want to rip up the rules and change the traditions and guardrails on the judicial nomination process on a regular basis.

They are pushing through nominees who have not been found qualified by the American Bar Association. They are pushing through nominees over the objection of home State Senators. They are pushing these nominees without making sure that they have seen their complete records.

In the case of a North Carolina district court nominee, Thomas Farr, his nomination was pulled when critical documents were finally disclosed while his nomination was pending on the floor of the Senate.

It is no secret what is happening here. There is no emergency that justifies changing the Senate rules. Senator McConnell himself admitted the Senate has plenty of time to consider nominees. This is all about avoiding close scrutiny for extreme ideological nominees that Republicans want to pack onto the Federal courts for lifetime appointments.

I oppose the rules change. Let's do our job when it comes to conducting due diligence and providing informed advice and consent for lifetime appointments to the Federal bench. It can be done.

I will tell you that in the first years of the Trump administration, we have been able, by and large, to work out bipartisan agreement on filling judicial vacancies in the State of Illinois, even at the circuit court level, to the point where Senator Duckworth and I gave blue-slip approval to circuit court nominees based out of our own State, and to the point where we have reached a basic agreement when it comes to filling the district court vacancies to this point. It has been bipartisan all the way, and I believe we have found qualified people. It took some time and some bipartisan cooperation, but we did. It can be done. We didn't ask to have the rules changed in the Senate. We used the existing rules to do our job under the Constitution.

All the issues we care about are impacted by these nominees in my State and others. The Senate deserves to take the time to make sure we get this right. We should not be putting men and women into lifetime appointments without close scrutiny as required by our Constitution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate failed to pass emergency relief funding yesterday to help the American families recovering from natural disasters. It failed for one reason--the Republicans removed critical aid for Puerto Rico and other territories from the House bill after President Trump told them to do it. Under this administration and with Leader McConnell's blessing, even disaster relief has now become political.

I don't need to litigate why we are here. Over the last 2 years, the American people have endured staggering natural disasters that have devastated communities across the country. These Americans need help. They need help now. I would parenthetically add, if there were ever evidence of global warming or of climate change, this would be it despite the fact that just about every Republican has his head or her head in the sand and will not admit it.

Regardless of what you think the causes were, Americans have always stood together when American citizens have been hit by disaster. We band together and say we are going to help one another--all American citizens, all. Yet one part of America is not being treated like the others, and why not? It is because President Trump, for reasons that defy decency, harbors an apparent contempt for the people of Puerto Rico. He tweeted again last night and erroneously claimed that $91 billion has been afforded the people of Puerto Rico. He ridiculed the leadership that has desperately tried to rebuild the island in the wake of these megastorms.

Let's get the facts straight.

The Republicans know the storms that hit Puerto Rico over a year ago were not ordinary storms; they know these were historic catastrophes. We are talking about the deadliest disasters to hit American soil in over a century. We are talking about the worst power outage in American history. We are talking about 3,000 lives lost. Yet here we are, 18 months later, and the island hasn't recovered.

It is surreal that a disaster so awful has been met with a Presidential response that is so tepid and so heartless. It is surreal that our Republican colleagues go along with this and say we are not going to help Puerto Rico in the way that is needed. Billions in funding for recovery and mitigation efforts right now remain locked in the Treasury. Congress already appropriated $20 billion that the administration has not allocated. All we want to do is make sure the money is allocated. That is one of the things we want to do.

Are our Republican colleagues opposed to that? That is what it sounds like. Some of them say it is political. What is political is President Trump's saying no aid for Puerto Rico and having the Republicans jump in line, even those with many Puerto Ricans in their States. Make no mistake, we have reached this impasse because the President has said himself he opposes help for Puerto Rico, and the Republicans follow along.

Some of my colleagues from the other side came up with another shibboleth; that we opposed the House bill because it didn't provide funding for the Midwest. First of all, the House bill was aimed at disasters in 2018, not in 2019. Second, Senator Leahy offered an amendment that would have added funding for the Middle West and funding for Puerto Rico. What did the Republicans do? They blocked it anyway. So this undoes their fantasy that the Democrats are opposed to aid for the Middle West. Senator Leahy and I will be offering an amendment that will give aid to the Midwest and to Puerto Rico. Let's see where our Republican colleagues stand. Will they block that too?

Yesterday's vote boiled down to a simple question: Do the Republicans believe the people of Puerto Rico deserve relief for their natural disasters as do all Americans? Do they believe the families of Puerto Rico--whatever you think of this elected official in Puerto Rico-- deserve to be helped just like the families of the Midwest and California?

Do they believe the statement of the Governor of Puerto Rico, Rossello, that the House bill is much preferable to Puerto Rico than what the Senate has proposed or do they make their own judgment based on what President Trump said and then call it political?

What a shame.

Let me be clear as day: Without objection, the Democrats support funding for all regions of the United States that have been affected by natural disasters, which is any State or territory that needs to rebuild. That list should include the Middle West, and it should

include Puerto Rico because our fellow citizens on that island have yet to recover from the deadliest of storms in our recent history.

I will let this Chamber know that Senator Leahy and I will be offering a new amendment to the disaster bill in order to provide billions of new additional dollars for the Midwest's 2019 disasters.

The Senate Republicans say they care about Iowa and Nebraska, but they didn't put an additional penny in for that aid. They said to let them compete with the 2018 disasters and the same amount of money. We are going a step further. We are going to say we need additional aid for the Middle West--for Iowa and Nebraska--as well as aid for Puerto Rico. It is not an either-or.

If we get into an either-or, the next time, it will be your State, my Republican colleagues, when people will not want to vote for aid or it will be for mine or another's. I experienced it, incidentally, with Sandy, when a lot of Republicans didn't want to vote for aid after Sandy because it was for New York. That was so wrong.

So I say to all who are suggesting that the Democrats aren't willing to help the people of Iowa and Nebraska and other States that we are calling their bluff.

Are you ready to actually appropriate new money--more money--for what the people in the Midwest who are struggling need? The Democrats are. Let's see where you stand.

Healthcare

Mr. President, on healthcare, the Republicans have failed to advance any of their healthcare plans through Congress, so they are trying to repeal healthcare through the courts. This reeks of desperation, for they do not have a backup plan.

Last night, the President tweeted that the Republicans will come up with their plan in 2021. Translation: The Republicans have no healthcare plan. Translation: President Trump has no healthcare plan. It is the same old song the Republicans and the President have been singing. They are for repeal, but they have no replacement. President Trump confirmed he will hold Americans hostage through the 2020 election when it comes to healthcare. He promises with ``re-elect me, and maybe you can take a peek at my backup plan after that,'' which he doesn't have. What a ruse. What a shame. What a disgrace.

People are suffering. When their children have cancer, people need protection so the insurance companies will not pull away the healthcare. Seniors need protection from the rising costs of prescription drugs. Women need protection so they will not be treated differently than men when they have healthcare needs that are particular to women. Young people need protection to be allowed to continue to stay on their parents' plans until they are 26 if they start new lives after high school or college. All of these folks need protection.

President Trump and our Republican friends say: Rip all of those things away, and trust us. Maybe in 2021, we will have a plan.

With a stubbornness that would impress a mule, President Trump has waged a manic war on the American healthcare system that shows no sign of stopping. Now we are asked to believe that President Trump has a wonderful but secret healthcare plan but will, for some reason, not reveal it until the next election. What a transparent ruse.

Snake oil salesmen, take notes.

Here is why we can't believe the President's punt and promise.

In May 2017, after the Republicans voted to repeal the healthcare law, on national television, the President celebrated in the Rose Garden with House Republicans. He celebrated the passage of a bill that would result in 23 million fewer people having health insurance and would result in gutting the protections for Americans who have preexisting conditions. He celebrated his own broken promise to never cut Medicaid and to always protect people with preexisting conditions, and he did it on national TV. So don't tell me this time will be different. Don't tell me there is a secret plan, when we know what the Republicans' healthcare plan will be--increased premiums, a loss of coverage, and the elimination of protection for preexisting conditions. The markets will be stabilized, but families will be tossed into an abyss of inferior care.

President Trump's lawsuit seeks to wholly undo the progress we have made, but he wants the American people to just wait for a magic plan to appear 2 years from now?

If successful, the President's lawsuit will mean skyrocketing costs for families. The President wants the American people to just wait and see.

President Trump's lawsuit will mean massive increases in prescription drug spending for seniors who are on Medicare. The President wants the American people to just wait and see.

President Trump's lawsuit will mean women will be charged more because they are women. The President wants the American people to just wait and see.

So, when President Trump insists he has a silver bullet plan that we will only be able to see if the American people reelect him, we know what a sham that is. For a President who has perpetrated lots of shams, this one takes the cake.

I am asking: Which one of our Republican colleagues will stand up for healthcare for the American people?

Senator Shaheen has a resolution that simply reads to the Justice Department: Withdraw your suit that would do all of these awful things.

How many of our Republican colleagues will go on that proposal? Let's see. Are they going to say it is politics too? With regard to the healthcare of millions of Americans, any time the President does something horrible and the Democrats resist, are they going to say it is politics? Oh, no. That is what we are supposed to do whether it comes to Puerto Rico or whether it comes to healthcare.

China

Mr. President, I have one final word on China.

The New York Times reported yesterday that a trade agreement with the United States and China is nearly 90 percent complete, with a deal being potentially finalized later this month. Yet it alarms me that the President, for all his bluster, will likely settle on a deal that will be devoid of any meaningful reform to China's economy and trade practices. Instead, he will settle for the purchases of American goods by the Chinese state. This move will only strengthen China's leverage while it will do little to help us long term.

We want to protect our farmers, but we don't want a soybean sellout where, in exchange for soybeans, we trade away America's family jewels--our intellectual property, our industrial know-how, our hard- working labor force being able to compete in a reciprocal way in China the way China can compete here. If it is just the purchases of product, the Chinese Government can always turn off the tap. So we are entering treacherous territory.

I have a simple message for President Trump and praise him for standing up to China more than President Bush or President Obama did on this issue. I say to him: We have made progress in making China see it has abusive practices. Stand firm. Don't back out. I cannot think of a worse end for us than to say ``uncle'' at the last minute. Skip the political photo op and make good on your promise to stand up for American business and workers when China takes advantage.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, the Senate is in a bad spot. In the first 2 years of President Trump's Presidency, there were 128 times that the President sent over a nomination and the minority party has said: We want additional time to be able to debate those folks.

These are individuals who have already gone through vetting at the White House. They have already gone through FBI checks. They have already come to the committee. They have done full vetting at the staff level, then had a full hearing at the Member level, and then had questions for the Record. They passed out of the committee, then had a lapse of time, and then a majority vote was set up to be able to move them. At that time, there was a request for additional time 128 times.

Just to do a quick comparison of how common that is--because folks say this is normal and this is the way the Senate functions all the time--for President Obama, in his first 2 years, that happened 12 times. For President Bush, that happened a total of 4 times. For President Clinton, that happened a total of 8 times. But for President Trump, it happened a total of 128 times.

This is a new way of operation for the Senate, and I really should say it is a new way of not operating for the Senate. It is an issue that has to change. It is not just about President Trump. It is about this body, who we are going to be, and how we are going to operate.

In the past, when there was a nomination from a President, there was the assumption that the President was elected and they could hire their staff. Now the resistance has stepped up and said: The President is elected, but we will not let you hire a staff, and we will not let you put your policies in place because we want to prevent you from getting any people into a spot.

Guess what. As soon as there is a Democratic President elected--and at some point in the future, there will be--Republicans will retaliate back to that and say: We will do the same thing. You can't hire your staff.

This is a new precedent that has been set. If we don't correct it, it is damaging to our Republic. A President should be able to hire their staff. All of the Agencies need Senate-confirmed individuals to be able to actually conduct their business. We need judges to be able to execute across the country. Those are basic things that need to occur.

I have heard folks say: Well, there has been no problem getting judges through. In fact, Republicans have bragged about the total number of judges coming through.

Let me give you a comparison. If we stay on the same pace right now with judges--just for the district court judges, which are the most common judges across our country--and President Trump is in office for 8 years, he will have put in 193 judges. President Obama put in 272 judges. It is factually not true that we are able to ram through all of these judges to be able to work through the process. We are not on an epic pace.

There has been a higher number for circuit court judges, which is correct, because this Senate has prioritized working on circuit court judges, but that is to the detriment of everything else because you can't do all of it because there is this constant request for additional time at the end of it.

Again, I have heard folks say that two hours is not enough time to be able to debate. That would be true only if 2 hours was the only thing that was allocated for debate. These individuals have already been through vetting at the White House and vetting in committee. They have gone through the process and have been approved. This is not 2 hours of time. It is actually 26 hours of time because people are conveniently leaving out the fact that there is an intervening day required. We are talking about nominees moving from 54 hours of floor debate time to 26 hours of floor debate time. It is just convenient to leave out that extra day that happens to be in there, if you want to make the argument.

Our simple conversation is this: How can we get the Senate back to work again? In 2013, Harry Reid led a movement, which 78 Senators approved of, to be able to say that for 2 years--2013 and 2014--we would fix the nominations process in the Senate. There was wide agreement to be able to do that. At the time, Harry Reid stood on the floor and said: Now, let me make this clear. We shouldn't have all of these nominees go through postcloture and all the debate on the floor anyway. Most of these passed through committee. They should be done by voice vote. In the rare exception that someone has to come to the floor, let's limit the floor time because it is not really used anyway. It is just a tactic to delay.

If you need evidence of that, there is all of the conversation that has recently been held on this floor about debate and about how we need to have all of this additional time for debate because these are lifetime appointees, these are essential people, and so they need to have a debate on the floor about them. Let me tell you what that really looks like in real life. That sounds very sanctimonious here on the floor.

In real life it looks like this. Here are the circuit court judges we have confirmed this session of Congress so far. These are for the circuit court. This is the appellate court. These are very important folks in the process. These folks currently have 30 hours, and for all of these folks, there was a demand to get 30 hours of extra debate time on the floor because they were so important.

Here is the actual problem. When that 30 hours of debate time was done and was blocked off, and that was respected, the first of the circuit court nominees actually got on the floor 1 hour and 16 minutes of actual debate, not 30 hours. People actually coming to the floor and debating that nominee was 1 hour and 16 minutes. The next nominee had 18 minutes and 57 seconds total of debate on this floor, although 30 hours of debate was blocked off, which meant most of the time the floor was empty, waiting for someone to actually debate. The next nominee was 1 hour 23 minutes.

Then, there is one my favorites. A circuit court judge had 4 minutes and

22 seconds of actual debate when 30 hours of debate was demanded for this lifetime appointment. The next circuit court judge was 23 minutes and 6 seconds.

The next one for the DC Circuit was actually very controversial. There was lots of noise about this nominee: 47 minutes and 28 seconds.

It is one thing for folks to say these are lifetime appointments so we need to make sure we block off a significant period of time on the floor. It is another thing to actually see the facts. These folks have gone through committee and we all know it. They have gone through background checks and we all know it. Every one of these individuals has been cleared and we know the outcome of all of these. We should respect each other and acknowledge that if this body is going to do legislation and personnel, no one can lock up the body and demand 30 hours of time on a nominee when we actually use 4 minutes and 22 seconds.

If we want to shift it off of judges and shift it onto executive nominees, recently we had a demand for 30 hours of additional debate time from our Democratic colleagues for the Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee. They demanded extra time because they were so controversial. On this floor, there was exactly zero minutes and zero seconds of debate on that nominee.

You see, this is not about actually debating whether people are qualified or not qualified. This is about preventing President Trump from getting nominees by locking up the floor and making sure he can't actually hire staff or can't actually put people on the court.

This will be reciprocated in the days ahead for every Democrat, and it will be done to every Republican President in the future if we don't fix this now. We had 2 years and 3 months of bad muscle memory on a process that should not be like this and has not been like this in the past. We can fix this.

When there was a Democratic President and a divided city, led by Democrats at the time, Republicans joined Democrats to be able to fix that nomination process for a Democrat President. The mistake we made was to do it only for a 2-year time period. We should learn from our mistake, and we should fix this from here on out. This is doable.

To give an example, in the last session of Congress, 386 nominees were never heard on this floor. They were sent back at the end of Congress and told: You have to start all over again. Those are folks who quit their job, went through FBI background checks, went through reviews, went through hearings, and confronted all the questions that were brought at them, and 386 of them were then stalled out and never heard. They were sent back to the White House.

That means that in the future we will have less opportunity to get more people who are qualified to be able to apply for this. We want the best of the best to actually come and serve in our government. We will not get that if people have to quit their jobs to go through the nomination process, wait a year or 2 years, and then get sent back and told: You have to start all over again to go through the process.

Who will want to go through that process in the days ahead? We need to fix this both for the nominees who are going through the process and the Senate, which needs to have a better process of actually expediting nominees through. Quite frankly, we need to fix it for the country.

It is a simple process. It is not trying to gain partisan advantage. Regardless of who is in the White House, it is trying to fix it for the long term. Let's fix it this week. We have talked about this for 2 years. We have floated different proposals. Let's fix it this week and, from here on out, have a better process in the Senate.

Why in the world are we arguing about our rules of the Senate when we should be worrying about the issues the American people face? Of all places, of all people, we should have fair rules in the Senate to actually have a debate, have a vote, finish, and then move on to the next thing. There is more to be done.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, what is the pending business?

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk for

Mr. President, I come to the floor to discuss the unprecedented obstruction that has faced President Trump's nominees for the past 26 months--and counting--and to announce that the Senate is going to do something about it.

The systematic, across-the-board delay and obstruction that have crippled this administration's nominations are unique in American history.

Every Presidential election since Adams beat Jefferson in 1796 has left some Senators disappointed that their side lost. There is always a losing side, and they are never happy about it. But the past 2 years have been the first time--the first time ever--that the unhappy party has used Senate procedure to systematically blockade the new President's nominees and prevent him from even staffing up his administration. Let me say that again. Since January 2017, for the first time in the 230-year history of the U.S. Senate, a minority of Senators have used Senate procedure to systematically prevent the President of the United States from putting a full team in place.

During the first 2 years of the last six Presidential administrations before President Trump, 24 total cloture votes had to be held to advance a nomination, but in President Trump's first 2 years, there were 128 cloture votes on nominees.

For 42 different executive branch positions, cloture votes have been required for the first time in history--the first time ever. Uncontroversial Assistant Secretaries and Agencies' general counsels never required cloture votes before--ever--until this particular Democratic minority.

Just compare President Trump's first 2 years to President Obama's. Overall, we have confirmed 22 percent fewer nominations for President Trump and sent more than twice as many back to the White House.

Take just the Foreign Relations Committee as one example. The share of nominees sent to the Foreign Relations Committee who were still not confirmed after President Trump's first 2 years was more than three times--three times--what it was for President Obama.

To be clear, the lion's share of all of these are not controversial, high-profile figures. In most cases, they are unambiguously well- qualified nominees for critical but lower profile jobs.

For example, it took more than 6 months--6 months--and several tragic railroad accidents that made national news before a minority of Senators would allow us to confirm the President's nominee to head the Federal Railroad Administration. That is 6 months and several railroad accidents to get us to confirm the President's nominee to head the Federal Railroad Administration.

He had worked in railroads as an engineer, manager, and executive for 45 years. Our colleagues on the Commerce Committee voice-voted him out of committee. Actually, when Democrats finally allowed his nomination to come to the floor--when they finally allowed that--he was confirmed by voice vote. Despite the fact that nobody actually objected to this nominee, this important job was held empty for 6 long months. It is obstruction for obstruction's sake.

It is the same story with even the least controversial judicial nominees. Last January, it took more than a week of floor time to confirm four district judges, all of whom had been voice-voted out of the Judiciary Committee the previous autumn, but there were still months of delays. Then cloture votes were required for each, but once we finally plowed through to the confirmation votes, they were all confirmed unanimously.

There were months of delays and procedural roadblocks for four bipartisan nominees whom not a single Senator actually opposed.

This is not a principled maneuver, not thoughtful use of minority powers, but obstruction simply for the sake of obstruction.

This historic campaign isn't fair to our duly elected President, and, more importantly, it is not fair to the American people. The American people deserve the government they elected. They deserve important positions to be promptly filled with capable individuals, not held open indefinitely out of political spite.

As we all acknowledge, from an institutional perspective, this is completely unsustainable, but if we allow it to persist, it seems guaranteed to become standard operating procedure for every administration going forward.

Let's assume 2 years from now that my side is in the minority, and there is a Democratic President. If we allow this to persist, we will be doing the same thing to those guys that they have been doing to us. It will be the new norm.

Some of our colleagues who are leading the systematic obstruction are actually running for President themselves. Well, these tactics will virtually guarantee that any future Democratic administration is subjected to the same paralysis. Everybody will be doing it.

Is this how the American Government is supposed to work from here on out--whichever party loses the White House basically prohibits the new President from standing up an administration?

We can't accept this. This just can't be allowed to continue. We need to restore the Senate to the way it functioned for literally decades.

Remember, the idea that nominees would regularly require cloture votes was completely foreign to the Senate until this sad chapter began during the administration of President Bush 41, in the early 2000s.

As of 1968--1968--cloture had never been required for any nomination--any nomination. As of 1978, it had been required for two-- two as of 1978.

Until 2003, in no conference--none--had more than 12 cloture motions ever been needed for nominations. But now, again, President Trump's chosen nominees faced 128 cloture votes in the Congress that just past. So this entire conversation is a modern aberration. This hasn't been going on forever. This is a fairly recent thing. This behavior is new. We need to restore the Senate's tradition in this area. Fortunately, we have a clear roadmap to do just that.

In 2013, immediately after President Obama's reelection, 78 Senators, including me, passed a bipartisan standing order to speed up the consideration of many Presidential nominees. Seventy-eight Members of this body passed a standing order to help President Obama speed up the Executive Calendar.

It reduced the postcloture time for most nominations without touching the Supreme Court, circuit courts, or the highest levels of the executive branch. Essentially everything else got

a more streamlined process so nominees could be confirmed more efficiently.

Again, President Obama had just been inaugurated for the second time days earlier. You better believe Republicans were disappointed we had lost, but we did not throw a systematic tantrum. Instead, a sizable number of us came over and joined the Democrats to help the Senate process noncontroversial nominations, as it had for the vast bulk of the history of the Senate. I was a Republican leader in the minority, and I still supported it. We judged if it was the right thing to do, and we did it. The standing order passed 78 to 16.

So, today, I am filing cloture on a resolution that takes that bipartisan effort as its blueprint. This resolution from Senator Blunt and Senator Lankford would implement very similar steps and make them a permanent part of the Senate going forward.

The Supreme Court, circuit courts, Cabinet-level executive positions, and certain independent boards and commissions would not change, but for most other nominations--for literally the hundreds of lower level nominations that every new President makes--postcloture debate time would be reduced from 30 hours to 2 hours.

This would keep the floor moving. It would facilitate more efficient consent agreements, and, most importantly, it would allow the administration--finally, 2 years into its tenure--to staff numerous important positions that remain unfilled with nominees who have been languishing.

This resolution has come up through the regular order, through the Rules Committee, and next week we will vote on it. It deserves the same kind of bipartisan vote that Senator Schumer and Senator Reid's proposal received back during the Obama administration.

I understand that many of my Democratic colleagues have indicated they would be all for this reform as long as it doesn't go into effect until 2021, when they obviously hope someone else might be in the White House, but they are reluctant to support it now. Give me a break. That is unfair on its face.

My Democratic colleagues were more than happy to support a similar proposal back in 2013 under President Obama. They whisper in our ears privately that they would support it now if it took effect in 2021, oh, but they can't support it now, especially under these unprecedented circumstances, simply because we have a Republican President.

Fair is fair. Members of this body should only support reforms that they would be as ready to support in the minority as they are in the majority.

Put another way, if my side is in the minority 2 years from now, I don't think this will be unfair, and it will not disadvantage us in the wake of a new Democratic President. This is a change the institution needs--a change the institution made already, basically, with a 2-year experiment when President Obama was in office. This is reform that every Member should embrace when their party controls the White House and when it does not control the White House.

I urge every one of my colleagues: Let's get the Senate back to a normal historical pattern for handling Presidential nominations. Let's give President Trump, as well as all future Presidents, a functional process for building their administrations. Let's give the American people the government they actually elected, and let's seize this chance to do so through the bipartisan regular order that we are pursuing here, both in committee and now on the floor.

The status quo is unsustainable for the Senate and for the country. It is unfair to this President and to future Presidents of either party. It cannot stand, and it will not stand.

I still have the floor.

Mr. President, I want to be able to talk about a couple of subjects today, but I want to be able to set the context on these with the recognition of Women's History Month. A lot of fairly remarkable ladies in Oklahoma have set American history and world history into a different pace based on what they have done in the past.

I can't help, when I am talking about Women's History Month, to be able to talk about my own mom, who is a pacesetter in her own leadership. She was a student, librarian, and mom. She went through elementary school librarian and high school librarian and then became the director of libraries for a very large school district.

She led the way for our family and community. She even led the American Association of School Librarians around the country. She was a pacesetter there.

There are other pacesetters that I would highlight who are Oklahoma pacesetters. The first is Claire Luper. Born in Okfuskee County, OK, in 1923, Claire Luper was the first African-American student to enroll in the History Department at the University of Oklahoma. She was a civil rights leader. She led Americans at lunch counters in 1958 as she was seated there and helped to train youth to be seated at lunch counters to break through the racism that was existing in Oklahoma City and in Oklahoma.

Claire Luper herself was arrested 26 times for just eating lunch--for just

leading for the rights of what every single human being should be allowed to do in our great country.

After 26 arrests and the breakthrough leadership that she experienced, she now has been recognized with over 500 different awards and honors in her lifetime. She taught in the Oklahoma City area for 41 years, was a senior adviser for the NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma City, and is now a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

Another great leader from Oklahoma is Shannon Lucid. She was raised in Bethany, OK. In 1979 she became an astronaut in a time period when ladies did not become astronauts. She set the pace. She was the chief scientist at NASA from 2002 to 2003. She served as the capsule communicator for numerous space missions. She was the first woman to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Jeane Kirkpatrick is another Oklahoman. Born in 1926, she was the first woman appointed to serve as a Permanent Representative to the United States for the United Nations. She served from 1981 to 1985. She served on President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet, was a political science professor at Georgetown University, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She made Oklahoma proud.

Let me tell you about a current one now. LaRita Aragon. LaRita Aragon was born in Shawnee, OK, but she was raised in the big town of Dale, just outside of Shawnee. She became the first woman to hold the rank of brigadier general in the Oklahoma Air National Guard and the first female commander of the Air National Guard.

Before her military career, she was an elementary school teacher and a principal. After retirement from the military, she returned to education. She served as the director of advanced programs in the University of Oklahoma College of Continuing Education. Then, in January 2011, she started serving as secretary of veterans affairs for the State of Oklahoma. She is a remarkable military leader from our State and a tremendous role model for people in our State--boys and girls.

Maria Tallchief was born in 1925 in Fairfax, OK. She was a member of the Osage Nation. At age 17, she did a crazy thing. She moved to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer. As her career began to take off, people tried to persuade Maria Tallchief to change her last name so that she wouldn't face the prejudice of being Native American. She refused to do that. She continued to work and to prove herself. In 1947 she became the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet. She led the way, and she set the pace.

Oklahomans are proud of these ladies and many, many others who have done great work and made remarkable advances. We are proud of them.

Long-Term Budget Planning

Mr. President, from recognizing Women's History Month, let me make a comment on something currently happening in the Senate. Right now in the Senate, the Senate Budget Committee is continuing to work on a budget.

The President turns in a budget. As many people know, since 1974, the President's budget has been just a document of ideas. The Senate and the House agree together on a budget, set a number, and then do appropriations bills. That is how we actually do the spending for the Federal taxpayers' dollars. Since 1974, it has typically begun with a budget document from the Senate and from the House.

They are working on that budget document right now in the Budget Committee, but here is the difficult thing. In all likelihood, that budget document that will come out of committee will never come to this floor and will never be voted on because of the difficulty we face right now in our deficit and the challenges the budget will have in order for it to move through the process. In all likelihood, this body will deem a budget number, where there will be no real plan. It will just set a budget number and then move on and start heading toward appropriations.

Layer upon layer of debt and deficit will be added to where we are as a nation. Our simple challenge is, how do we get around this?

Last year, 16 Members met--eight Senators, eight House Members; eight Republicans, eight Democrats--to try to strategize how we could change the budget process. Though I commend Chairman Enzi of the Budget Committee and his remarkable work, thought, and incredible staff, once again that document will not make a difference on this floor, and once again it will not set us on a long-term path to getting back to solvency. We have to change the process of what we do.

These 16 Members met all last year to establish a set of ideas of how we could change the process, but it failed in December. I am challenging this body to step up to it again and to reengage on some simple sets of ideas of how we can get our budget back in balance and how we can do better planning. Though we do budgets and though we will do the deeming of a budget number, there is no real plan for how things can get better. We have to get better at planning, so let me give you some simple ideas that were birthed out of the conversation last year.

We hold debt ceiling votes, which are supposedly to limit our debt, but they never do. They did decades ago, but they have not for decades. We will have 12 appropriations bills in some form and in some way so as to actually do the spending in the next several months, but there will be no bill to deal with how we can reduce spending.

A simple idea that came out of that conversation last year was this: How do we add a 13th bill?

As simple as I can say it, we have 12 spending bills. In every single Congress, the 13th bill would be set aside for how we will reduce our deficit. We have a structure with which to do that. It is the reconciliation process. It will certainly take work to reform this. We have a process in place right now that we could use but that we don't. What if we mandate it each year? We would have our 12 spending bills in whatever form they would take, but in every single session of Congress, we would have to have some conversation about what we would do to reduce spending or to fix our deficit. It is not an unreasonable proposal. It is an opportunity for us to sit and plan, to actually think about things, and to work things out.

Senator Maggie Hassan and I also have another idea for working through the process. How do we end government shutdowns? How do we stop the perpetual cliffs of budgeting issues? There is a simple way to do that.

The simple way to do that, as odd as it may sound, is for Members of Congress and our staffs, as well as for members of the staff within the Office of Management and Budget from the White House, to not travel if you get to the end of a budget year and the budget is not done. You can't leave until the work is done, is as simple as I can say it. That may sound overly simplistic, but I guarantee you, if this body has to work through 2 weeks, no one would have the opportunity to travel. Everyone would have to be here days and weekends. There would be no official travel. There would be no opportunity to head back and see your family. There would be no codels or staffdels or any kind of other opportunity to leave. Each day, we would also have to have a quorum call and be here until the work gets done. Then we would solve this.

Last December, we had this protracted shutdown that began when Members of Congress left for Christmas. They just left with there being an unresolved budget issue here. If Senator Hassan's and my idea were to pass, we would have finished that work last December, and Americans would never have experienced that protracted government shutdown.

We have differences of opinion. It is who we are as Americans, and that is what we represent in the U.S. Senate, but we should not punish Federal workers and the American people because we have not worked out our differences here. We should stay until the work is done, and we should keep negotiating until we are finished. That is a simple, straightforward way to resolve this.

With our adding a 13th bill to enable our having to plan for how we will actually deal with debt and deficit, there will be some moment created every year to compel us to actually be here until our work is done as well as having a more systematic structure of how we are going to do budgeting. All of these are simple ideas, but they are ideas that will help us get on top of a $22 trillion debt and an approaching $1

trillion yearly deficit. It is as if we have lost the importance of this, and we cannot.

My challenge to this body is to make the budget mean something again. Let's actually do long-term planning, and let's figure out how to make a process work for the taxpayers. We can figure this out, and we can work together to do it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, we have spent a great deal of time in my time in the Senate talking about immigration and the situation along the southwestern border. My State has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, so obviously this is very personal to me and my constituents who live and work along the border.

We have been caught up in a lot of semantics and more than a little politics in Washington, DC, debating what is a wall versus a fence, what is a crisis versus an emergency--just some of the semantics we have been caught up in--but it doesn't take a rocket scientist or an expert to see there are a lot of problems occurring at the border today. I hope, if there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that there is in fact a problem that needs to be solved at the border, whether you want to call it a crisis like President Obama did or whether you want to call it an emergency like President Trump.

Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security sent a letter to Congress detailing the record number of apprehensions along the southern border. Secretary Nielsen noted that Border Patrol was apprehending between 50,000 and 60,000 a month late last year. Last month, it was 76,000, the highest in a decade. At the time of her letter, she said we were on track to interdict nearly 100,000 during the month of March--so almost essentially double from late last year until this coming month. Unsurprisingly, Customs and Border Protection personnel are not equipped to handle these record numbers.

Forty percent of the Border Patrol's manpower is spent processing migrants and providing care and transportation. These are, by and large, asylum seekers from Central America. In fact, while the Border Patrol, our primary law enforcement agency providing border security, should be securing the border, many of them are processing unaccompanied children or family units, handing out diapers and juice boxes instead of doing the job they are trained to perform. They have been taken off the patrol line to do this kind of work, leaving areas of the border

vulnerable to exploitation by the drug cartels. One way the cartels use this huge volume of humanity coming across the border is to distract the law enforcement agencies from doing their job interdicting the drugs that are poisoning tens of thousands of Americans. We know 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year--about half of those from opioids, including synthetic fentanyl and heroin--90 percent of which comes from Mexico.

The amount of people coming across now is so overwhelming that the El Paso Border Patrol Sector has temporarily shut down its highway checkpoints in the interior so agents can help process these individuals. Most of our Members may not realize, we not only have Border Patrol working at the border but also in the interior at checkpoints on major highways because frequently what will happen is people are smuggled through or drugs are smuggled through, and they have to go through checkpoints for a double check, at which time a lot of drugs and a lot of illegal immigrants are discovered.

Additionally, detention facilities are at or over capacity. These are relatively small because they are built to house single adults for a short period of time. The record surge of children and family units combined with the impact it has had on processing time has put a serious strain on their resources. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release families and adults from custody.

I was on a radio program last week in San Antonio, my hometown. It was said Border Patrol is so overwhelmed, they are essentially just putting people on buses and shipping them into the interior of the State and the country, not even processing them.

I have heard from officials at DHS and throughout the ranks of the Border Patrol that in order to keep up with this pace, they need our help. They need more personnel so law enforcement agencies can respond to the crisis, secure the border, and keep our country safe, as well as adequately and efficiently processing individuals who illegally cross the border. We also need additional facilities to house illegal immigrants in custody so we don't engage in the failed catch-and- release policy, which is just another pull factor to encourage more people to come. If they know they are not going to be detained and they are going to be released, that is an incentive for them to come and join this wave of humanity coming across the border. We should be able to enforce the law and properly care for migrants in custody, but inadequate resources are limiting DHS's ability to do both.

Ours is a compassionate country. We are a nation of immigrants. Everybody--almost everybody came from somewhere else at some point in their family history, but the only way we are going to be able to maintain that compassion and generosity, when it comes to immigration, is by bringing some order out of chaos.

Many illegal immigrants know we are compassionate and generous, and they will take full advantage of the gaps in our border security and flaws in our immigration laws. The cartels--the criminal organizations that get rich moving people from Central America, across Mexico, into the United States--know for sure because they are exploiting those gaps and flaws in our immigration laws. It is not just the sheer numbers of people crossing the border that is concerning, it is the makeup of the people coming across.

We used to see primarily single adult males arriving from Mexico, and our current detention facilities reflect that, but now, because of the gaps and flaws in our immigration laws that are being exploited, people coming across are family units and unaccompanied children from Central American countries who almost uniformly claim asylum. That means they have to appear in front of an immigration judge at some point to have their claim assessed and adjudicated.

While there absolutely are legitimate families coming to our country for legitimate reasons, that is not the case for all the 36,000 family units apprehended last month alone.

Individuals crossing illegally know about the loopholes in our laws, as I said, and they know how to exploit them. For example, in 1997, the Flores settlement agreement determined that the Department of Homeland Security can only detain unaccompanied children for 20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services, which in turn places them with sponsors--usually family members in the interior of the United States. Then they are given a notice to appear at an immigration hearing at some point in the future, but because of the backlog of cases, 98 percent of them don't show up. While this was unquestionably well-intentioned at the time, it has turned into a pull factor for illegal immigrants hoping to game the system, as well as the transnational criminal organizations that get rich engaging in this sort of trade.

In 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the Flores agreement, effectively applying the settlement to family units and not just unaccompanied children. So now, rather than single adults arriving at the border alone, they are bringing children with them so they can pose as a family unit. They realize they can bring a child--any child-- and pose as a family unit so they will be released within 20 days.

Sadly, Flores is not the only loophole being exploited. Another well- intentioned piece of legislation that is being abused is the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act or TVPRA. This legislation limits our ability to return unaccompanied children from countries other than Mexico or Canada to their home country.

These loopholes are an attraction or pull factor and encourage parents to send their children on the dangerous journey to our southern border alone or sometimes with a single parent or sometimes with a smuggler or human trafficker posing as a parent.

This isn't a symbiotic relationship, where the smuggler gets an honest day's pay and the migrant gets a comfortable ride to the United States. These smugglers are called coyotes for a reason; they are predators.

Children are being kidnapped to serve as a free ticket into the United States. They are often abused or raped along the way, and many arrive at our border in terrible health. We simply cannot allow these practices to continue with no response by Congress. We need to close the loopholes that are being used to unlawfully enter and remain in the United States and provide much needed protection for these vulnerable children.

If a pipe burst and caused your kitchen to flood, you wouldn't start by cleaning up the mess; you would start by fixing the pipe first. If we want to have any sort of impact on the massive numbers of people crossing our border, which will only grow, we have to look not just at the problem but at the root cause.

I would urge all of our colleagues on the other side to stop viewing this through a purely political lens. This is not a question of Trump wins, you lose or Trump loses and you win. I am afraid that defines a lot of our politics in Washington today. That is a terrible mistake and a disservice to the people we represent, and it is an embarrassment to an institution which is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body.

We need to view this together as the humanitarian crisis it is-- President Obama called it that--and view it as a problem that will only continue to grow without our intervention, which it has. We need to view it as an urgent issue that requires our cooperation and, yes, our compromise.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the last 2 years, since the beginning of the Trump administration, our Senate Democratic colleagues have brought our work to a crawl over judicial and executive branch nominees. It is as if they have frustration and surprise over the election of President Trump in the first place and still haven't gotten over it. This is another way in which they have sought to undermine the administration--to deny the President the staff necessary to populate the various executive branch Agencies as well as the judiciary.

The way you do that in the Senate is by stringing out the amount of time it takes to confirm nominees who ordinarily would have been confirmed by consent or by voice vote--certainly, not by taking 3 days or so at a time to generate a confirmation. It is not because these nominees are unqualified or even controversial; it is simply because this is how the resistance operates at a time when President Trump is President of the United States. These nominees are being used as a weapon to slow the work of the Senate and, really, to deny us the floor time in which to do other things that we might be doing that would be beneficial to the American people, and they have been running this play repeatedly over the last 2 years.

In February of 2018, President Trump nominated John Ryder to serve on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The work of the TVA is undeniably important, but this isn't the sort of high-profile job that typically leads to a contentious nomination. In fact, these board positions are normally confirmed by voice vote.

Mr. Ryder was, by any account, well qualified for the job. He received unanimous support from the committee of jurisdiction, the Committee on Environment and Public Works. Under normal circumstances, he would have been quickly confirmed by the entire Senate. Our Democratic friends, instead, decided to delay and delay and delay some more and forced the Senate to hold a cloture vote on the nominee, which caused him to sit in limbo for 400 days.

I wonder how many Americans who want to serve their country in some positions that require Senate confirmation can afford to put their lives on hold and wait for 400 days or more just for the Senate to get around to doing something that should be somewhat of a routine job.

With Mr. Ryder, in the end, the irony would almost be funny if it were not so pathetic. Ultimately, he was confirmed by voice vote. For 400 days, we waited to achieve the result we all knew we were to have all along if Mr. Ryder were to hang in there long enough. For 400 days, the TVA waited for the vacancy to be filled without there being an end in sight, and for 400 days, Mr. Ryder and his family waited and waited and waited with uncertainty. Sadly, he is not alone. He is part of a long list of nominees who have received similar mistreatment.

There is one Texan, a friend of mine, who had to wait even longer. Susan Combs is a fourth-generation rancher from Big Bend who has led an impressive career in both the public and private sectors and has gained the respect of virtually every person who has crossed her path.

She served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, then as the first female agriculture commissioner of Texas, and later served as the Texas comptroller of public accounts.

When she was nominated to be the Department of the Interior's Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget, I was thrilled, and I was happy to introduce her before her committee hearing. Less than a month after she was nominated, Susan was unanimously approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Again, I was hopeful that her nomination would sail through since it, clearly, was not a controversial nomination. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Here we are, 631 days later, and Susan Combs has still not been confirmed. Again, it is not because she is not qualified for the job or that she is a controversial nominee. Just the opposite is true. This is simply the way our Democratic colleagues have sought to deal with nominees from this President.

If Senate Democrats were delaying well-qualified nominees like Susan to make sure they had adequate opportunity to debate their nominations, we wouldn't have any disagreement with that, but we know, by their actions, that they will stop at nothing to bring the work of this body to a screeching halt, particularly during the time of the Trump administration.

Over the last 2 years, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have forced votes on nominees who in previous years would have sailed through the Senate. During President Trump's first 2 years, we held more than five times the number of cloture votes on nominees as we did during the same time for the last six Presidents combined. So to call this unprecedented is not an exaggeration, and the long list of vacancies is growing.

Our government is suffering, and the services that we provide to the American people are being obstructed as well. The Senate's duty of advice and consent is important, but it is not our only job. We have a lot of other things we are supposed to do here, and they are falling by the wayside while we try to work through these, largely, noncontroversial judicial and executive branch nominees.

Unfortunately, our Democratic colleagues' delay tactics have brought us to the point at which we really don't have many other options. We have tried negotiations. We have been told they will be happy to limit postcloture debate time but that, oh, by the way, they will not agree to that unless it starts in the year 2021. This is hardly a principled position. This is simply about resisting President Trump, his administration, and this administration's ability to do the job the President was elected to do.

What we have proposed is something that will not make nominations easier to be confirmed. The process will be largely the same, and the vote threshold will remain the same. It will simply keep us from wasting valuable time that we should be spending on debating and voting on other important policies, not widely supported nominees.

This certainly isn't as radical a change as many of our Democratic colleagues are presenting it to be. In January of 2013, current Majority Leader Schumer and then Majority Leader Harry Reid led the charge to make similar changes in order to process President Obama's nominees.

At that time, Republicans were in the minority. What did we do then? Well, we weren't exactly fans of President Obama's, but he had just been elected to his second term, and suffice it to say that while we were hoping for a different outcome, we weren't about to obstruct his ability to populate and staff the various Departments in the Federal Government. We didn't obstruct nominees. We didn't sulk. We didn't try to prevent the President

from filling these nominations throughout the entire government. This is our government. In fact, we took the opposite approach. Along with several of my Republican colleagues, I joined Democrats in voting for a resolution that would speed up the consideration process for lower level nominees.

I have to give Senator Alexander, the Senator from Tennessee, a lot of credit for negotiating that in the first place. But it has now expired, and we are back to the status quo before that temporary change went into effect. Like the changes we are talking about today, it didn't change the threshold for nominees; it just made the process a little more efficient. It received votes from 78 Senators on a bipartisan basis. So that is why it is a real head-scratcher that we find ourselves where we are today. Unfortunately, I think we know what the answer is. This is part of the anti-Trump resistance. Unfortunately, it is not playing out just in social media or on TV; it is playing out right here in the Senate--what used to be known as the world's greatest deliberative body.

When our colleagues Senator Blunt, chairman of the Rules Committee, and Senator Lankford of Oklahoma introduced this resolution, I was surprised that our colleagues across the aisle wouldn't do what we did back in 2013. Back then, all but one Member of the Democratic caucus voted for the resolution--again, something very similar to what we are proposing today--but yesterday, they refused to even proceed to debate a similar change. They could have offered amendments. They could have made changes to the resolution where they thought it fell short. But no--their commitment to obstruction remains. It is clear they don't really oppose the resolution; they oppose supporting a resolution under the President of another party. Indeed, they oppose supporting this resolution under President Trump.

When 78 Republicans voted for a similar change in 2013--as I said, we didn't vote for President Obama, but we understood the importance of protecting the Senate as an institution and allowing our valuable work to continue on behalf of the American people. I wish our colleagues across the aisle had that same commitment today.

Just as I supported this modest change in 2013, I will support it again today. This will allow us to make meaningful progress in confirming the long list of pending nominees without impeding our ability to do our other work, like legislation.

In particular, there are four district court nominees from Texas I am eager to get off the Senate calendar and on the Federal bench.

I yield the floor.