[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 142 (Wednesday, November 19, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6109-S6110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                KEYSTONE PIPELINE AND ENFORCING THE LAW

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it is good to be here.
  I was disappointed yesterday to see that we weren't able to move 
forward on the Keystone Pipeline. It has become symbolic in many ways 
of whether we are willing to embrace the opportunities of more American 
energy.
  The American people clearly have a sense that it is to their 
advantage for us to take advantage of those opportunities, for us to 
deal with not only our own economy, with the energy we can produce but 
even with our next-door neighbors. Canada is our greatest trading 
partner, and Mexico continues to play a bigger and bigger role as a 
trading partner--I think now No. 4 and No. 5 of all the countries in 
the world we have economic exchanges with--but friendly neighbors in 
North America that can produce energy in ways that meet every logical 
standard.
  I heard some discussions about the pipeline, that once this is built, 
even though it may create tens of thousands of jobs in building the 
pipeline, it will only take three dozen or so people to run the 
pipeline. Of course that is right; it is a pipeline. It is an 
efficient, safe way to transport the energy we need. But I think it is 
important to understand that just the jobs to run the pipeline have 
nothing to do in many ways with the job potential that is created when 
we embrace the energy potential we have. If we ask about that energy 
potential, the American people say yes. If we ask about lower utility 
bills or dependably payable utility bills, the American people say yes. 
If we ask about price at the pump, the American people say yes.
  But beyond that, if somebody is thinking about a manufacturing job or 
any other job as a job creator, if they have that utility bill they can 
pay, if they have the delivery system they can rely on, the country is 
much more likely to make things again, the country is much more likely 
to compete, and the American people understand that.
  Even if we ask specifically about this one small part of that 
puzzle--the Keystone Pipeline--the American people say yes. Six years 
is enough. The State Department has evaluated this over and over again 
under two different Secretaries of State. Both times they have said 
there is no problem moving forward with this. I was disappointed that 
we didn't.
  Even the White House suggesting they would veto that if it was sent 
to them seems to continue to indicate to me that nobody is listening to 
what the people we all work for are saying.
  The President said he wasn't on the ballot but his policies were. If 
his policies were on the ballot, as he said they were, those policies 
were widely rejected--not just to change next year in the body we get 
to serve in here, but also two-thirds of the legislative Houses in the 
country are no longer run by the President's party, and 60 percent-plus 
of the Governors are no longer run by the President's party.
  People are trying to send a message. It would be a good idea if the 
White House would get on the receive and begin to figure out what that 
message is and what is wrong with those policies that the American 
people don't like. I don't think it is because they don't understand 
them. I know there would be one sense probably most closely held at the 
White House: If they just understood what we were trying to do, they 
would be for what we are trying to do.
  I think it is not that way, even though the President might like to 
think it would be. In fact, the clear message is that people are 
concerned about costly energy policies, they are concerned about the 
President's recent overreach on a topic we wouldn't even think people 
would have engaged on, but they have: net neutrality, where even the 
Chairman of the FCC, nominated by the President and confirmed by this 
Senate--even the Chairman of the FCC said: I think the President is 
headed in the wrong direction there, and we need to do something 
different than that.
  The SBA recently called on the EPA to withdraw one of their proposals 
and try again because it had too much negative impact on the economy.
  I can't think of a similar situation ever, where an administration 
finds itself so often in conflict even with itself, even having the 
administration challenged. When the SBA thinks the EPA is off target, 
and that was empaneled sometime before a rule was laid down--a proposed 
regulation was laid down--we wonder, why not? Why wouldn't we be 
managing this discussion in a better way? Why wouldn't we be moving the 
country forward in a better way?
  Ignoring the voters is an incredible tragedy in a democracy. Ignoring 
the law is an even more incredible tragedy in a constitutional 
democracy.
  According to reports, the President is considering two requirements 
deciding on the 11 million people who are here without documents who 
either came illegally or stayed illegally and what to do about that. 
The President is looking at the length of time as a qualifier. Nowhere 
in the law is that a qualifier. The President is looking at the ties 
people might have to others in the country. These requirements, 
depending on how broadly they are drawn, could wind up with the 
President's announcement as early as Friday, leaving another 5 million 
people in the country in a status I don't quite understand and they 
will not either.
  When someone is here based on an Executive order, that is totally 
dependent on one thing: Who is the Executive?
  When someone is here based on the law, that is very dependent on 
everything having to come together that changes the law before their 
status will change.
  Why would we put people in that kind of jeopardy? Why would we send 
that kind of mixed message?
  After legislation overhauling the immigration process died in the 
Congress, the President said he is going to act on his own. I can't 
find that part of the Constitution which allows that to happen. In 
fact, in statements made more than one time, he couldn't find it 
either--statements made more than one time where the President said: I 
can't do this on my own. We are a nation of laws. That is his 
observation about who we are, not my observation about who we are.

  I know there will be people on this side of the Capitol Building who 
will say: We sent something over there, I didn't vote for it, but it 
doesn't mean I am not aware that it was sent to the House. But the 
House sent a bill over here too. Apparently both the House and the 
Senate are so far from where the other side is that neither is willing 
to take up the other bill.
  But that is the Constitution. The Constitution is designed so that 
when we change law, we do that in a fairly cumbersome way, but that has 
served our country pretty well for a long time, and it is not up to the 
President to decide that can be suspended on a topic he thinks is 
important and a topic he in fact has previously said he couldn't do on 
his own.
  As he was talking about this the last several months, not just 
Republicans but Republicans and Democrats--and I

[[Page S6110]]

will admit particularly Democrats in close races around the country--
said the President was overstepping his authority; the President is 
putting people in jeopardy of not knowing whether they are here on some 
kind of basis that nobody has quite defined or quite understands even 
after he acts.
  Recently, a union representing thousands of Federal immigration 
officers raised an alarm that the U.S. Government had ordered supplies 
to create millions of blank work permits and green cards. According to 
reports following that union report, the new Federal contract proposal 
for Homeland Security would allow the government to buy enough supplies 
to make as many as 34 million immigrant work permits and residency 
cards over the next 5 years.
  We issue immigrant work permits all the time but not at the level 
that is being talked about here. Nobody has contended, by the way, that 
we just got a particularly good opportunity to buy a lot of card stock. 
I haven't heard that given as the reason.
  So these people who work with that every day are saying: What is 
going on here? The President of the National Citizenship and 
Immigration Services Council--the union representing 12,000 immigration 
service agents--called reports about planned Executive action 
dangerous, people who deal with this every day--his words--said it 
would increase exponentially the health risks, the threats to national 
security, and expense to taxpayers that he said are on the rise because 
of lax enforcement of immigration laws already.
  Article II, section 3 of the Constitution declares that the President 
``shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.''
  Simply put, these constitutional requirements are just that. They are 
requirements the President shall take care that the laws are faithfully 
executed, to execute the acts of the Congress, to enforce the law as 
written. Signed into law by some President and never changed by the 
current President would indicate that is what the law is and the 
President is supposed to enforce the law.
  Yet President Obama continues to refuse in this and other areas to 
show a willingness to try to convince the Congress to change the law 
rather than assume: If the Congress doesn't do this, I will.
  As I said earlier, and will say again, I am still trying to find that 
phrase in the Constitution that says: If the Congress doesn't do this, 
the President can. Whether it is issuing waivers to States from the 
work requirements contained in the bipartisan Welfare Reform Act of 
1996 or announcing another change in the President's health care law--
and I have lost count of how many changes on his own the President has 
had the administration do--they continue to look for ways to circumvent 
what the law says: a nation of laws, respect for the laws.
  Americans are appropriately concerned the government is just too 
willing to overreach and at the same time unbelievably dysfunctional, 
whether it is kids at the border or a Secret Service that can't keep 
people out of the White House or how we deal with Ebola.
  We have a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and when we 
have a disease control problem we have to put somebody else in charge. 
What is wrong with that?
  That is why I introduced the ENFORCE the Law Act in March, a bill 
that would allow Congress to authorize a legal case to be brought 
against a President if he fails to uphold the law as written.
  This bill would restore the system of checks and balances reiterated 
in the Constitution. The ENFORCE the Law Act removes the procedural 
barriers and then would allow the House or Senate or both together to 
jointly adopt the resolution that just says we don't believe the law is 
being enforced.
  There is a set of regulations out now on the Clean Water Act which 
did authorize the Federal Government, the EPA, to monitor and have some 
authority over the navigable waters of the United States. I don't have 
any doubt that in the 1970s when that happened, people thought 
navigable waters meant the same thing they thought navigable waters 
meant when it was first put into Federal law in the 1880s. Suddenly, 
navigable waters in the new rule means any water anywhere that could 
ever become part of water that could become part of water that could 
become navigable. This is a case that can easily be litigated sooner 
rather than later, long before people try to comply with an area where 
the Federal Government will turn out not to have control, as they did 
in a number of areas this year. So I hope we will look at that again. 
The House has passed it in a bipartisan manner. The Congress should be 
concerned about enforcing the law as written. As the Constitution says, 
both the Members of the Congress and the President of the United States 
should be concerned about enforcing the law as written.

  I thank the Presiding Officer for the time and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

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