[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 117 (Monday, July 10, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2267-S2269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Business Before the Senate

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, it is actually good to be back in the 
Senate this week after 2 weeks back home, and we certainly have a busy 
schedule ahead of us. The fact is that, unfortunately, this was a 
product of the inattention or lack of urgency that the majority leader 
has had to deal with the Senate's necessary work so far. We are a 
quarter of the way through the 118th Congress, and we, frankly, don't 
have a lot to show for it.
  Under our colleagues' leadership, this Chamber developed an 
embarrassingly short list of accomplishments. Despite the chaos at the 
southern border, we haven't had the opportunity to vote on legislation 
to address this humanitarian and security crisis, either in the Senate 
Judiciary Committee or here on the floor. They simply just ignore it: 5 
million border encounters since President Biden took office. Last year 
alone, 108,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. Seventy-one thousand 
of those were from synthetic opioids, virtually all of which come from 
Mexico, the precursors having been imported from China.
  Would that be enough to get the attention of the President and the 
majority leader to actually do something in that area? Well, apparently 
not.

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  Yesterday, I was interested to see that the Senator from New York--
the majority leader--sent a letter to our Senate colleagues 
highlighting his plans for the next 3 weeks. Actually, we only have 
about 10 workdays in these next 3 weeks before now the regularly 
scheduled August recess. Again, more of the same that we have seen so 
far this year--not much time and a lot to do.
  Senator Schumer mentioned his desire to move forward on bills 
relating to drug pricing, fentanyl, permitting reform, rail safety, 
marijuana banking, China competition, artificial intelligence, and a 
number of other topics in the next 3 weeks.
  Now, to be clear, I don't think the majority leader actually believes 
we are going to produce legislation in these areas. Maybe you would 
call this a wish list. But it is only wishful thinking to believe that 
in the U.S. Senate you are going to be able to get all of these 
necessary items addressed in the next 10 working days.
  And, of course, that ignores the fact that we have a bicameral 
legislature. We have the Senate and the House. Has he prevetted any of 
this legislation with the House to see whether, assuming the Senate 
would act, that the House would actually take it up and pass it and the 
President would sign it into law?
  That is how we legislate around here. It is not performance art. It 
is not show business. This is actually about doing the people's 
business and passing legislation through an admittedly difficult 
process.
  But this is where we find ourselves having waited until this late 
moment to deal with so much important legislation. The Democratic-
controlled Senate has been downright sleepy for the last 6 months. And 
I have no reason that this letter, this wish list, will prompt some 
miraculous turnaround.
  The lack of productivity in this Congress has created a major backlog 
of important bills, which must be our top focus. We have a lot to do 
and not much time to do it, but that is by design. That is not the way 
the Senate should be operating.
  We heard from the previous speakers a lot about the national defense 
authorization bill, which is our annual Defense bill, which we passed 
for the last 61 years in a row--61 years in a row. Before this last 
break, the Senate Armed Services Committee completed its work on that 
bill and passed it out of committee by a vote of 24 to 1--bipartisan 
bill out of the Armed Services Committee demonstrating an overwhelming 
bipartisan support.
  This legislation, as we all know, is about supporting our 
servicemembers, modernizing our military, and addressing our biggest 
security challenges, including China.
  Senator Wicker, from Mississippi, the ranking member, has shared his 
disappointment over the fact that this year's Defense bill doesn't 
adequately seek to fund our defense needs.
  Now, of course, this is an authorization, in the jargon of the 
Senate--it is not an appropriation--but typically what happens is the 
authorizing committees will set a level of funding and then the 
Appropriations Committee will come behind that and fund it, presumably, 
at that level.
  But I know many of us are committed to working in the coming weeks to 
increase those funding levels to ensure that our military has the 
resources it needs to protect the American people, especially in the 
face of 40-year-high inflation.
  I don't have to tell anybody within the sound of my voice what 
inflation has done to their standard of living and their purchasing 
power over the last couple of years. Basically, this is like a silent 
tax, where you have less and less to spend for the necessary 
expenditures in your life, whether it is your transportation, your 
food, your clothing, your childcare, your healthcare, or the like. 
Well, the military is experiencing the ill-effects of this 40-year-high 
inflation, too, and its purchasing power has been decreased 
dramatically.

  Well, I hope that we will have a turnaround of sorts and that the 
Defense authorization bill will get off to a strong start, but it is a 
long way from the finish line.
  While this bill did pass the committee, it still needs to be brought 
to the floor. There needs to be an opportunity for Senators to offer 
amendments and debate the bill, hopefully improve it, and then vote on 
it by the full Senate, and that takes time.
  Under the regular procedures of the Senate, to bring a bill like that 
to the floor and to account for all of the potential procedural 
obstacles that would be encountered, it would take you more than a week 
to process the bill. And we have 3 weeks before August--10 days of 
actual working time--and this is what the majority leader has presented 
us with.
  So we know that we need to get to work. The NDAA should pass before 
the end of fiscal year, which is September 30, and the Senate is only 
scheduled to be in session for 7 weeks before then. So even after we 
come back from the August recess, in order to meet the deadline of the 
end of the fiscal year, September 30, we only have 4 more weeks after 
we get back before the NDAA essentially lapses--the national defense 
authorization bill--absent our action in the meantime.
  I don't have to tell my colleagues that providing for the common 
defense is one of our most important responsibilities. And the National 
Defense Authorization Act is the foundation for that. So I hope the 
majority leader will allow the Senate to take up the bill soon.
  I think I heard the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee 
just now suggest that perhaps the NDAA will come to the floor next 
week, and I hope that is true. But certainly, in order to give Senators 
an opportunity to participate and hopefully debate and offer amendments 
and improve the bill, it is going to take time, and that is something 
we don't have a lot of.
  Every Member of this Chamber has the right to offer their ideas to 
strengthen and improve this legislation, just like we should on any 
piece of legislation. And the majority leader should not try to jam the 
process by saying: Oh, now, we don't have enough time so we are going 
to have to do away with the opportunity to have full debates and 
amendment process because we are running up against a deadline. Well, 
that deadline is of his own making because he failed to deal with this 
in a timely manner.
  But September 30 isn't the only deadline that we have for the Defense 
authorization bill. It is also the farm bill. Every 5 years, Congress 
passes a farm bill to support everything from crop insurance to 
nutrition programs, to rural broadband. The impact of the farm bill is 
felt in communities across America, including those in my home State of 
Texas.
  Texas is home to nearly a quarter of a million farms and ranches, 
more than any other State in the country. And one out of every seven 
working Texans actually works in an ag-related job. These hard-working 
men and women raise cattle, chickens. They grow corn and sorghum. They 
produce cotton and hay, not just for the Nation but for the world. 
Texas farmers and ranchers produce food and fiber for America and for 
exports as well, and they are facing increasingly strong headwinds.
  I mentioned inflation, which has been at a 40-year high. It has 
increased the cost of every input that farmers and ranchers have, from 
diesel to fertilizer, you name it. It has eroded their purchasing 
power. Their operating costs have skyrocketed for everything. I 
mentioned fertilizer and fuel. Pesticides is another major expense. And 
so their profit margins continue to get slimmer and slimmer.
  I was somewhat amused to hear that President Biden, during our 2-week 
period away from Washington, DC, began to tout something he calls 
Bidenomics, like he is proud of it. He said: This is a lot like 
Reaganomics, except it is Bidenomics. It has nothing to do with 
Reaganomics, which actually worked. But I was amused because when I 
looked at the RealClearPolitics' average of the President's approval 
rating for his economic policies, it stands at a whopping 38.7 
percent--38.7 percent approve of President Biden's economic policies. 
Bidenomics is like putting lipstick on a pig to try to dress it up to 
make it look better than it really is.
  But in addition to our economic woes, Mother Nature has unleashed a 
set of challenges as well. Last year alone, natural disasters caused 
more the $21 billion in crop losses nationwide. Today, areas across 
Texas are experiencing a hot and dry summer. We are used to that. It is 
summertime. It is July. We are used to hot and dry

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summers. But farmers are also battling very little rainfall, and they 
are praying that their crop loss will not be more than minimal.
  The farm bill includes farm safety net programs which are a lifeline 
for countless producers. They are critical at managing the risks 
inherent with this critical industry. Everybody knows farming and 
ranching is risky, for the reasons I mentioned and others.
  But this year I hope we can build on the progress we made in the last 
farm bill to ensure that the agriculture sector is as resilient as 
possible.
  This sector not only feeds, fuels, and clothes America, as I said, it 
also drives our economy and feeds the world.
  In Texas alone in 2021, ag exports totaled more than $7.2 billion. In 
2019, Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service estimated the economic 
impact of the ag sector to be nearly $160 billion, which is more than 8 
percent of my State's GDP.
  So a strong, on-time farm bill is essential to the health and well-
being of this important sector of the economy, but it is also important 
beyond that. It is important to the American people, and it is 
important to our economy.
  Our colleague Senator Boozman from Arkansas is a ranking member. And 
our colleagues on the Agriculture Committee, I know, have been working 
hard to draft this year's farm bill, and I appreciate the hard work 
that they put into it. But I am eager to work with our colleagues to 
get this bill across the finish line on time, again, before it lapses 
at the end of this fiscal year.
  And then, there is another big one, Federal Aviation Administration 
Reauthorization. As though we needed another big, heavy lift before the 
end of the fiscal year, it is also the deadline to reauthorize the 
Federal Aviation Administration. Over the last couple of years, 
travelers have dealt with widespread flight cancellations, paralyzing 
staffing shortages, and rising prices. We have also witnessed some 
jarring safety issues, including near-collisions on airport runways in 
Minneapolis and New York.
  Last month, Senators Cantwell, Cruz, Duckworth, and Moran introduced 
the FAA Reauthorization Act to address these and other issues. But like 
the National Defense Authorization Act and the farm bill, the FAA needs 
to be reauthorized by September 30. Again, all of these deadlines are 
well-known by the majority leader, but here we are finding ourselves 
with very little time and a lot to do.
  And last but not least is, likely, the biggest lift before us for 
before September 30, and that is to fund the government. As part of the 
debt limit agreement, Senator Schumer vowed to bring all 12 
appropriations bills to the Senate floor by September 30. How he is 
going to be able to keep his promise is not clear to me, given the 
traffic jam that we are going to experience, because this includes 
funding for our military, veteran services, border security, and so 
much more.
  Senator Collins and Senator Murray and all of our colleagues on the 
Appropriations Committee are determined to restore some regular order 
and common sense to the funding process. I hope the majority leader 
will stick by his word and put all 12 appropriations bills on the 
Senate floor before the end of the fiscal year.
  We don't need, and the country does not want, another omnibus 
spending bill like we saw at the end of last year, which, of course, 
was by design, because it empowers the leadership to the detriment of 
rank-and-file members of the Congress. When you are presented with a 
``shut down the government,'' ``take it or leave it'' proposition at 
the end of the year, having bypassed all of this normal process, the 
question is, Are you going to keep the government open? Are you going 
to fund the government? Are you going to fund defense, veterans, border 
security, or not? And that is simply an abomination we do not need to 
repeat again. And so I do hope the majority leader will keep his word.
  None of these bills are an easy lift. They require a lot of hard 
work, cooperation, and time, and we only have 7 weeks of legislative 
session to pass them all. So far, the 118th Congress hasn't been a 
productive one. The Democratic majority has struggled to complete even 
the most basic tasks, and now we have a lot of work to do, maybe an 
impossible amount of work to do, by design. The clock is ticking, and 
we can't let these critical responsibilities slip through the cracks.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). The Senator from Kansas.