[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 67 (Wednesday, April 25, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2410-S2414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  DACA

  Mr. President, on September 5, the Trump administration announced its 
repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, known as 
DACA. As a result, hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the 
United States as children, toddlers, and infants--known as Dreamers--
face losing their right to stay here without being subject to 
deportation and the right to legally work in America.
  DACA provides temporary legal status for Dreamers if they register 
with the government, pay a substantial fee, go through a criminal 
background check, and return every 2 years for renewal. It has been a 
great success. More than 800,000 Dreamers have come forward and 
received DACA protection.
  When President Trump repealed DACA 7 months ago, he set an arbitrary 
March 5 deadline of this year for Congress to act and replace it. We 
tried. We offered to this President six different bipartisan 
alternatives to continue the DACA Program. He rejected every single one 
of them. He sent to Congress his own plan for dealing with immigration. 
It received 39 votes in the U.S. Senate--39. Remember, there is a 
Republican majority of 51. The President struggled to get his own party 
to support his ideas on immigration.
  Luckily, a Federal court stepped in and issued an order blocking 
President Trump's repeal of DACA. This means those Dreamers who have 
DACA can continue to apply for renewed status. I certainly urge every 
DACA recipient to file for renewal as quickly as possible. There was a 
ruling yesterday, as well, in one of the DC district courts which also 
said that perhaps the President's actions on DACA can be questioned, 
and he gave the government 90 days to produce evidence of what 
authority the President used to reach that conclusion.
  The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to fight 
this injunction, and it could be lifted any day. We don't know when the 
courts will turn and make a decision. This means there is still an 
urgent need for Congress to act to overcome the decision of the 
President of the United States of last September 5.
  Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released updated 
statistics on DACA. It shows, as of March 31, more than 32,000 DACA 
renewal applications are pending. Of these pending renewal 
applications, more than 9,000 were from recipients whose DACA 
protection had already expired, and tens of thousands more Dreamers 
have DACA protection due to expire very soon.
  The President has created chaos, not just in the White House but 
clearly at the Department of Homeland Security as they try to respond 
to his decisions. Secretary Nielsen of DHS has promised me and has said 
publicly that she will not be party to deporting any DACA recipient 
with a pending DACA application, even if their DACA status has expired. 
We will hold her to that commitment.
  However, for DACA recipients whose status has expired, they are not 
going to be given any work permits while their renewal applications are 
being considered. It means tens of thousands of DACA-eligible 
individuals could be forced to leave the jobs they have--such as 
teachers in our schools or even in our military--because of the chaos 
that has been created by President Trump's decision.
  Consider the fate of Dreamers who are eligible for DACA but have 
never quite reached that status. Until this decision is made in the 
court hearing in the District of Columbia, they can no longer apply for 
DACA protection because of President Trump's decision to prohibit new 
applications after September 5 of last year.
  The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that--in 
addition to 800,000 DACA recipients--there are an additional 1 million 
Dreamers who are eligible for DACA. President Trump's cruel decision to 
end DACA means that some 1 million DACA-eligible people cannot even 
apply.
  On September 5, President Trump called on Congress to legalize DACA. 
As I mentioned, he has refused to accept six different bipartisan 
approaches that would. He even rejected one approach that offered $25 
billion for his infamous wall on the Mexican border. Instead, the 
President has tried to put the entire hard-line immigration agenda on 
the backs of DACA recipients.

  It is not working, for 85 percent of the American people are on the 
side of these young people who were brought to the United States as 
kids, children, infants who grew up in this country, pledging 
allegiance to that flag, and wanting to be part of our future. There 
are 85 percent of Americans, including many Trump voters, who believe 
that is the right and fair thing to do, but a handful of hard-liners in 
this administration are determined to exact a punishment on these young 
people and their parents. That is why we find ourselves in this 
situation today.
  I have come to the floor more than 100 times to tell the individual 
stories of these Dreamers. I do that today as well.
  This is Karina Macias. She is the 114th Dreamer whose story I have 
told on the floor.
  At the age of 3, her family brought her to the United States from 
Mexico. She grew up in East Palo Alto in Northern California. She loved 
to read and spend her afterschool time and summers at the local Boys & 
Girls Club. Karina was an excellent student, and she received numerous 
awards in high school, including the Mount Holyoke Book Award, the AP 
Scholar Award, and a Rotary Club Academic Achievement Award. She was 
the coeditor of her yearbook and copresident of the Community Service 
Club. She volunteered as a tutor and worked as a volunteer in food 
distribution centers. She attended Saint Mary's College of California, 
where she continued to excel academically and to receive many awards. 
In May 2016, she was awarded a bachelor's degree in communications.

[[Page S2411]]

  She works today as a project manager at a biotechnology firm. She 
volunteers with the Peninsula College Fund, where she organizes career 
development and college success workshops. She tutors elementary 
students and mentors middle school youth who compete in local science 
competitions.
  What is her dream for the future? She wants to pursue an advanced 
degree so she can become a biotechnology researcher.
  Here is what she wrote in a letter to me:

       DACA is my hope for a future in which, with hard work and 
     perseverance, I can achieve any dream imaginable. It's my 
     protection from being ripped away from the only place I've 
     known as home. It's the promise to my baby brothers--both 
     U.S. Citizens--that I'll be around to watch them mature into 
     exceptional young men. It's the ticket that allows me to be a 
     contributing member of society. I credit my success to the 
     endless support I have received from so many sources. I want 
     to give back so my fellow Americans have the opportunities to 
     achieve their dreams.

  What a tragedy it would be to deport this young woman. Why would 
America do that? What sin has she committed? What crime is she guilty 
of? Who will feel so good to see her leave America? It will certainly 
not be the many people whom she currently works with and serves in her 
community.
  That is what we face because of President Trump's decision to end 
DACA. That is what hundreds of thousands of young people face every 
single day, who are just like Karina, because of this President's 
personal, unilateral decision. President Trump created the DACA crisis 
we face today.
  Instead of working toward a solution, a few hard-liners around him 
have sabotaged every effort to help the Dreamers. In fact, the 
President quickly adds: Don't use the word ``Dreamer.'' He doesn't like 
that word. It is why I have used it so often today. I introduced that 
DREAM Act 17 years ago, and I am glad it has become common parlance in 
America when referring to the plight of these young people.
  Congress needs to do its job; most importantly, the President needs 
to do his. If he truly wants to lead this Nation and bring us together, 
if he wants to stand for fairness and justice and the opportunity for 
young people to make America better, then this President has to step up 
and admit that the problem he created on September 5 of last year can 
only be solved if he stands up and shows the courage and determination 
to find a solution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, earlier today, we heard the French 
President address a joint meeting of Congress. He reminded us that the 
French and American people have always fought side by side to defend 
our common values. France was our original ally during the American 
Revolution.
  Americans fought and died in France during World War I and World War 
II. Our alliance has spanned centuries because of diplomats who have 
cultivated the close relationship that the countries continue with 
today, and it is a shame we didn't have a Secretary of State of the 
United States who could have helped us welcome the French President 
during his visit here. We have a nominee who is eminently qualified--
Mike Pompeo--and Republicans are ready to confirm him right now. We 
were ready to confirm him last week. We are ready for him to get to 
work in maintaining and strengthening relationships around the world.
  Under previous administrations, we could have brought the nomination 
to the floor of the Senate without needing to waste all of the time and 
the delays, by the Democrats, on a cloture vote. That is how we used to 
treat important national security positions like the Secretary of State 
but no more, apparently. That is what happened even when Senators 
disagreed with the administration's foreign policies.
  Consider Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State 
John Kerry. The Republicans and Democrats agreed that the President 
deserved to have the team he wanted--the people he wanted--on the 
ground helping him. We all agreed some of these positions were very 
important to national security--so important that, in a bipartisan way, 
we felt that playing political games with them was just wrong. 
Apparently, that has changed in the eyes of the Democrats now that 
Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States.
  When Barack Obama became President in 2009, the Republicans didn't 
obstruct his nomination of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. 
No. She was confirmed by a vote of 94 to 2. Then, when President Obama 
nominated John Kerry for the job in 2013, the Republicans didn't slow 
down or block that choice either. He was confirmed by a vote of 94 to 
3. The Republicans had serious concerns about President Obama's foreign 
policy ideas, his strategies, his approach, but we confirmed the people 
whom he wanted as his Secretary of State. We did not obstruct these 
nominations, and we didn't try to tarnish the reputations of the people 
whom he picked for these important jobs, not at all.
  I think the Senate does have an obligation to carefully evaluate a 
President's nominees. When those nominees are qualified and capable, 
then the President has every right to have his team and have his team 
in place quickly. That was the standard the Republicans applied to 
these Democratic nominees for Secretary of State under a Democratic 
President.
  What has happened since then? Why has all of this changed since then?
  We now have a Republican President, and we have a Republican nominee 
to be Secretary of State. It seems the Senate Democrats have tossed out 
the way things have always been done before. ``No, we do not want to do 
it that way anymore.'' The only interest seems to be obstruction--
obstructing, delaying, resisting anything the Republicans, under 
President Trump, are trying to do, anything he is trying to do in terms 
of getting his team in place--a team he needs.
  How does someone justify a vote for these two people to be Secretary 
of State--the Democrats and Republicans who voted for these two--and 
then turn around and not vote for Mike Pompeo? How can you justify 
that? I certainly cannot.
  When Mike Pompeo was nominated to be the Director of the Central 
Intelligence Agency, 15 Senators from the other side of the aisle were 
willing to set aside partisanship. They knew he was qualified for the 
job--first in his class at West Point, the Harvard Law Review, his 
activities as a Member of Congress. Everything he has done as the CIA 
Director has shown that those 15 Senators made the right call to 
support him over a year ago. They made the right call to join the 
Republicans and to respect the traditions of the Senate--to put 
qualified people on the job even if they may not have agreed completely 
with their philosophies on political issues.
  There is no reason other than pure partisan politics that any of 
these Democrats would vote against Mike Pompeo now. He is eminently 
qualified. He showed during his confirmation hearing--he went through 5 
hours of questioning--that he has the intelligence, he has the 
integrity, and he has the experience to serve as our Nation's Secretary 
of State.
  Turn to the newspapers. You have the Washington Post coming out, 
writing: ``Confirm Mike Pompeo.'' You have USA TODAY coming out today 
and writing: ``Confirm Mike Pompeo.'' We even have the New York Daily 
News--the hometown newspaper of the leader of the Democratic Senate--
coming out and writing: ``Confirm Mike Pompeo.''
  The Democrats in the Senate don't seem to care. It doesn't seem like 
they are interested in doing the right thing. They are interested in 
obstructing and continuing the history of the deliberate delays we have 
seen with them through this administration. They have been doing it 
since the very first day of the Trump administration. At this rate, it 
would take more than 9 years to confirm all of President Trump's 
nominees for important jobs. Why? The Democrats can't offer a single 
good reason. The Senate has been forced to waste huge amounts of time 
in confirming nominees who aren't even controversial at all.
  When Senate Democrats try to block the President from filling 
important national security jobs, they are putting America's security 
in danger. We all know the world is a dangerous place and is getting 
more dangerous every day. Our adversaries are opportunistic. Our 
adversaries are aggressive. Our allies are eager to work with the 
United

[[Page S2412]]

States. That is what the President of France told us today.
  Have the Democrats already forgotten the atrocities we saw in Syria a 
few weeks ago? It was France and Great Britain that joined the 
President of the United States in launching airstrikes against Bashar 
Al-Assad's chemical weapons facilities.
  We need to be able to maintain the relationships that allow this kind 
of action to occur. We need people on the job who can both encourage 
our allies and deter our enemies. The Senate Democrats have to decide 
what is more important to them--protecting America's national security 
or appeasing the extreme liberal, far leftwing of their party.
  I understand if there are Senators who have principled reasons for 
objecting to this nominee or any nominee. They can vote no but not 
continue to hold up or slow down the process as they have done for a 
year and a half. I think, if a Senator is against a nominee, then come 
to the floor; state the objection; cite the evidence; vote no. Yet that 
is not what many Democrats here are doing with their obstruction of one 
nominee after another, and it is not what they have done with their 
obstructions of hundreds of nominees. For them, it doesn't seem, at 
least to me, to be a principled stand. It seems to be a reckless 
political stunt.
  I listened to my colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee the 
other evening when we voted on this nomination. I listened to the 
Democrats speak on the floor and speak to the press. Frankly, I have 
not heard a single good reason to delay the Senate's consideration of 
Mike Pompeo to be Secretary of State. The Democrats need to stop the 
games, stop the delays, allow us to move immediately to vote on his 
nomination, and get President Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, 
on the job.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 317

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, Senator McCaskill and I rise to have an 
opportunity to pass a bill and for the Senate to do some work on a bill 
that has been around for several years and just hasn't been able to go 
over the finish line. We would like to see that finish today.
  It is a bipartisan bill with a very straightforward concept. Right 
now, if any agency head or any sub-Cabinet individual or any individual 
within the government wants to see what another agency is doing, they 
have to go to the Office of Management and Budget. They would do a 
study--and get it back to them--to find out if the program they are 
doing exists somewhere else.
  If any Member of this body or of the House wants to find out about an 
agency and such straightforward things as how many employees they have, 
what programs they are doing, if they measure those programs, how are 
those programs measured--if we want to find out those very basic 
things, we have to go to the GAO office to make a request, and 18 
months later, we will get an answer back on that specific thing.
  This is something that every agency either already has or should have 
but that the American people can't see, the Congress can't see, and, 
quite frankly, the individuals within the agencies also cannot see.
  This is a straightforward concept. We call it the Taxpayers Right-to-
Know Act, and it is something Senator McCaskill and I have worked very 
hard on. It is something that passed out of the Homeland Security 
Committee unanimously. This is a bipartisan bill. In fact, to show you 
how bipartisan it is, this passed in the House of Representatives last 
session 413 to 0. Not a single House Member voted against this 
proposal, but it wasn't able to pass in the Senate. So Senator 
McCaskill and I brought it up again this year. It came unanimously out 
of committee; it also has been through the House of Representatives. In 
January of 2017, it passed unanimously in the House of Representatives 
again. This is not a controversial piece of legislation.
  What is interesting is that Senator McCaskill and I did a lot of work 
with President Obama's Office of Management and Budget to make sure 
there were no concerns. They had some concerns, so we made some 
changes, and President Obama's Office of Management and Budget signed 
off on this and said it would be a helpful document.
  We have now worked with President Trump's Office of Management and 
Budget, which also signed off on this proposal and said that this would 
work.
  We went to the Government Accountability Office, the entity we asked 
to help us find duplication, waste, and inefficiency in government, and 
in a hearing we asked Gene Dodaro, the head of GAO, a simple question: 
Would it be a help to have the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act? You have 
the ability to see all agencies. Would this be a help to you? His exact 
response:

       I would urge the Congress to complete passage of that 
     bill--

meaning the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act--

     and send it to the president for signature. I think that it 
     would make a huge difference in identifying overlap, 
     duplication, fragmentation in the federal government and 
     provide a better accountability tool to the Congress and the 
     agencies. It's severely lacking.

  That is from the head of the Government Accountability Office, the 
one we have asked to help us find these things. He is saying that he 
needs this tool. We need this tool. The agencies need this tool.
  President Obama's team signed off on this. President Trump's team has 
signed off on this. It has passed unanimously out of the House of 
Representatives.
  We bring it to the floor today to ask unanimous consent to move this 
across the floor of the Senate today, to be able to get in place what 
President Obama asked for, what President Trump has asked for, what the 
Government Accountability Office has asked for, what all Members of the 
House of Representatives have asked for, and what Senator McCaskill and 
I are asking for.
  With that, I yield to Senator McCaskill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I come today to join my colleague from 
Oklahoma to ask unanimous consent that we take up and pass S. 317, the 
Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act.
  I want to thank Senator Lankford for his continued hard work on this 
bill. Senator Lankford has been working on this bill since his days in 
the House, and I worked hard to move this bill with his predecessor, 
Senator Tom Coburn, to try to get this through the Senate before he 
left the Senate. Hopefully, we can get it across the finish line, if 
not today, in the near future.
  American taxpayers deserve a government that can tell them how their 
money is being spent. This is all this bill is trying to do. It is not 
complicated. It is trying to get important information to the people 
who are paying the bills. Don't they have a right to know where all the 
money is going?
  It improves a publicly accessible online database with information 
about Federal programs, including the funding information for the 
program and the activities it comprises; the authorizing statutes and 
relevant rules and regs; the individuals a program serves; the 
employees who work to administer it; and copies of recent evaluations 
or assessments provided by the agency, inspectors general, or the 
Government Accountability Office.
  The truth is, much of this information, including the program 
inventory itself, is already required by the Government Performance and 
Results Act, or GPRA. It passed this body by unanimous consent in 2010. 
But the current program inventory under GPRA is a mess. It is virtually 
useless to help lawmakers understand whether these programs are 
actually working as intended or whether they are a payroll without a 
purpose.

  This bill adds a few additional information requirements to the 
program inventory and makes it much easier to compare apples to apples, 
which is what we need to do when we are making funding decisions.
  Senator Lankford and I have agreed to a number of changes to this 
bill, raised not only by President Obama's administration but also 
President Trump's administration and by leaders in this body. There 
were some concerns expressed to us that OMB could use the information 
to punish agencies by holding up rules and holding up budget requests. 
I have news for everybody.

[[Page S2413]]

They can already do that; they have the ability. But just because they 
can do it now, we have agreed to include a clause which says that 
nothing in this bill gives OMB any additional authority whatsoever, 
other than what is needed to comply with the requirements of this bill. 
I can't imagine anything clearer than that.
  We have added caveats to make it easier for programs and agencies to 
comply with the requirements of this bill.
  I have to tell you, this is what drives the American people crazy. 
Different from private business, somebody around here could have a good 
idea and we can legislate a new program, but going back and determining 
whether that program is actually delivering on the goals that were 
stated and believed in at the time the legislation was passed--we are 
really not very good at that. That is what this bill is about.
  It will give us the tools to require that these programs and agencies 
at least have information as to whether they are working--how much 
money they are spending, what they are trying to do. Why are we hiding 
behind a maddening bureaucracy when we can simplify things with the 
technology that is available today? Frankly, if we can't defend these 
programs and justify how we are spending taxpayer money, we should be 
shutting them down.
  I urge my colleagues to commit to and support this good government 
transparency bill. I am worried that there is an objection. I am 
disappointed there will be an objection from the leader of my own 
party. That is disappointing to me, but it doesn't change my commitment 
that this is the right thing to do.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the 
immediate consideration of Calendar No. 43, S. 317; that the committee-
reported amendment be withdrawn; that the Lankford substitute amendment 
at the desk 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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Democratic leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I 
certainly have a great deal of respect for my friends from Missouri and 
Oklahoma and their desire to increase transparency in government. I 
share that goal. But, respectfully, the legislation they are proposing, 
I believe, would undermine and potentially threaten important programs 
administered by the Federal Government.
  The idea of requiring the government to publish an inventory of 
Federal programs is not something I object to. As my friend from 
Missouri has stated, it is already required under the law, but it is 
such a cumbersome thing to do that for 7 years they have not published 
an inventory, not because it is lacking the provisions in the bill 
proposed by my colleagues but because it is virtually impossible to do 
in the way that you would do it in other far more different and simple 
things--in a factory that makes widgets.
  This bill would go further and make it even more difficult to publish 
the inventory they already haven't been able to publish. Neither the 
Director of OMB under President Obama nor the Director under President 
Trump has complied with the existing law.
  I further have serious objections with the reporting requirements. 
How can an agency, for instance--and this would happen on a thousand 
occasions under this law--quantify the number of individuals who 
benefit from the Community Development Block Grant Program? If one 
neighborhood is revitalized, maybe it benefits the neighboring 
neighborhoods. What if they put that number in, and the OMB Director 
says: Oh, no. That is all wrong. There is no way to do that.
  How about this: Is there a threshold to the number of people that is 
too many to administer a program that helps disabled Americans get 
appropriate schooling or access to healthcare? These types of questions 
could fill volumes and volumes. There is no good answer to them, there 
is no clear answer to them, and this law will not make it any easier to 
discern which programs are working and which programs are not.
  I have a great deal of worry, particularly, to be honest, with 
Director Mulvaney. If you saw the budgets that Director Mulvaney has 
submitted to this Congress--he has eliminated just about every 
potential program. He is a scourge. He was one of the 10 most 
conservative Members of the House when he was there. He eliminated 
programs necessary in my State to keep the Department of Defense going, 
to help our nuclear weapons stay strong. He zeroed them out; he didn't 
just cut them. Can you imagine if he got his hands on this? He would 
use this bill not for the purposes my colleagues intend but to 
basically hold back money, punish, and in other ways delay very 
necessary programs that 90 to 95 percent of this Congress agrees to. I 
am concerned that this legislation, left to the implementation and 
oversight of a man so hostile to government services up and down the 
line, whose budgets have been dramatically and repeatedly rejected by 
Democrats and Republicans alike in the House and the Senate, would be 
used for ill, not good. The potential downside to this legislation far 
exceeds the potential upside, dramatically.
  I cannot in good conscience support a bill that would give Mr. 
Mulvaney more tools to slash Federal programs that almost every 
American would agree serve the public good.
  In conclusion, I support the goal of this bill, which is to provide 
more transparency to taxpayers, but I believe it will not. It will 
confuse things, delay things, provide more layers of bureaucracy, not 
less, and can well be used by someone who believes in slashing programs 
of all kinds to delay them, fail to implement them, and not deliver the 
services that so many Americans need. I strongly object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Missouri.
  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, Senator Schumer is just flat wrong. He 
is just wrong about this bill. There is nothing in this bill that gives 
the OMB Director any additional power. There is nothing in this bill 
that gives him any additional tools to delay or cut programs. In fact, 
we specifically put that language in at the request of the minority 
floor leader, that this would give the OMB Director no additional 
tools.
  Frankly, I remember when we were having the discussions under the 
Obama administration. Many of my Republican colleagues were worried 
that this would be a way for the Obama administration to somehow have 
more power than we want them to have.
  The bottom line is, we have the power in the legislative body to 
decide which programs get funded. We are the people who appropriate 
government funds. Shouldn't the taxpayers and Members of Congress have 
an easily accessible way to get good information about a program?
  By the way, no one is saying that anybody has to draw certain 
conclusions from the facts that would be on this website. We are only 
asking that the facts be put on the website. It is not nefarious. There 
is no plot here. I don't want to hurt CDBG, and neither do all of the 
House Members who voted for this. Not one Democratic House Member 
objected to this bill.
  So I have to respectfully say that Senator Schumer is wrong about 
this legislation. He is wrong about what it would do. It is the right 
thing for good government. It is the right thing for transparency. I am 
going to keep working at it until hopefully we can either convince 
every Member to let this go by unanimous consent or until we get an 
opportunity to get a vote on it on the floor, where I am confident it 
would win by an overwhelming number.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I could not more wholeheartedly agree 
with my colleague from Missouri.
  What is surprising to me is that Senator Schumer's objection to the 
taxpayers right-to-know bill was that the taxpayers would actually find 
out information that he doesn't want them to find out. That is the 
surprising part.
  I am grateful to be able to get his answer because over the last 6 
months, our staff--Senator McCaskill's and my staff--has worked with 
his staff every month. We have made 27 changes and 6 revisions over the 
last 6 months. In the last month, we have gotten radio silence--nothing 
from Senator Schumer's staff. So we finally brought it to

[[Page S2414]]

the floor and said ``What is the problem?'' because we can't seem to 
figure out what the problem is. We learn today that the problem is that 
he doesn't want the program inventory to be public because if the 
American people and the Congress and the Office of Management and 
Budget see the programs, they might actually do things with efficiency. 
That seems surprising to me, but if you read the transcript, that is 
what he just said. The fear is that they will actually find out what 
the Federal Government does in the programs.
  Surely that is not his objection. Surely no one in this body would 
say: I hope the American people and the Office of Management and Budget 
never find out what the Federal Government does.
  Here is what this bill does. The reason we could not have a good 
listing--Senator Schumer mentioned that there is no way to do a list 
right now--is because there is no definition for a program. The Federal 
Government has struggled with that simple definition, so this bill 
fixes that. The reason that inventory doesn't exist gets solved with 
this. So literally Senator Schumer's objection as to why we shouldn't 
do this is nonsensical.
  The second issue with this is the fear of OMB and Mick Mulvaney 
actually trying to slash programs. OMB and Mick Mulvaney have no 
authority to take down a program. Congress does that, and Senator 
Schumer knows that better than anyone in this body. While OMB can make 
recommendations, Congress has to actually vote to act on those 
recommendations. He can't just slash programs. He can recommend it. He 
can say: Here is an issue of inefficiency. It is the exact same as the 
Obama administration could have done, the exact same as any future 
administration could do, but Congress must act on that.
  It seems exceptionally shortsighted to say: I don't want the American 
people to know what the government is doing, because of the current 
administration and someone I don't like.
  In a few years, there will be a different administration. That may be 
in 7 years, or that may be in 4 years, but in a few years, there will 
be a different administration, but this problem will still remain. 
Agencies can't see what other agencies are doing, this Congress can't 
see what the agencies are doing, and the American people cannot see 
what the agencies are doing.
  I would say that for the benefit of the taxpayers--not the benefit of 
Washington bureaucracies but for the benefit of the taxpayers--we 
should allow this information to go public. I hope we can continue to 
work with Senator Schumer's office, after making 27 changes that his 
staff recommended, to finish this document.
  Yesterday, Senator Schumer was caught in the hallway and was asked 
what the problem is in the Senate, and his response to a reporter was 
that the Senate needs more comity. I would agree.
  The House approved this unanimously. Our committee approved this 
unanimously. It has come to the floor and has but one person who 
believes that the American people should not have access to the 
information on the programs they pay for.
  I would love to see more comity in this body and for us to work this 
out.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.