Floor Statements

Mr. President, Senator McCaskill and I rise to have an opportunity to pass a bill and for the Senate to do some work on a bill that has been around for several years and just hasn't been able to go over the finish line. We would like to see that finish today.

It is a bipartisan bill with a very straightforward concept. Right now, if any agency head or any sub-Cabinet individual or any individual within the government wants to see what another agency is doing, they have to go to the Office of Management and Budget. They would do a study--and get it back to them--to find out if the program they are doing exists somewhere else.

If any Member of this body or of the House wants to find out about an agency and such straightforward things as how many employees they have, what programs they are doing, if they measure those programs, how are those programs measured--if we want to find out those very basic things, we have to go to the GAO office to make a request, and 18 months later, we will get an answer back on that specific thing.

This is something that every agency either already has or should have but that the American people can't see, the Congress can't see, and, quite frankly, the individuals within the agencies also cannot see.

This is a straightforward concept. We call it the Taxpayers Right-to- Know Act, and it is something Senator McCaskill and I have worked very hard on. It is something that passed out of the Homeland Security Committee unanimously. This is a bipartisan bill. In fact, to show you how bipartisan it is, this passed in the House of Representatives last session 413 to 0. Not a single House Member voted against this proposal, but it wasn't able to pass in the Senate. So Senator McCaskill and I brought it up again this year. It came unanimously out of committee; it also has been through the House of Representatives. In January of 2017, it passed unanimously in the House of Representatives again. This is not a controversial piece of legislation.

What is interesting is that Senator McCaskill and I did a lot of work with President Obama's Office of Management and Budget to make sure there were no concerns. They had some concerns, so we made some changes, and President Obama's Office of Management and Budget signed off on this and said it would be a helpful document.

We have now worked with President Trump's Office of Management and Budget, which also signed off on this proposal and said that this would work.

We went to the Government Accountability Office, the entity we asked to help us find duplication, waste, and inefficiency in government, and in a hearing we asked Gene Dodaro, the head of GAO, a simple question: Would it be a help to have the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act? You have the ability to see all agencies. Would this be a help to you? His exact response:

I would urge the Congress to complete passage of that

bill--

meaning the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act--

and send it to the president for signature. I think that it

would make a huge difference in identifying overlap,

duplication, fragmentation in the federal government and

provide a better accountability tool to the Congress and the

agencies. It's severely lacking.

That is from the head of the Government Accountability Office, the one we have asked to help us find these things. He is saying that he needs this tool. We need this tool. The agencies need this tool.

President Obama's team signed off on this. President Trump's team has signed off on this. It has passed unanimously out of the House of Representatives.

We bring it to the floor today to ask unanimous consent to move this across the floor of the Senate today, to be able to get in place what President Obama asked for, what President Trump has asked for, what the Government Accountability Office has asked for, what all Members of the House of Representatives have asked for, and what Senator McCaskill and I are asking for.

With that, I yield to Senator McCaskill.

Mr. President, I could not more wholeheartedly agree with my colleague from Missouri.

What is surprising to me is that Senator Schumer's objection to the taxpayers right-to-know bill was that the taxpayers would actually find out information that he doesn't want them to find out. That is the surprising part.

I am grateful to be able to get his answer because over the last 6 months, our staff--Senator McCaskill's and my staff--has worked with his staff every month. We have made 27 changes and 6 revisions over the last 6 months. In the last month, we have gotten radio silence--nothing from Senator Schumer's staff. So we finally brought it to

the floor and said ``What is the problem?'' because we can't seem to figure out what the problem is. We learn today that the problem is that he doesn't want the program inventory to be public because if the American people and the Congress and the Office of Management and Budget see the programs, they might actually do things with efficiency. That seems surprising to me, but if you read the transcript, that is what he just said. The fear is that they will actually find out what the Federal Government does in the programs.

Surely that is not his objection. Surely no one in this body would say: I hope the American people and the Office of Management and Budget never find out what the Federal Government does.

Here is what this bill does. The reason we could not have a good listing--Senator Schumer mentioned that there is no way to do a list right now--is because there is no definition for a program. The Federal Government has struggled with that simple definition, so this bill fixes that. The reason that inventory doesn't exist gets solved with this. So literally Senator Schumer's objection as to why we shouldn't do this is nonsensical.

The second issue with this is the fear of OMB and Mick Mulvaney actually trying to slash programs. OMB and Mick Mulvaney have no authority to take down a program. Congress does that, and Senator Schumer knows that better than anyone in this body. While OMB can make recommendations, Congress has to actually vote to act on those recommendations. He can't just slash programs. He can recommend it. He can say: Here is an issue of inefficiency. It is the exact same as the Obama administration could have done, the exact same as any future administration could do, but Congress must act on that.

It seems exceptionally shortsighted to say: I don't want the American people to know what the government is doing, because of the current administration and someone I don't like.

In a few years, there will be a different administration. That may be in 7 years, or that may be in 4 years, but in a few years, there will be a different administration, but this problem will still remain. Agencies can't see what other agencies are doing, this Congress can't see what the agencies are doing, and the American people cannot see what the agencies are doing.

I would say that for the benefit of the taxpayers--not the benefit of Washington bureaucracies but for the benefit of the taxpayers--we should allow this information to go public. I hope we can continue to work with Senator Schumer's office, after making 27 changes that his staff recommended, to finish this document.

Yesterday, Senator Schumer was caught in the hallway and was asked what the problem is in the Senate, and his response to a reporter was that the Senate needs more comity. I would agree.

The House approved this unanimously. Our committee approved this unanimously. It has come to the floor and has but one person who believes that the American people should not have access to the information on the programs they pay for.

I would love to see more comity in this body and for us to work this out.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, earlier today, the minority leader came to the floor to talk about multiple issues. During that conversation, he called me out by name regarding a rules proposal that I have in front of the Rules Committee this week. He said that he vehemently disagrees with that rules proposal. He even mentioned that he knows that I came here in 2014 and that I should study the history of the Senate a little bit more before I bring up a rules proposal. Well, I would only tell my colleague that I have studied the history, and I would like to get a little bit of context around those comments.

The rules proposal that the minority leader is opposing is the exact same rules proposal that he actually voted for in 2013 when he was on the Rules Committee and then voted for again when it came to the floor of the Senate. This is not some radical proposal.

In 2013, Democrats found intolerable what was happening with the nomination process, so at the beginning of 2013, they worked with Republicans and said: We need to be able to put a structure in place to get nominations through because a President should be able to have his staff put in place, and there shouldn't be an arbitrary slowdown of that process.

Republicans came on board, even during a very contentious time, because Republicans did not agree with the policies of President Obama. Yet they agreed.

With a vote of 78 total votes, 78 votes on the floor of the Senate, a rule change was made that was proposed by Senator Reid, supported by Senator Schumer, and supported by Senator McConnell, to say that this is a rule change that will go into place. It was a very simple rule. The rule was just for nominees.

When nominees come to the floor, the minority can always ask for additional time to debate. Most of the time in the past, they have not, but they could. The time allotted for that purpose is 30 additional hours for debate. The assumption is that it is a controversial nominee when 30 additional hours of debate is required.

The time was lowered in this 2013 rule so that for district court nominees, just 2 hours of debate on the floor is needed because, quite frankly, district court nominees had never been held up on a cloture vote, so 2 hours of extra time. The nominees have already been through the committee process. They have already been approved. Now

they are coming to the floor, and if there is a request for additional time, they would get an additional 2 hours on the floor. For any other nominee, they would get 8 hours of additional time, if they even asked for more time. Supreme Court, circuit court, and Cabinet-level nominees would remain at 30 hours.

That was the agreement that was made and that we functioned under in 2013 and in 2014. Fast-forward to today. A historic new precedent has been set for any President coming in. It was absolutely not done by Republicans in the past, and it was absolutely not done by Democrats in the past, but it is being done now.

Right now, there are 67 judges pending and 139 executive nominees pending--139. In just the past year and a few months, Democrats have requested 85 cloture votes--that is asking for an additional 30 hours of debate time.

They can say: Well, these nominees need to be vetted. These are all nominees who have already gone through the committee process, have already waited in line. There has been a tremendous amount of vetting. Even if this was additional vetting--an additional 30 hours of debate on the floor--for most of these nominees by far, there has been less than an hour of actual debate on the floor for these individuals, but 30 hours has been requested. It is not 30 hours of debate. In fact, just over the past couple of weeks, we have had district court judges, and they have had a demand for a cloture vote on them, and we had less than 15 minutes of additional debate time for those individuals on the floor, but 30 hours had to be allocated. There was less than 15 minutes of actual debate on that person.

This is not about vetting. That is a good line for the media. That is a good line for the base. This is about slowing down the Senate. This is about slowing down the process.

Again, giving a side-by-side, the minority leader said that this is about keeping intact the power of the minority, that the power of the minority needs to be maintained in the Senate. I totally agree. That is why I am trying to work this through a normal rules process--the same rule the minority leader supported on the Rules Committee in 2013 and the same rule he voted for on the floor. The only difference now is that it is not Democrats in power, it is Republicans in power. Republicans joined Democrats in 2013 to be able to put this in place, but for some reason, now that Republicans are in power, Democrats are saying that this is an onerous rule that will take away the power of the minority.

The only real thing that has changed here--other than that now the Republicans are in control rather than Democrats--is one other thing; that is, the nuclear option. When Senator Reid and Senator Schumer put in place the nuclear option at the end of 2013, at that time, there were 20 judges pending and 56 executive nominations. But they unilaterally changed the rules of the Senate to be able to drop down nominations from 60 to 51 because they were so frustrated that there were 20 judges pending and 56 executive nominations. May I remind my colleagues that right now there are 67 judges pending and 139 executive nominations pending.

The minority was so frustrated when they were in the majority that they had to go nuclear and unilaterally change the rules in November of 2013, even after Republicans joined them in January of 2013 to change the cloture rules because there were 20 judges pending. Yet now there are 67 judges pending. At that time, there were 56, so they went nuclear on the executive nominations. Now there are 139.

Listen, this is not an argument that I am trying to make based on a partisan issue. I am trying to go back to the agreement that was made in 2013, which was a bipartisan agreement. That worked for that time period. Republicans and Democrats supported it, and it worked. We actually had a process that was in place. I am asking to take that Democrat-written document and say: Let's make that the rule from here on out--not just for this session but from here on out--so that we would have consistency whether Republicans or Democrats are in control.

All I am asking is that Democrats vote again now for the same thing they voted for in 2013 when they asked Republicans to join them; for Democrats to join us and to say: Let's make this the clear rule for everyone. That is the history that I think needs to get into this conversation.

Quite frankly, I am not asking for something radical. I am trying to do a rules change the right way, by the rules as they are written, going through the Rules Committee and having a hearing, which we had in December, having a markup in the Rules Committee, and bringing it to the floor of the Senate and actually implementing a rules change. If there is another proposal we want to consider, I will be glad to have that conversation.

I am not looking to make it contentious; I am trying to actually solve a bad precedent because the precedent that has been set by the minority party right now will be the new precedent when the next President comes. So the next time there is a Democratic President, I can assure my colleagues that Republicans will say: We will just do the same thing the Democrats did to the Republican President--we will do that to the next Democratic President. And year after year, this toxic environment will get worse. The only way to dial back the volume is to actually fix the rules to make sure they stay fair for everyone.

Again, this is not a partisan move for me; this is trying to get the Senate to actually function and work again.

This rule change that was done in 2013--Senator Reid and Senator McConnell came to the floor of the Senate and had a colloquy, and in that colloquy, Senator Reid said:

It is our expectation that this new process for considering

nominations as set out in this order will not be the norm--

That is, asking for additional time for every person--

but that the two leaders will continue to work together to

schedule votes on nominees in a timely manner by unanimous

consent, except in extraordinary circumstances.

Those were Senator Reid's comments. But now, this has been invoked more than 80 times by the minority just this year. There have not been 80 extraordinary circumstances. Quite frankly, many of these individuals waited out additional time for cloture and then they were confirmed almost unanimously. They weren't controversial; it was about slowing down the Senate.

Let's get this fixed. When the Senate is broken--and it is certainly broken in process right now--the Senators can fix the Senate by fixing our own rules. That is what I am encouraging our body to do. I do understand the history--although the minority leader is right, I wasn't here when the nuclear option was imposed. When Democrats did the historic change to the Senate rules, unilaterally--I wasn't here then. Senator Schumer did support that and did make a radical change at that time. I have to read about that history. But I can tell my colleagues that we can fix our future--and not just for Republicans but for the country--if we actually fix this rule change for the future.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk with this body about the NASA Administrator.

Later today, we are going to have a vote that is extremely important for the future of NASA and the future of space exploration, what we are going to do with our satellites, what we are going to do on climate issues, and what we are going to do on weather. All of those are related to NASA.

Jim Bridenstine, who is a friend and who is a fellow Oklahoman, the current Congressman from Tulsa, OK--Oklahoma's 1st District--is the person the President has tapped to say: That is the person I support to be the next NASA Administrator.

He has for months and months and months gone through the process. He has gone through committee hearings and has gotten all kinds of support. The committees he served on in the House of Representatives sent a bipartisan letter with wide majorities to the Senate saying: We have worked with Jim Bridenstine. He is exceptionally knowledgeable about issues on space. He is a great choice.

They sent that letter over from the House to the Senate.

Multiple individuals have written letters in support of Jim Bridenstine, including Sean O'Keefe, who is a former NASA Administrator. Buzz Aldrin also sent an extensive letter in support of Jim Bridenstine and also wrote a pretty remarkable op-ed about Jim Bridenstine, in support for him.

We have had multiple different groups that are space related who have sent us all kinds of information and endorsements about Jim Bridenstine leading NASA and being the next Administrator.

There has been a lot of support from around the country and from multiple individuals--former NASA Administrators, former astronauts, individuals who have risen up--but I still have people who bump into me and say: I don't know who he is. Well, I get that. He is a Congressman from Tulsa, OK. Let me give just a little bit of background so you will have some perspective on him.

Jim Bridenstine began his naval career flying the E-2C Hawkeye off the USS Abraham Lincoln. As a naval aviator, he had 333 carrier- arrested landings. He has had 1,900 flight hours in total. While on Active Duty, he transitioned to the F/A-18 Hornet and flew at the Naval Strike. He flew for TOPGUN. He served in Afghanistan. He served in Iraq. He served in our drug interdiction work in Central and South America, flying there. He has had a pretty remarkable naval career.

He graduated from Rice University, which is no simple thing to do. He graduated with a triple major when he finished at Rice University. He has an MBA from Cornell University. He is extremely smart, and he is extremely engaged.

He has been very attentive to the issues of space. Serving in the House of Representatives, he has made his focus space and research and trying to realign NASA into being mission-focused. Some have said that NASA in some ways has lost its focus of what it exist for. Jim Bridenstine has been very, very passionate in trying to get NASA back on focus with a big vision and a big mission. He has done that with multiple different bills that he has worked through, but he has also done that in trying to articulate to the space community why it is extremely important that we have a good, solid, and functioning NASA in all of its areas of operation.

He has the support of our delegation. He has the support of many in the space industry. He has the support of former NASA Administrators. He has the support of former astronauts. And he should have the support of this body today.

We will vote on him at 1:45. NASA's Acting Administrator is in the process of retiring right now. Not only should Jim be here, but we should not have taken this long to actually get to this spot. It has taken 8 months to get to a vote on a NASA Administrator. Let's get him on this task, and let's get him going. We need him in this spot, and I think he will do a fine job. That is not just my opinion; folks from all over the country have risen up and looked at him clearly and have said he is the right person for the job.

Mr. President, let me do a quick history lesson with this body. In 1773, the Colonies we were getting more and more frustrated with King George. There were a lot of issues we raised with him--a lot of taxes, a lot of changes, things that were happening in the judiciary, things that were arbitrary that were coming down. Then it boiled to a head.

In December of 1773, a group of American colonists went out to Boston infuriated with the tariff policy over tea. The British East India Company had special access that no one else had. They had no taxes and everyone else had a tax--a tariff. It pushed out all of the other companies except for the British East India Company. A group of American colonists went out to one of the ships, grabbed all the tea in the harbor, and threw it overboard, creating the legendary Boston Tea Party.

That was an argument about tariffs. It was an argument about international trade. It was an argument about American companies and fair trade, and we still talk about it today.

It is interesting to note that in our letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776, which we now call the Declaration of Independence, in the long list of grievances that we wrote out to King George, we included this line: We are cutting off our trade with all parts of the world as one of our big grievances. That grievance fell between the grievance of the British Government allowing British soldiers to murder inhabitants in America and our taxes without consent. In between those was cutting off our international trade. We have been free traders as a nation since even before we were a nation, and we have been passionate about keeping it fair but keeping it free and keeping it open.

Free trade is a big issue for us, and for some reason it has become this big national conversation again. Should we have free and fair trade? Should we continue to engage? What does it mean to have a deficit in our trade? Does it have to be equal with every country, that they buy from us as much as we buy from them? Suddenly, this has become a brand-new dialogue again.

I wish to bring a couple of real world moments to this, beginning with the history lesson, by stating that trade--and international trade, specifically--was important to us even before we were a country. We were gathering supplies from all over the world to be able to do our basic production. We are still doing that today.

For some reason I run into people that think this international supply chain is something new in this generation. I tell them that they should look at our history and see that the United States has always had an international supply chain.

We are also 25 percent of the world's economy. There is no nation in the world that can afford to buy as much from us as we buy from them. We are the largest economy in the world, by far. We are going to buy more from other countries.

The issue is, How does this work in our economy and how do we make sure we protect American manufacturing and the American consumer at the same time? Let me walk through what this looks like.

Charlie and Mary Swanson are Oklahomans and third-generation farmers and ranchers who live in Roosevelt, OK, with a whopping population of 241. The agricultural products they produce help feed the world. They raise wheat, cotton, cattle, and milo.

Every year their crops are harvested using John Deere equipment. We look at the John Deere tractor and its beautiful green and we think: That is a great American company, except that parts of the equipment also come in its original form from Mexico. Parts come from India, and parts from Germany. Most of the parts come from the United States. They employ 60,000 people in the United States.

It is a great American company--John Deere--but their cabs are made in Germany. Their hydraulic cylinders are made in Mexico. The castings from the foundry are from Iowa, but the guidance products are from California. Some of the transmission and electronic parts come from India, and

other parts are from Missouri. We see that as a great American tractor.

The crews that harvest some of the Swanson's crops are folks that come in--legally, by the way--from New Zealand, Ireland, or South Africa. The wheat they produce goes to export markets all over the world. Some of it goes to Egypt, some to India, Japan, and South Korea.

Their cotton is used all over the United States, but it is also shipped to China, as well, to produce fabrics. Some of the fabrics end up being made into garments that are shipped from Vietnam. Some of them end up right back here in the United States again, having started from the cotton from Roosevelt, OK.

The milo they raise goes to feed. Most of that feed goes to Texas. If you are from Oklahoma, you may consider that international trade, but it is still domestic trade. A lot of the feed goes to China.

They raise cattle, our great American beef. We eat as much beef as we can possibly eat in Oklahoma, and the rest of it we ship all over the world. Their beef is used in Oklahoma and all across the United States, but it is also sent to Japan, Korea, and Mexico.

Understand this, just as an aside: In 2017, U.S. beef producers exported 1.2 million metric tons of beef worth $2 billion. That is just American beef going around the world. Two leading partners in that are Canada and Mexico--$980 million in exports. It is a big part of what they do.

Charlie Swanson drives a Ford F-150 pickup. It is a great American product; isn't it? It is a great Ford truck. That F-150, by the way, is a fantastic vehicle. It is completely assembled in the United States, but the aluminum in that great American truck comes from Canada. About 15 percent of the components in that great American truck come from Mexico. Some parts even come from China. That F-150 is not only used extensively in the United States, but it is also shipped around the world. There are a lot of F-150 trucks on the roads in Mexico, Canada, and, yes, even in China.

That F-150 rides on four good, solid American-made tires, but the steel cord in those good American tires comes from all over the world. The steel in most of our tires is not made in the United States. A lot of the chemicals that go into the production of those tires are from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They are good American tires. A lot of them are made in Oklahoma in the Goodyear facility--a phenomenal facility--or the Michelin plant in Ardmore. They make great American tires for a lot of vehicles all across the United States, but they have parts and pieces from around the world in those American-made tires, and they are shipping them out as well. So just speaking about Charlie and what is happening in Roosevelt, OK, population 241, the products they produce are going all over the world. The products they use, such as the John Deere tractor and the Ford F-150 with the Goodyear or Michelin tires are American-made, but are dependent on trade from all around the world.

I could talk about Dr. Brent Hancock, born and raised in Kiowa County, OK. He left Kiowa County and went to the big city of Stillwater to attend Oklahoma State University, where he received his doctor of veterinary medicine degree. He returned back to Kiowa County and opened a veterinary clinic in Hobart in 1995. For over 20 years, Dr. Hancock has been taking care of vaccinations for sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, cats, and dogs. It is also rumored that Dr. Hancock can operate on your rabbit, but that is a whole different story.

He vaccinates these animals with vaccines to provide some of the safest agricultural products in the world. Some of those vaccines come from companies like Bayer, which is an international company based in Germany. He also uses products from Merck. They have offices in 50 countries, and they produce and ship their products to 140 countries around the world.

Again, we look at him and say that he is a good American veterinarian. He must be all American, but he actually depends on products from all over the world to provide basic things.

I cannot talk about Oklahoma without talking about oil and gas. Most of the pipe that goes down the hole in most of our wells is produced from steel that is not made in America. That particular type of steel that is down holding those wells is produced around the world but not here. We are dependent upon oil and gas that goes in the F-150 pickup and the John Deere tractor, and a part of it relies on steel from around the world.

I can take you to Tulsa, OK--slightly larger than Kiowa County, I would say--to a manufacturing plant called SWEP. They employ 100 people and produce components for refrigerators and air conditioners. They import products from Europe, and they combine them with products that they are making in the United States and assemble them. That final product is sold all over the country and is also sold to Canada and Mexico--all from one company in Tulsa, OK.

Drive up the road from Tulsa to Bartlesville to a manufacturing plant operated by ABB. They create a lot of products that are in wells, pipelines, and refineries all across America. That company imports products from suppliers from Canada and Mexico, and they create a final product that is sold all over the United States, and they sell it right back to Canada and Mexico as well.

This shouldn't be shocking to anyone. This is the same structure that we have had since the 1700s as Colonies. We produce some of our products and ship them out. We buy some to be able to use in manufacturing. This is a nation that is very interconnected to the world, and it is exceptionally important that our trade agreements get resolved as fast as possible.

I want fair trade. We had unfair trade in 1773 that we protested in the Boston Harbor. We still want fair trade agreements right now, but those trade agreements need to be resolved as fast as possible. Farmers and ranchers in Oklahoma cannot wait a year to find out what is going to happen in our trade policy. Some of them are on the edge of the knife right now of bankruptcy. They can't get anything on the futures market to try to figure out what is happening in the now to be able to make the basic investments they need to make for this year's crops.

Predictability helps us, just like fair and free trade does. So while I understand full well that the administration is engaging in trade negotiations around the world, I encourage them to move from talking about these trade agreements to settling them--getting them resolved with Mexico and Canada and getting the best deal that we can have, resetting this agreement with NAFTA for another generation to prepare us for the future. Let's get that resolved. Those are our two largest trading partners. Resolve our trade agreement with Korea, locking that one in and finishing out all the area around Asia as well. Twelve of those nations have already resolved the trade agreements they are into, putting us behind. Those nations are forming contracts now. We need to engage as soon as we possibly can.

There are big issues with China and trade. They have not been fair in all their trade agreements. We need to resolve our issues with China, and I am pleased that this administration is leaning in to resolve a long-term issue with China trade. It is about time someone does it, but we also need to get it resolved. We don't need retaliatory tariffs moving across every industry in our Nation destabilizing what we are doing in the economy. Let's get these issues resolved.

Quite frankly, many of the trade issues that we have with the rest of the world aren't their tariffs, but they are our regulations. When our regulations and American redtape from our own government slow down our own economy, let's deal with our own house to make sure what we produce is competitive around the world, but in the meantime, let's move our trade conversations to trade agreements so we can continue to move on toward doing the same thing we have done since the 1700s as Americans; that is, trading with the entire world and leading the world with it.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to talk a little bit about election security, but on a day like today, I have to at least mention where we are with the giant omnibus bill that got dropped on us last night at about 8:30--about 2,300 pages of legislative text--to try to deal with all of government spending, all of discretionary spending.

If people don't know what an omnibus is, it is where we are supposed to pass 12 individuals bills dealing with 12 different topics of our spending. An omnibus is when you take all 12 of those and just do it at once. It is supposed to be the exception to the rule, but for the last 17 years, we have done some version of an omnibus. Today's vote will be the 18th.

We have 2,300 pages with technical legislative language and less than 24 hours to be able to go through it. There is no way to be able to discover what all is in it.

There is another historic event that has happened this past week, as well, which I think connects to this omnibus. Last Friday, the Treasury Department announced that we just crossed over $21 trillion in total debt--$21 trillion.

I have had some folks who have caught me and said: Now that we have gone over $21 trillion and it looks like we could be rapidly approaching $1 trillion of deficit this year alone--which would mean that in the next 12 to 14 months, we will go from $21 trillion to $22 trillion in total debt--gosh, that looks terrible. It has to be this Republican tax plan that is causing it. Well, there will probably be some deficit spending with the Republican tax plan that went in because it will take a couple of years for the income to be able to accelerate with it, but this omnibus alone is $300 billion of additional spending--just this, $300 billion.

So we go up to over $600 billion in deficit spending this past year, and this omnibus will add another $300 billion to that. The disaster relief funding that was done this year was $140 billion on top of that, and the interest payment increase--just the increase--from last year to this year was $54 billion.

It is not just some Republican tax plan that made this change. This is a very rapid acceleration in overspending that is happening right in front of our eyes, and the omnibus is not slowing it down. It is accelerating it. We have to change how we are doing budgeting and the trajectory that we face.

There are 16 of us who have started meeting last month--8 Democrats and 8 Republicans, half from the House and half from the Senate--to evaluate how we do budgeting.

The 1974 Congressional Budget Act that we are currently operating under created this incredibly complicated system that has not worked in a decade. Every year we come up and try to do it again, and every year we end up with some omnibus package, and none of us has an amendment. None of us has an opportunity to be able to see it, read it, or go through it. It is just this: Here is the number. There it is. Vote for it or not.

We have to be able to fix that process. There is no long-term strategy. There is no regular order. There is no opportunity to be able to make changes. There is no plan.

My hope is that by the end of the year, this bipartisan group will have the opportunity to be able to present a different way of doing budgeting. That is not trying to be partisan but just to be able to put a neutral process in place in which we can actually be strategic about where we are going, because we are accidentally stumbling into more and more debt every single month, and it will happen again today.

Election Security

Mr. President, I wish to chat with this body a little bit about election security. Just to give a quick update, as many of you know, the Department of Homeland Security has been actively engaged in trying to fix what they can on election security leading up to the 2018 time period.

I have absolutely zero doubt that the Russians tried to meddle in our elections in 2016. They started in 2014 trying to strategically plan for how they were going to try to interfere in our elections--the social media, the false news, and as many different ways as they can to be able to get out information and misinformation. They started the process early. Quite frankly, they planned and executed well. They exposed a weakness in our system.

We are an open society that is exceptionally trusting of each other, and we are not used to having a foreign entity try to reach in and try to influence us like that.

What the Russians exposed in 2016, we should be well able to push back against in 2018 and 2020 and not be caught off guard again. The Russians reached in and scammed multiple States in their election systems. They were looking at voter rolls, trying to figure out if they could get access to those. Now, they can't change votes by just looking at voter registrations, but if they could look at and download those files, they could also change those files, edit names, edit addresses, and then, suddenly, when people show up to vote, they are not really registered anymore or they are registered at a different precinct. They could create chaos on election day just by going in and editing those names. They could go into the unofficial results websites of secretaries of State and during the

day of the election actually start putting up false election results or changing algorithms and numbers, so that when numbers are added, they are actually counted wrong, just to create uncertainty in the process. So when the actual election day comes, the unofficial results come out, and they are not reliable and everyone doubts the system itself.

Again, that doesn't change votes, and it doesn't change outcomes, but it certainly destabilizes the system. We should be aware of that.

We have multiple States--there are not many, but there are around 10 to 12 States--that cannot audit their elections when Election Day comes and goes. That means that they are completely counting on the machine to be able to keep an accurate count. Now, that machine is not attached to the internet. In fact, there is no State that has their election equipment attached to the internet on the day of the election, but for almost every one of them, there is a software update right before the election. If any entity were to be able to get into any one of the third-party software companies when the update is done and just put a bit of software in there that just messes with the machine, you would literally not know if that election result was reliable or not.

Did that happen last time? No. Were the Russians looking to try to find different software companies and the different makes and models of those companies that make our election machines? Yes, and we should take that as a warning sign. Last time they were looking, and next time they may be looking to mess with it and change it. We should be well prepared for that.

We have a piece of legislation. It is a very straightforward piece of legislation about secure elections. Myself, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins, and most of us who are all engaged in this one simple issue say: How do we stabilize our elections system?

Elections are run by States and should be run by States. There is no reason for us to federalize elections, but the Federal Government should walk alongside States and say some simple things: We are going to have quick communication between the States and the Federal Government. So if a foreign entity is trying to reach into your State to mess with your system, we can quickly let you know about it, and we can help you in the process of protecting your State.

The last time this occurred in 2016, it was months before the Department of Homeland Security was able to actually engage with those States to let them know that what was really happening was a foreign actor and to be able to help them with their security. We have to be faster on that.

We want to be able to streamline that communication. We want to encourage States, when they buy election equipment or they get election equipment, that they be able to audit their results on the day of the elections. The Federal Government should not pick their equipment. Those States should because it is a State responsibility. But we should incentivize them to actually lean in and make sure their equipment is good, because at the end of the day, in a Presidential election, we are all counting on every other State to make sure their election system is good. If it is not, it is a problem for all of us.

We want to make sure that there is not only streamlined communication and that there is not only good and auditable equipment, but that we actually give classification to individuals so that they can deal with classified information. That didn't happen last time, and so, again, it was months before there was any contact back and forth, because the Federal Government wanted to notify the States of what was happening, but no one had the clearance to be able to get the information. Let's fix that.

DHS is in the process of fixing that, but we would like to put in legislation that just remains, so that in the future, we don't lull ourselves to sleep again. Last time, it was the Russians. Next time, it could be the North Koreans. Next time, it could be the Iranians. Next time, it could be a domestic activist group that is just mad at somebody for something, and they have learned the vulnerabilities that the Russians pointed out.

In the days ahead, we need to secure our system for our election. It is not a partisan issue. It shouldn't be a partisan issue, but it should be something we learn the lesson on.

We are quickly learning the lessons about our vulnerabilities--cyber vulnerabilities in our pipelines, in our electric grids, in our phone systems, in internet fibers, in our election systems, in our banking systems, and in multiple other areas. We should learn this lesson and learn it well.

There are people who mean to do us harm. They are not necessarily going to attack us bodily, but they don't like our growing economy, they don't like our values, they don't like our openness, and they want to use our openness against us. We can't imagine doing that to someone else. They practice doing that to us.

We need to put up a basic guard, and we need to communicate to nations and nation-states around the world: If you come and attack us, this is going to be our response, so that they clearly know what they are facing when they come after us next time.

It happened once. It will happen again. Let's make sure that we are ready. Let's pass this bill about safe elections and get our elections secure so that we can trust the results year after year after year, as we have in the past.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, when I was in college, I remember watching a State of the Union speech by President Reagan in which he took a 43-pound stack of papers and set them on the podium. As he was giving his State of the Union Address, he said: This is the budget bill that has been given to me--43 pounds of it, all stacked up. It was a famous moment when the President said: Do not send this to me again.

Republicans and Democrats alike stood and cheered. They said: That is a terrible way to do government.

For 5 of the next 6 years there were no more Omnibus appropriations bills, but that did not last. Since 1986, there have been 22 Omnibus appropriations bills. People may ask, what is that?

By law, Congress is to do 12 appropriations bills. Each part of that has a section of the budget, and each one of those is passed as a stand-alone. First, they go through subcommittee, then committee, then to the full floor, and then they pass. But 17 times since 1998 and 22 times since 1986, all of those bills were just looped together to make one giant document--the 43-pound document that President Reagan dropped in 1988.

What is going wrong? We have another one of those omnibus bills next week, in which all of the appropriations bills have been looped together to try to simplify the process, but this actually provides even less transparency.

What do we do with this? How did we get here?

The short story is that the Budget Control Act of 1974 was created right after Watergate in a fight between Congress and President Nixon over the fact that President Nixon was told that Congress wanted to be able to spend certain amounts of money in certain areas, and President Nixon basically didn't want to spend it. So Congress pushed back and put additional requirements on him to actually do what Congress was compelling him to do in that 1974 Budget Act, to try to create more transparency and provide greater leadership for Congress. Out of that was born this Budget Act, but also the House and Senate committees and the Congressional Budget Office were born.

All of those things were to create more input and create a system in which, each year, the President would create a budget and would submit that budget to Congress. Then that budget would lead to authorizing bills from the different committees. And then, from the authorizing, it would lead to appropriations bills and final passage.

Well, how is that working for us? It is not. It created a process so complicated and so slow that, although it makes sense on paper and in legislative language, it doesn't actually work year to year, and it pushes us into what is called continuing resolutions--or, as is commonly thrown around here, CRs. Every year since 1995, Congress has had at least one CR--one continuing resolution; that is, taking last year's appropriations bill, just changing the date on it, and moving it over. There is no strategic planning, nothing. That is a problem for us.

The budget process itself has broken down and has fallen into omnibus spending bills, with 12 bills, all combined. Some years, we fail to get budget bills done at all.

The authorizing process that is supposed to go between the budget and the appropriations process has completely collapsed for us. In fact, in the 2017 appropriations, it happens that there were 256 expired authorizations in the final appropriations bills. About $310 billion of what was appropriated was not authorized even last year. Some of those things hadn't been authorized for more than a decade. Finally, we have passed all appropriations bills only four times in the last 44 years.

We have a major problem with the way we do budgeting. Year after year, people visit me or people bring this to me in townhall meetings or at the grocery store or at Taco Bell; people catch me and say: What is going on with the budget process?

I can tell you that if it sounds as if you say that every year, it is because you have said that every year now for a couple of decades.

How do we get out of this? There is a bipartisan, bicameral committee that has been put together and met for the first time last week. There are 16 total--8 Democrats and 8 Republicans, 8 from the Senate and 8 from the House. Our mission is to revise the way we do budgeting. A lot of Americans probably will not watch this process, but it will be extremely important that we actually fix it.

I am convinced that we are not going to get a better budget product until we get a better budget process. This committee itself is designed in such a way that it takes out the partisanship, not just with equal numbers on both sides, but the agreement from the very beginning is that if we don't have a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans signing off on the final proposal, we will not bring it to the floor. If we do, we hope to fix the budget process itself.

The budget process is set up to create gimmicks in the budgeting rather than to fix them. We have a 10-year budget window, and there are all these gimmicks that have been created to try to move spending outside the 10-year budget window to make things look as though they are actually going to balance when they actually don't balance. I would like for us to consider some things like biennial budgeting. Twenty States budget every 2 years. It gives budget certainty for 24 months. We should get that. That helps our economy. That helps our businesses. That helps our agencies. That helps in contracting. That helps us avoid these continuing resolutions--if we can actually do budgeting in 2-year cycles.

I would like to get out of the perpetual focus on government shutdowns and the countdown clocks that happen. I proposed a bill 5 years ago called the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. It is designed to get us to a spot where we actually put the pressure on Congress to get the job done but hold agencies and hold the American people harmless while we work through the process.

Quite frankly, I think the President's budget is a meaningless document. It has never been passed by any President of any party. I don't mind the Presidents releasing their budget priorities--ways we can save money, duplication that they see, key aspects. That is entirely appropriate. But the President's budget every year just becomes a big fight, and when it is late, it throws the process off even more and gives Congress one more reason to say that they are not getting their job done because someone else was late in doing theirs. We should reform that.

We should reform the way we do debt limits. We are the only country in the world that does this. We have had some kind of debt limit since the 1920s, actually. But originally, when it went to the form that it is in now in the late 1930s, it was established as a way to protect us from adding more debt, and it did work for decades.

It has not worked for decades. It has been another fiscal cliff out there that has not resolved anything. We have to fix that so it does what it is supposed to do or take it away, but we can't destabilize international economies because we can't get our job done here.

We have to have some sort of focus on both revenue and spending. We should deal with real consequences when we don't get things done on time. We have to build internal processes that actually get things done. We have to pay attention to $20 trillion, and growing, in national debt.

These are things we can get done, but they will not get done if we don't actually fix the process. There is no moment to actually get the big things and hard things done.

My hope and my commitment, with this body and with this group of 16 of us who have grouped together from the House and the Senate-- Republicans and Democrats--is this: Bring a proposal to us that is a fair, nonpartisan proposal that is not focused on what party is in power at that moment but looks at the fiscal health of the Nation, how we can plan for the future, and how we can actually get off this endless cycle of nonaction and get back to a process of predictable budgeting and appropriations. We will bring some of those solutions in the days ahead.

Right now we are meeting and talking. I invite any Member of this body who wants to contribute to catch any one of us in this group. We are not saying that the 16 of us are exclusive to solving the problems.

I also say the same thing to the American people: Anyone in my State or anyone around the country who wants to contribute good ideas, bring them. Let's add these good ideas together. Let's fix the process. Let's get back to actually talking about how we solve the budget issues rather than how we solve our internal processes in the House and the Senate. That is the last thing we should be arguing about and the first thing we should fix.

With that, I yield back.

Mr. President, I have 12 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Armed Services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 9:30 a.m. to conduct a hearing.

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Rebuilding Infrastructure in America: Investing in Next Generation Broadband.''

Committee on Environment and Public Works

The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The Agriculture Creates Real Employment (ACRE) Act.''

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 4:05 p.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: John F. Ring, of the District of Columbia, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board, Frank T. Brogan, of Pennsylvania, to be Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, and Mark Schneider, of the District of Columbia, to be Director of the Institute of Education Science, both of the Department of Education, Marco M. Rajkovich, Jr., of Kentucky, to be a Member of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, and other pending nominations.

Committee on Indian Affairs

The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 2:30 p.m to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Opioids in Indian Country: Beyond the Crisis to Healing the Community.''

Committee on the Judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``See Something, Say Something, Oversight of the Parkland Shooting and Legislative Proposals to Improve School Safety.''

Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, after the first vote to conduct a hearing on S. 526, to amend the Small Business Act to provide for expanded participation in the microloan program, S. 791, to amend the Small Business Act to expand intellectual property education and training for small businesses, S. 1538, to amend the Small Business Act to establish awareness of, and technical assistance for, the creation of employee stock ownership plans, S. 1961, to amend the Small Business Act to temporarily reauthorize certain pilot programs under the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, S. 1995, to amend the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 to improve the number of small business investment companies in underlicensed States, S. 2283, to amend the Small Business Act to strengthen the Office of Credit Risk Management within the Small Business Administration, S. 2419, to amend the Small Business Act to improve the technical and business assistance services under the SBIR and STTR programs, S. 2527, to amend the Small Business Investment Act of 1958 to increase the amount of leverage made available to small business investment companies, and the nominations of David Christian Tryon, of Ohio, to be Chief Counsel for Advocacy, and Hannibal Ware, of the Virgin Islands, to be Inspector General, both of the Small Business Administration.

Committee on Veterans' Affairs

The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a joint hearing.

Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans

The Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing.

Subcommittee on Strategic Force

The Subcommittee on Strategic Force of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing.

Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy

The Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy of the Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Somalia's Current Security and Stability Status.''

Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral

Institutions, and International Economic, Energy and Environmental

Policy

The Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy and Environmental Policy of the Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Why Food Security Matters.''

Mr. President, let me tell you about Farmers State Bank of Allen, OK. I know exactly where Allen, OK, is. I bet a bunch of folks in this room do not. It is a small town, and this a small bank. There is $43 million in total assets in that bank. That is a pretty small bank, as banks go. It is located in a town of about 900 Oklahomans in total. The town has a number of small business owners, farmers, and ranchers--folks that some people in this room fly over. There are good families who live in that great town. Many of them have great credit scores and have a good family history of repayment back to the bank when they have taken loans, because that is the bank in town. They have been longtime customers of this bank. In many instances, the bank employees and the people in the bank have grown up together. They know each other, but they also understand seasonal income.

When you are a farmer and rancher who doesn't come in with a W-2 every single week or every month--it comes in seasonally--they understand the credit restrictions there.

A banker, named Debbie, at the Farmer State Bank of Allen wrote me this and said:

Between the Ability to Repay and Global Cash Flow analysis,

particularly for a bank of this size, these new rules take

our time away from doing what needs to be done--caring for

our customers.

We have 12 employees and we're treated the same as JPMorgan

Chase, or Goldman Sachs--both of which have an entirely

different business model of operating. They do not operate in

towns of 900 [people]. . . . That's not their business model

or their kinds of markets

One of our key employees now spends most of her time on

compliance issues. Total costs for this employee, together

with the cost of the annual compliance audit [and everything

that goes with it is], now exceeds $100,000 annually.

Again, folks in big towns may not think it is a big issue to have $100,000 in appliance costs, but the total net income of this bank for the year is right at $500,000 a year, and $100,000 of it is now spent on compliance.

How did this happen? This happened when Congress decided in 2010 to pass something called Dodd-Frank. Dodd-Frank was a bill signed into law in July of 2010 to deal with the financial crisis that happened in 2007 and 2008, which was real. The largest banks in our country took some incredible risks. It caused a financial domino effect all over the country, and it caused great risk for our international markets.

In response to that, Congress rose up with a strong Democratic majority, and President Obama ran to it and said: We need to do something.

They looped together as many different financial restrictions as they could. They created a new thing called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with no oversight at all. They created a whole litany of new regulations and said: This will only be for the biggest banks because they were the violators.

They put it out there, and then the regulations started flowing after that. Guess what. Farmers State Bank of Allen, which was not the cause of the financial collapse in America, is now caught up, and they are struggling to survive as a bank. Because Congress decided they were going to do something, the something ended up being something that is devastating rural economies in my State.

Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, we have seen a 16-percent decline in the total number of Oklahoma bank charters--just in my State. There is a 35-percent decline in Oklahoma charter banks with less than $100 million in

total assets since Dodd-Frank. The effects of Dodd-Frank were felt pretty quickly in Oklahoma. It was passed in 2010. By the 2013-to-2014 reporting time, more than 40 percent of the banks in Oklahoma no longer did mortgage lending at all.

Let that soak in for a minute--banks that don't do mortgages. If you are in a rural community, that is the bread and butter of normal lending in that community--going to get a mortgage. But 40 percent of the banks in Oklahoma, starting in about the 2013, 2014 reporting cycle--just 3 or 4 years after Dodd-Frank passed--had already said the compliance costs were so high and the complexity was so great that they no longer offered mortgages and mortgage lending.

There are folks who say: We will just drive to a big city and go to a big bank and get it, and they will still take care of that. Quite frankly, that is what is happening. Dodd-Frank has done an excellent job of increasing the size, power, and strength of the biggest banks in America and has targeted the smallest banks in America. We are watching mergers all over my State, as the smallest banks struggle under the compliance costs. It almost looks like the design of Dodd-Frank was to cause biggest banks to get bigger because the smallest banks would not be able to survive under the compliance burdens that were then created for them.

What does that look like in real life? Let me tell you about a gentleman who I bumped into early Monday morning. He was flying out of Oklahoma. I was sitting next to the gentleman, and were striking up a conversation. He is a farmer and rancher in Oklahoma. He owns about 200 acres in North Central Oklahoma. He started to go through the purchase process to actually buy that acreage and couldn't get mortgage lending for it. No banks in the area would do it. Why? The Dodd-Frank requirements. Suddenly, a guy in Oklahoma trying to buy 200 acres had to find a way to scrape together $100,000 of cash to buy a ranch.

Now, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, if you wanted to get that same ranch, you would go to the bank in town. Now the bank in town has to tell you that you have to go somewhere else or find some other way to do it because the restrictions are so high that they can't do it anymore.

Local customers don't want to deal with someone else in another State or in another city. They would like to deal with their local bank, but they can't anymore. Oklahoma's community banks had nothing to do with the financial collapse in 2008. Yet they have been penalized all the way through this process.

In total, Dodd-Frank required more than 10 Federal agencies to write more than 400 new rules, imposing 27,000 new mandates on financial institutions of every size. Just process that. When you are Farmer State Bank of Allen and you have 12 employees, you now have to track 27,000 new mandates to keep up with it.

How are you doing with that?

That is what real life looks like. I have had folks say to me: This is some giveaway to the biggest banks.

What we are dealing with in this reform package is pretty straightforward. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial earlier this week saying that the bill ``eases administrative burdens on 5,000 community banks that make up 98% of the financial institutions but only 15% of the assets.''

Let me run that past you again. What we are dealing with deals with 98 percent of the banks, but of total banking assets in the country, it is only 15 percent of the assets. That means the top 2 percent of the banks in the country--the largest top 2 percent of the banks in the country--have 85 percent of the assets. I understand the higher regulations on those. They are significant. If they fail, they take down the global economy. For the other 98 percent of the banks in the country that have only 15 percent of the total assets in the country-- these are the smallest banks in the country--why are they being dragged into this?

All we want to say is to allow local banks to be local banks again and to be able to loan to their neighbors. These are the folks with whom they go to church and are in Rotary Club, and with whom they have grown up. They know their kids, and they know their families, but they are dealing with all these arcane requirements. They are dealing with 27,000 new rules, and they just can't make it.

What does this look like in real life? Let me give you an illustration from Legacy Bank in Elk City. Damon, from Legacy Bank in Elk City, OK, said:

As a community banker, my job has become much more

difficult and burdensome to our customers. Legacy has always

strived to offer the best customer service a bank can offer.

I used to be a lender to all. However, with the changes that

have come about with this bill, along with the fines and

penalties that are a potential and, at times, don't use

common sense, I am now a commercial lender only.

Let that soak in for a second. At Legacy Bank in Elk City, he used to make loans to everyone, and now he is a commercial lender only. What does that look like in real life? I have folks who come to this floor and people who catch me and say: Banks are still making lots of money, and banks are doing just fine. Why is Dodd-Frank a problem?

Yes, banks are going to find a way to still do business. What has happened? The biggest banks are loaning to corporate customers, and the smallest banks that used to do small business lending and mortgages and took care of their community can't do that anymore. So the big is getting bigger and helping the biggest, and the small is not able to help the small.

I thought we were supposed to be a country that helped everyone-- corporations or individual farmers and ranchers and citizens who are trying to start small businesses. Let's get back to doing that again. Let's not put 27,000 new restrictions on a small community bank and tell it that it has to abide by everything that JPMorgan Chase does and treat it as if it is the same. It is not.

There is Frazer Bank in Altus, about which my wife and I have a longstanding saying: Everywhere you go in the world, you are going to bump into somebody from Altus, OK. Try it sometime.

A local banker wrote: This past week in Altus, we had a local small business owner who applied for a home mortgage loan. The customer had a down payment and closing costs, but one of the key issues preventing our bank from making this personal loan was the time constraint of 2 years of history. This is someone to whom we would have made a home loan prior to Dodd-Frank, but now we cannot.

So a small business owner with closing cost money and with an ability to repay is now blocked out. How serious is that?

Jim Hamby from Vision Bank in Ada wrote me and was trying to describe exactly what this looks like.

He made the statement: Overly prescriptive rules on mortgage lending are the big issue. The ability to repay and the rules governing that topic are geared for people who are W-2 wage earners, not small business people. Many small business people have already been denied credit who would have otherwise qualified for a mortgage, and that is bad policy. Any mortgage bank keeps its own books and should automatically define what is a qualified mortgage. This would help alleviate the ``ability to repay'' rule and allow us to take better care of our customers.

Don't miss what he is saying there. The rules are written for people who get a paycheck from week to week, not for the small business owner and certainly not for the farmers and ranchers.

Here is a statement from a banker in Northwest Oklahoma who asked a simple question: What about a $60 million bank in the northwest corner of Oklahoma? What about other rural markets where smaller, traditional community banks have completely abandoned lines of business and products because the cost of regulation makes it so unprofitable or because the price of regulation and risk from examiners and lawyers bring so much additional scrutiny that you can't afford it?

One thing is certain. When banks are forced to leave lines of business due to government regulation, both customers and communities suffer. Even in markets in which there are other participants in the abandoned product line, the reality is, with fewer competitors, customers pay higher rates and higher fees for a simple service.

This is not a hard issue. For the 2 percent of the largest banks that have

85 percent of the banking assets, I understand there is systemic risk there. For the other 98 percent of the banks in the country that cover 15 percent total of all of the banking assets in the country, why are they considered so systemically important that 27,000 new regulations would need to come down on their 12 employees?

This is a good moment in which to get small towns in rural America working again and to allow people to go down the street to the bankers they know and went to school with rather than to have to drive to some big city and talk to the biggest banks in America and have them try to understand more about rural America.

We can fix this. I am looking forward to passing this reform and allowing our banks not just to make money--they will find a way to make money; they are businesses--but to actually get back to serving the customers they want to serve again in a fair way--farmers and ranchers and small businesses.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. There is no question that I want to see legislative solutions here, and I am actually glad to stand with my colleague from Arizona to talk about how we get a solution on this issue.

As we have seen from Congress, especially over the last 20 years, the challenge has been, if Congress does a temporary patch once, it will do it 20 times again. My concern is for the 7,500 DACA kids who are in my State of Oklahoma. They are looking for an actual solution. They want a sense of permanence. Their status has been in limbo since 2012. The question is, Can we actually resolve this for them?

I have put forward a presentation--Senator Flake has been passionate about this as well--for those individuals to actually end up toward naturalization, not to have a temporary patch of just being in limbo status again. It would be to work them through a process to get them in a line in which they actually end up in naturalization at the end of it. At the same time, there would be border security and some other things that we think would be connected to it. I would like to see us work through this process to actually get to a resolution. A couple of Federal courts have pushed back on the administration and have bought Congress a little more time to be able to resolve this issue. I would like for us to use the better wisdom of that to actually get to a solution during this time period.

The goal is: How do we get this resolved?

I am pleased to say the President has moved a long way on this issue. The President has laid out naturalization for 1.8 million people, has dealt with border security, and has engaged in a conversation to actually get it resolved. We had a completely failed effort a couple of weeks ago with four different proposals coming up, with all four of them getting bipartisan support, but with all four of them failing. I would love to see us get on any one of them and start amending it.

The Senator from Arizona and I have already had conversations about changes that I would like to see even in some of the bills that I supported, but the way to resolve that is get on one of them. Let's actually start amending one, and at the end of it, let's let this body work its will. The frustration I have had with this body in these 3 short years that I have been here is, most of the time, we fail to even debate an issue. When it requires 60 votes to even open debate on something, we just, simply, start the process, never get 60, never debate it, never resolve it. Then this body just moves on to another topic.

I commend my colleague from Arizona for reminding this body again that we have an unanswered issue still sitting out there that needs to be resolved. I agree with him completely on that one. Let's get on it. Let's resolve it long term, and let's provide a sense of permanency to this solution, not another temporary patch that will end up being the same temporary patch we will do 3 years from now, 3 years after that, and 3 years after that.

May I remind our body that we are on our fourth continuing resolution just this year. We need to resolve this and take the moment to be able to do that.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2579

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator modify his request so that the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2579. I further ask that the pending amendments be withdrawn with the exception of the Grassley amendment No. 1959. Finally, I ask that the Grassley amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

I do object.

Mr. President, it was an exceptionally moving service in the Rotunda today. For a man to be able to lie in honor in the Rotunda, for the Nation to pause for a moment, and for the leadership of the House and Senate, on both sides of the aisle, and the President of the United States to all stop and for a moment look at a wooden casket, simple as it was, and remember the legacy of a man who gave his life telling people that Jesus loves you, it is a remarkable day. It is not a common day in the U.S. Senate, in the House, to break in the middle of the day to be able to go to the Rotunda and just contemplate this simple fact: There is a God whom you can know who loves you.

It is interesting to think back on some of the legacy of Dr. Graham. He had been to Oklahoma many times. In 2003, I had the opportunity to be the chair for the Youth Night of that mission. It was a moving night, and there were a lot of people there, as there were at all of his events. That night, there were thousands and thousands of teenagers there, and Dr. Graham unpacked a message about Solomon, a person who had everything. He challenged them--for this person who had everything--but he always came back to say all of these things were vanity, and, really, at the end, it is knowing God that is going to matter.

He even challenged people of power. In that message that night in Oklahoma City, he said:

People like power and prestige. Solomon had more power than

any man in his generation. No nation dared to defy him. But

he looked upon all his mighty military power and said that

even power brings no sense of fulfillment, or joy, or peace.

The Bible talks about another power--the kind of power that

helps when the crisis comes. 2Timothy 1:7: ``God did not give

us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and

of self-discipline.''

And then he said this:

Jesus Christ said, ``All authority in Heaven and on Earth

has been given to me.''

Then he quoted Paul's words: ``For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation.''

That night, many students responded to that simple invitation to be able to know a God who doesn't give you power, but He is power.

If you asked most Oklahomans, though, what was the moment they remember most about Dr. Graham coming to Oklahoma, they would say it was in 1995 after the Federal Building was destroyed by a domestic terrorism event. Dr. Graham was there the Sunday after that tragic attack on Oklahoma and on the Nation. He gave a message to Oklahoma City, to Oklahomans, and to the Nation, and he laid out a sense of hope. Toward the end of his sermon he said this:

This event also reminds us of the brevity and uncertainty

of life. It reminds us that we never know when we're going to

be taken. I doubt that even one of those who went to that

building to work, or to go to the children's place, ever

dreamed that it was their last day on earth. That is why we

each need to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves

to God.

It's ironic that this terrible event took place just three

days after the churches of this city were filled with people

celebrating Easter. Just one week ago today. And throughout

the world, the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Easter on

this day. And Easter always brings hope to all of us. For the

Christian, the Cross tells us that God understands our

suffering, for He took upon Himself at the Cross all our sins

and all of our failures and all of our sufferings. And our

Lord on that Cross asked the question: ``Why? My God, my God,

why hast thou forsaken me?'' And he received his answer. He

knew: To redeem the world. To save you and me from our sins.

To give us assurance that if we died we're going to heaven.

He was saying from the Cross, ``I love you!'' And I know the

heartaches and sorrows and the pain that you feel.

Easter points us beyond the tragedy of the Cross to the

hope of the empty tomb. It tells us that there is hope for

eternal life, that Christ has conquered death. And it also

tells us that God has triumphed over evil and death and hell.

This is our hope, and it can be your hope as well.

Dr. Graham ended his conversation by saying: ``My prayer for you today is that you will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around you and will know in your heart that He will never forsake you, as you trust Him.''

This was a significant day for Oklahomans to begin the healing process together.

It is quite remarkable to have America's pastor be laid to rest. Dr. Graham would assure all of us that the same hope he experienced, that he shared with as many people as he possibly could, was not unique to North Carolina. It wasn't unique to his family. It wasn't even unique to America. It was God's great affection for all people. The offer of that love that could turn around a heart like his, could turn around the heart of a nation, and it could turn around the heart of all people.

It is a good day to remember. It is a rare moment for us to be able to stop and pause in the way we have today. I think it is a significant message that should not be forgotten.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join with many others who are praying for the families in Florida today as they grieve--an overwhelming grief that most parents would never contemplate--because they do not have the opportunity to take their kids to school today because their lives were taken yesterday. I continue to pray for, engage in, and help in any way that we can through this process.

I know so many of the schools in my State have taken active steps over the past many years to provide greater security in the schools, with lockdown access and other things that they have done intentionally to provide greater and greater security. There is no explanation for an individual who is a former student of a school to return to the school with a gun and with who knows what motivation.

So we will continue to pray, engage, and work with schools on security, as we have done from this body in the past, as well as to provide financial resources to help schools and their security systems, to help provide advice and counsel--to do what can be done. We will pray along with the families who struggle deeply, and we will walk with them through their incredible, inexplicable grief.

Mr. President, this is a week that has been set aside for the immigration debate, but today is the first day there has been any real immigration debate on the floor. It is Thursday. All week, this floor has sat mostly empty. For months, there has been the preparation to put immigration bills on the floor, but as of earlier this week, there had only been one bill that had actually been proposed--the President's bill--to be able to say: Here is a middle-ground position.

After months of negotiation and the White House meeting with everybody--both sides of the aisle from the House and the Senate--the White House laid out a proposal and said: Here is a middle ground. I would say that the White House has moved a tremendous amount in this and has dropped a tremendous number of issues. Over the course of the past several months, the White House has moved away from a lot of things.

First, it moved from legal status to saying: OK, let's do citizenship. It is not citizenship for just the 690,000 individuals who are currently in DACA, but the White House opened this up--and I agree--to 1.8 million individuals who are not only DACA students but to those who are also DACA-eligible, those who did not sign up for the process but who could have been eligible for it.

Interestingly enough, the President even moved from President Obama's position. President Obama's position for DACA was that you had to be in the country by 2007. President Trump has moved that and said he will be more open. You will have had to have been in the country by the time President Obama announced the program in 2012. That was a significant concession which has opened up the program for almost 1 million more individuals.

The trade-off was pretty straightforward. He had a long list of items to be able to provide border security--both interior enforcement and border security. Yet, over the past couple of months, the President has backed up and said OK. The Democrats have said they absolutely do not want any interior enforcement of any immigration laws added in any way, so the President backed up and said: Let's start with border security. We want to do interior enforcement in the days ahead, but let's start with border security. The President wanted to address the issue of sanctuary cities, but that is not addressed in this bill. He has dropped that. The President wanted to deal with asylum reform, but he has dropped that issue from his proposal. There is no conversation about refugees and changing how that structure would work. There is no conversation about the H visa programs. He has dropped a lot of issues that were important to the White House and has said: OK. We will deal with those on a different day. Let's limit the issues to this narrow group of four issues, and that is all we will deal with.

He dropped a lot of other issues for it. Border security, dealing with citizenship for those individuals who are in DACA or who are DACA- eligible, dealing with the issue of family migration and how that works together, and then dealing with the issue of the diversity lottery-- that is it. Everything else dropped away.

It is not comprehensive--it is small--but border security had very clear definitions. Border security is not just a wall. I have heard some individuals say, even on this floor today, that a wall will not accomplish anything. I would say the President agrees with that. A wall by itself doesn't accomplish anything. A wall is needed in some sections of the border to slow down illegal crossings, especially in urban areas, where there are urban areas on both sides of the border. It is

needed in those areas, but a wall by itself doesn't accomplish anything. You can go around it, and you can go over it eventually. What you need are additional agents. What you need are additional enforcement authorities. What is needed is to be able to break down some of the legal loopholes.

Some proposals that have come out in the last few hours have said they want to strike a bipartisan compromise and say: OK, we will provide for wall funding, and we will allow for the large legalization and naturalization of individuals who are DACA and DACA-eligible. That is a fair trade-off, they say. The problem is when you read the fine print of what that means. I go back to the same statement: If they say a wall doesn't accomplish anything, and all they provide is really a wall and a few technical things around it, then the question remains, What is missing? What would make the difference?

What would make the difference are some very basic things to be able to close legal loopholes. That is what is in the President's proposal-- none of them onerous, none of them out of line. They are just dealing with the basic legal loopholes.

We all have to admit, when you see the records from the Department of Homeland Security and from Customs and Border Protection, that there are individuals who cross the border, both adults and unaccompanied minors, who are coached by coyotes as they move through Mexico: When you cross the border, here is what to say. If you say these things, then you will get access into the government.

They know that if they say certain phrases, they are in. I hate to say that is actually true, and it is unaddressed in any of these bipartisan compromises. I don't think it is unrealistic to say that if you go around one of the barriers or even through one of the gated entrances and cross through and immediately get caught by someone on the other side but say the magic phrases, you are in. We have to resolve that, and there are some basic ways to resolve it.

If you come in and have a credible claim of fear or a claim of asylum and cross the border and immediately speak those words, currently you are allowed into the country for 2 or 3 years while your trial goes through the process. Only about 30 percent of those are actually successful. That 30 percent number is significant.

What do we do to resolve it? Why don't we add additional judges and additional courts, and instead of waiting 3 years before you have that hearing, you have that hearing within 3 weeks? No evidence has changed in that time period. You are still allowed to have counsel, and you are still allowed to have insight. But we actually resolve it instead of allowing people to come into the country for 3 years and telling them ``Here is a court date and a court location to appear,'' and you do not know if they appear. In fact, the majority of them do not appear for their court dates, but they are somewhere, at a location unknown, in the country. It is not unreasonable to resolve this issue; yet it is unresolved in all of these bipartisan proposals.

There is no fix to deal with criminal aliens or those individuals who come into the country who are gang members. It is a small minority, but there are those individuals, and there seems to be no fix for those things at all.

There is no dealing with the issue of the hiring process for the Department of Homeland Security. If you are in remote areas on the northern border--there are requests to add additional compensation to some of these areas or to give additional benefits to some of these Customs and Border Protection folks because they work in very remote areas along the border. They ask for this year after year after year, and there is nothing addressed in the bipartisan agreement. It is just the wall and asking: Shouldn't that be enough? It is not.

There is no dealing with drugs like fentanyl and trying to interdict those in the border areas.

It doesn't provide any deterrence for the visa overstays. About 40 percent of the individuals who are illegally in this country right now came on a tourist visa or on some other kind of visa and just overstayed it. We have to resolve those issues as well. That seems to be an obvious issue.

There is no dealing with some of the basic statements. What do I mean by that? Under some of the bipartisan bills that are coming out, you prove yourself to be a DACA-eligible individual by your own verbal statement that you are eligible. No documentation is required. I think that is an obvious loophole. If you are DACA-eligible, even, in fact, under President Obama's proposal, you have to show documentation that you are DACA-eligible. Yet, in these new proposals, you don't. You just have to say that you are eligible, and suddenly you are eligible. That is a major problem.

The structure of how some of the bipartisan agreements have come out has also become a big issue for me because it doesn't really deal with just this 10-year. In one section of the bill, it says it is a 10-year path toward citizenship. I have no issue, if we can do border security, with having a 10-year path toward citizenship. It allows us to have 10 years to deal with the basic border security things. It gives certainty to those individuals who are in the country that they are headed toward citizenship. I have absolutely no problem with that, but the bipartisan agreement that has come out doesn't do that. In one section, it says a 10-year path to citizenship. In another section, it gives the recipients the opportunity to get legal permanent residency--green cards--much faster, which then moves them on to a much faster track. It is a little bit of a sleight of hand that we say 10 years in one part and in another part say that it is actually 5 to 7 years. Say what you mean. Don't try to say two different things and have two different paths.

I was also interested in a change that was slipped in at the very back of the bipartisan bill that makes an enormous change to the status of every single individual in the country. Let me just read this. It is being said that this bill is just about a wall and just about DACA, but let me read this section in the back of the bill: In carrying out immigration enforcement activities, the Secretary shall prioritize available immigration enforcement resources to aliens who have been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor, three or more misdemeanor offenses, pose a threat to national security or public safety, or are unlawfully present in the United States, and--that is an important word in there, ``and''--they arrived in the United States after June 30, 2018.

Do you know what that says? That says the Department of Homeland Security can't go after anyone in the country illegally who arrives here before June 30, 2018. In other words, the race is on. If you can get into the country and across the border before June 30 of this year, you are in, and you have amnesty--for millions. That is not about DACA; that is every single individual in the country unlawfully present. If you are in the country unlawfully present before June 30 of this year, according to this bill, you are in until you commit a felony. As long as you don't do that, you will never have any enforcement of any type. I was stunned to see that slipped into the back of the bill.

This was dropped last night, and we still have the opportunity to go through it, but I am quite surprised at the number of people who have pushed back on the President and have either not read his proposal or have ignored what he put on the table. It is not an unreasonable proposal. It is a straightforward, commonsense proposal. I would encourage those folks who oppose it to read it first and to see what it actually says.

There has been pushback on the issue of chain migration or family reunification. Let me set this in context. Right now, we have a 20-year backlog for individuals coming into the country legally. That is an incentive not to do legal immigration because if you are going to wait in the line 20 years long, many are just not going to go through the process. Unless we reform how we do the family integration, once 2 million additional people are added to this in the 10-year time period, I have no question we will move from a 20-year backlog to a 25-year backlog as family members also reconnect with those individuals coming in. What happens at that point? A bad situation gets even worse in our immigration policy.

The issue of family reunification and the proposals that were laid out have not been partisan proposals in the past,

but suddenly because President Trump put it out there, it is suddenly an unrealistic partisan proposal. May I remind everyone that this issue was also dealt with in the 2013 Gang of 8 bill that got around 70 votes in the Senate--this very similar issue of family reunification and how this would work. In 1995, during the Clinton administration, a proposal was made by Democratic House Member Barbara Jordan, leading the Commission on Immigration that made almost the exact same proposal in 1995.

This was just not a partisan issue until now. For some reason, because President Trump wants to propose it, it is an angry Republican issue. It has been a bipartisan, commonsense issue for a long time on how to deal with an obvious issue in our immigration reform.

I would encourage my colleagues to read the bill and see what is in it, not what is being said in the media about it. See what is really in it, and if there is a question and a dialogue about it, let's amend it. Let's go through it because it is a very unique and powerful opportunity to set it right for those individuals who are in the DACA and DACA-eligible population to finally not be in limbo but to finally have permanence and to know they are home in this country where most of them have grown up; that they are not just long-term guests, they are home.

This is the way to resolve this but at the same time do what Americans have cried for, for a long time--actually secure our borders and start the process of reforming our immigration system in a way that makes sense for everybody--for the immigrant, for the born citizen of the United States, for the naturalized citizen, and to make sure it is fair for everyone. That is not unreasonable. In fact, it is a good idea.

If it were only proposed by someone else, I think a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle would agree with it. Take the politics out of it and look at the policy. Let's resolve this for the country.

I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Senate is probably interested in the status of the debate on immigration. This debate started in September in hallways, committee rooms, and in our offices--opportunities for us to talk about these issues now for months.

Several weeks ago, there was a government shutdown demanding that we actually have a vote on immigration right now or that we don't reopen the government. After 3 days of government shutdown, the government was reopened, demanding that we move the immigration debate earlier to make sure we would get this done earlier. Now it is Wednesday of the week that it was supposed to occur, and the proposals are not out on the table. It has been a frustrating journey.

I can't even begin to count the number of hours I have spent in bipartisan conversations trying to circle around a simple set of issues. How do we resolve a small group of issues related to immigration?

I thought this was resolved in some ways. Back in early January, there was a large bipartisan meeting with the House and Senate to discuss what was widely televised as the scope for immigration and the key issues we were going to address. It came down to four issues, and there was agreement among the leaders, among those in the room, that these are the only four issues we are going to deal with: DACA and those DACA-eligible and how we move them toward citizenship, border security and all the things around border security, diversity visa lottery, and family reunification. All of those have been dealt with in legislation before--in fact, for decades, in one version or another-- except for the issue of DACA. That one is new. That is the only one that hasn't been done with legislation before. The others all have.

The Gang of 8 bill in 2013 had border security and all kinds of different issues related to both construction of walls, technology, and legal loopholes. It had diversity lottery. It had chain migration in it. If you want to go back to an immigration study during the Clinton administration, in 1995, there was a proposal put out by Barbara Jordan, the Democratic House Member from Texas, who led that particular study during the Clinton administration dealing with chain migration, dealing with how we transition to merit-based immigration.

This has been dealt with literally in hearings for decades, but what I have heard for the past several months is that there is no time to do any of those things. The only time that we have is to deal with DACA. We can't even discuss anything else. Meeting after meeting after meeting since early November, I have heard the same thing: There is no time. There is no time. There is no time.

Now we are getting down to the day, and there is still a conversation about how we deal with these four simple issues that we have talked about for months, that the House and Senate have debated for decades, and on which we have had an untold number of hearings for decades to try to actually land them, to get legislation ready, and to get this resolved.

Let me just focus on a few things, because a few of us have put out a proposal that covers those four areas that was a middle-ground proposal. It is certainly not everything that I would like to have in border security, and it is certainly not everything that Democrats would like to have, but it is a middle ground between all of those. It is one the White House has already announced that they will certainly sign. It has 1.8 million people moving into naturalization, or citizenship. These are the individuals whose parents brought them illegally, but they were children at the time. Those individuals came into the country. They have now lived here for years. They know no other country, on the whole. Those individuals are offered an opportunity to become citizens of the United States 10 years from now.

Why 10 years from now? That gives a time period of 10 years, which is commonly agreed that it will take to be able to secure the border. In that 10-year time period, the border security could be put in place to make sure we have a secure border. It is not an unreasonable thing. In that same 10-year time period, about 2 million people are going to move, actually, into citizenship.

How does that affect the rest of our process? Well, let me tell you first how it affects it. Right now we have a 20-year backlog to be able to come into the United States legally--20 years to be able to come through that process. Once we add another 2 million people in that process and all the family that will be connected to them, in all likelihood, that backlog moves from 20 years to 25 years. It is ridiculous at 20 years, and it is even worse at 25.

We all know that this issue of family migration and the broad allowance of people coming in, not based on what skills they have but based on being someone's brother-in-law, is not the best way to do immigration, and we are the only country that does it like this. Seventy percent of the people who come into our country legally come through a family connection--being someone's brother, being someone's sister, being a relative in some way that they are able to come into the country.

Canada, just to our north, is exactly the opposite. Sixty-three percent of the people who come into Canada legally through their immigration system come because they are bringing a work skill. Now, I don't want to oppose anyone coming from anywhere in the world. There is a uniqueness to the United States and how we handle immigration, and we allow people from all over the world, from every country, to come. That should remain the same, but we should have one simple requirement: They come to bring something to the Nation. I don't think that is too hard of a hill to climb.

It is not a matter of who you are related to. You certainly should be able to bring in your spouse and your children, but brothers and sisters and other adults and such that would be in your family, maybe, should come based on their own merit, as well, for them to be able to come and be a part of our great culture, as well, or they are able to come visit and come stay long periods of time but not necessarily come for citizenship, unless you are coming to bring them. Again, that doesn't seem too difficult.

The diversity lottery hasn't been the challenging issue. Quite frankly, that has been an issue that was in the 2013 Gang of 8 bill, saying: Why do we have 50,000 visas for individuals from anywhere, from around the world, who can come who don't necessarily bring a skill at all? Why don't we just add a skill requirement or an educational requirement? We could say that you are welcome to come from anywhere, but at least we should know that those who

are coming from anywhere and everywhere bring something to the American economy. Again, that hasn't been controversial nor partisan in the past, and now, suddenly, it has become that.

The border security part of it has been the most confusing part of the debate for me on this thing. Months ago, some of my Democratic colleagues over and over said: The wall will do nothing. There is no benefit in the wall. If you put up a 20-foot wall, there will be a 21- foot ladder. It will do absolutely nothing.

Now, the conversation is this: Well, we will give citizenship to DACA, and we will give you some money to build a wall, and we will call it even. That has never been the request, and everyone knows it.

The request has been border security, not just a wall. I am very aware that the President has talked about a big beautiful wall a lot. I get that. But it has always been about border security, not just about putting up a wall in certain places. There has never been an emphasis to build 2,000 miles of wall. There isn't a need for a wall in certain urban areas, but what is really needed is border security and everyone knows it. I don't understand why border security has suddenly become a controversial issue.

What we have asked for and what we have laid out in a proposal seems to be a very middle-ground proposal. It doesn't do interior enforcement. Quite frankly, our Democratic colleagues have said: Absolutely no additional interior enforcement--we are open to border security, but nothing that secures the interior of the country.

So we have said: OK, that will be a future bill dealing with interior enforcement, but we do feel like border security is very important.

So they have said: OK, we will give you some money to build a wall in sections.

Can I say what they are trying to exclude? Border security, when you lay it out, is also the legal loopholes. So here are just a few of the things that we have laid out, which I don't think should be that controversial, that we have included in our language and said: If we are going to do border security, let's be serious about it. For instance, we have asked for additional penalties for people who do human smuggling. Right now, it is a slap on the wrist if you do human smuggling into the country. So coyotes and others are able to do human smuggling into the country in transit.

There are also people who are individuals in our country watching out for Border Patrol agents, radioing other people saying: Hey, Border Patrol is here. Go a different direction. They are actually helping to divert people away. We think we should increase the penalties. Our Democratic colleagues have pushed back and said no on that. It doesn't seem unreasonable to increase the penalties for human smuggling and the same for drug smuggling. To increase the penalties for those who are spying out and redirecting people who are doing drug smuggling doesn't seem too hard to be able to accomplish.

We would like to allow an individual State and their National Guard to be able to participate with Border Patrol. Now the National Guard is not law enforcement. What does the National Guard bring, though? They bring helicopters that have infrared technology. They are able to fly over sections of the border to be able to see the area below and to help direct Border Patrol to it. To participate with the National Guard and allow them to bring some of those resources those States already have shouldn't be that difficult. That is just a part of border security, but our Democratic colleagues are pushing back on that.

We would like to do an initiative to be able to work with Mexico and provide Mexico some additional funding and support and consultation on their border between Guatemala and Mexico, the southern border of Mexico--what is literally kind of our first border. It is their southern border. We have been pushed back, though, to say that is not border security. It is slowing down people illegally trafficking through Central America into Mexico. We think that is part of it.

How about this one? All along the Rio Grande in Texas, there is Carrizo cane that are there--this large cane that grows in the river in that area. In that area, you are able to hide people, drugs--whatever it may be--in this tall cane because you just disappear in it. It is on both sides of the border. We think we should do an eradication of that cane so that you can actually see through it. It hasn't been controversial in the past, but suddenly it is controversial: No, we don't want to eradicate the cane.

That cane is only there because it is hiding people and contraband. We think we should be able to do that.

We think we should be able to add an electromagnetic spectrum at our border ports of entry so you can look through a vehicle, looking for chemical parts of the spectrum and to be able to see if we can eradicate drugs that are being trafficked into our country. I don't think that should be that controversial.

There is getting secure communications so that our individuals and the Border Patrol can talk to each other and can interact with other law enforcement to make sure no one from a transnational criminal organization is listening in.

We should have license plate readers at the port of entry to be able to help track that and speed it up.

Doing biometrics at the entry and exit is something that has been required since the 9/11 Commission. So we can accelerate that process that as people come in and out of our country we know when they come in legally, but we also know when they depart legally.

There is dealing with what is sometimes called catch and release. Individuals who come into the country and cross illegally into the country are held in detention for a short period of time until they get due process, and every individual gets due process. This is not trying to remove due process from anyone. But as they cross into the country illegally, we are able to pick them up, detain them, and make sure they have due process. Some of them make claims for asylum or make claims of credible fear or other things. Instead of doing a hearing on that, we actually give them a piece of paper that is called a notice to appear and release them into the country and say: We will see you in about 2 years for your hearing date--instead of actually doing the hearing right then. Nothing has changed. No facts have changed. No information has changed. Nothing has changed during that time of delay. We just release them because we don't have enough judges or enough courts or enough attorneys or enough advocates to be able to accomplish that. So they are released for years in the country. You may be surprised to know that most of the individuals never show up for that hearing. They are just released into the country.

There is also a statement saying: Well, what about unaccompanied minors? Again, you might be interested to know that three-fourths of the unaccompanied minors who cross into the country are actually 14 years old or up. These are not 6-year-olds who are crossing in and 5- year-olds who are crossing in. Most of them are older teenagers. Two- thirds of the people who are coming in as unaccompanied minors are actually teenage boys, and most of them come in to be able to work. So the question is this: How do we handle that?

I think we do fair detention. I think we go through the due process and make a decision right then. Again, you will be interested to know that for individuals who actually do show up for their court hearing, which is a small group, about 30 percent of those who go to the court hearing do get asylum once they finally get to the court hearing. But we are not getting to the court hearing for most of those individuals. That shouldn't be that controversial. We should be able to handle how we go through that process in an equitable and fair way.

I would like us to be able to deal with the cost, quite frankly, of detention. We have asked for a simple part of this process on border security, to honor the taxpayer, to say that we will not spend more than $500 a night on housing individuals whom we have in detention. Now, I think most Americans--certainly most Oklahomans--would like to stay in a hotel that costs $500 a night. Putting a cap on how much we spend on that per person per night, I think, is a reasonable thing to be able to put into it, but we have had pushback.

We have asked for emergency immigration judges. Right now there are almost 700,000 people in a backlog in our immigration courts--almost 700,000. We don't think it is unreasonable to ask for emergency judges to come in to help us with the backlog. We are not talking about untrained judges. We are talking about judges who are in the Federal system who are knowledgeable of these issues and to do a surge of judges to help us get caught up.

We should be able to do all of these things. None of these issues should be controversial. This is what it means when you start talking about real border security, not just adding a wall in some places, not just adding a couple of additional agents but actually putting the things around them that they need to actually be able to enforce the law.

I think people lose track of the fact that ICE folks and Customs and Border Patrol are not enemies of our State. They are American law enforcement. They work for our country to keep us safe and to enforce the laws of our Nation. I am appalled at the way they are spoken of on this floor and treated in conversations. They are American law enforcement enforcing American laws. If there is a problem with what they are enforcing, this body should vote on it and fix the law, not beat up on the people who are enforcing the law and doing what we have asked them to do as a Congress.

I hope in the days ahead we can actually get this passed. I hope we can actually move toward citizenship for 1.8 million people, which the President has asked for, and I think it is a reasonable thing to be able to do for those individuals who came into our country as children. But I also hope that this time we don't say that we are going to do citizenship and not do border security. I hope we don't just throw some money and pretend we are doing it. I hope we, as a body, can have a serious conversation and say: Let's actually do border security and help us as a nation to establish a secure border. I hope we actually deal with some of the biggest issues on immigration and can walk through this debate in a reasonable way without the emotion and heat, but thinking this through because this affects the future of our country for a very long time.

With that, I yield the floor.