Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today in support of bipartisan legislation aimed at ensuring that those individuals who are on the Department of Homeland Security's no-fly list are likewise not able to have access to guns. I just met with several of the students from the shooting at the school in Florida and heard the very compelling case they have made to take this issue seriously and do what we can on a commonsense basis to make it more difficult for those who shouldn't have guns to have guns.

Regardless of what happened in Florida these past couple of weeks, this is a measure we should have taken before. It has been brought to the floor of the Senate, and it has received majority support here. I think it is simply common sense that someone who is not permitted to fly in this country and is considered by the Federal Government to be a potential threat to national security should not be allowed to purchase a firearm.

The no-fly list and the selectee list that we are talking about is composed of those who are not allowed to fly. With the selectee list, it is those who require additional screening. These are both narrowly tailored, defined, targeted lists.

This restriction would affect just a small number of people, all of whom would be afforded due process under the Constitution. Those who find themselves on either of these lists would have the authority to challenge that designation, and the onus would be on the government, not the individual; the onus would be on the government to justify the classification and to prove that they should not be allowed to purchase a firearm. These are strong, robust, due process protections that would make sure that these restrictions are constitutionally sound.

This bill also adds another layer of safety for citizens from those who would do us harm, ensuring that anyone who has been denied the right to fly cannot purchase a weapon without at least undergoing additional scrutiny. It simply stands to reason that if we fear that someone may use our commercial airlines as a weapon or to

harm those on board, we should not allow that same person to purchase a weapon without additional scrutiny.

I encourage my colleagues to review this bipartisan legislation and to join me, along with Senator Collins and a number of our colleagues here--a bipartisan group of Senators--in supporting this commonsense piece of legislation.

I hope we will have a debate on some of these measures. I will be talking in the coming days about some of the other measures that we ought to take to make sure that we don't put guns in the hands of those who shouldn't have them.

My heart goes out to those in Florida, and my vote will go here to measures that will make schools safer.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the massive spending increases included in the proposed budget measure. To propose increasing Federal spending by nearly $300 billion over the next 2 years, on top of the spending increases already established, is simply beyond comprehension. This is all with a national debt of $20 trillion a year, and the current deficit is running $600 billion to $700 billion. Yet we are about to vote on a bill to abandon self-imposed limits on Federal spending. As anybody who has spent time in Washington will know, once you raise spending limits, you just don't get them back down.

I love bipartisanship, but not when it is bought and paid for with billions of taxpayer dollars. That is precisely what this measure does. If you sprinkle enough money around, you can get bipartisan support.

While I was in the House for 12 years, I kept a journal of events. In December of 2007, when we passed a massive omnibus bill, at that time, I noted in my journal:

The Democrats singled out the funding for the Iraq war,

which required a separate vote. The tally board on the House

chamber wall explaining the vote said the following:

``Agreeing to House amendment to Senate amendment to House

amendment.''

I said at that time:

That clears it up. But that's the point. Liberal Democrats

could vote against the war funding and for more domestic

funding. Conservative Republicans could do the opposite.

Enough moderates in the middle would vote for both pieces of

legislation to ensure that each passed separately.

I continued:

Then we could all of us, Republicans and Democrats, go beat

our collective chests and go home for Christmas.

Bipartisanship at its best.

I wrote further in my journal at that time:

All these shenanigans led one Republican colleague to lean

over to me on the House floor and muse: ``You know, Jeff,

sometimes the toughest thing about being a member of Congress

is remembering everything you're supposed to be outraged

about.''

I agreed.

Here we are today, and it is clear what we should be outraged about-- a $300 billion spending hike, a return to trillion-dollar deficits, and an apparent end to any attempt to rein in Federal spending.

Fiscal responsibility is more than a political talking point to trot out when the other guys are in charge. The rules and principles do not change with the legislative session. It should not take hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending to prompt bipartisanship or to secure a budget agreement.

If we Republicans support precisely the kind of reckless spending that we have for so long criticized, it will mean an end of genuine fiscal conservatism in Washington, and it will establish a government without any meaningful spending restraints.

I urge my colleagues to consider their commitment to conservatism and whether their past protests over government spending were anything more than convenient political props. Let's be conservative no matter who is in charge, no matter who is in the White House or who controls each Chamber in Congress.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last fall I had the honor to stand in this Chamber and deliver remarks on the subject of a great and growing concern to me--the stewardship of our democracy at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. I stand again today to sound the same alarm.

Words matter. Have we arrived at such a place of numb acceptance that we have nothing to say when the President of the United States casually suggests that those who choose not to stand or applaud his speech are guilty of treason? I certainly hope not.

The one who levels such a charge knows neither the meaning of ``treason'' nor the power that the words of a President carry. If we are numb to such words, then we will surely regret that we failed to defend our colleagues in Congress against such a vile remark, but our silence will also mark the day we failed to recognize that this conduct in an American President simply is not normal.

I wish I could stand here today and say my words of last October have been proven wrong; that I had been unfair to inveigh against the daily sundering of our country; that I had been mistaken about the personal attacks; that I had exaggerated the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, and the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people we have all been elected to serve--I wish I could say I had been wrong, but I cannot.

I have seen the President's most ardent defenders use the now-weary argument that the President's comments were meant as a joke, just sarcasm, only tongue in cheek, but treason is not a punch line.

The President said the State of the Union Address was meant to promote and encourage unity in government. Then why, less than a week later, follow up with this divisive and harmful rhetoric? Unity is not secured in a speech. It must be pursued constantly through appropriate behavior, mutual respect, and gained by effective leadership. Respect is earned, not commanded. Applause signals approval of an idea, not loyalty to one's country.

Our Democratic colleagues love this country as much as we do. To suggest otherwise is simply unconscionable. None of us in Congress pledge loyalty or service to the President. This is not a royal court. Our oath is to the Constitution and to the people. As Members of Congress, we must never accept undignified discourse as normal because of the requirements of tribal party politics.

None of this behavior should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking this is just the way things are now.

We will get through this period, and when we do, we will look back at the destruction of our discourse and the attacks on our democratic values as nothing but a tragedy. May we also be able to say they were an aberration. That, my colleagues, is up to us. We must recognize this is aberrant, destructive behavior, whatever rationale its defenders may offer, and we must never shrink from opposing it, for it is in opposing this behavior that we defend our norms, our ideals, and our values. It is in opposing this behavior that we stand for decency.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to honor the life of my friend Elder Von G. Keetch, legal counsel and leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His passing on Friday evening was sudden and unexpected, and I wish to extend my condolences to his family during this difficult time.

Elder Keetch served as a general authority and executive director of the LDS Church's Public Affairs Department. He helped to shape community and government relations for the church as a recognized expert in constitutional law. His career was devoted to defending religious liberty for all religious institutions. His insight was particularly salient during this ever-changing world. As his daughter Steffani Keetch Dastrup said, ``He wanted to defend and support all churches and all religious beliefs and all people's rights to believe and act the way they feel is right. That was a big part of his work.''

I consider it a privilege to have worked alongside Elder Keetch over the past several years. I was able to witness firsthand the love he had for his wife, the pride he had in his children, and the devotion he had for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for his guidance, for his counsel, and for his friendship.

His humble expertise and kind demeanor will be sorely missed by all those who knew him. His legacy of faith and love will bless his family for generations to come.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise with great sadness to remember Edward Lorenzen, who, along with his 4-year-old son Michael, perished this weekend in a house fire.

Ed was invaluable to my staff during last year's tax reform debate. The Washington Post honored his contributions to Congress, saying: ``Quietly and intelligently, Mr. Lorenzen provided objective, reliable fiscal information, even--or especially--when facts and figures were the last thing wishful thinkers in Washington [or the government] wanted to face.''

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, where Ed served as a senior adviser, said: ``He was a brilliant budget mind--his guidance and expertise is a void that cannot be filled.''

The committee also remembered his deep love for his children, saying: ``We worked every day with a kind, loving man who cherished his three kids, bringing them to the office on occasion and lighting up in their presence and at the sound of their names.''

I cannot imagine the grief Ed and Michael's family and loved ones face. I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to them during this difficult time. May we all hold our families a little closer today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as we continue the debate on the issue of immigration as it relates to providing a permanent solution to those young immigrants who benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the scope of this debate has expanded to include other issues.

Some of these issues are directly related to the DACA issue, including persistent concerns on our southern border, like improving barriers and border access roads, providing hiring and retention incentives for Customs and Border Protection personnel to ensure that all locations on the border remain secure. Other things being debated, like changes to legal immigration levels, truly need their own debate.

Some appear to have seized on this as an opportunity to push forth an agenda aimed at limiting the future flow of legal immigration. Before this idea gains any steam, we have to fully discuss and debate its potentially enormous impact on our economy. It is easy for some to see unemployed Americans and point to immigrants as a scapegoat. To suggest that every immigrant who passes through our borders represents a job being pried from the hands of an American citizen is farfetched, at best.

After taking the time to actually examine the facts, the shortsightedness of this thinking is exposed. For example, cleaving the number of new legal immigrants by almost 50 percent--which is what the White House proposal appears to envision over time--would initially reduce the overall rate of economic growth in the United States by an estimated 12.5 percent when compared to currently projected levels through 2045. This is because labor force growth is one of the most important factors tied to economic growth. More troubling, these changes in legal immigration would come just as the aging U.S. population increases our dependence on a growing workforce.

Some have suggested that legal immigrants represent some sort of drag on government resources. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that the average immigrant contributes, in net present value terms, $92,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their lifetime.

We can only expect these numbers to increase as we move to a kind of merit or employment-based system. I should note that in the bipartisan approach in 2015, we did restrict the number of family-based visas. I think it was from a total of 75 percent of legal immigration, we moved it down to 50 percent from family-based visas. At that same time, what we did was reallocate those visas to merit-based or employment-based visas so we wouldn't have an overall drop in legal immigration.

To look into the future of what happens when the philosophy of limiting legal immigration takes hold, we need to look no further than the current economic struggles Japan is having. In a timely piece by Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post this last Sunday, he points out that Japan's population of 127 million is forecast to shrink by one-third over the next half century. The increase in lifespans coupled with a decrease in fertility is projected to lead to near-stagnant economic growth, reduced innovation, labor shortages, and huge pressure on entitlements and pensions in Japan.

These disastrous realities facing Japan are the direct result of that nation's historically low level of immigrants. As Hiatt astutely points out, ``You can be pro-growth. You can be anti-immigration. But honestly, you can't be both.''

Legal immigration policy is complicated, but it is important, and it is worth debating this reform on its own. There may be a strong appetite for merit-based immigration, but rather than drastically cutting legal and necessary immigration flows, we need to work together to provide a way for the best and brightest to make it to the United States, both for their benefit and ours.

Let's not be lured into thinking that legal immigration is some kind of simplistic zero-sum game that can be easily reformed without consequence. During the last administration, many of us rejected the new normal of low economic growth driven by overregulation and irrational tax policy. It would be a supreme irony if we were to fix those anti-growth fiscal and regulatory policies only to counteract them with immigration restrictions that affect our workforce.

Let's give this important and complex issue the time for discussion, analysis, and debate it deserves and not shoehorn it into a DACA fix.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah. Let me just say that during a televised, bipartisan meeting recently at the White House, the President suggested that we might be more collegial around here, more efficient in Congress, if we would just bring back earmarks. The reaction from the lawmakers present was decidedly mixed. Some cheered that declaration, but most of us, I have to say, recoiled at the thought.

As someone who served in Congress during the gluttonous earmarking era, when pork was used regularly to buy and sell Congressmen's votes, I can tell you firsthand this is an idea that nobody ought to be laughing at or embracing. Amidst public corruption investigations and a constant stream of embarrassing headlines about sweetheart deals for family and friends, Congress was forced to place a moratorium on earmarks about 7 or 8 years ago.

Earmarking does not improve the legislative process. In fact, it compromises Members into ignoring unethical behavior and voting for bad bills that they would otherwise oppose. Remember, ObamaCare was approved with just a single vote being secured with an earmark--the one that was derided as the ``Cornhusker kickback.'' Likewise, when Senators receive earmarks, they are agreeing to support hundreds of other earmarks stuffed into an appropriations bill.

When people say the appropriations process would be a lot smoother, would work a lot better with earmarks, I would respond by saying that there was a period of about 10 years when earmarks really hit the high point, in 1994 or 1995 through 2006. I served in the House from 2001 to 2012, and during that time we had earmarks for part of the time and went without earmarks part of the time. And 2005, I think everybody recognizes, was the high point--or the low point, if you want to put it that way. There were a total of 16,000 earmarks spread across 12 appropriations bills and 1 authorization bill, worth about $30 billion.

One would think that if we had that much to grease the skids in Washington, we should have been able to pass all appropriations measures and move through the process. We would have a more collegial, compliant body. During that time, in 2005--I just checked--we passed only five appropriations bills in the House--only five. We ended up with an omnibus bill, and that was when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House.

So this notion that we have to have earmarks, and if we just get back to earmarks then this place will run smoothly and we will get through the appropriations bills--with 16,000 earmarks, worth about $30 billion, only five appropriations bills were approved.

We all remember too well the indoor rain forest in Iowa, the teapot museum in North Carolina, and, of course, the bridge to nowhere in Alaska. When a challenge was made to that infamous bridge and other pork projects, not-so-veiled threats were leveled at Senators and Members of Congress who dared question their colleagues' projects.

We simply cannot go back to that time.

I remember well during that time one particular episode when we were all in HC-5 of the House basement. It was during the appropriations season, and all of a sudden one Member ran into the room just breathless. He had the list--the list from the Appropriations Committee--as to who was getting the earmarks and who wasn't. It was largely a staff-driven process. But then everybody would--the thing was, we have to get these earmarks; we have to go announce them quickly in the House before the Senators take credit for them. That was the atmosphere at that time. That was not a high point. That is not something we want to return to.

I was looking at some of what I said in the House at that time and some of what I quoted when we were trying to get rid of them in 2009. At that time, The Hill newspaper had reported that a prominent lobbying firm was the subject of a Federal investigation into potentially corrupt political contributions. It had given $3.4 million in political contributions to no less than 284 Members of Congress.

There were lobbying shops that were set up for that purpose--simply to be at the intersection of earmarks and policy.

The Hill also reported on February 10, 2009, that this firm, which specialized in obtaining earmarks in the defense budget for a long list of clients was ``recently raided by the FBI.''

The New York Times noted that the same lobbyist for that firm ``set up shop at the busy intersection between political fundraising and taxpayer spending, directing tens of millions of dollars in contributions to lawmakers while steering hundreds of millions of dollars in earmark contracts back to his clients.''

This is a process that simply is too tough to police when it gets this way.

During my time in the House, over a series of a number of years, I went to the House floor literally hundreds of times to challenge individual earmarks in these spending projects. For those who think that you can go and challenge these earmarks and have somebody say ``Yes, all right, I didn't want to spend money on that teapot museum anyway; that is a bad idea,'' that rarely happened. In the hundreds of times I went to the floor to challenge earmark spending, there was only one vote that I won--only one in hundreds of times. That is because the process of logrolling takes over, where one Member will say: I will protect your earmark if you protect mine. It was more likely that I would get 30, 40, 50 votes, and if I was challenging a popular appropriator, I would get even fewer because nobody wanted to challenge them because their own earmarks would be threatened.

This is not a process that we want to go back to. This is not something that we should be proud of in our history. Several of our colleagues ended up in jail. One of them actually had an earmark bribe menu printed, in hand, on his congressional letterhead which read: If you want an earmark for this much, here is what it will cost you, under the table. He ended up doing time in prison. Not every Member did that, obviously, but it is a process that is too difficult to control.

Here is the worst part about earmarks generally. Some will say that it is just a fraction of spending; it is just a couple of percentage points off the Federal budget, which is true. But the problem is, once you get back into earmarking, the Appropriations Committee spends an inordinate amount of time--the majority of its time--focusing on that 1 or 2 percentage points of the funding and gives up its oversight responsibilities on the other 98 percent of the budget.

We simply don't do the oversight that we should be doing on the Federal agencies and how they spend this money. That is the worst part of earmarking--that we simply give up oversight. Yes, we pay a lot of attention to that 1 or 2 percent of funding, but we give up oversight on the rest, effectively.

So I hope we don't go there. That is why I am introducing bipartisan legislation, joined by my colleague from Utah, to permanently ban all congressional earmarking. Senators McCaskill, Toomey, McCain, Lee, Portman, Johnson, Rubio, Ernst, Fischer, and Sasse are all on as cosponsors. I hope that when this is brought to the floor, it passes, and we don't go back to this practice of earmarking.

I turn back to my colleague from Utah to hear what other thoughts he has on the subject.

Well, I thank the Senator from Utah. One of the things I fear most is that we are having a tough enough time controlling spending.

Dr. Coburn, who served in the House--I admired his time there. He went after earmarks and after a lot of these appropriations, and he did the same thing when he came to the Senate until the last day he was here. He had a saying. He said: ``Earmarks are the gateway drug to . . . spending addiction.''

What he meant by that is if you give an earmark in an appropriations bill, some people will say ``Well, it is just an earmark for a couple of million dollars for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame''--that was actually one. The problem is, once you get your earmark there, you are obligated to support that entire bill, no matter how ballooned it becomes.

During the period, particularly in 2001 to 2006, boy, we bloated up a lot of appropriations bills. We were running basically at almost a surplus in 2001, and by the time we got to 2006, it was anything but, and nondefense discretionary spending and defense spending related to earmarks increased significantly. It just was not a good trend.

So what I fear most is that we have been able to have some control on nondefense discretionary spending, and the growth of that has been slower than other things, but once you start getting earmarks in these bills, then you will be obligated to support them no matter what. Then you support bloated appropriations bills just to protect your earmark. The process of logrolling takes effect--I protect yours if you protect mine.

That is one thing I fear.

I turn it back to the Senator from Utah.

Mr. President, on Friday, I voted with many of my colleagues not to accept the deal that was offered at that time, the CR to go for 4 weeks. I felt that was unnecessarily long.

Also, I voted against it because I felt, like a lot of my Democratic colleagues and some of my Republican colleagues, that we need to deal with this situation on immigration and that we shouldn't wait for the White House to indicate its preference.

I felt that we could have an agreement to move forward, so I voted against the proposal at that time. In the intervening time, we have worked with the majority leader to, No. 1, have a shorter timeframe, which now has been offered, that of February 8. That is longer than I would like, but it is shorter than a 4-week CR.

Also, we had an agreement, which the majority leader has just announced, that if an agreement on immigration has not been reached by that time, the majority leader, using his discretion and his authority as majority leader, will move to immigration, and at that time, we can deal with the DACA issue and broader immigration issues generally; that moving to immigration, my understanding--and I believe the commitment-- is not to prejudice one bill over another, but anyone can bring forward their bill.

There are several of us who have been working on a bipartisan bill. I believe we have seven Republicans and seven Democrats on that effort right now. That legislation certainly will be considered, as will other legislation, as it should be. I think the Senate should act like the Senate.

I just want to say that there has been a lot of rhetoric over the last couple of days about whose shutdown this is--who should have the blame. There is enough blame to go around. I hope we can move away from that and find a way to open the government back up, move about our business, and let the Senate legislate as it should.

I will add my vote for this agreement, as the majority leader has simply outlined, that we have a CR that runs through February 8, and we seek to have an agreement on immigration before that time, as well as the other outstanding issues. If an agreement has not been reached by February 8, then we move to immigration, and the Senate deals with it as the Senate should, without relying on the White House or other bodies, other Chambers, to dictate what we do here, and we deal with this issue as we have dealt with it in the past, by debating it, by amending legislation, and by moving forward.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, 1 day into a government shutdown, we are in a hole as a body. I was just talking to one of my colleagues who said we ought to spend less time worrying about who threw us in this hole or how we ended up in this hole and more concern about getting out of it. I hope we can dispense with the signs--``The Trump Shutdown'' or ``The Schumer Shutdown''--and realize we are in a shutdown situation, now let's climb out of it. There are ways to do that.

I believe we will be coming with a proposal today, and I hope we can vote on it today--we can with consent--to move the date from the 16th to the 8th. That would be significant. We don't need to go 4 weeks more in this CR. We can find an agreement to get out of it, to find some permanent solutions, some permanent funding solutions for the government.

We can also find solutions on the DACA situation. I just want to encourage my colleagues to not use loaded phrases as well here. I have heard the term that we can't deal or we shouldn't deal with the illegal alien situation right now. Who could honestly look at a child who was brought across the border--the average age when these DACA kids were brought across the border was the age of 6. Some of them were toddlers, some of them were carried by their parents. Who in the world can look at them and refer to them as illegal aliens? You can have a different description for their parents or others who brought them across, but to put that kind of a label on a child is just wrong, and with that kind of loaded language, it makes it more difficult to come to a solution.

There is enough blame to go around for this shutdown on all of us. It is a pox on all of our houses. The question should be: How do we get out of it? I would suggest--and I think we are coming to this--that the best way out of this is for the Senate to be the Senate again. I know the majority leader--and I am glad he does--very jealously guards his prerogative as the majority leader to decide what comes to the floor. That is his right as the elected leader of the majority. I hope he will just as jealously guard the Senate's prerogative, the congressional prerogative. We are an equal branch of government, and to say we will not move on a particular topic until we have agreement from the President, when we have waited for weeks and weeks and weeks for that kind of agreement, for that kind of nod or signal, we can't wait anymore. Let's more jealously guard our prerogative here as legislators, and let's bring an immigration bill to the floor.

My understanding now is, that is the agreement; that if we haven't reached an agreement with the White House and with the other negotiators by the 8th, by the time this next CR runs out--if we can agree to a CR that runs to the 8th--we will bring an immigration bill to the floor and/or we will bring a vehicle to the floor that will allow other immigration bills to come. I happen to have been working on a bipartisan bill. There are now seven Republicans and seven Democrats who have signed on. That is my preference. I believe some on the Democratic side may want to bring another one up first; that is great. Some on the Republican side may want to bring another version up as well--great. Sixty votes will be required, and I think we will probably settle on one we can all agree on. We will have to. We have to get 60 votes in the Senate. I think that can be done, and that is a way forward.

I hope at that time--there is no guarantee--but I hope the President will, as he has said in the past, agree with what the Senate passes. I believe we can pass a responsible measure that takes care of these DACA kids as well as reinforces the border where we need to and takes care of some other issues as well that the President and our leaders have outlined. I think that can be done. It can be done today. I hope we can have consent to move that, and I hope the President can accept that as the will of the House or the will of the Senate and then promote that solution.

We have until March 5 before these kids are subject to deportation. None of these kids should be under that cloud, not knowing what they are going to do with regard to school or work or their legal status here. There is an urgency. For those who say there is no urgency, we have had 6 months to deal with this, and now we are just outside of a month before kids will start being deported. We shouldn't go further than February 8 to actually settle this in the Senate. We can do it. We have people who are working in good faith on both sides of the aisle. Let's just exercise our congressional prerogative to actually legislate. If we will do so, I am confident we can come to a solution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding.

On the 5th, as I understand it, the DACA Program will no longer apply.

Those who have already registered, that registration will continue until it runs out. There are some now--I think the figure is some 150 a day--who are losing status, and there is a question about whether they can renew. Courts have been trying to weigh in on that, and the administration has asked the courts to finalize--asked the High Court to.

The problem is, even if it is not deportation on March 5, there are real questions. They can't get work permits. They will not be able to register for school, in certain circumstances, so they are left in limbo, and that is not fair to them.

I thank the Senator for working on a solution, and I thank him for yielding time.

Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident.'' So from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The Founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.

As the distinguished former Member of this body, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, famously said, ``Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.'' During this past year, I am alarmed to say, Senator Moynihan's proposition has likely been tested more severely than at any time in our history. It is for that reason that I rise today to talk about the truth and the truth's relationship to democracy, for without truth and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, our democracy will not last.

Mr. President, 2017 was a year which saw the truth--objective, empirical,

evidence-based truth--more battered and abused than at any time in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine ``alternative facts'' into the American lexicon as justification for what used to be simply called old-fashioned falsehoods. It was a year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally protected free press was launched by the same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted.

``The enemy of the people'' was what the President of the United States called the free press in 2017. It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own President uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ``enemy of the people'' that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of ``annihilating such individuals'' who disagreed with the supreme leader. This alone should be the source of great shame for us in this body--especially for those of us in the President's party--for they are shameful, repulsive statements.

And, of course, the President has it precisely backward--despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot's enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn't suit him ``fake news,'' it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.

I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this Chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of ``fake news'' are dubious at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas all around the globe, encounter members of U.S.-based media who risk their lives and sometimes lose their lives reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to their commitment and their sacrifice. According to the International Federation of Journalists, 80 journalists were killed in 2017. A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists documents that the number of journalists imprisoned around the world has reached 262, which is a new record. This total includes 21 reporters who are being held on ``false news'' charges.

So powerful is the Presidency that the damage done by the sustained attack on the truth will not be confined to this President's time in office. Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful. In fact, we question the powerful most ardently. To do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship. And so we know well that, no matter how powerful, no President will ever have dominion over objective reality. No politician will ever tell us what the truth is and what it is not. And anyone who presumes to try to attack or manipulate the press for his own purposes should be made to realize his mistake and be held to account. That is our job here. That is just as Madison, Hamilton, and Jay would have it.

Of course, a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the free press usually corrects itself when it has made a mistake. Politicians don't.

No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to those assaults on our institutions.

An American President who cannot take criticism, who must constantly deflect and distort and distract, who must find someone else to blame, is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the President adds to that danger.

Now we are told via Twitter that today the President intends to announce his choice for the ``most corrupt and dishonest'' media awards. It beggars belief that an American President would engage in such a spectacle, but here we are.

So 2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it. In this effort, the choice is quite simple, and in this effort, the truth needs as many allies as possible. Together, my colleagues, we are powerful. Together, we have it within us to turn back these attacks, to right these wrongs, repair this damage, restore reverence for our institutions, and prevent further moral vandalism. Together, united in this purpose to do our jobs under the Constitution, without regard to party or party loyalty, let us resolve to be allies of the truth and not partners in its destruction.

It is not my purpose here to inventory all the official untruths of the past year, but a brief survey is in order. Some untruths are trivial, such as the bizarre contention regarding the crowd size at last year's inaugural, but many untruths are not at all trivial, such as the seminal untruth of the President's political career--the oft- repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama. Also not trivial are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate; to the effort to undermine confidence in the Federal courts, Federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, and the free press; to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all--the supposed ``hoax'' at the heart of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

To be very clear, to call the Russian matter a ``hoax,'' as the President has done so many times, is a falsehood. We know that the attacks orchestrated by the Russian Government during the election were real. They constituted a grave threat to both American sovereignty and to our national security. It is in the interest of every American to get to the bottom of this matter, wherever the investigation leads.

Ignoring or denying the truth about hostile Russian intentions toward the United States leaves us vulnerable to future attacks. We are told by our intelligence agencies that these attacks are ongoing. Yet it has recently been reported that there has not been a single Cabinet-level meeting regarding Russian interference and how to defend America against these attacks--not one. What might seem like a casual and routine untruth--so casual and routine that it has now become the white noise of Washington--is, in fact, a serious lapse in the defense of our country.

Let us be clear. The impulses underlying the dissemination of such untruths are not benign. They have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them. The destructive effect of this kind of behavior on our democracy cannot be overstated.

Every word that a President utters projects American values around the world. The values of free expression and reverence for the free press have been our global hallmark, for it is our ability to freely air the truth that keeps our government honest and keeps the people free. Between the mighty and the modest, truth is a great leveler. So respect for freedom of the press has always been one of our most important exports.

But a recent report published in our free press should raise an alarm. I will read from the story: ``In February, Syrian President Bashar Assad brushed off an Amnesty International report that some 13,000 people had been killed at one of his military prisons by saying, `You can forge anything these days,' we are living in a fake news era.''

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has complained of being ``demonized'' by ``fake news.'' Last month, the report continues, with our President ``laughing by his side'' Duterte called reporters ``spies.''

In July, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro complained to the Russian propaganda outlet that the world media had ``spread lots of false versions, lots of lies'' about his country, adding: ``This is what we call `fake news' today, isn't it?''

There are more.

A state official in Myanmar recently said: ``There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.''

He was referring to the persecuted ethnic group.

Leaders in Singapore, a country known for restricting free speech, have promised ``fake news'' legislation in the next year--and on and on and on.

This feedback loop is disgraceful. Not only has the past year seen an American President borrow despotic language to refer to the free press, but it seems he has now, in turn, inspired dictators and authoritarians with his own language. That is reprehensible.

We are not in a ``fake news'' era, as Bashar Assad said. Rather, we are in an era in which the authoritarian impulse is reasserting itself to challenge free people and free societies everywhere.

In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous, it is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be the cause for profound alarm and spur to action. Add to that the by now predictable habit of calling true things false and false things true, and we have a recipe for disaster.

George Orwell warned: ``The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.''

Any of us who have spent time in public life have endured news coverage we felt was jaded or unfair, but in our positions, to employ even idle threats, to use laws or regulations to stifle criticism is corrosive to our democratic institutions. Simply put, it is the press's obligation to uncover the truth about power. It is the people's right to criticize their government, and it is our job to take it.

What is the goal of laying siege to the truth? In his spurring speech on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America, President John F. Kennedy was eloquent in the answer to that question. He said:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with

unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and

competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its

people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a

nation afraid of its people.

The question of why the truth is now under such assault may be for historians to determine, but for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world, made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions.

We are a mature democracy. It is past time to stop excusing or ignoring or, worse, endorsing these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.

I sincerely thank my colleagues for their indulgence today. I will close by borrowing the words of an early adherent to my faith that I find has special resonance at this moment. His name was John Jacques. As a young missionary in England, he contemplated the question: What is truth? His search was expressed in poetry and ultimately in a hymn that I grew up with titled, ``Oh Say, What is Truth?'' It ends as follows:

Then say, what is truth? 'Tis the last and the first,

For the limits of time it steps oe'r.

Tho the heavens depart and the earth's fountains burst,

Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,

Eternal, unchanged, evermore.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate this colloquy. I appreciate my colleagues who have been through a lot on this proposal. Many of us have worked in prior years on immigration reform measures, and I think we have built up a level of trust between us that helps on these issues.

Senator Durbin is right. There were a couple of times when you would just throw your hands up and say: I don't know if we can get there. Yet our staffs worked hard and well, and I do believe that we have a proposal that can get 60 votes. We have worked so long under rules of reconciliation that sometimes we forget that we have to get 60 votes around here. That is what this bill is designed to do. In the end, that is what it is going to take--60 votes.

I come from Arizona. We have a lot of Dreamers there, obviously, some 50,000. I have met so many of them over the years, and to say that they deserve this is an understatement. They have waited so long, some of them delaying their educations because of not knowing what is on the other side and some not being able to get the kinds of jobs that they need because of the uncertainty in their moving ahead. These are the people whom Senator Graham said we want here. We ought to roll out the red carpet and say: Please stay here and help build your country. This is the only country they know. They have everything but the papers. So I hope we can move forward on this.

Let me talk about a few aspects of the proposal.

There are some who have said that the Democrats are unwilling to give on this. I hear that on my side of the aisle. I can tell you, on any compromise proposal--anything that is a bipartisan proposal--both sides are going to give, all sides are going to give. Yet this one, the Dream Act, of which I am a sponsor, would have a faster path to citizenship for kids. This is a slower path here, which is a big give on the Democratic side, from some 5 years to 12. That is not easy. It is not easy to tell people: You have to wait a little longer than you expected. It is part of the legislative process.

I know a lot of people aren't keen on some of the structure that will go along the border, whether it is called a wall or whatever, but those of us in border States realize that we need better infrastructure, that we need better security, that we need better technology, that we need more manpower, and it is all a compromise. That is what it is about, and that is why I appreciate this process.

I know that if we allow this to come to the floor and are able to present this proposal to our colleagues, we will have a lot more support than we have already on the Republican side.

It was said by some on our side today that the only way we can move forward is if we get an OK from the White House--if we know what they want and what the President will sign. I am not sure that we will ever get there unless we actually put a proposal on the floor of the Senate and debate it and vote on it. At that point, we will know. Then the White House will come and say: Yes, I can support that, or, we can support that with this change or that change. If we are waiting for the White House to come to us with a proposal that it can support, we will likely be waiting a long time.

Many of us met with the White House, starting 6 weeks ago, in our asking for proposals on the border. We said: Tell us what the White House can live with. What is needed? What is a must have?

We waited and waited and waited for weeks and then got a big proposal with just about everything thrown in.

I would submit that we have to put something on the floor, and this proposal is ready. I think we ought to continue over the next couple of days to build support and add Republican and Democratic cosponsors. Then I would ask our leadership to put this on the floor. Let's see where the votes are. We have a short period of time. We don't have much runway. The last thing we want to do is to come right up against the deadline, right up against March 5.

The administration has asked the High Court to rule on whether or not there can be any further extensions or if March 5 is the ``deadline'' deadline. It is my opinion that the Court will come back and say: Yes, that is it. We have to be ready for that. We cannot afford to wait anymore. It is time with this proposal to put it on the floor.

Again, I thank my colleagues for their work on this. I thank the White House--those who have sat down and the President's comments the other day in that this needs to be a bill of love. I think that it is. It is also, as Senator Durbin said, a bill that is tough, that has border security elements, as we want to make sure we are not in this situation a few years from now.

We have to have a bill, first and foremost, that has the support to pass the House and the Senate. That is what this is. Make no mistake in that this is the bipartisan approach. This is the only game in town. As much as others want to say that they are going to reach an agreement, they are basically where we were a few months ago. They have a long way to go. We have a proposal here that can garner enough support to pass the Senate, so let's move on with it.

I yield to Senator Menendez.

Mr. President, over the past couple of months, we have seen a lot of effort with regard to immigration reform and in particular to address the situation of the so-called DACA kids, the Dreamers who were brought here through no fault of their own and are now protected--many of them--through the DACA Program. But those protections will run out on March 5. In fact, some have lost their protections already. So there is a great impetus and urgency to deal with this program.

I have said from the beginning that in order to establish a long-term resolution and to provide regulatory certainty, a true DACA fix must be a bipartisan solution. Over the past year, the two big items this Chamber and the Congress have dealt with--healthcare reform and tax policy--have been done under rules of reconciliation, meaning that if we could get a bare majority of Republican votes, that would be enough, if we could keep all the Republicans together. That is no longer the case with our approach to DACA. We are not under rules of reconciliation. It will require 60 votes, meaning that only a bipartisan solution will do. That is why I have been working on such a measure with my Republican and Democratic colleagues in Congress, as well as the White House.

As I have said repeatedly, on this issue, I believe that the President's instincts are better than some of the advice that he gets. I truly believe that he does want a solution for these young immigrants. I hope we can get there. We will have a meeting tomorrow at the White House--a bipartisan meeting--to try to get a little farther down the road.

Let me stress that a lot of words that are highly charged are thrown around this immigration debate. No word is perhaps more highly charged than the word ``amnesty.'' That has been thrown around by a number of my colleagues. I would suggest that is not the case here with the DACA kids. Amnesty, by definition, is an unconditional pardon for a breach of law. I don't think a child who was brought across the border by the parents has committed a violation of the law--not the child; certainly the parents but not the child. To provide relief for those kids and to allow them to stay in the only country they know I don't think should be called amnesty. Yet that highly charged word is often used. To suggest that anyone pursuing a bipartisan solution is proposing amnesty I think is misleading, and it sets back the cause of trying to fix the situation.

A proposal that we are drafting--this bipartisan group--offers a pathway to citizenship for only a specific group of young immigrants-- as I mentioned, those who were brought here through no fault of their own. These are immigrants who are serving in the military, who are seeking education, who are holding good jobs. They will be required to continue to do so before they

can have a chance to earn citizenship. As for the parents of these young immigrants, nobody can deny the fact that they did break the law, and any bipartisan proposal on DACA cannot and will not reward them for this behavior.

I agree with the President when he said that dealing with DACA is a very difficult subject but that we must do so with heart. I believe that has been the case for those in this Chamber who have tried for 16 years to get a solution for these kids.

We have to prioritize border security measures, obviously, to determine which ones are sensible to include in a DACA measure. We will go beyond simply dealing with these DACA kids with some border security measures, but we have to find out which ones are sensible and make sense to include in this limited measure and table those that should be considered for the future.

I have been part of comprehensive immigration reform efforts in the past. I look forward to being part of comprehensive immigration reform efforts later this year, but this is not that. We have a very specific purpose to achieve before the 5th of March. The commitment we got was to have a bipartisan bill on the Senate floor by January 31. I believe we need to have that in order to have enough runway to get this done by March 5.

The White House, after much urging on our part, finally sent a list over as to what should be considered part of the border security plan. As I mentioned, many of these items need to be addressed. Maybe all of the items need to be addressed, but they need to be addressed as part of a larger, more comprehensive effort, not the limited fix we are going to do before March 5. I am all in when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform. I look forward to that debate. But we have to understand that we can't do it all before March 5 if we are going to protect these kids.

Some will say: Well, we get to March 5, if we can't do it, then we just kick the can down the road again with some other protection.

I think the courts have made it clear that what was done prior to this--the DACA Program itself--was not constitutional, and should we simply say we are going to extend that program now, it would be found unconstitutional by the courts. This is a real deadline, and we have to meet it. We have to focus specifically on protecting these DACA recipients. I think Republicans, Democrats, and the President all want this. The question is, Are we going to, just over the next couple of weeks, talk about bigger, broader issues that need to be dealt with but have no chance of being part of legislation?

In 2013, I participated in what was called the Gang of 8. We negotiated for 7 straight months nearly every night. We were in Washington. We as Members negotiated--and our staffs did as well--much longer hours and into the weekends. Then we brought that piece of legislation to the Judiciary Committee, where we debated it for a couple of weeks. I think we amended it more than 100 times. Then we brought it to the House floor for another couple of weeks and amended it several more times before passing it by a vote of 68 to 32. That was a long process--hard-fought compromises in that legislation. To suggest that we can go through a similar effort in the next couple of weeks--it simply isn't going to happen. The list the White House brought forward is simply something that we ought to consider for comprehensive reform but not for this specific fix.

With regard to the border itself, we all know that we need additional infrastructure on the border. I represent Arizona. We have some 375 miles of border. Some of the border has good barriers in terms of fences. The closest thing we have approximating a wall is these old landing strips from World War II that we put on their end and cemented in. They are opaque. You can't really see through them. We have them in a number of the communities along the border. We have been taking them out because they are not very effective and putting fences in place of them because we need to have visibility to the other side of the border.

Most of what the President is talking about along the southern border is a fence. We do need more fences. In the Gang of 8 bill, I think we authorized 700 miles of additional and improved fencing. Nobody is suggesting we don't need additional infrastructure or barriers on the border. The question is, How much do we provide for it in this legislation?

The President has made a request in the budget for about $1.6 billion for the coming year. I think that will result in about 74 miles of fence between Texas and California. I think that is a good place to start. How much we authorize going forward will be very much in debate.

I know that during the campaign, the President talked long and hard about building a wall, but every time he mentioned building a wall, he talked about Mexico paying for it. We all know--and many of us knew at the time--Mexico was not going to pay for that wall. They are not. That is why the President is asking for $18 billion of U.S. taxpayer money to fund that wall. To suggest that the President hasn't changed his position and that we are dealing with a proposal that we have known was coming from the White House simply isn't true. It has changed. The President initially said that Mexico would pay for it. That is not the case. The U.S. taxpayers are going to pay for any infrastructure on the border. That is as it should be. If we are putting up the border fence, we ought to pay for it. To suggest that nobody has changed their position is simply not true.

Deals like this where you need 60 votes necessarily involve compromise. No party, no individual is going to get everything they want. The White House will not get everything they want. The Democrats in Congress will not, and neither will the Republicans. This will be a compromise.

I am simply suggesting tonight--let's get real about the time involved between now and when we have to fix this and not think that we can simply kick the can down the road and put in some temporary fix, some kind of bridge later that will protect these kids. Those protections will run out on March 5 and may be done at that point. Let's get serious. Let's all get serious, Republicans and Democrats, and not come to the table with unrealistic expectations about what can be done and what can be part of this legislation. Let's have something that we can put on the Senate floor by the end of the month to leave sufficient time to get this fixed by March 5. I hope we can all work together on this, Republicans and Democrats.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I rise today to honor the selfless and dedicated life of Thomas S. Monson, the 16th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After nearly seven decades of church leadership and service, President Monson passed away on Tuesday evening. Millions of members of the LDS Church around the globe mourn his passing as we celebrate his life.

There is much that can be said about what President Monson taught us from the pulpit. There is much more to be learned about what he did when he wasn't speaking--the sick whom he visited, the weary he sustained, the jobless he aided, and the homeless he sheltered.

A reoccurring theme throughout his life and his ministry was ``the rescue.'' He spoke movingly of a painting he had seen in a gallery in England that featured, as he described it, ``heavy-laden black clouds and the fury of a turbulent sea portending danger and death. A life from a stranded vessel gleaming far off. In the foreground, tossed high by incoming waves of foaming water, a large lifeboat, men pulling mightily on the oars plunging into the tempest. On the shore stands a wife and two children, wet with rain and whipped by wind. They gaze anxiously seaward.''

``In my mind,'' President Monson said, ``I abbreviated the name of the painting. To me, it became ``To the Rescue.''

Throughout his life, President Monson went to the rescue of those in need. He possessed a genuine love for those who were sad, downtrodden, and less fortunate.

He was quoted as saying:

I firmly believe that the sweetest experience in mortality

is to know that our Heavenly Father has worked through us to

accomplish an objective in the life of another person.

This, he took to heart. In his early years of church service, President Monson presided over a congregation with 85 widows. Although he was their appointed church leader for just a few short years, the love he felt for those widows was evident. He continued to visit each widow throughout her remaining life and was present at the funeral for each of his dear friends.

He encouraged all of us to ``extend the hand that helps and the heart that knows compassion.'' My colleagues here would be interested to know that President Monson often quoted Abraham Lincoln saying: ``If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.''

President Monson's example of service and rescue was recognized by many world leaders. In an effort to promote America's spirit of generosity, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to his Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives. President Monson met with religious leaders of all faiths to talk about the welfare program of the church, which has been recognized as being highly successful in its scope and in its mission.

In closing, President Monson's daughter, Ann Monson Dibb, observed how her father embodied the Scripture in James that reads: ``Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.'' There is no better description of the life and legacy of Thomas S. Monson. May we do the same by rushing to the rescue of those in need.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.