Floor Statements

Mr. President, there is a lot of conversation about all that is moving this week in the Senate and the House and the executive branch. There is a lot of conversation about 100 days. It is somewhat of a look back, and it is reasonable for Americans to be able to look back and say the beginning of a new Presidency or the beginning of a new session of Congress has begun and what has already happened. There has been quite a bit that has actually happened, but let me highlight one specific area. I want to highlight an area that has moved and to, quite frankly, highlight an area that has not.

What has moved has been a lot of conversation about regulation. When I walked into Congress just a few years ago, I had a lot of people in my State who would catch me and ask for one specific thing. They said: I don't want anything other than to make it stop. Because every time they get news, every time they open up something from an association or try to be able to track something, all they got was a new regulation. Some of them were large and some small, but it seemed like every time they opened the mail, they had a new requirement from some entity they had never heard of, 1,000 miles away, telling them how to operate their business or to submit some new form. Whether they are a school or a hospital or a small business or a large business, whether they are doing manufacturing or are service-oriented or technology, the flood of regulations coming out of Washington, DC, caused people around my State to say: Make it stop; we are trying to catch up. And literally they are hiring more people for compliance than they are to actually do what their business is designed to do. At some point, they want to hire somebody to actually do their business.

A dramatic shift happened starting January 20 of this year when the administration stepped in and for a moment said: Pause on regulations. And literally the Nation could take a deep breath. They didn't turn anything back. They didn't turn anything off. America didn't become less safe. They asked a simple question: How can people actually get involved in the process? And before a regulation comes out, we make sure that it is, No. 1, consistent with the law, and No. 2, that the people who are affected by it actually get a chance to raise their hands and say: When you do a regulation, make sure you consider this.

It doesn't seem unreasonable. If we are going to be a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is a good idea to have people involved in the process of the regulations that affect them. The government should not be their enemy. The government should be their ally. It should be the way to make sure that we have fair rules, that everyone has a consistent set of guidelines and that those guidelines don't change all the time.

Before this year, there had been only one time in the past decade that the Congressional Review Act was used. The Congressional Review Act was actually due to a fellow Oklahoman named Don Nickles who, in the Senate years ago, passed a simple piece of legislation to say that if a regulation is promulgated by an administration--any administration--that is not consistent with the desires of Congress, that Congress can pull it back out in the first few days after it was passed, and most of the time, it is legislative days--it is actually months in calendar time. In the first few months it is in existence, Congress can pull that regulation out and look at it and say: Is this consistent with what Congress passed? If it is not, Congress would have a fast-track process to be able to look at it and say: This is inconsistent with what Congress desired when it passed the law; that it had to go through the House, the Senate, and then to the White House to be signed. That has happened only one time.

In the past few months, Congress has passed now 13 Congressional Review Acts--13 different reviews of different regulations that were put down by the previous administration in their final months, some of them in their final days of--the administration--an administration that lasted 8 full years. These were the things they crammed into the very end, what are called midnight regulations. Those regulations cost billions of dollars, and some had very little review. Thirteen different times this Congress has pulled those out. It is literally billions of dollars in regulations that were laid on the economy and millions of hours of work on people filling out compliance forms and submitting things to Washington, DC, that most likely no one will ever read.

Those thirteen bills that have now been signed into law have helped free up our economy, and it has started a process that is very simple: What do we do to make sure that we have good regulations as a nation, that they stay consistent and have the maximum number of people involved?

The administration has also laid out something that many called a radical idea; that is, for every one regulation that goes in, an agency would pull two out; to go back and review old regulations and say: Are there other regulations that need to come out? For those who have called this a radical idea, I have had to smile and say: You realize the United Kingdom has done that for years. Canada has done that for years. Australia has done that for years.

It is not a radical, crazy idea; it is a simple statement to say that when regulations go in, we need to have consideration for those who are already regulated and say: Are we burying them in new compliance requirements? Is there an area where we can help free them of things that are not needed anymore, that are old, that are not used or not even appropriate anymore? It is a reasonable thing to be able to look at. It is not in statute, it is an Executive order, but it is one of those things that I think are wise for agencies to be able to take a look at.

Every administration over the past several decades has said they are going to do what is called a retrospective review--go back and look at it. This administration has said: We are really going to look at it. If a new regulation goes in, we have to go back and review and see if two can come out at the same time, to force that retrospective review.

Many other areas of regulations are coming out, but the primary issue that has come out is very simple; that is, slowing down the process and making sure it is wise to be able to impose new regulations. We should have them in health and safety areas, but we shouldn't do regulations just because someone in Washington, DC, thinks it is a good idea to be able to run everyone else's business.

With any set of decisions made by the executive branch, we should resolve many of these things in law. The Congressional Review Act-- those are all in law. Those have all been settled. The executive actions like the ``one in, two out''--that is an executive action. A future executive can flip it back around and say: We are not going to go back and review it at all.

I proposed a whole series of issues that we need to deal with on regulatory actions. I chair the Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, in fact. We have had very bipartisan conversations to say: Where can we find common ground, and what do we need to do to be able to resolve this issue of regulations just showing up?

So we have set out a simple set of ideas, one beginning in small business. If we are going to start with regulatory issues, let's start in the area where we have the greatest amount of agreement; that is, on small businesses. Small businesses should have an opportunity to have a voice at the table. Now, when regulations are put out, often those regulations are put out and only the largest businesses are consulted on them--those that might have lobbyists or government relations or have a team of attorneys to be able to go engage with the Federal Government and get their input considered.

We required years ago that small businesses get a voice. The problem is, many agencies actually don't do it. We need to be able to press the issue and put into statute an absolute requirement that small businesses be consulted. So when a regulation is created, the people who are affected the most--like in my State of Oklahoma, where 97 percent of the businesses are small businesses--that those folks actually get a voice.

It may shock some people in this Chamber to know that small business owners in Oklahoma don't wake up every day and read the Federal Register to see if there is an area they have to give notice and comment to. It may be stunning to know that they don't have a team of lawyers at every small business. In fact, there are towns in Oklahoma where there are many small businesses but there is not a lawyer in that town. We should not require every business to hire attorneys and to read the Federal Register every day for them to be able to stay in business. We should actually reach out to them and say: We are not opposed to small businesses; we want to make sure we facilitate them.

Here is a simple idea of many ideas in the small business bill that I have--not only getting greater input and to make sure they are in consideration, but how about this simple idea: If there is a paperwork violation for a small business, they are not fined immediately. They have forgiveness for that first-time offense. Many of them didn't even know there was a certain amount of paperwork that had to be turned in. It showed up as a requirement in the Federal Register. They are running their small business. They weren't tracking it. Someone comes in and evaluates and says ``There is a piece of paper you haven't turned in'' and drops a $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 fine on them for not submitting something, and they had no idea what it was.

First-time paperwork forgiveness is a simple idea. To actually be engaged where the Federal Government can go to a small business and say ``Hey, you missed one,'' and if they are not health or safety related issues, we give them forgiveness in the process--why should that be so hard for us to do?

We have another piece of legislation we proposed called early participation in regulations. Before a regulation is written by an agency, this would require that they actually put out the word that they are thinking about writing a regulation on a certain topic and get as much input as they can, so before they even write the regulation and we are fighting over whether we should use ``or'' or ``and'' in a section, we actually talk about whether it is needed at all, or if they are going to write it, make sure it has these certain issues in it-- again, getting more people involved in the process.

Just a week ago, there was a march through this town and through many towns saying: We need to have great science in our Nation. I could not agree more. We should have quality science in our research. We should have engagement from science when we put policy papers together.

One of the challenges we currently have and one of the things we are trying to correct with another piece of legislation is just on using best science, just requiring agencies, when they make a decision about something in a regulation, to actually use peer-reviewed, good science that can be shared with other people. We bump into issues now commonly with agencies where they say they have made a decision on some of the regulations, and we ask for the science behind it, and they say that the science is proprietary and they can't share it with us or the American people. The American people aren't good about withholding a secret on something that actually affects their day-to-day life. Don't lay a new requirement on them and tell them: Trust us--we have thought about this, and this is the right way to go. Americans aren't great with that. They just want to be able to know the facts behind it so they can see that science themselves.

So getting best science is something we have talked about within the framework of the Administrative Procedures Act for a long time-- something many administrations for the past several decades have said we should do. Well, let's go ahead and do it, and let's require that we actually have best science out there.

This body, with a voice vote, just a year ago, passed a bill called TSCA. That TSCA bill dealt with chemicals and how we are going to approve chemicals and how the EPA can do it. We put new language in that requiring good science, peer-reviewed science, and on a voice vote from everyone in this body, we agreed that is the best way to handle science on chemicals.

So what did I do? I took that exact language that we all agreed to on TSCA and said: Let's apply that to every agency so that whenever an agency of any type makes a decision that is science-based, it has good transparency and it is peer-reviewed. We have agreed that the EPA should do it dealing with chemicals; let's agree that everyone should do it. Let's agree on how we handle guidance, to not allow agencies to be able to create guidance documents. Let's have good transparency and simplicity.

We have a simple bill, as odd as this may sound, that just says that for whatever regulation is out there, the agencies also have to put a description out on it in plain language that a non-attorney can understand in just 100 words, just a 100-word description of what it is. Right now there are folks who actually do try to research things, and if you are not a trained attorney, you can't even understand what it means. So just plain-language descriptions of regulations are called for.

These should all be areas of common ground. These should all be straightforward issues that aren't partisan issues but are commonsense issues.

We have made progress on regulations over the past 100 days. The American people have now been able to take a breath as regulations are not coming

out at rapid speed. We still need them, though. In the days ahead, we need to do good regulations, so let's figure out a good way to do it.

Let me make one more note on the opposite side. We have made progress in regulations, with a ways to go. Where we have not made progress in the past 100 days is on how we do budgeting.

There is a group of us who have talked for several years now and have said that we have to change the way we do budgeting. Year after year, the American people have said: Are we going to have another continuing resolution? Are we going to have another omnibus bill? Are we going to be late again on budgeting?

Year after year, Congress has said: Yes, we are.

Folks around my State occasionally catch me and say: This is different.

I smile at them and say: No, it is not different.

The way we do budgeting was created right after Watergate in 1974 to create a more transparent process. What they actually created was a process so difficult that it has only worked four times since 1974-- four times. So if it feels like every year you are saying ``How come the budget process didn't work again?'' it is because every year but four, since 1974, the budget process didn't work.

At some point, we have to say: The budget process is not in the Constitution. Let's change the way we are doing the process. They were well-meaning in 1974 when they made that process; it just didn't work. So let's fix it instead of saying that once again it didn't work.

We will never get a better product on our budget until we fix the process of our budget. We will never be able to solve the budget debt and deficit issues we have with this continuing resolution autopilot system and with an omnibus system that seems to just perpetuate the same issues over and over again.

We have made specific proposals: doing the budget every 2 years, getting time to get more predictability, to get more time to be able to walk through the research of it; eliminating budget gimmicks, and there are a mess of budget gimmicks that are out there; and getting a better long-term view. The budget has what is called a 10-year window now, where we have to budget over 10 years. So what happens? Congress creates a budget that blows up in the 11th year. Well, that has been done year after year after year, and we have a lot of eleventh-hour years now stacking up and a lot of major problems that are out there.

We need to find a way to prevent us from ever having to get in a conversation about a government shutdown. We have a bill called the government shutdown prevention bill that would keep us from ever having that, and it would put the pressure back on Congress and the White House to resolve the issues but would prevent us from ever having a government shutdown fight. We shouldn't argue about whether the government is going to be opened or closed. We should argue about how we are going to handle the issue of budgeting and how we are going to actually be able to get us back to balance.

There are a lot of simple, commonsense things that are out there that we can do, but we as a body have agreed that we are going to actually tackle the way we do budgeting. That is going to involve some focus and some time commitment and a risk to say: How it was done in the 1970s is not the way we should do it now. It didn't work. Let's change the system so we can actually get us back on track and bring some predictability again to what we are doing.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have listened over the last several weeks to accusations and a type of smear campaign, quite frankly, of a good judge and a good man: Neil Gorsuch.

It is remarkable to me to see that the debate has become more about character destruction than it has been about policy differences. I understand there are policy differences, but why does it have to come to this?

In the past few weeks, I have heard on this floor that Neil Gorsuch shouldn't be a Justice on the Supreme Court because he has no independence from President Trump.

No. 2, I have heard he was handpicked by far right groups like the Federalist Society, a group of legal minds committed to the original interpretation of the Constitution--clearly, a scandalous group of radicals.

I have heard that Judge Gorsuch supports torture, he is against privacy, he hates truckers, he will step on the little guy, he will help only big corporations, he is just not mainstream, and I have heard that he shouldn't be selected because he was not approved first by the Democratic Senate leadership.

All of these reasons have been given for a historic change in Senate tradition not to give a Supreme Court Justice an up-or-down vote. Block him on a procedural motion; for the first time ever, block a Supreme Court Justice on a procedural motion with a partisan vote.

Let me take these one at a time as I walk through this.

No. 1, I heard constantly that he is not independent enough from President Trump. As far as I know, he had never even met President Trump before. This didn't seem to be a standard, to be independent from the current sitting President.

Let me give an example: Justice Elena Kagan, who is clearly qualified as a legal mind, but I would say Republicans have serious policy differences with her. Justice Kagan was allowed to have an up-or-down vote. This body did not have a standard that they had to be independent from the President. If they had a standard like that, Justice Kagan would have never been on the bench. Why do I say that?

On May 10, 2010, President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. From 1997 to 1999, she served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and was Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for President Clinton. In 2009, she was confirmed Solicitor General of the United States for President Obama. She worked for President Obama in the Obama White House as his Solicitor General and then was taken directly out of the White House and put on the Supreme Court.

I would say that is not independent from the President. So this mythological new standard that any Court Justice nominee needs to be independent from the President clearly wasn't in place when Elena Kagan was being heard.

It is also interesting to me that one of the most talked about decisions from Judge Gorsuch was a Chevron decision that he put out. The whole crux of that decision was the independence of the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. Let me just read a few paragraphs from the decision he wrote. He wrote this:

For whatever the agency may be doing under Chevron, the

problem remains that courts are not fulfilling their duty to

interpret the law and declare invalid agency actions

inconsistent with those interpretations in the cases and

controversies that come before them. A duty expressly

assigned to them by the APA [Administrative Procedures Act]

and one often likely compelled by the Constitution itself.

That's a problem for the judiciary. And it is a problem for

the people whose liberties may now be impaired not by an

independent decisionmaker seeking to declare the law's

meaning as fairly as possible--the decisionmaker promised to

them by law--but by an avowedly politicized administrative

agent seeking to pursue whatever policy whim may rule the

day. Those problems remain uncured by this line of reply.

In other words, the judiciary needs to have oversight of the executive agency in what they put out as far as agency rulings, not allowing the White House or any agency to just make any decision they like. He continued writing:

Maybe as troubling, this line of reply invites a nest of

questions even taken on its own terms. Chevron says that we

should infer from any statutory ambiguity Congress's

``intent'' to ``delegate'' its ``legislative authority'' to

the executive to make ``reasonable'' policy choices. But

where exactly has Congress expressed this intent? Trying to

infer the intentions of an institution composed of 535

members is a notoriously doubtful business.

In all the accusations that he is not independent of the President, in one of his most famous opinions, he declares that we absolutely need to have independence from the White House--of any White House--and have a clear separation of powers between judiciary, legislative, and executive. That actually does not stand up to simple muster. So the first thing falls: no independence from the President.

The second issue which came up often was that he was handpicked by far-right groups. There were all these groups that handpicked him, so somehow that made it horrible that these different groups would actually try to support him.

I go back to Justice Kagan. Again, that wasn't the standard at that time, and I could use numerous judges through that process. Elena Kagan was supported by the AFL-CIO, by the Human Rights Campaign, by numerous environmental groups like WildEarth Guardians, Sierra Club, and the National Organization for Women. She had a lot of different liberal or progressive groups that were very outspoken in support of and helping to push her nomination.

There is nothing wrong with that. She was a nominee who was actively engaged in White House politics; she was actively engaged in Democratic campaigns. Before that, as far as working for the Dukakis campaign, she was a Democratic activist, and it was well known. That did not preclude her from getting an up-or-down vote for the Supreme Court because she is sitting on the Supreme Court today. There was no cloture vote mandate or requirement for a 60-vote threshold as there was pushed by this minority.

This issue that somehow you can't be handpicked or that having some groups that would support you from the outside somehow precludes you from being a serious consideration is not legitimate, and everyone knows it.

I have also heard individuals out there saying that he is for torture, he is against privacy, he hates truckers, he will step on the little guy, he is only for big corporations, and he is not mainstream.

Here is the problem: When you actually look at the history, it is very different from that. Of the 2,700 cases that Judge Gorsuch has been involved in, in the 10\1/2\ years he has been on the Tenth Circuit, he has been overturned in his opinions once--once in 2,700 cases; 97 percent of the time his cases were settled unanimously, and 99 percent of the time he voted with the majority.

Lest you don't know the Tenth Circuit as we know the Tenth Circuit in Oklahoma, because it is the circuit court for our State, the majority of the judges on the Tenth Circuit are judges selected by President Carter, President Clinton, and President Obama. They hold the majority in the Tenth Circuit. So to say that he voted with them in the majority 99 percent of the time would be to say that the Carter, Clinton, and Obama appointees also apparently had these radical ideas. It is just not consistent with the facts.

Then I have heard of late that the President should have engaged with Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle to be asked for their approval of the nominee before that nominee was ever brought. Well, I don't know if that has ever been a requirement. There have been times that Presidents in the past have had conversations with people on both side of the aisle. Fine, but it is certainly not a requirement of the Constitution, and it certainly doesn't preclude a nomination.

It is interesting to me that Judge Gorsuch offered to meet with 100 Senators one-on-one, face-to-face. Only 80 of them accepted his offer; 20 of them refused to even meet with him face-to-face. He did 4 days of hearings in the Judiciary Committee, 4 solid, long days, where he answered every possible question he could answer.

He has had extensive background checks. Everyone has gone through every piece of everything they could find that has ever been written. In fact, the latest new accusation is they found a couple of places where what he wrote seemed to look strangely like something else someone else wrote--which, when I saw it and read the side-by-side on it, I thought: He forgot to do an annotation and a footnote in the 800 opinions he has written. In the tens of thousands of annotations that he did, he didn't do a couple of them. Somehow that doesn't seem to rise to the level that he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court--that in the tens of thousands of annotations he put there, he might have missed a couple.

I would challenge anyone serving in this body, to say: You can serve only if you have never missed a single footnote on any paper you ever wrote. I would say: Those who live in glass houses probably shouldn't throw stones because we have all had times like that.

He is a solid jurist. I believe he will do a good job. In the time I sat down in his office, we looked at each other face-to-face, and I went through multitudes of hard questions with him, trying to determine his judicial philosophy, seeking one simple thing: Will you interpret the law as the law--not with personal opinion but as the law.

This body is about opinions. This body is about listening to the voices all across our States and trying to make

good policy. Across the street at the Supreme Court, it is about one thing: What does the law say and what did it mean when it was written?

The Constitution and law were not living documents. They do live in the sense that if you want to make changes in the Constitution, you amend the Constitution and you make changes to it. You can't suddenly say it meant one thing one day but culture has changed and now it means something new.

If you need new law, this body passes new law. Across the street, they read the law and ask: What does it mean? It is that straightforward.

I look forward to having a jurist on the Supreme Court as an Associate Justice who says: I may not even like all my opinions and you may not like all my opinions, but I am going to follow the law, and what the law says is what we are going to do.

I think that is the best we can ask from a Supreme Court Justice, and I think it is a fair way to be able to get him an up-or-down vote. I have to tell you, I am profoundly disappointed that the Senate, to get a simple up-or-down vote, had to go through all of this just to be able to do what we have always done. Regardless of background or preferences or policy or politics, this body has always said the President, for his nomination, should get an up-or-down vote when they go through the process.

We are going to do that tomorrow. We will put Judge Gorsuch on the bench, and we are ready for him to go to work.

Mr. President, I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on January 18, 2017, two days before President Obama left office, he finalized a rule and put it in place to require States--regardless of their decisions in their State--to have to use Planned Parenthood, removing the decision making from each State.

In the past, it had been very straightforward. States were allowed the opportunity to be able to examine who was the best decision maker to be able to help and the best provider of care in their community for title X funding. For that family planning funding, when it occurs and when it goes through the process, the States made the decision, looked at the providers, found out who the most comprehensive provider was, who could provide the best healthcare, and they made that final decision.

President Obama, two days before he left office, finalized a rule to remove that right from States and to compel each State to be able to use Planned Parenthood.

States like mine and many other States said: We want to do family planning in our State. We want to have comprehensive healthcare in our State, but we do not want to provide Federal funds to the single largest provider of abortion in the country. That was a reasonable decision that our State lawmakers could make to be able to protect the lives of women in our State and to protect the lives of children for the future. That reasonable, commonsense method was removed two days before President Obama left office.

I am proud to say that the House of Representatives and the Senate today voted to strike that rule from the last two days of President Obama's term to compel States to be able to use Planned Parenthood in their States, to be able to give the option back to the States again.

I look forward to President Trump signing it. I would remind the President of this one simple thing, though. This does not strike funding away from women's care. This doesn't take funding away from any of the family planning. This doesn't even force States to not use Planned Parenthood. It is a simple statement of where we used to be: States could choose to have Planned Parenthood as a part of their title X funding, or not. It is their choice. If some States want to do that, they may continue to do that. Other States should not be compelled to do that with taxpayer funds, though.

That is the new status quo as soon as President Trump signs it--to be able to return to a basic doctrine: States should not be compelled to have taxpayer funds used toward Planned Parenthood title X funding.

I am proud that this Senate just passed this resolution. It is a reasonable act for us to be able to do, and I look forward to the President's signature.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there has been a long conversation about a Supreme Court Justice. Quite frankly, there should be a long conversation. It is an incredibly important role of the Senate for advice and consent. We are talking about a Supreme Court Justice as someone who serves on the Court for life, so it has to be right.

A long conversation about Neil Gorsuch is coming to a head. In the next week, he will come to this floor. He will face final debate, and the very long confirmation process will end with him joining the Supreme Court as the ninth Justice. When he is added on as an Associate Justice, it won't have been a short journey. He has met with every single Senator face to face. He has made all the time available that they wanted to have for face-to-face questions and to be able to go through those issues personally. He has been in very long hearings. He sat down hour after hour, multiple days, answering questions from Senators in the Judiciary Committee, then a vote from the Judiciary Committee, and then coming to this floor. There has been research in his background in every case. Everything he has ever written and every speech he has ever given has been examined overwhelmingly. And at the end of that, he has been found to be a very serious member of the judiciary.

In this body in 2006, he was put on the Tenth Circuit, a circuit that Oklahoma happens to be in. There was a unanimous vote in the Senate in 2006 for him to join the Tenth Circuit. He was seen as a consistent, solid, mainstream, fair judge. That means Senator Joe Biden voted for him. Hillary Clinton voted for him. Chuck Schumer voted for him. Barack Obama voted for him in 2006.

After going through all of his background leading up to this point, since that time, what has happened? Did he leave the mainstream during that time period after he was overwhelmingly voted here, unanimously out of the Senate, to be on the Tenth Circuit? Well, since that time, he has been a part of 2,700 cases in the last decade. Of those 2,700 cases, 97 percent of them were unanimous. In 99 percent of the cases, he was in the majority in those opinions. Only 1 percent of the time he was not in the majority of the decision.

So you may ask, who is the Tenth Circuit Court that he is working with, this large group of judges who are in that court? Let me give you the basics of it. Of the Tenth Circuit judges there right now, whom he is serving with, with whom he was in the majority 99 percent of the time, five of the other judges were Obama appointees, five of them were George W. Bush appointees, three of them were Clinton appointees, three of them were Reagan appointees, 1 was Bush 41, and 2 of them were from President Carter. That is the group he was voting with in the majority 99 percent of the time.

He was seen by this Senate in 2006 to be a solid, mainstream jurist. Since that time period, he has voted with them 99 percent of the time in a very diverse Tenth Circuit.

CRS, in their background research with him, said that Judge Gorsuch's opinions had the fewest number of dissents of anyone in the Tenth Circuit. In other words, when he wrote the opinion, his colleagues disagreed with him the fewest number of times of anyone on the Tenth Circuit.

He is a solid jurist, respected around the country, and one who deserves not only an intense investigation but I believe deserves to be put on the Supreme Court of the United States. I look forward to voting for him next week.

In the process, I hope, as we support him, that we will also step up and do a process that has been consistent in this country for the last 230 years of how we process through judges; that is, we have an up-or- down vote. They are not blocked by a cloture vote to try to keep them from getting to a final vote. The judges here get an up-or-down vote. That is the way we have done it.

Of the eight Justices who are sitting on the bench right now, only one of them even had a cloture vote at all, and that one wasn't even close. It was 72 to 25, and that was Justice Alito.

Just to walk through the brief history of some of the recent judges and some of the things that have happened and how it is absurd that we would even be discussing a filibuster of a Supreme Court Justice, Justice Kagan was approved by a vote of 63 to 37. There was bipartisan support coming out of the committee. I can assure you, there wasn't bipartisan support for policy positions.

For some reason, Judge Gorsuch is being accused of being partisan or political or somehow connected to the President, so that would disqualify him.

Ironically, Justice Kagan was a member of the White House staff before she was nominated to go onto the Court. That was not considered disqualifying when it was Justice Kagan and the Republicans were in the minority looking at it. They considered that everyone should be looked at fairly based on qualifications, when she was coming directly from the White House staff onto the Supreme Court.

Justice Sotomayor was approved by a vote of 68 to 31--again, bipartisan support even in committee.

Clarence Thomas, one of the most controversial nominees in this last century, came out of the committee with a divided committee. After the vote failed, the committee then voted to send his nomination to the floor without a recommendation. He then passed on a floor vote of 52 to 48. There was never a request for a cloture vote. No one filibustered him--not one person.

If Clarence Thomas would have had a filibuster threat facing him, he wouldn't be on the Court today. He has been an excellent jurist on the Supreme Court, but he came out during a time when there weren't these idle threats.

It is even interesting that Robert Bork, who is currently not on the Court--his vote failed 42 to 58, but that was a failed final vote. Robert Bork did

not face a filibuster threat. He was brought to a final up-or-down vote.

I could go on and on to walk through the judges and Justices and how they have gone through the process, but there has been a simple procedure: Is this person qualified?

The American Bar Association, multiple entities, huge bipartisan support around the country--there is no question he is qualified. There is no question he has been a great jurist. There is no question he has been an excellent writer.

Now it is a question of, Will the Senate follow through on the procedures that we have followed through on for two centuries? Give judges an up-or-down vote, and the majority and the minority both respect the process of what it means to be a part of article III leaders in the Justice Department.

This is the way that this works in the days ahead; this is the way it has worked in the days past. We need to be able to resolve it now.

I look forward to voting up or down and getting that vote for Judge Gorsuch. I look forward to his joining the Court to be that ninth Justice and to the Court being able to get back to their business. There are a few issues that are unresolved from the fall. There are not many cases that were divided 4 to 4, but a few. It is time to get those resolved and be able to add this ninth Justice.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to take the chance to have just a moment to be able to reflect on what the Senate has just completed. We have worked through a process of identifying what is called the Congressional Review Act. Most Americans are not

familiar with this because it is so seldom used. In fact, it has only been used one time before this Congress successfully.

It is a moment for the Congress to be able to look back at regulations that have been promulgated by the administration and say: Was that the intent of the law?

It is something that we have worked at for a long time to be able to get as a frequent part of this national conversation. We call it the REINS Act. It allows Congress to be able to look at each major regulation when it comes out from the administration and ask the simple question: When the regulations are created, are they consistent with the statute? That is what regulations are. No administration can just invent policy and say: We think this is a good thing to do. That is the task of Congress. That is why the Constitution says that all legislative powers shall reside in the Congress, because an administration can't make up the law. It has to come from this body, from the House of Representatives, and then be signed by the President. After that is done, then regulations are created that have to be consistent with the law.

The Congressional Review Act was created years ago to allow Congress to have a second glance at regulations as they are put out and say: Is that consistent with the statute we passed? This Congress has already gone through multiples of those.

In the last 6 months of the Obama administration, many regulations were created. When they were created, they were not consistent with the statute. This Congress has already turned back billions of dollars of regulations from the American people. One of those was done this week. Ironically, it is an issue that deals with unemployment benefits and drug testing.

Many States have requested the ability to be able to do drug testing for unemployment benefits. And this is not a situation where this Congress believes that all people on unemployment benefits need to be drug tested or are unemployed because of drug use--far from it.

In 2012, Congress passed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. In that, it allowed States, if they chose to--they don't have to but if they chose to--to do drug testing for benefits eligibility, for unemployment benefits under two circumstances. One of them is if the applicant was terminated from their employment based on the unlawful use of a controlled substance. In other words, if they were just fired from a previous job because they were using drugs, they wouldn't be able to get unemployment benefits because they had already been certified as a drug user. The second one is that if the only available suitable work meant that they had to be drug tested, then they could be drug tested.

What is the design of this? The design of the policy was to encourage people to get back to work. If they were fired from a previous job because they used drugs, it is a natural thing to say: Before you can get unemployment benefits, we want to make sure you have gotten off drugs since that time period you were fired, or if you will be drug tested for the only job that is available to you in your targeted area, you are not available to be able to take that job if you haven't already had some sort of drug testing.

It is a commonsense measure, and it is given to the States to say to the States: You can choose to do this or not to do this, but if you choose to do it, you can, because unemployment benefits are a partnership between the Federal Government and local States.

We believe this is one tool of many to be able to help people who are trapped in the addiction of drugs to have one more incentive to be able to get off that addiction. Multiple different methods are also used within States to enable them to walk alongside families and individuals and help them get off their substance abuse habits as well.

It is a powerful motivator to say to people: If you want to get some support into your family to help you transition back into a job, the law says that to be on unemployment benefits, you have to be available for work. And if this person is currently addicted to drugs and using drugs, they are not available for work.

This measure was passed in 2012. The Obama administration took 4 years to promulgate the rules off of this commonsense measure, and once they finally promulgated the rules, they created a set of rules so complex, so complicated, with so many exceptions built into it, that the rule meant nothing. It put us in the situation of saying: What Congress passed 4 years ago, we actually wanted that to go into effect to give those States the right to be able to do it.

So this Congress--the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted and this week the Senate also voted to be able to block out that last- minute regulation from the Obama administration, which they took 4 years to promulgate, and to be able to say to the States: If you choose to do drug testing with someone who was fired from a previous job because of drug use or because the only job available to that person will have drug testing, if you want to help families be able to get off substance abuse and to be able to set this standard for them, you can.

We have an epidemic of drug use in our Nation. We should do everything we can to not only deal with the interdiction of drugs coming into the country but to also deal with abuse of drugs in our country. This is one of those measures, and I am glad my State and other States will again have that opportunity to be able to use this.

Mr. President, on January 15, 2017, an incredible ice storm came through my State. For some States that haven't seen ice storms, they are beautiful, but boy are they destructive. As freezing rain comes down, it lands on power lines, lands on trees, destroys the trees, power lines come down, and it is incredibly difficult for families and for regions when this happens. You can't move. You can't function. You can't travel the streets because they are covered with ice. It is very destructive.

The northwest part of our State experienced an ice storm like that on January 15. That ice storm devastated the Woodward area and all over the northwest--trees, debris, damage, power out for weeks in that area.

Then, in early March, it was starting to warm up. The forecasters from the National Weather Service and the Forest Service saw the forecast coming out of rapidly dropping humidity levels and very high winds, with a lot of debris damage still in the area. It was the perfect storm for wildfires.

They prepositioned assets in that area to be able to respond if they broke out, but on March 6--just a week and a half ago--wildfires broke out all across northwestern Oklahoma. Four large fires in particular broke out simultaneously in multiple areas. Some of them were started by some of those same power lines that were weakened by the ice storm. Now the high winds--60 miles an hour--are taking down those weak power lines, and they are striking the ground and starting a fire spontaneously out in a field.

There were four individual fires across this area covering 315,000 acres just in Oklahoma. One of those fires spread straight across the Kansas border and burned an additional 472,000 acres. To give you a point of reference of how large these fires were, the total fire damage that was done in acres is greater than the entire State of Rhode Island. Twenty homes were destroyed, 3,000 cattle were killed in the field, 6,500 hogs were killed, and 7 people died in the fire.

Let me give you a picture of what we faced in this area as I went out last Friday with Senator Inhofe to tour the area both from the air and on the ground and to talk to farmers and those individuals who are trying to work through this very difficult process. Those farmers and ranchers are facing something you can't even imagine in their fields. For miles, there is no grass. The cattle that did survive the fire had literally no food on their ranch for miles. Hundreds of miles of fence line were taken down. Each mile of fence in Oklahoma, just a simple barbed wire fence, costs about $10,000, and hundreds of miles of fence line were destroyed.

We have animals that burned alive as they tried to escape the fire. We had deer that, as they were running across the fields, got caught up in the barbed wire fence and 16-mile-per-hour winds, and the 16-mile- an-hour flame caught up with the deer in the fence and burned them alive as they tried to escape.

We have families who have lost absolutely everything.

We have volunteer firefighters across much of this area who would literally be fighting the fire in one county in one area and hear on the radio about how a fire had broken out in another county on a road right near their own home, and literally volunteer firefighters fighting one fire could hear on the radio about the destruction of their home at a different fire.

In different places, the volunteer firefighters and those who were gathered, both career and volunteers, would see a raging fire at the home of their neighbor, of people they knew. In western Oklahoma, you know your neighbors in that area. You know the folks in the county. They would head out to a home as the fire was rushing at them and try to fight it off, try to cut a fire line to be able to stop it. Eventually, the fire would get so close, they would literally take their fire equipment and park the equipment between the fire and the home and spray down their equipment in hopes that the fire would jump over the house as the firefighters just huddled behind their own equipment hoping the fire didn't come to them. They saved several homes by using that extreme method.

Neighbors took their own farm equipment and their own tractors and created fire lines to be able to protect their neighbors' homes.

These small community firefighters fought fires for hours and hours. They saved a lot of lives, and they saved a lot of structures.

I can't even begin to tell you the pain of walking through that area, what has been described by many as walking across a moonscape of destruction where there is literally nothing left.

What have we seen in that? I will state that what we have seen is a tenacious spirit from people who survived an ice storm, were without power for weeks in many areas, and then had a wildfire come right behind it and destroy what was left. Over 20,000 bales of hay have already been donated from farmers all over Oklahoma who are trying to feed the cattle that are still left--20,000 bales. Understand the expense of 20,000 bales of hay being donated but also understand the efforts of all the truckdrivers who loaded up their vehicles and personally paid the gas money and the travel expenses to be able to deliver that hay over hundreds of miles to those folks. Oftentimes, the travel of that truckdriver and the gas required are more expensive than the hay that is in the back of it, and they are delivering as much as they possibly can.

I have to thank the folks from the Farm Bureau; the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association; Western Equipment; Oklahoma Farm Credit; the Red Cross of Oklahoma; the Salvation Army; the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture; the Oklahoma Forestry Service; Southern Baptist Disaster Relief; Oklahoma emergency management--first responders from all over the State, volunteer and career firefighters who worked very long and difficult hours. USDA and FEMA were also on site. I thank Harper County Extension; all the emergency management folks from Beaver, Harper, and Woodward Counties; all the folks who have donated, places like Love's Travel Stops that have donated so much to be able to move things there; the United Way; Cleanline Energy and their donations; and untold numbers of civic organizations and churches from around that community.

As I looked at many of those folks in the area last week and met with some leaders and pastors in the area, I reminded the folks that the devastation they face is not something that will be recovered from quickly. Springtime will come soon, and the area that is just black earth right now will spring to life with green grass again in the weeks ahead. But the loss of those fence lines, the loss of thousands of animals, the loss of homes, the loss of structures, will take a very long time for the folks--the farmers and ranchers who don't live on a high profit margin.

I have continued to encourage the pastors and churches in that area to walk alongside some families who will have a hard time recovering from this for a long time. I have encouraged our Oklahoma agencies and our Federal agencies to do what we can to be able to step in with repairing fence lines and helping them recover from a very traumatic event.

My wife and I stood with a rancher who talked about going out into the field after the fire. His home was completely destroyed. As he traveled out to the field around him checking on his cattle, he found dead cattle but also found cattle with their faces completely burned, blinded, with coyotes chasing them down. He said all he could do was stand there in the field and cry. These are going to be long days.

I am grateful that there are neighbors taking care of neighbors. I am proud of the people of Oklahoma watching out for each other. As we walk through this, God willing, we will continue to be able to hug and take care of our neighbors in the days ahead.

I want to tell this Senate and the people of the United States that this was a wildfire as big as the State of Rhode Island, and many people haven't even heard of it. But I can assure all of you that the folks in Oklahoma have experienced it, and we will walk through it together as a Nation.

With that, Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1362 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign

Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 83 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 9.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 76.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 89, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn, to then convene for pro forma sessions only, with no business being conducted, on the following dates and times and that following each pro forma session, the Senate adjourn until the next pro forma session: Thursday, March 16 at 11:30 a.m. and Monday, March 20 at 10 a.m.; I further ask that when the Senate adjourns on Monday, March 20, it next convene at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 21; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; further, that following leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein; finally, that the morning business hour be equally divided, with the majority controlling the first half and the Democrats controlling the final half.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Hatch.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, in December of 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act after it passed this body with overwhelming bipartisan support--85 of 100 Senators supported the bill. The Wall Street Journal called the Every Student Succeeds Act ``the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter- century.'' It also had the support of Governors, State legislators, chief State school officers, school district superintendents, local school boards, principals, and teachers unions, who all agreed on the need to replace No Child Left Behind.

The core of the education reform in the Every Student Succeeds Act was to restore local control to the States--not just control for them but that they would have the responsibility and the authority for things such as school accountability, teacher evaluation, student evaluation. It is very clear. In fact, the Every Student Succeeds Act says things very specifically. States are solely responsible for choosing which standards to adopt. The Secretary cannot mandate, direct, or control State standards. The Secretary of Education cannot require, coerce, or incentivize States to adopt common core State standards. States are responsible for choosing which assessments to adopt. The Secretary of Education cannot mandate, direct, or control State assessments for education. States design their own system for holding schools accountable and decide which schools to identify for school intervention and support. The Secretary cannot add new requirements or criteria on State accountability systems that are not in the law. States and local school districts decide what strategies they will implement to help fix identified schools without Federal interference. The Secretary of Education cannot prescribe how States and local school districts improve those schools.

Congress passed that clear education law to take power out of Washington, DC, and from the Department of Education and the Secretary of Education and hand it back to the States.

Five months after the bill was signed, the Obama administration changed their mind and released regulations to take back school decisionmaking and accountability, in direct violation of the law.

Eighty-five of one hundred of us agreed that our passion is for every school district, every parent, every State to take care of every child; that no child would be left behind by switching to local control rather than Federal centralized control. But when this new rule was put out by the Obama administration, they reinterpreted that clear law. Let me tell you what they said in the rule.

In the rule, they dictate to States the consequences for schools that don't annually test at least 95 percent of their students.

They prescribe to the States and school districts how they would intervene and improve schools that don't exit from this identification process of being an underperforming school.

They limit how States may measure school quality or student success based on 4-year graduation rates.

They define how much weight States must afford to non-test-based indicators in their accountability systems.

This regulation prescribes the long-term goals and measurements of progress that States would use for their student subgroups.

This new regulation prescribes when schools may exit from comprehensive support based on improvement.

This new regulation mandates that States comply with specific Washington, DC, created requirements instead of letting the school districts or the States determine how best to proceed on those requirements.

This new regulation limits how States award school improvement funding to school districts and schools.

This new regulation adds a new and burdensome reporting requirement every 4 years on States and local school districts that will drive up compliance costs and will divert resources away from students in the classrooms, in direct violation of what we passed.

This new regulation requires States to establish a statewide definition for ``infective teacher,'' requiring a statewide system of evaluation controlled by DC.

This new regulation limits how students are scored when they have exited from special education.

This new regulation controls how the school report cards are created and how long they are.

This is what we were exiting from with No Child Left Behind. We said in that vote for Every Student Succeeds that Washington, DC, should not do this. This rule directly violated the spirit and the letter of the law and will put the new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, in charge of school evaluation, teacher evaluation, and student success. That is not her role or the intent of this law when we passed it, regardless of who is the Secretary of Education. Our intent was to provide maximum flexibility for the States and the parents. The rule is central control from Washington, DC.

It is essential that we stop this rule right now. While some of my colleagues have said: Let's just wait, and we will do regulations, and we will unwind some of this--they are basically admitting that the Trump administration will fix the Obama administration overreach. I understand that statement. I think there will be some unwinding of regulations, but here is why it must be done right now--two reasons. One is, when we do this right now with a Congressional Review Act, we settle this forever, that no administration ever, as long as this law is in place, can repromulgate a rule and turn right back around and say Washington, DC, is going to control teacher evaluation, student success evaluation, and school evaluation. This ends that forever.

The second thing is, right now schools in Oklahoma have already diverted resources in their administration, and they are filling out forms that are due to Washington, DC, in April to fulfill this new requirement that was put down by the administration. If we don't end this now, the districts in Oklahoma and in all of the States represented by this great Senate--their administrators will be working on forms for Washington, DC, rather than educating children at home. Let's get those folks back in the classroom, working on things that matter, not some form that no one in Washington, DC, will read anyway. Why don't we allow our schools to focus on educating kids instead of filling out forms for the Secretary of Education? That is the reason we passed the Every Student Succeeds Act.

I encourage this body to support H.J. Res. 57 when it comes up. This will fix this overreach and will put a permanent marker down to say we meant it when Congress said to the administration: Do not control local education. Let the States and the parents do it.

With that, I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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