Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, April 26; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed. Finally, I ask that following leader remarks, the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the Pompeo nomination, with the time until 12 noon tomorrow equally divided between the two leaders or their designees.

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 Blumenthal.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, first, I thank Senator Durbin for 17 years of work on this issue and for highlighting the reality that there are so many people who came here through the decisions of their parents--not decisions of their own. I, for one, believe they deserve a path to citizenship.

I felt so strongly about it that I did something I don't believe any Republican-only bill has ever done before. I filed a bill, along with Senator

Lankford, to do just that--to provide a path to citizenship not only to the 690,000 who had enrolled in the DACA Program but to some 1.2 million.

I believe we need to come up with a solution to this problem, and I thank Senator Durbin for his dogged tenacity on this issue. I believe that if we continue to focus on it, we will succeed.

I just need to set a few facts straight. I know the majority leader is in the Chamber, and I will keep my comments brief.

I was in that January 9 meeting as well. In the January 9 meeting, we had an extraordinary meeting, and most of it was on tape. But the reality is, in the January 9 meeting, we walked away with an understanding that there were four pillars on which we were going to build a bipartisan bill. The President looked to the whips in the minority and the majority, and he said: You guys get together, produce a bipartisan bill, and I will support it.

The goal was to go out and have everybody get together with the diverse interests that were represented in the room and come up with that bipartisan bill. We have to talk about ``bipartisan.'' A bipartisan bill is not a bill that gets just Republicans and Democrats on it. A bipartisan bill is a bill that gets up to 60--at least 60-- Republicans and Democrats on it. About a month ago, we came to the floor and had four bills. There was no open debate. It was just an up- or-down vote. That is why it failed. It also failed when there were supermajorities, when President Obama was in place, when not a single Republican vote was necessary. That is why President Obama issued the DACA Executive order.

President Trump did not create this problem. It was the inaction of Congress and even a Democratic-controlled Presidency and supermajority- controlled Congress that couldn't solve this problem for whatever reason.

On the bill that we had, we had three Democrats vote. I guess I could argue that 39 votes were Democrats. That was a bipartisan bill, but it was a bill that didn't get 60 votes.

I hope we will continue to work on this issue so that we can provide certainty to the DACA population. It is not too late to do it. I think about the Dreamers every single day. They deserve a path to citizenship. The President deserves to be able to look the American people in the face and say he secured the border and made the homeland safer. I think we can work on some of the legal immigration issues that can actually get this solved.

Senator Durbin, I look forward to working with you, and let this be the Congress where we actually solve the problem.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2579

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

I object, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I had not planned on talking about the bill we have before us, S. 2155, but the other day I was listening to another Member speak, and this Member was talking about how this bill could threaten and possibly increase the predatory practices of people who had mobile home loans.

As a person who had a mobile home loan and somebody who lived in a mobile home park, I thought I would try to speak maybe about the practical easing--what we are trying to accomplish with this bill. The truth is, I would go further on regulatory tailoring than we have. We didn't because we wanted bipartisan agreement on this bill, which we have.

As a matter of fact, I thank the members on the Banking Committee who joined with me and other members to make sure we kept the bill tailored enough so we had bipartisan support.

On mobile homes--we get out here in the Senate, and we talk about facts and figures. I can talk about the fact that half of my community banks have ceased to exist in North Carolina since the crisis. I can talk about a number of people I speak with who can't get loans, but what I thought I would talk about is my own personal experience as a 16-year-old, 17-year-old kid living in a trailer park working with my father.

He would do maintenance work. If a house caught on fire or there was some sort of insurance damage, he would work with the insurance companies to actually do repair work, and I was his handyman when we would do these projects. We did not have a whole lot of money. My father didn't have a lot of cash on hand, so the way we did it is, when you had this insurance job, you bid on the insurance job. You knew how much money you would make at the end. Then you go to a bank and get what is called a 90-day note. Most of these projects were about 60- to 90-day projects, and you would go to a banker whom you had built a relationship with, and you would ask them to trust you to get this project done. You would show them the project you were doing, and he would underwrite a loan that you had to pay back in 90 days. That is why they called it a 90-day note.

Today, in the postcrisis world, that virtually never happens. Today, we don't have community banks and personal banking relationships that people can rely on to get access to capital. Even worse, with all the community banks and smaller banks consolidating, ceasing to exist, there are entire areas of North Carolina--a lot of people think North Carolina is an urban State. The fact is, about half our population, about 5 million people, live in rural areas. They have been hardest hit by the consolidation of banks and the ceasing to exist of these sort of lending institutions out in communities like the community I lived in when I was 17 years old. They are not getting the money they need to make ends meet.

What this bill is trying to do is recognize that, of course, after the financial crisis, there was a regulatory exposure we needed to address. The problem is, we simply went too far or at least with the passing of time we now know we can claw back those regulations on certain banks--particularly community and regional banks. That is all this bill is intended to do.

As a matter of fact, this bill allows the regulators to go back after those banks that are under the $250 billion threshold if they determine that the practices they are involved in are particularly problematic or may have a systemic impact on the financial system as a whole.

What we are trying to do is make sure we start seeing community banks pop up in rural areas like the place I lived in outside of Nashville, TN, where bankers could work with people and give them the resources they need to pay their bills. Even as late as just a couple of years ago--we have some folks who are speaking against the bill who said it was important for us to advance these sorts of changes. As a matter of fact, one Member said: ``It is important we advance this conversation to ensure that prudential regulations for regional banks are crafted appropriately.'' That is what this bill does.

Another Member or maybe the same Member said: ``We all agree that regional banks are not systemically important.'' Regional banks are the bigger banks. They would be like BB&T or Fifth Third Bank.

They are not systemically important. Well, then, I guess we can all agree that the community banks and smaller banks aren't. That is what this bill is about, some of the midsized regional banks and community banks. We said we need to tailor it, and that is what this bipartisan bill does.

Another Member said: ``I continue to believe we will not be successful in providing regulatory relief to institutions of any size if we don't have broad, bipartisan consensus.'' That is what this bill has.

We always talk about the polar environment here and how we can get nothing done. This is a bill that has had members of the Committee on Banking, on which I serve, join together to make sure that all we advanced out of the committee was a bipartisan consensus for regulatory relief that allows cash to flow to people who need it--community banks, regional banks that have a more intimate relationship with people who need access to capital. That is what this bill does. For the life of me, I can't understand why we can't all agree.

You have these discussions here where it sounds like we are doing some big-bank relief--not at all. I have a couple of large banking institutions in North Carolina, and they are going to have to continue to submit 60,000-page, 100,000-page stress tests and CCAR reports to make sure they don't create a

systemic threat. This bill doesn't touch that.

What this bill touches is a part of the ecosystem that is suffering. What this bill does is reduce the regulatory burden so that guy who existed back in the midseventies who would give my dad a 90-day note can now do it and not have to say no because they simply can't afford to do it either because it affects their portfolio or because they are spending so much money on regulatory relief that they have to go after the bigger loans. It is the people at my level at that time back in the seventies who suffer.

This is a bipartisan bill, it is a responsible bill, and it is a bill that is going to provide much needed relief.

I thank the Members on both sides of the aisle who recognize that this is a prudent bill, that it is measured. I thank Chairman Crapo for all the great work he has done to live up to his commitment to the Members on the other side of the aisle to keep this tailored and to do exactly what we said we were going to do. I look forward to its passage.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my friend and colleague, the senior Senator from North Carolina, for his words about Reverend Billy Graham. I will only add a few comments.

At one level, mine are very personal. I was telling someone just yesterday that I have two very distinct memories of times with my father. One of them was of watching Walter Cronkite, and the other one was of watching Billy Graham. I was talking to my mother earlier this week, and she talked about how much my father loved Billy Graham. I remember, vividly, sitting in front of that console TV with my father, watching him as he preached the Word of God.

This week is amazing because I find, when one loses somebody so precious like Reverend Graham, it is a very sad time, but in his case, America's pastor had brought so much joy to everyone's lives that it really is a celebration.

Earlier, Senator Burr and I had had an opportunity to offer our condolences to the Graham family. What was remarkable was that in the face of every one of them was, maybe, a hint of sorrow but, really, just a fullness of joy in knowing what their father did when he was on this Earth and now what he will do in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I think that today is a day we should all look back and ask ourselves: Could we actually come anywhere close to living the kind of life that this man lived? With his ministering in some 180 countries, with over 200 million people actually attending some of his unbelievable celebrations of the Gospel, and then his touching the lives of hundreds of millions of people--and billions of people like me who were watching on TV--the Graham legacy is something that is going to live on for generations.

I am happy to be a proud Senator from the State in which he was born. In fact, I live only about 20, 30 minutes from where he lived his early years. I look forward to going to the funeral on Friday to celebrate his life, to celebrate his legacy, and to celebrate the many lives that were changed because he had brought the Word of God to them wherever they may have been on this planet.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak about America's pastor.

To the Graham family, all of them--the sons, the daughters, the children, the grandchildren--God bless you all. Thank you for sharing the gift of your family member with so many people across this great Nation and across this world.

I thank Senator Burr for his kind words. I thank him for his leadership and for moving forward with the resolution that honors Reverend Billy Graham's life and legacy.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Nancy R. Mazza and congratulate her on her dedicated service to the people of North Carolina.

Nancy previously worked for esteemed Congressman Howard Coble, a dear friend who served North Carolina for three decades and passed away in 2015. After Congressman Coble's retirement in 2014, I was fortunate enough to hire Nancy in my High Point office.

Nancy's addition to my team was instrumental in getting our constituent service operation off the ground and running. Nancy has been an absolutely indispensable mentor and leader on our team. She has trained many of our staff members, generously sharing her wealth of casework experience and expertise.

Over the course of her distinguished career, Nancy has helped expedite thousands of passports, assisted countless veterans who were struggling to get answers and service from the VA, and inquired on behalf of many other North Carolinians when they needed assistance and had nowhere else to turn.

Anyone who has ever interacted with Nancy can immediately tell that she has a heart of gold and a dedicated passion for public service that is driven by kindness and compassion.

While Nancy Mazza will be sorely missed by our office, I am eternally grateful for the work that she did on behalf on North Carolinians. I wish her the very best in retirement.

Mr. President, in a moment, I am going to talk about the immigration debate we are going to have here.

Before I do that, though, I want to recognize that this is Valentine's Day. I happen to be several hundred miles away from my sweetheart, but I want to wish my wife a happy Valentine's Day. I made her a little card. I am sure I probably just violated a rule, but I don't think anybody can fire me. I want my wife to know I love her and wish I was with her.

Now, Mr. President, I want to talk a little about immigration reform. We just heard a discussion. I tell you, sometimes I think I teleport from this Chamber to the Kennedy Center because there are more theatrics going on here than you can find down there on any given day.

Let me give you one example of that. The whole indignant position that the Member from New Jersey just had on ``chain migration'' and somehow that mean Republicans came up with this term because we wanted to make a point. Demographers came up with this term decades ago. People on the other side of the aisle even have references to chain migration in bills they proposed. End the theatrics. Solve this problem.

Let's talk about the President's framework. I was presiding just before I got up here. I heard the word ``hard-line'' used--the hard- line demand of President Trump. I don't agree with everything President Trump has done. In fact, I said a year and a half ago--and I got criticized for it--that when you sit down and talk border patrol and talk homeland security, you are going to find out you don't need a large, monolithic wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

After the President was elected and after he got into office, he listened to homeland security and border patrol, and he came up with a plan that isn't a long, monolithic wall across the southern border. It is a strategic plan that actually lets us improve the security of the homeland along the northern and southern borders. It is a plan that tries to confiscate tons of drugs that are poisoning Americans in the tens of thousands of every year. It is a plan that makes sure gang members are more likely to be incarcerated when they cross the border illegally and less likely to go into the very communities that many of the people who immigrate to this country go into. It is a plan to make those communities safer.

It is a plan to make sure we know the thousands of people that cross the border illegally are not carrying illicit drugs in a truck or car or a wheel well, the way they do it today, because it is using technology to be able to search more vehicles to make sure our homeland is safe.

It is also a plan that shows more compassion than President Obama's DACA plan. Right now, they are saying: Let's keep DACA going. Well, there are 690,000 people who are in DACA. Their future is uncertain because it is an Executive order. It doesn't have the force of law. It could possibly be challenged by the court. The President decided on September 15 of last year, Congress do your job. You have been talking about immigration reform for two decades. We have an arguably illegal Executive order by President Obama that President Trump kept in place for about a year, and then he said: I am going to give you all 6 months to do your job and come up with something that has enduring value.

The DACA proposal only provided the illegally present persons who came to this country--through the decisions of an adult--some certainty that they wouldn't be deported. It doesn't give them any certainty in terms of a path to citizenship. People said the President has a hard- line plan. DACA allows 690,000 people who signed up for it to be here and, hopefully, not have that decision thrown out by the courts or have the President rescind it.

What we just heard from three or four Members on the other side of the aisle is that the President's hard-line plan is to have nearly three times as many people with a path to citizenship, not a piece of paper that hopefully will be in place for the time you spend in the United States but citizenship. So the President's hard-line plan actually legalizes about two and a half times as many people, not to just let them be here present, to have legal status but have a path to citizenship. That is hard-line?

I am not sure the President was there when he was running for office, but he listened. He recognizes he wants to be the President who gets something done, and he is willing to accept the criticism from people on my side of the aisle who may not support a path to citizenship. I do, and the President does.

I find it remarkable that somebody would say a President, who has endorsed a bill to provide a path to citizenship to 1.8 million people--two and a half times more than President Obama provided a temporary and passing status to--is hard-line.

Border security. Why is border security important? Is it just purely a hard-line deportation force sending people out? No. I already talked about, No. 1, hundreds of millions of doses of heroin, fentanyl, and other illicit drugs come across our border every year. We simply do not have the people, technology, and infrastructure to interdict them. Of the $25 billion, about $18 billion of it would be spent for border security. About 10 percent to 15 percent

of that is on the northern border. The remainder is on the southern border. Some of that will be spent on wall structures.

When all is said and done, less than half of the 2,300 miles will have a wall structure. The rest will be spent on training additional personnel. If you have ever gone to a border crossing, you know the long lines they have there. This is actually creating technology that has low-intensity x rays where you could drive a vehicle through. The Border Patrol folks can identify human smugglers, human traffickers, and drug smugglers without ever having the person get out of the car. That is what the border security plan is focused on as well. There are wall structures where they make sense. They don't make sense along about half of the border.

Let me tell you about the humanitarian case for this, which I find remarkable no one on the other side of the aisle will bring up. I went to Texas last year. I went along the southern border. I was on the Rio Grande, on the Border Patrol boats, on horseback, and at night I took ATVs around. I heard a lot of stories by a lot of people, including property owners. Over the last 20 years, 10,000 people have died trying to cross our border on U.S. soil. We have no earthly idea how many tens of thousands of people die just trying to get there. So 10,000 people died over the last 20 years because we didn't know where they were. They were on American soil, but we didn't know where they were. About 1,000 of them were children. If that is not a case for needing to know who is crossing the border and where they are--even if they may get deported if they don't have a legitimate claim to asylum but have this threat to their safety--then I don't know what else is. I don't see how border security is hard-line when you look at the facts--not the theater but the facts.

I think that second pillar of the President's proposal is balanced. It is less than what he originally wanted, but it makes sense, and it shows a lot of movement on his part. Again, two and a half times the number of people are actually getting a path to citizenship--more than the DACA Executive order proposed--and it has border security that makes sense and is no longer this idea of a monolithic wall.

We heard somebody say there is a dramatic cut to legal immigration; that the promise we made to everybody who is in line because of a family relationship is going to be broken. That is utter nonsense. There is no proposal like that on the table. The fact is, there are about 3.9 million people in the backlog who, if the President's proposal is accepted, will get to this country in half the time it takes today. There are about 3.9 million people waiting to come to this country because of a family relationship who we have proposed--that the President has proposed--should be able to get here sooner.

The diversity lottery is also something, I think, people have been misled or they are trying to mislead you. I will leave it to you to decide. The diversity lottery is not ending. This actually comes up with a reasonable way to use those 50,000 green cards in a way that lets us draw down the backlog sooner--instead of having somebody wait 17 years or 20 years to get into the country, maybe 8 or 9, but then it is also with a focus on the underrepresented countries. There are many countries in Africa--about 15,000--that we would like to make sure they have an opportunity every year to come to this country. They are from an underrepresented country. We have already made proposals that said we are open to other proposals to make that be a part of how the diversity lottery gets settled. So 50,000 will continue to come. When we say we are ending the diversity lottery, we are not saying we will end the entry of 50,000 people; we are talking about modernizing it.

The last time we did any major immigration bill, I was 5 years old. I think it is about time to look at how the world has changed and maybe open your eyes and open your hearts to a better way to do it that benefits the person trying to come to this country and benefits our country as a result of their entry. I think it can be a win-win.

The last thing on chain migration is, I want to go back and find everybody who voted for bills in the past, and they voted for a bill with legislative language in it that referred to chain migration. I am sick of that kind of garbage on the Senate floor. That is just misleading. Chain migration is just a process that has been used in the past--not only by our country but other countries--to kind of link people together.

I am absolutely sympathetic with some of the things the gentleman from New Jersey said, but to say that this is some hateful, divisive term is not paying a whole lot of attention to your job. I have only been here 3 years. Many of these people who are here voted for language that had chain migration in it, and now they are saying it is something the hateful folks in our marketing departments created to be divisive. That is just untrue.

Now the last thing. When we are talking about legal immigration in this country--we immigrate about 1 million to 1.1 million people a year to this country. I don't have a problem with that number. If I had Members on the other side of the aisle, some of my colleagues, say, ``Thom, we want to try to maintain that same amount of immigration over time,'' I would say that I am open to it. Some of my colleagues I have worked with on this bill may not be. But the way we go about doing it needs to be modernized.

How many times have I heard that when we have a foreign national here who graduates with an engineering degree or some degree in STEM, that we should just staple a green card to the back of their diploma--how many times have we heard that?--because we need high-end workers. We need welders. We need carpenters. We need plumbers. We need people to come to this country to fill jobs, or at some point, our economic growth is going to be limited by the number of resources we have for those jobs. Our unemployment is going down. The demand for the workers is there. But we have an immigration system where about three-fourths of everybody who comes to this country comes purely because of a family relationship. I bet that if we dig into it, many of them actually could qualify on the basis of merit, but right now, it is just a random selection that doesn't really tie to our needs as a nation and for our economic growth or for our economic security.

I believe that if we get the immigration policy right, over the next 10 years, we will be building a case to have more legal immigration here, more than the 1 million or 1.1 million, but if we don't fix this, we are not going to fix the underlying problem with our immigration system.

I actually didn't plan on speaking. I just grabbed a couple of these slides so that I could talk about it. But it is very important to me for us to--I don't like being a part of an organization that talks a lot and doesn't get anything done, and over the last 17 years, that is all these folks have been doing. They say: Reelect me. I promise you that next year, I will get immigration reform done. Next year, I will file the Dream Act, and we will get it done.

Well, guess what. It hasn't gotten done under a Republican administration. President Bush was sympathetic to this issue. He couldn't get it done. Congress couldn't get it done.

President Obama comes in and says: I am going to fix immigration. President Obama had the votes to pass ObamaCare. There was a time in this Chamber when not a single Republican vote was necessary to pass a bill out of here, right? So if you don't need a single Republican vote in Congress, on the House or the Senate side, why didn't you get it done? Because I don't think you have taken the time to construct something that makes sense, that is compassionate, that is responsible, and that will have the enduring value of law. So now is the time to get it done, and the only way we are going to get it done is with bipartisan cooperation.

If you don't like some of the elements of the President's framework and you set a hammer to it, fold your hands, and say: If you will not vote on mine, I will not vote on yours--look at this and tell us how we can improve it. Tell us what we need to do to get a vote. Tell us what we can do to moderate this. To call this a hardline bill is absurd. It is theatrics. It is the kind of stuff that has prevented us from getting things done for the last 17 years.

I hope people will have an honest discussion and debate. I hope people will come down here, offer all the amendments they want to, and I hope they

will be mature enough, if they fail, to move on to the next one because I, for one, want to provide certainty to the DACA population.

I say to the Presiding Officer, you know better than I because you are in the Marine Reserves. There are 900 people serving in the military today--that is more than a battalion, right? We have more than 900 DACA recipients serving in the military. I want to file this bill. I want to get this bill to the President's desk and say to them: Welcome to this country. Thank you for your service. I can't wait to go to your ceremony where you swear the oath as an American citizen.

That is what we can do this week. But I guarantee you, anybody who sits here and says that the President's proposal is unfair and insincere and hardline is playing politics. It makes me wonder if some of them would just as soon have this be the ``if you elect me next year, I promise I will fix this problem'' campaign speech versus take this off the table, provide them certainty, and do something different for a change.

Finally, I started by wishing my wife a happy Valentine's Day. When I get into these speeches--I worked in business most of my career. I haven't been in politics very long. I get very frustrated with the lack of production and with the lack of results. But, Sweetie, I am not mad. I just get a little bit intense when I talk about an issue where the solution is within reach. I am not mad. I am frustrated with the Members of the U.S. Senate who don't see the opportunity to seize this moment and get it done.

Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity. I probably went long, and I apologize to anybody else who may be waiting to speak. But this is the week to get it done. This is the Congress to get it done. This is the President who has given us a historic opportunity. I hope we seize the day.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I wish to personally thank the Presiding Officer for all the work he has done to come up with what I believe is the right framework for fulfilling the promise to solve and create a viable solution for the DACA population and to deal with the other things that are critically important as we take this first major step in immigration reform after decades of failure.

Last year, I and Senator Lankford, who will be speaking after I do, decided we really wanted to get a discussion around a legal path to citizenship for a significant portion of the population of the illegally present. The deferred action program that was implemented by President Obama is what we used as kind of a baseline for determining how we could actually define that population and set terms so we could ultimately accept them into this country, and they could ultimately get citizenship.

The proposal we have outlined today--and I should also thank Chairman Grassley for his leadership. I have served on the Judiciary Committee for 3 years during my first term in the Senate and for 3 years on the Immigration Subcommittee. Under his leadership, we have crafted a framework that is consistent with what the President has proposed.

It is also consistent with what virtually anybody who has been around here for any amount of time has voted for in one form or another. It is a four-pillar framework that first begins with a path to citizenship for some 1.8 million DACA-eligible persons in the United States today. They were young when they came into this country. Some are adults now, but they came to this country through the decision of their parents. I, for one--and I believe many of my colleagues who support this bill-- believe they should be given an opportunity to be U.S. citizens.

After the bill is ratified, they will have an opportunity, based on a 10-year or 12-year timeline, to have the certainty of having legal status and then a path to citizenship that could be 10 to 12 years. It is fairly straightforward, in terms of the requirements to come into the program. Some 1.8 million will qualify, once we ratify this bill and send it to the President's desk.

Coupled with this, it is critically important to not make the mistakes of the past. First off, let's not just come in and assume we are going to pass a standalone Dream Act. The reason for that is, it has failed every single time it has been attempted. It has failed under a Republican administration. It has failed under a Democratic administration. It even failed at a time when President Obama was in the White House, and there were supermajorities of Democrats in the Senate and a majority in the House. So even when not a single Republican vote would be necessary, they were unable to produce a solution.

Now, this week, we have an opportunity to debate one that I think works. No. 1, there is broad consensus. Even among people who have never supported a path to citizenship before, there is broad consensus that this is a workable, viable, compassionate framework. So 1.8 million DACA-eligible persons qualify for a path to citizenship.

Then we get into border security. Senator Ernst talked about border security. It is critically important to think about border security. It is not the wall. The President has said he does not see in his vision a wall going from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. There are certainly places where we need structures, but we also need so many other things layered on top of it so we actually know who is coming to this country, what is coming to this country, and if they should try to cross the border illegally, we know where they are for no other reason than for humanitarian reasons. Thousands of people have died crossing the border--over the last 20 years, over 10,000 people and about 1,000 of them, young children.

By putting into place a wall structure where it makes sense, better technology and resources at the border, we are going to know who is coming into this country. We are going to know what drugs are coming into this country. We are going to be able to do a much better job of finding and protecting people who may be trafficked to this country for the purposes of the sex trade--human trafficking.

It comes through a commonsense, 10-year implementation that was developed by Homeland Security and Border Patrol. This wasn't something that started in the White House; it is something that has taken a year or two to get into place, which is a rational, multiphased, multifaceted solution for border security.

Then what we have to take a look at is the reality of our broken immigration system. We have millions of people waiting to come into this country, some of them as long as 20 years. This proposal--the proposal we will introduce this week and hopefully gain the support of the Senate, that we know the President supports, and we believe the House would support--draws down a queue that has been out there for almost 20 years. So 3.9 million people who are in the process right now have been petitioned for because of a family relationship with some other U.S. citizen. We are proposing actually trying to figure out a way to accelerate that, to have them move through the naturalization process far sooner than they will if we fail to produce a solution this week. Then, over time, we can find other possible opportunities for immigration.

Today why don't we at least look at how we fix the broken immigration system to make sure those who are in the system know we are not turning our backs on them. Then, over time, we can get on to possibly--in my case, I think, at some point, we could actually build a case for even more legal immigration than we have today, but, for now, let's at least make sure we have an immigration system people can rely on and can actually become U.S. citizens.

The real sticking point--and I think what we are going to see this week--is we are beginning to see more and more consensus on the three pillars I just discussed: the DACA population, border security, and the visa lottery being used in a way that rewards merit and also uses green cards to bring more people into the country sooner rather than the two decades they have been waiting.

The last thing we have to look at is chain migration--family unification or reunification. We are out of step with most other countries in terms of how we allow immigration into this country. I, for one, think it is reasonable to continue to have a component to allow families to be reunified--people who come over on work visas or people who are coming through whichever immigration process they may choose, but at the end of the day, to have such a small number of our immigrant population--some 1 million every year--come in without regard to merit is irresponsible. In fact, I think if we continue to do it, we do it at the expense of maybe future immigration. We want more and more skilled people--people who can come to this country and contribute immediately, satisfy the needs of our society, and we can do that through a reasonable, rational discussion about what our immigration policy should look like over time.

I will leave my colleagues with this: In a country like Canada, 63 percent of their legal immigration has a skill requirement associated with it. In a country like Australia, it is the same thing, but almost three-quarters of all

of our immigration has no tie whatsoever to the needs of this Nation-- our economy, our educational institutions, our communities.

All we are saying is, let's take a look at this and maybe change the proportions so we can actually have a program that is modernized, that is also focused on the needs we have for our great country.

This week, we are going to hear a lot of things. I told a group today at lunch to be ready for me to vote against something they would expect me to vote for. I am going to do that. I fully expect to have some of my Republican colleagues and some of my Democratic colleagues offer an amendment that I don't have a problem with the underlying policy, but I have a huge problem with producing a result in the Senate which has virtually no chance of going to the President's desk and becoming law. Then, we will ultimately get on the Secure and the Succeed Act. It is a well-structured, four-pillar solution that has been very much instructed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that I know the President will support, and I believe the President could convince our colleagues in the House to get it to his desk.

So, again, I thank my colleagues Senator Lankford and Senator Grassley, Senator Perdue, Senator Cotton, all of those who have weighed in--Senator Cornyn--to try and craft a solution that is responsive to the President's framework, responsive to some of the concerns our friends on the other side of the aisle have, and now it is time for us to act.

Let's do something different. Let's produce a result. Let's not get up here and talk about it and say: Well, I tried. Let's produce a result. Let's provide certainty to these people waiting for us to act, to those DACA recipients. Let's secure our border, and let's modernize our broken immigration system. If we do that, we have done a great thing.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I was talking with the pages earlier asking if they knew what was going on. I am not sure if people watching the debate know what is going on. Let's talk about the mechanics of what is happening right now.

We have a measure before the Senate right now that cures at 1 a.m. tonight. At 1 a.m. tonight, we are going to vote on something we could vote on right now. The outcome is going to be something my friend from Kentucky will oppose, but it is going to happen because the majority of Republicans believe that funding the government is a pretty important thing to do.

I am in a club. I am in a club that says we need to keep the government open. I am in a club that says we don't need to be telling people they are going to be furloughed tomorrow when we know darn well that at 1 a.m. tonight, we will be back open for business. I am in a club that tells everybody we obligated ourselves to pay our bills, and we are going to pay our bills.

I don't like this. I served as speaker of the house for 4 years. We paid our bills on time and got our budgets done on time. We had regular order. I agree with all that stuff.

Right now, we are in a position to where this is very simple. We can, right now, provide certainty to the thousands of people who expect the government to be open or we can play this game until 1 a.m. I, for one, think we should do it right now. If we want to go through the theater, and we want to go until 1 a.m., that is going to be the end result.

Employees out there, I apologize on behalf of people who can't give you certainty right now at 9 p.m. At 1 a.m., you will have it. I am sorry we have to go through this process. We seem to go through it far too often.

I will also tell you something else I have to speak briefly on, and I am going to offer a motion.

This whole idea about this concept of let's just withdraw from Afghanistan--I have been to Baghdad. I have been to the Kurdish region in Iraq, and I have been to Afghanistan. I have heard people in Iraq say the worst thing we did was a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. We can debate whether we should have gone in there, but we are in there, and now we have to figure out a way to exit that doesn't put Iraqis at risk and American men and women who are serving this country. You don't do it through a precipitous withdrawal. It is irresponsible, and I will guarantee you, there is not a single person in uniform who would agree with you that is the

right way to protect our troops and protect the people of Afghanistan and the many allies we have there trying to take the fight to the Taliban and al-Qaida. It is irresponsible. So I am a member of that club.

I am a member of a club that says when the United States said we are going to protect a country and try to get it on the right path, we stay there until we get it done and do everything we can while there to keep our men and women safe. If that is the wrong club to be in, so be it. I happen to think it is the club that every single one of us should be in.

This is not the sort of discussion we should be having tonight. Tonight is about funding the government. Tonight is about actually having a great discussion about regular order, getting appropriations bills on the floor, having a debate like we are going to have on immigration next week--but now is not the time to have this discussion.

We have to decide, what do you want to be as a Senator? Do you want to be a Senator who wants to make a point or do you want to make a difference? Do you know what? I don't see how points alone make a change in America. What makes a change in America is when we ratify a bill or get a bill out of here, we send it to the President, and it becomes law. If all we do is a speech on the floor, and it doesn't produce an outcome, time after time, then you may want to rethink how you are trying to get your point across.

What happens when you don't produce an outcome here? You haven't convinced 50 or 51 Senators your idea is good enough to support. Go to work. Build a coalition. Make a difference. You can make a point all you want. Points are forgotten. There are not a whole lot of history books about the great points of the American Senate. There are history books about the great results of the American Senate--the great bills, like the tax reform bill, and the other things we have done in this session but not points.

People aren't here to talk about a good point. They are here to talk about a good outcome. How do good outcomes happen? When we take votes like the vote we should be taking at 9 p.m. tonight. We may take it at 1 a.m. I am a night person. I am all right with that, but we should be taking it now.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, at 9 p.m. today, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 1892 with a further amendment; further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and the Senate vote on the motion to concur.

Mr. President, regular order.

Mr. President, again, I have the motion before us. I believe the Senator from Kentucky did object to the motion.

Just one brief comment. And I thank the Senator from Louisiana for presiding. I know I was supposed to be in the chair 30 minutes ago, and I will be there in a couple of minutes.

I also wanted to take a moment to talk about the great opportunity we have next week to pass immigration reform, the great opportunity that we have to fulfill the promise to the DACA population of some 1.8 million that the President has proposed to provide a path to citizenship. It is a proposal that has $25 billion allocated over 10 years, with maybe $2.5 billion to $5 billion appropriated in the bill that we will take up or in various amendments that we will take up next week.

The first pillar is DACA, and we have satisfied that, and I believe we have broad consensus. There may be a few things around the edges, but we are pretty close to done.

On border security, we are done because the President himself has said it is not a monolithic wall over 2,300 miles. It is not even a wall over half that territory. It is about maybe 1,000 miles. And 1,000 miles of wall includes some walls that are secondary. So when you see a mile-long wall, it is actually two walls because there is a secondary barrier.

We are also talking about technology and infrastructure so that we can start working on the opioid epidemic. Tons and tons, millions of doses of heroin, fentanyl, and other drugs come across our border every month. By implementing border security--a lot of people think this is just about preventing people from crossing the border. This is about securing our Nation. Fortunately, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle recognize that.

Some think that the proposal--many of them; I don't know that all of them do--many of them believe the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have put together a great strategy that makes sense. I have always said--I got criticized last year--I said there is no way we are going to build a wall. We don't need a wall across all 2,300 miles, but we need security. We need it so that we know what is coming into this country, whether they are people crossing the border illegally or whether they are pumping hundreds and hundreds and millions of doses of poison into the thousands of people who die every year from opioids. In my State of North Carolina, more people die from opioid overdoses every year than interstate accidents--over 1,400.

So I am glad to know that pillar one--a path to citizenship for some 1.8 million DACA recipients--has an opportunity to become law, to make that difference I was talking about, and then $25 billion to secure the border.

Now we are having a great discussion about what is called the diversity lottery. It involves about 50,000 visas every year that are allocated in a random way today that makes no sense. We want to do it in a way that actually makes sure that underrepresented countries have an opportunity to come here, maybe some 15,000 a year, many from Sub- Saharan Africa, and the other ones can be used to draw down a backlog of people who have been trying to get to this country for as long as 17 years.

We talk about how we want more people immigrating, but the reality is, if you get in line today through the legal process, it can take you 10 to 17 years to get through the process. We are trying to figure out a way, through that allocation of the diversity lottery, to make that half the time. So we can clear out the queue for people waiting for 17 years, and others in the queue will never have to wait that long--about 9 years in total. I think we are making great progress.

The last thing we have to work on is chain migration or family reunification. Today, about 72 percent of the 1 million to 1.1 million people who come to this country every year are through what they call a family petition. So there are people who may have some

relationship here--it could be a brother, a sister, a mother, or a father. That is important to do, but it is also important for us to take a look at what our economy needs, what America needs, to make sure we have the resources and the people who best provide a great platform for the Americans whom we have to fight for--for all of the Americans whom we have to fight hard for in this country.

So there would be simple provisions, such as if you have an advanced degree--maybe we should allocate some of what is going into purely family reunification into getting engineers, doctors, scientists, highly educated people who want to come to live in this country.

At the other end of the spectrum, we need people of various skills, with a community college certification, maybe--a welder, a technical drawer. There are a number of things you can get at a community college. I know this because I went to a community college--actually two of them. There are a number of skills that you get over 2 years that you may have gained in a foreign country, or you may want to come here and complete the degree and then stay here.

That is all we are talking about in terms of adding a merit component to what right now is purely random or purely family-based immigration. I think there is a way to bridge that gap. I know people are kind of drawing their swords on certain issues, but let's look at what we are trying to do: No. 1, promote immigration to this country; and No. 2, make sure that it is very much focused on the kinds of needs we have in this Nation to help the economy grow.

By the way, if the economy is growing, there is going to be a lot of resources and people to support that growing economy. So I think that at the end of the day, if we do this, it could have the effect of actually promoting a case for more legal immigration over time.

I want to thank Senator Durbin and Senator Graham and a number of people who have spent years trying to solve this problem. By the same token, I would tell them, you have spent years trying to solve the problem with a single solution, and it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked in a Republican administration, and it didn't worked when President Obama was in power. It didn't even work when you didn't need a single Republican to vote for comprehensive immigration reform.

There was a time here--because no Republican voted for ObamaCare, so there was clearly a time here that the table should have been set for whatever immigration solution you wanted, in the same way the table was set for whatever healthcare solution President Obama wanted. I don't begrudge him for taking advantage of the opportunity, whether or not I disagree with the policy. But it is very telling, if that solution, which started back in 2001, couldn't make it through a sympathetic Republican President's administration, if that legislation couldn't make it through after 2008, with President Obama's clearly sympathetic administration, why on Earth would we simply propose the same thing that has failed for 17 years when we are so close to coming up with something that is balanced and compassionate?

I have had all kinds of people mad at me because I support a path to immigration for 1.8 million people. I wear that as a badge of honor because it is the right thing to do. It is also the right thing to do to secure the border, to fix the visa lottery, and to work on migration here that still maintains roughly the same numbers but does it in a responsible way that also protects the interests of the American people, the people who are here today, and creates a better environment for the people who want to move here tomorrow.

I thank the Presiding Officer for standing in my place for a moment.

I will yield the floor and come to the Chair.

(Mr. TILLIS assumed the Chair.)

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, at 9:30 p.m. today, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 1892 with a further amendment; further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and the Senate vote on the motion to concur.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 102, which was received from the House.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess until 12:01 a.m. on Friday, February 9.

Mr. President, I am here to talk about a vote we will be considering later this afternoon on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

I thank Senator Graham and my fellow cosponsors on the bill. I think it is a very important bill. I think it is a balanced bill as it is a bill that has the support of the vast majority of the American citizens and would make us consistent with all but only seven other nations in terms of restricting abortions to a limited number of exceptions after 20 weeks. Those exceptions would be a threat to the life of the mother, someone who may have been raped, or someone who may have been the victim of incest.

This is a balanced bill, and it is a policy that most of the world population agrees should be in place. I think it is our job to make sure this restriction is put into place, with medical science today suggesting that after 20 weeks an unborn child can experience pain, while still allowing for the choice of the mother. We could discuss different opinions about that in the earlier terms but certainly after 20 weeks. I think this is balanced policy and is something I hope my colleagues will support and ultimately send to the President's desk.

I was speaker of the house in North Carolina for 4 years. We worked on commonsense changes to protect the lives of the unborn, changes that also received the support of the majority of North Carolinians. This is just another example of where we at the Federal level can enact a law that I think can help us to demonstrate that the life of the unborn is a precious life. We as Members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress are tasked with making sure we protect all lives in America. This is just a very important, precious, helpless part of the population. I, for one, think this is a great, modest step forward, and I encourage all of the Members to support it.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I reserve the right to object.

Mr. President, like the Senator from Connecticut, I don't understand why we are here this weekend myself. I don't understand why a continuing resolution--all the provisions in it have the broad support of both sides of the aisle--has actually gotten us to a point where we are putting so many people in jeopardy of not getting the critical services they need. I don't understand that at all.

I think a simple request of extending the government for 4 weeks and allowing the CHIP program to be authorized for 6 years makes a lot of sense while we work through the issues we have on the DACA challenge. It is something that I personally invested in. It is something that I am really working very hard to come up with a solution to. But instead of spending time on providing a solution to that problem, we are playing these sorts of games, and now we are talking about funding the government for 24 hours. That is not the way to actually conduct the business of the U.S. Senate. For that reason, I object.

Mr. President, I ask that the Chair read rule XIX.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am glad to hear that the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Connecticut all want to get the government funded. I also think Wright-Patterson is a great military installation.

I actually come from a State that is the home of the Global Response Force, the 82nd Airborne, down in Fort Bragg. When the President calls and they want to send somebody into harm's way, that is where they call first. It is also the home of 45 percent of all marines that serve in the Marine Corps. I worry a lot about the message we are sending our men and women in uniform when we can't get our act together here. Everybody in suits, everybody in the Senate, everybody here tonight is playing games with funding our government.

My colleague just asked for a 1-day CR. That didn't happen. Now you are asking for a 3-day CR. How about this? Why don't we stay here until we get this done? Why don't we realize that, look, the daylight is not going to come until about 8 or 9 hours. We can get this done before 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. Instead of asking for these half measures--a 1-day CR, a 3-day CR--why don't we get in a room tonight and solve our problems? Why are we actually kicking the can down the road a little bit--1 day, 3 days? We were trying to get 1 month done.

For that reason, Mr. President, I object.

I yield.

I do.

Actually, what I want to work on is funding that goes at least for the next 4 weeks and maybe the next year. I want to get to regular order. I actually want to provide certainty to men and women in uniform who are out there fighting in harm's way, and we are sitting here.

You have asked me a question, and I want to answer it. I actually want to provide the funding to the military, to the men and women who are working hard to protect this Nation, and that doesn't happen through procedural discussions. It happens through----

I do.

Mr. President, just to cool down the temperature, why don't we actually get back to what we tried to accomplish just a couple of days ago--a 4-week CR that funded our military, that funded our veterans, that funded CHIP for 6 years--and then get on to all the other things that we want to do.

I, for one, have a lot of passion for coming up with a solution for the DACA population. It is not going to happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but I believe it is going to happen.

What I prefer to do is actually to get on to funding the government and then to get on to all of these other matters that are critically important to all of us.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

I agree with the Senator from New Jersey, we want to fund the CHIP program, which is exactly why we voted to try to extend it for 6 years just a couple of days ago. The Senator voted against it. I agree with him that the States are beginning to run out of money, and we need to come up with a reauthorization soon, but this looks more like a way to atone for a bad vote that was just made a couple of days ago on the part of people on the floor today. What we need to do is go back and fund the government.

I also care about the veterans who would have been covered by the continuing resolution the Senator from New Jersey voted against. I care about the military and military families who are affected by the CR.

I think, instead of doing these sorts of measures that give some level of cover or comfort to those who voted against these same things just a couple days ago, why don't we get back on funding the government, opening it back up, making the right decision, and resolving our differences but, at the end of the day, not through these half measures.

For that reason, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

First and foremost, I thank the Federal employees. I thank anybody who works for the Federal Government for all the hard work they do. I also apologize to them on behalf of the actions of some people in this body who voted not to fund the government just a couple of days ago. I hope we get to a point where we can fund the government and move on and resolve our differences on very important issues, the DACA issue being one that is very personally important to me.

As a practical matter, I think we will take care of the Federal employees because they work hard, and they deserve that. What I will tell you is the effect of these CRs--and something that I will say is one of the reasons why I hate these continuing resolutions. Here is what happens every time a CR is threatened to occur or a shutdown is threatened to occur.

One of the reasons the short-term CRs make no sense to me is because if you did a 1-day CR, then the good news is, everybody would come to work tomorrow, and then tomorrow afternoon, you say: You are probably not going to come back on Tuesday or the 3-day, where you say: The good news is you are going to be here on Wednesday, but the bad news is, we are going to have to furlough you again on Thursday.

At the end of the day, we need to fund the government. We need to fund our military, we need to fund our veterans, we need to extend the CHIP program for 6 years, based on the proposal which was voted down by my colleagues, and my colleague who is offering this particular motion. That is not the way to do it.

I want our leaders to get together, I want our Members to get together, and solve this problem. These are half measures that do not address the root problem. The root problem is getting people together, getting them in a room, and funding the government.

For that reason, I object.

Mr. President, I just want to reiterate to Federal employees that I fully believe that, just like these dramas in the past, we will fund the government; they will be paid; and I apologize on behalf of those who voted against the CR just a few days ago that they are being taken through this process.

I, for one, have been here for 3 years. I have never voted against a debt ceiling increase because I believe we need to pay the bills we have obligated ourselves to. I have not ever voted for a government shutdown because I believe we should do the work we are paid to do.

I will say, in closing, I also agree that Senator Heller has a great idea. When we get into this mode and we can't actually fund the government, then why on Earth should we be paid for what we are doing?

I don't think any U.S. Senator should be paid a dime; I don't think any U.S. Senator should get healthcare every single day we fail to do our job, and that is something hopefully we can get unanimous consent tonight to put forth to say: Until we solve this problem, then maybe we shouldn't get paid; maybe we shouldn't get a dime; maybe we shouldn't get healthcare; maybe we should actually put our money where our mouth is. Then maybe we can get some things done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to go back and talk about the concept of doing our jobs. We have done a lot over the last 12 months. For people to say we haven't done anything--let's go back and talk about the 12 circuit judges, Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, extraordinary regulatory reform--a number of very positive things.

I know that your perspective is different based on what side of the aisle you are on, but I am actually very proud of what we as a Congress have accomplished and what this President has accomplished.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 1301

Reserving the right to object--I do object, but I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 36, H.R. 1301; that the amendment at the desk, which provides for full funding for authorized activities in the National Defense Authorization Act, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to enter into a colloquy with the Senator from Oklahoma.

Madam President, we are here to talk a little bit about immigration reform and maybe a little bit about the looming government shutdown. I want to start with the government shutdown because it is intrinsically linked with some of the arguments that are being made by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

What we are trying to do is fairly simple. We are trying to fund our servicemembers. We are trying to fund our veterans. We want to get a long-term authorization for the CHIP program. The CHIP program actually expired last year, but there were sufficient funds on account to continue funding, but they are running out. In States like North Carolina and other States, this program is going to start being

shut down if we don't get much needed resources. We are talking about a multiyear reauthorization for the plan and, of course, continuing to fund the National Institutes of Health, which is a critically important part of combating diseases, finding treatments, and cures. That is all we are trying do with this spending bill.

The other thing we are trying to do is create a bridge for a month so we can get our colleagues on both sides of the aisle talking and hopefully get some certainty in terms of funding going into next year-- if it were up to me and I think up to Senator Lankford, for several years, but it would be good to get some long-term certainty in the funding process because right now these continuing resolutions are killing us. We are living paycheck to paycheck. It creates all kinds of inefficient processes. It is wasting taxpayer dollars.

We have to at least start with funding the government tonight. At midnight tonight, if we don't act on a continuing resolution, then we will be shutting down the government. I, for one, am going to vote for the continuing resolution like I have every resolution for the last 3 years I have been here because I believe we need to pay our bills. I believe we need to fund our servicemembers. I believe the civilian employees should know they can come back to work on Monday, and we need to do a better job of actually getting together and coming up with centered solutions that gain enough support on both sides of the aisle to do that.

Now I want to talk about why we are at the shutdown. We are mainly at the shutdown because some Members want to put all of our government funding at risk--all the funding I was talking about here at risk-- because we have not yet reached an agreement on immigration reform.

Senator Lankford and I have spent a lot of time on this. In September of last year, we introduced the SUCCEED Act, which was an honest effort to get into the discussion on how we could come up with a long-term solution for the DACA population. We got together with Senator Durbin, Senator Graham, and a number of other Members to try and negotiate out our differences. We made some progress.

Now I will bring you forward to a couple of weeks ago. We met with the President 2 weeks ago, on a Thursday. Republican Members--it included myself, Senator Lankford, and other Members, and we told the President we thought we were making progress. Senator Graham was in the meeting as well. But we thought to really get the deal done, we needed a bicameral, bipartisan meeting. The President thought it was a good idea, and he hosted the first meeting that following Tuesday. That meeting--actually, the majority of it, about 55 minutes of it--was televised. People could see the discussion going on. Actually, people saw a lot of good interchange. There were clearly gaps, but we thought we were making progress. What we agreed in that meeting was that there were four main pillars of this first phase of immigration reform.

The idea of comprehensive immigration reform sounds good, except it has failed every time they attempted it. We decided we should start with a more focused effort to address some of the border security concerns and certainty for the DACA population. It sounded like a good idea, so we decided we would have the No. 2 leaders in the House and the Senate--the Democrats and Republicans, four people--get together the following day and develop a schedule so a subset of that group of a couple of dozen people who met with the President could get together and work out our differences.

Senator Lankford and I knew going into it that in order to compromise, we were going to have to accept positions that were short of what we wanted, but that is the whole purpose of compromising. Nobody gets everything they want. We were looking forward to what we would hope would be a schedule coming out from the whips--the Democrats and the Republicans, the four who were in the meeting--and that never happened. What we instead found out was on Thursday, a subset of the group, without talking with any of us, decided to have a meeting with the President and see if they could offer their solution. That is what a lot of them have been talking about on the floor. They are saying: Our solution is ready to go. We can put it in the year-end spending bill. We have bipartisan support. We can let it go.

Last night, I finally got the full text of their solution. I want to share it with you. There it is. It is a title. It is nothing. There are no specific provisions. There is not a bill filed. There is no evidence they have spoken with people to try to bridge the gaps. It is completely counter to what we agreed to do that Tuesday, a week or so ago.

I am asking my colleagues to recognize that people like I and Senator Lankford care about the DACA population. We want to provide them with certainty. We also want to make sure we put balance into the proposal so we are not here again 10 years from now, so we can make sure we have something of enduring value. We don't want to do something quick, where maybe you play gotcha and you put some pressure on someone and you get a bill because those sorts of bills are always at risk of being reversed.

We have already taken hits in our States. There are people who think we never should have had this discussion, but we care about the DACA population. We care about border security. We care about Homeland Security and a number of the things that have to go together so we provide a solution, but then we also make sure it is highly unlikely that Senators 10, 12, 15 years from now are in the same place.

Before I turn it over to Senator Lankford, I want to talk a little bit about why border security should be argued on compassionate grounds. I was in Texas in February. I spent a week there with Senator Cornyn and some of the other Members. I was all along the border. I met with Border Patrol agents. Some of them had been shot at. They had stories about some of their colleagues who had been killed. I was in Laredo where they showed me the door of a helicopter that had just been shot through a couple of weeks earlier by someone across the Rio Grande in what they call Nuevo Laredo. It is a dangerous place down there.

There is a compassionate basis for trying to keep our border security and CIS agents safe. There is also a compassionate case for knowing who is crossing the border and where they are. Why? Because 10,000 people have died crossing that border over the last 20 years. Almost 1,000 of them were kids or minors. That doesn't include the number who get killed or die long before they ever get to the southern border.

The way it works is they have these human traffickers, or human smugglers, who charge thousands of dollars to get somebody across the border. Sometimes they get across; oftentimes they don't. It is a moneymaker. As a matter of fact, the cartels that run the different plazas--that is the geographies along the southern border. It is sort of like if you go through this plaza, you better be paying a toll or you are probably going to die. We have one example where 72 people were all murdered, one family--men, women, and children--because the person who was smuggling them apparently got crosswise with the cartel. So to send a message, they killed these people. They died because we didn't know they were there. We didn't know they crossed the border. We didn't have the situational awareness that we are trying to get done with the border security provisions that are in a compromise bill that we offered.

I can also talk about the millions of doses of drugs that cross our border every week. Every week millions of doses of poison cross our border. We talk about the opioid epidemic, and we know a vast majority of the opioids--the heroin, the fentanyl, the variants of opioids that are coming across the border--are coming from south of the border, either by water or by land. If that is not a compelling case, a compassionate case, for American border security with what we are trying to do with immigration reform, I don't know what is. We are not talking about a wall. We are not talking about a 2,300-mile wall.

I have been criticized for several years because I sit on the Judiciary Committee. We have had a number of hearings that would have never made sense. The President has been briefed by Border Patrol. He understands it is

a series of structures, people, technology. Infrastructure is what border security call it. We are asking for the baseline funding and build it out over time--walls where it makes sense, fences and roads, reconnaissance, and just intelligence-gathering devices in some places. That is all we are asking for. There is a deal to be struck here very quickly, but you don't do it by going around a process that, 2 days before, you agreed to participate in.

I thank Senator Lankford because Senator Lankford has done an extraordinary job. I also want to thank our staffs because they have done an amazing amount of work to really come up with something that had been well received, to a certain extent, by Senator Durbin and others. In fact, they embraced some of the provisions, but then things just broke down because all they wanted to talk about was the DACA component. They didn't want to talk about the other things that make it an enduring and impactful and compassionate solution for which, I think, we could easily get 60 votes.

I would appreciate Senator Lankford's thoughts and comments on this.

I yield the floor to Senator Lankford.

Madam President, I am pleased to see Senator Cornyn here. He has done an extraordinary job. As a matter of fact, it was Senator Cornyn who hosted the trip that I made down to the border that gave me an incredibly important perspective on the case for border security. I appreciate his leadership on this issue.

I want to leave a final comment for the DACA population. Some people say: What is the crisis? We have until March 5.

I understand that every single day you wake up, that day seems like today. I know we need to move more quickly. Quite honestly, we could have gotten this done a couple of months ago if people had engaged, recognized their differences, and accepted a compromise. We are doing everything we can to get done much sooner than March 5 because we understand that they are our teachers, our EMTs. There are 900 serving in the military. They are hard-working people. They are kids in school. There are hundreds of thousands of good people--in a proposal that we put together, over a million--that we want to welcome into this Nation because they are great citizens, they love this country, they are productive citizens, and I want them to

know that we know that. I want them to know that there are dozens of Republicans prepared to vote on a compromise bill that is balanced, that brings border security and provides certainty to the DACA population. We are going to do everything we can every day that we are here to make sure that we deliver on that promise.

Madam President, thank you.

I yield the floor.