[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 9, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1417-S1419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Nomination of Merrick Brian Garland

  Mr. President, on another subject, today the Senate will start 
consideration of Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to be Attorney 
General of the United States.
  I will be supporting his nomination, but, as I said at Garland's 
hearing before the Judiciary Committee, I have concerns, and I am here 
now to repeat those concerns so all of my colleagues can hear them.
  I hope he will take these concerns seriously, and I will work with 
members of the Judiciary Committee to conduct thorough oversight of the 
Department of Justice in order to make sure the Department is being run 
independently and free from political influence.
  On paper, I don't think anyone would doubt Judge Garland is a good 
pick to lead the Department of Justice.
  His credentials are excellent, and he has a distinguished career of 
public service, including all of those long years he has been on the DC 
Circuit Court of Appeals. Of all the possibilities to be President 
Biden's Attorney General, it is hard to come up with a better pick.
  The top law enforcement officer of the United States must be 
committed to enforcing the rule of law, and he made it very clear that 
that is what he was going to do. As our former colleague John Ashcroft 
said--and he was Attorney General, you know, early in the George W. 
Bush administration--the Department of Justice is the only Cabinet 
Agency whose name is an ideal. It is not the Department of Law 
Enforcement but the Department of Justice. Justice is equality under 
the law. There is one law for all Americans regardless of race, color, 
creed, or political affiliation.
  It is our founding principle that all people are created equal. My 
hope is that Judge Garland agrees with that principle, and he does, but 
he has got to be careful to make sure the Justice Department runs 
accordingly.
  That is not how it has always been, however. And I don't want to say 
that is how it has always been under just Democrat Presidents; it 
probably has been that way under Republican Presidents too. But I don't 
think it is how it was run more recently during the Obama years.
  Here is what I don't want to see Judge Garland do--and all of my 
colleagues at the time heard this: The Attorney General then, Eric 
Holder, famously said that he was a ``wingman'' to the President. I 
don't want an Attorney General who takes tarmac meetings with President 
Clinton while she is investigating his wife. I don't want consent 
decrees that federalize law enforcement and cause murder rates to soar. 
I don't want the Civil Rights Division trying to stop school choice in 
Louisiana. I don't want a return to catch and release. I don't want 
Operation Choke Point, where the Department of Justice decides that gun 
stores don't get access to banking services.
  I am concerned about the Justice Department's direction before Judge 
Garland is even confirmed. These are some of the directions. They 
changed litigation positions on a number of high-profile cases in 
court, including on immigration, affirmative action, ObamaCare, and 
other issues.
  This is what a very famous Solicitor General, Paul Clement, said: 
``It has been the long-term position of the Justice Department to 
defend the constitutionality of statutes whenever reasonable arguments 
can be made.''
  It appears that our new President and his administration are going to 
flout that tradition. I just stated how Paul Clement felt about it. I 
hope that Judge Garland brings that point of view in line and preserves 
the credibility of the Justice Department.
  I hope he also preserves his credibility with the Durham 
investigation. During the Trump administration, I supported the Mueller 
investigation. I even supported legislation to protect his 
investigation in 2018 when it looked like President Trump might fire 
him. That bill got out of the committee that I chaired at that time.
  In 2019, when Bill Barr was before the Judiciary Committee, he was 
required to commit to not interfere with the Mueller investigation. And 
I thought that was appropriate.
  Now we have another special counsel investigation, this one run by 
John Durham, a respected career prosecutor who is investigating the 
Crossfire Hurricane investigation, in which members of the Obama 
administration spied on and prosecuted members of the Trump campaign.
  As a Republican who supported Mueller, I think it is obvious that 
Judge Garland should have made that same commitment at the hearing 
about Durham that Bill Barr made about Mueller when he was before the 
same committee for confirmation. Judge Garland was given multiple 
opportunities to do so during his hearing and had written questions for 
the record, but every time he declined to do so unequivocally. He has 
implied that he won't interfere with the Durham investigation, and I 
take him at his word. But it would have been better if he had been very 
clear about it before the committee.
  So, further clarification, it is Judge Garland's credibility that is 
on the line. If Durham is fired for anything other than cause, we will 
know why Judge Garland refused to give us a commitment like Barr gave 
us a commitment when we asked for it.
  Lastly, I want to make a point about how Judge Garland's nomination 
went through the Judiciary Committee. Republicans called two witnesses, 
two of whom supported Judge Garland's confirmation. Republicans also 
decided not to do the usual holdover of one week of Judge Garland's 
nomination, allowing him to be reported to the floor a week early. 
Judge Garland also received bipartisan support in the committee.
  It happens that none of these courtesies were extended to either of 
President Trump's nominees to be Attorney General, one of whom was a 
colleague of ours here in the Senate and one of whom had already held 
the job before.
  I say all of this to make a point more to the media than to my 
colleagues because the media seemingly refuses to cover these points of 
bipartisanship that we didn't get from the Democrats in the previous 
administration. After the last 4 years of unprecedented obstruction of 
nominees, I think Republicans would have been justified to make this 
confirmation a drawn-out process. But we did not do that.
  I don't plan on opposing nominees just because of the person who 
nominated them like many of my colleagues, unfortunately, did in the 
last 4 years.
  So even though I still have some concerns, I believe Judge Garland is 
a good

[[Page S1418]]

person, particularly a good person for this job, to lead the Department 
of Justice. So I will vote for his confirmation
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.


                    American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it doesn't seem like that long ago--it 
wasn't; it was only January 20 of this year--that we heard President 
Biden talk about healing the divisions in our country and promoting 
unity. He promised to restore respectful, bipartisan communication and 
cooperation. He spoke eloquently, saying:

       Without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
       No progress, only exhausting outrage.
       No nation, only a state of chaos.

  It really was a fine speech. But here we are, 7 weeks into the Biden 
administration with a lot of bitterness and fury and outrage over the 
President's first big, broken promise. On Saturday afternoon, following 
an all-night voting marathon, our Democratic colleagues passed, by 
themselves, their so-called COVID-19 relief bill.
  Sadly, the lack of bipartisan support was not a surprise. After all, 
our Democratic colleagues decided to abuse the reconciliation process 
for this very reason. They wanted to pass a bill they knew would not 
generate any support among Republicans because it really is a Trojan 
horse for their liberal wish list. And the only way they could make 
that happen would be to exclude Republicans, turn down offers of 
bipartisanship, as the President did when 10 Republicans visited him at 
the White House just a few weeks ago and decided to go it alone, which 
is what our Democratic colleagues did.
  Since Republicans had no say in the drafting of the bill and because 
our Democratic friends chose to skip the normal committee 
consideration, our only opportunity to make any changes to the bill 
came through the amendment process on the floor. From roughly 11 a.m. 
on Friday until 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, the Senate voted on more than 
30 amendments, largely from folks on our side of the aisle, almost all 
of which were rejected in a party-line vote.
  Outside of Washington, DC, not many people stay up for 24 hours 
straight to watch Congress vote on budget amendments, so I think it is 
important that we recap what the American people missed while they were 
sleeping.
  The first amendment vote last Friday was a good barometer of what was 
happening on the other side of the aisle. The first vote, teed up by 
the chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Sanders, would have more 
than doubled the minimum wage at $15 an hour. The Congressional Budget 
Office said that this would kill 1.4 million jobs, and then the Senate 
Parliamentarian said that this was an improper use of the budget 
reconciliation process.
  But our Democratic colleagues wanted to take this shot anyway, so 
they voted to waive a budget point of order, but it did not go well. 
Eight Democrats voted alongside all Republicans to prevent this abuse 
of the budget reconciliation process and prevent this job-killing 
minimum wage mandate from becoming part of this bill.
  As it turns out, there is bipartisan opposition to killing jobs at a 
time when our economy is already on a fragile footing. Who would have 
thought otherwise?
  And once Senators cast their votes, our Democratic friends held the 
vote open for a recordbreaking 12 hours as they tried to whip their 
caucus into shape on the most critical amendment, which was next in 
line.
  I am not one to tell our friends across the aisle how to do their 
job, but normally, when you have a vote, you know ahead of time how 
that vote is going to come out. That is just legislation 101. But when 
you are trying to rush, at warp speed, a nearly $2 trillion wish list 
to the President's desk, I guess you don't have the time to do things 
the right way, and you certainly don't have an interest in getting them 
done in a bipartisan fashion.
  But on the rest of the votes we held, over and over again, our 
Democratic colleagues held together and blocked commonsense amendments 
offered by this side of the aisle. For example, there were amendments 
to stop blue States from receiving more than their fair share of the 
State and local funding. The Democratic proposal includes a jaw-
dropping $350 billion for State and local aid--more than double what 
was spent in the CARES Act last March when the economic picture was far 
more dire.
  Unlike the CARES Act funding that was distributed based on 
population, this proposal separated the funds into two pots of money--
one to be distributed based on a population formula while the second is 
based on the unemployment rate.
  Senator Graham from South Carolina offered an amendment which would 
have required this funding to follow the same formula that we did in 
March, in a bipartisan way, rather than this new formula that favors 
blue States.
  Since the primary argument for the bill was that States needed this 
funding because of lost tax revenues, it made sense that the largest 
population States should receive the most funding, a per capita 
formula. This would eliminate a big windfall for blue States that have 
largely kept their economies on ice and shuttered, even as COVID-19 
cases decreased.
  Then there was an amendment from the Senator from Utah, Senator 
Romney, which would have ensured State and local funding was only going 
to those States that actually need it. What a concept. His amendment 
would require States to apply for aid through the Treasury Department. 
They could then receive funds to help recover pandemic-related 
expenses, revenue losses, or unexpected Medicaid costs. But, of course, 
in a party-line vote, our Democratic colleagues blocked that amendment 
as well.
  And it is not just State and local funding that folks on my side of 
the aisle wanted us to use more responsibly. I offered an amendment to 
improve the quality of care for unaccompanied migrant children who 
arrived along the U.S.-Mexico border. We know that these children are 
especially vulnerable and their health and safety should have been 
addressed in this COVID package.
  Well, President Biden's border crisis is shaping up to be one of epic 
proportions. Border agents reportedly detained nearly 100,000 migrants 
along the southern border last month alone. That marks the highest 
total for the month of February since 2006. The numbers have now 
climbed so high that the administration is allowing facilities to house 
children to operate at 100 percent capacity, when our kids aren't even 
going back to school in many school districts around the country 
because of concerns for their safety. Forget that. The Biden 
administration is now allowing these facilities that house children to 
operate at 100 percent despite the COVID risk.
  An amendment I offered would redirect unnecessary funding for the 
National Endowment for the Humanities and instead send it to the Office 
of Refugee Resettlement. This office is part of the Department of 
Health and Human Services, and this extra funding would help keep these 
children safe and healthy. Unfortunately, for these children, many of 
whom have endured long and dangerous journeys in the hands of human 
smugglers, our Democratic colleagues chose the National Endowment for 
the Humanities instead of these children in distress.
  Well, the list of rejected amendments goes on and on.
  Senator Scott of South Carolina offered an amendment to ensure States 
weren't fudging on the nursing home death count totals, like the 
disastrous situation developing in New York that we are just now 
learning about the magnitude of nursing home deaths that were covered 
up by the Cuomo administration. This amendment would have required 
States to certify the accuracy of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in 
order to assess funding for nursing home facility strike teams. Once 
again, a party-line vote blocked that amendment.
  One of the highlights of this long and drawn-out process, which just 
left me scratching my head, was an amendment from Senator Cassidy, the 
Senator from Louisiana, that would have prevented stimulus checks being 
sent

[[Page S1419]]

to people in prison and one from Senator Cruz, my colleague from Texas, 
that would have stopped payments from going to people who are not even 
legally present in the United States. Both amendments were blocked in a 
party-line vote by Democrats.
  Our colleague from Florida, Senator Rubio, offered an amendment to 
incentivize a safe return to in-person learning at our Nation's 
schools. The crux of it was simple: If schools wanted Federal funding, 
they should actually educate children in the classroom and do so 
safely, according to CDC guidelines; otherwise, why do they need this 
huge amount of extra money if they are not actually going to use it to 
educate our children? Well, our Democratic colleagues blocked that 
amendment too.
  While Americans were sleeping, Senate Democrats stood in the way of 
numerous commonsense reforms to this behemoth of a partisan bill. They 
have proven, once again, this so-called COVID-19 relief bill has next 
to nothing to do with what is best for the country and everything to do 
with what is best for their liberal partisan agenda.
  This bill includes a long list of liberal priorities that are 
completely unrelated to the crisis at hand. I think roughly 90 percent 
of it is unrelated to COVID-19. Blank checks for mismanaged union 
pension funds, funding for climate justice--whatever that is--backdoor 
money for Planned Parenthood, an exclusive paid leave program for 
bureaucrats, those are just some of the greatest hits in the vote-
arama.
  Even the portions of the bill that are related to the pandemic are 
completely out of proportion. The legislation provides $130 billion for 
schools when tens of billions of dollars that we have already 
appropriated last December remain to be spent.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, only $6.4 billion will 
be distributed through September of this year. The remaining $122 
billion would trickle out the door through not just 2021 but through 
2028.
  Of course, there is the blue State bailout. Despite the fact that tax 
revenues have largely rebounded and many States are still sitting on 
piles of cash from previous COVID-19 relief bills, our Democratic 
friends want to send another $350 billion to State and local 
governments but not just on an equitable population-based formula. They 
rigged the formula to make sure blue States reap the biggest cash 
benefits.
  We know this wasn't the only path forward. We worked, time and time 
again, this last year on five different occasions to show we can unite 
to provide COVID-19 relief to the American people.
  We could have built on that record this year, which after listening 
to President Biden's inaugural speech, I had hoped we might do. The 
first legislation to pass during the Biden administration could have 
been a bipartisan pandemic relief bill with overwhelming support. We 
wouldn't have needed to go through the vote-arama or the abuse of the 
budget reconciliation process. We could have had a bill that supported 
the hardest hit families, got kids back at school, and helped expedite 
vaccination.
  But those types of policies, obviously, weren't top of mind for our 
Democratic friends. They wanted to have a payday for the most radical 
element of their party at an absurdly high pricetag, which our children 
and grandchildren are going to be saddled with.
  They assembled a laundry list of unrelated wasteful and downright 
partisan provisions and rejected even the most commonsense amendments 
offered by this side of the aisle.

  Sadly, this legislation passed the House without a single Republican 
vote. It passed the Senate without a single Republican vote. And now, 
our Democratic friends are on track to write a $2 trillion check 
completely funded by deficit spending without even a trace of 
bipartisanship.
  They don't have a figleaf to hide behind. This was a partisan bill 
intentionally. Either the President sold snake oil on Inauguration Day 
or he has already caved into the most radical elements of his own 
political party. Either way, it is bad news for the American people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, today I am going to talk about the 
growing crisis on our southern border and how we need urgent action to 
address the degrading situation there, but before I begin, I want to 
say a quick word about the reconciliation bill we passed last week.
  The massive $1.9 trillion bill was not COVID-19 relief; it was 
liberal relief. Everybody and everyone needs to understand what this 
was. It was not a rescue plan. It was a heist of taxpayers' money. We 
don't have $1.9 trillion to be spending. When we have to borrow this 
much money, we are digging our country deeper into debt. And with this 
massive spending bill, we are borrowing against our grandkids' future 
and are going to owe more and more countries like China.
  To keep up, the money supply will have to increase at such a rapid 
rate, it could potentially spark inflation. That means we could see the 
value of Americans' hard-earned dollars plummet.
  To further underscore that point, that means your money doesn't go as 
far. For the items you buy, it is very expensive. All of this bogs down 
our economy and hinders future growth.
  What is more, this entire sham of a process was partisan. It was not 
about helping Americans, businesses, and communities recover from the 
pandemic. That much is clear because only 9 percent of the bill is 
going to COVID and health-related pressures and less than 1 percent is 
going to vaccines. The remaining 90 percent went to progressive wish 
list items for bailouts for poorly run States.
  Instead of ramming through non-COVID-related spending, Democrats 
should have worked together with Republicans as a team to pass a 
bipartisan bill that actually makes lives better as we recover from 
this pandemic.
  We share a goal of helping the American people, but the bill that was 
ultimately put forward failed to do just that. It is a shame. This is 
not how our country should be run.

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