Bipartisanship

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Happy New Year. It is good to see you and everybody back at the beginning of a new year after, I hope, a few days of respite and relaxation with friends and families and, hopefully, we have all had a chance to recharge our batteries now for the work ahead.

One of the great things about taking a few days off during the holidays is you get a chance to reflect on your work, your life, your family, what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong. That is what New Year's resolutions are all about, changing some of those habits that maybe aren't serving us all that well.

But it is also to sort of reflect on the work here in the Senate. And I want to start by quoting one of the wisest men I knew, and that was my dad. My dad said--he had a whole list of aphorisms, most of which kind of embarrassed my brother and sister and me because they were so corny, but some of them were pretty shrewd and right on.

And one of them was that he said the hallmark of intelligence is to learn from your mistakes. The hallmark of intelligence is to learn from your mistakes.

And we are merely human and we all make mistakes--we all acknowledge that--but learning from our mistakes is perhaps the most important thing we can do to make progress, to get smarter, to learn from experience, and to do things better the next time.

I also thought of another wise man--you might call him a genius-- Albert Einstein, who supposedly said--and I can't vouch for this, but maybe it is apocryphal; maybe it is accurate.

He said:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I was reflecting on this--these two definitions of intelligence and insanity as I thought about the year past and our 50- 50 Senate. In 2020, we had a historic election, no doubt. Our Democratic colleagues captured not only the White House but the Senate and the House of Representatives.

But what is so amazing about that is the lessons that they learned from that 50-50 election in the Senate and a bare majority in the House was very different from what I think, historically, people have come to believe that that kind of message would send.

Ordinarily, you would think that--well, first of all, this is not the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had huge majorities in the House and the Senate when he passed the New Deal legislation, historic legislation by any count.

Conversely, in 2020, when President Biden was elected, the American people basically said we don't particularly trust either one of the major political parties so we are going to divide power equally in the Senate and give you a bare majority in the House, believing, I think, maybe intuitively, if not consciously, that that would force us to work together.

That is not necessarily the first instinct we have when we come here to the Senate or the Congress. We want what we want. We all run for election. We campaign on a platform saying, if elected, I am going to do this or that--and it is frustrating to not be able to do it.

But the wisdom of our Founders was that with the various checks and balances that we have on unilateral or partisan power, that when the voters say, well, we are going to divide power equally in the Senate, you would think the conclusion or the lesson that you would learn from that is what, historically, we have come to believe to be true, which is that they believe we ought to work together and not try to do things on our own.

So you would think that an equally divided Senate would encourage the majority leader--who is majority leader only by virtue of the fact that Vice President Harris is the Presiding Officer of the Senate. She is not actually a Member of the Senate, but she can break tie votes.

That is what gives Senator Schumer, the Senator from New York, his job as the majority leader, in spite of the fact that we have a 50-50 Senate.

So you would think that an equally divided Chamber would encourage the majority leader to prioritize bipartisan bills that could win broad support. That is what we did last year in the last year of the Trump administration. We worked together to pass, I think, close to $5 trillion of relief from COVID-19, this terrible pandemic that has gripped the planet for the last 2 years.

But, apparently, the majority leader reached a different conclusion because that is not the type of work that he has prioritized in the Chamber during this last year. It didn't start off very well. After a wonderful speech by Biden on January 20, when he talked about healing our country, coming together as a nation despite our differences, the first thing the Democratic-controlled Senate did is pass a partisan $2 trillion spending bill in the name of COVID-19 relief.

Well, they omitted to mention that only about 10 percent of the money, the $2 trillion, on top of the $5 trillion we had spent on a bipartisan basis--that out of that $2 trillion, only about 10 percent of it was really related to the pandemic, and only 1 percent supported vaccinations. Perhaps the single most important thing that we have done in response to COVID-19 is to make vaccinations broadly available, and we continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, as I do every chance I get.

But after that first $2 trillion partisan spending bill, our colleagues then repeatedly used the Senate's time, which is the most precious asset we have here in the Senate, which is floor time, to vote on smaller but no less problematic bills that really stood zero chance of becoming law in a 50-50 Senate.

There was one to--in the name of paycheck fairness that was, in fact, designed to line the pockets of trial lawyers, and it didn't pass.

Then our Democratic colleagues drafted an election takeover bill. They said the only way for us to restore the public's confidence in the voting process is for the Federal Government to take it over, to hijack it, notwithstanding the position in the Constitution that elections should be run at the State level. And this election takeover bill was so blatantly partisan that even Members of the Democratic Senate voted against it.

But they didn't stop there. They rewrote the bill and brought it up for another vote in October, and again it failed. Our Democratic colleague, the majority leader, has said this partisan legislation will resurface again later this month. But I don't expect the outcome to change because it is the same unconstitutional, partisan legislation that is not to advance the cause of access to the ballot or to enhance voter integrity, it is designed to enhance Democratic prospects to win elections in 2022 and 2024. That is what it is about.

And then there is the multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending bill. And I know the Senator from West Virginia has been the chief spear catcher when it comes to all the criticism associated with this legislation, but I have told both the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from Arizona that there are many Democrats, I believe, on the other side of the aisle who are grateful to them for preventing a vote on this terribly flawed bill in the face of rapidly rising inflation.

I mean, one reason why it costs more to fill up your gas tank or to feed your family or to buy an appliance is because of inflation. Prices have been going up dramatically. One reason is there has been so much money shoveled out the door, trillions of dollars. We never used to talk in terms of trillions of dollars here in Washington. We talked about billions of dollars.

Everett Dirksen famously said:

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Well, maybe it was a billion, I can't recall specifically, but I know he didn't talk about trillions of dollars. That is an innovation of the last couple of years.

I want to commend our colleague Senator Manchin for his courage in stopping this terribly flawed bill for all the reasons he and others have mentioned. And I hope that is the end of this terribly flawed legislation and it will force us to do what the Founders believed that we would do in the event of a 50-50 Senate and that is to work together.

By definition, ``working together,'' means I am not going to get everything I want. The Presiding Officer and his political party aren't going to get everything he wants. That is what consensus means. That is what the Founders intended. And that is what the voters intended when they gave us a 50-50 Senate.

But it is not enough to vote against just bad legislation. We have a responsibility to work together when we can on bills that Senators from both political parties can vote for. That is the reason for the so- called filibuster rule, 60 votes.

We keep debating until 60 Senators say, OK, we are ready to vote. That is what creates deliberation and debate and consensus building, not eliminating that requirement and then just passing bills by a strict majority--bills which can, by the way, be undone after the next election.

And just as colleagues on this side of the aisle have identified legislation we don't want passed absent an ability to build a bipartisan consensus, there is a litany of bills that I know our Democratic colleagues would not want passed were the shoe on the other foot. And I have been here long enough to know that eventually the shoe will be on the other foot.

I have always said that I have been in the majority and I have been in the minority and being in the majority is a lot better, a lot more enjoyable, a lot more productive, from my standpoint.

But, eventually, the Democratic colleagues will be in the minority, perhaps as soon as after the 2022 election. And if 51 votes is all it takes to undo things that have been done, well, that is exactly what will happen. That has been the history of the filibuster that has been applied to nominations, not to legislation.

I was here when Senator Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option and said: We are going to require 60 votes in order to confirm judges with a 51-vote threshold. And then when that was used to block judges on the DC Court of Appeals, Senator Reid invoked the nuclear option and got them passed by a strict partisan majority.

The Senator from Kentucky, Senator McConnell, said: I have been here a while, too, and I know what goes around comes around. And what we have seen come around is three new Supreme Court Justices during Donald Trump's time as President of the United States. You might call it the physics of the Senate. I think it was one of Newton's laws said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You might call that political physics.

At the start of this Congress, I promised my constituents in Texas that I would push back against dangerous proposals when needed, but I also said, in the same sentence, that I would work with my Democratic colleagues whenever possible, whenever I believed it was in the best interest of my 29 million constituents.

And despite the partisanship that has gripped this Chamber, we actually have made some progress in some areas, not that you would read very much about it in the newspaper. The nature of news is in conflict; it is not consensus. When things are consensus, it is not news. It is not on cable TV. It doesn't swirl around social media or the internet.

So we have been able to make some progress in some areas. For example, last month, the Senate passed the 61st annual National Defense Authorization Act--the 61st. That means we have done it 61 times in a row every year for 61 years.

This was good, bipartisan legislation and an example of what we can do when we work together. This legislation ensures that our servicemembers will have the resources they and their families need, both on duty and off. It makes investments in military construction and our military bases across Texas and elsewhere, and it gives our commanders and our military leaders the certainty they need to plan for the future.

Another example of bipartisanship last year, not that many people remember or talk about it or write about it or hear about it on TV or see it on social media, but last summer we passed another major bipartisan piece of legislation called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. This legislation makes investments in critical sectors to counter threats from China. One of the leading proponents of this bill was the Senator from New York, the majority leader, working principally with the Senator from Indiana, Senator Young, and others of us.

One important part of that bill that I worked on with the Senator from Virginia, a Democrat, the senior Senator from Virginia, Senator Warner, was funding for programs created by the CHIPS Act. It actually became law last year, but we had to find a way to pay for it, and the Senate stepped up and did so, and now we are hoping that the House will follow suit.

But as consumers learned over this last year, actually, COVID-19 exposed our vulnerability to supply chains from overseas. We saw that first with personal protective equipment, most of which--virtually all of which--was made in China, and when we needed it here, well, we had to try to get it overseas from China to the United States so that it could protect our healthcare heroes, our frontline healthcare providers, among others.

But we learned that the vulnerabilities of our supply chains did not stop with PPE. Semiconductor shortages, for example, have a very real and dramatic impact on all of our lives. We have seen this in empty car lots, more expensive electronics.

The global semiconductor or microcircuit shortage is very visible and has had a dramatic impact on our economy and threatens our national security because most of it is made overseas. Ninety percent of the semiconductors in the world are made in Asia. If you take South Korea out of the picture, 63 percent of them are made in Taiwan--Taiwan.

Yeah, you may have read a little bit about Taiwan in the news recently, that President Xi has said he wants to essentially unify Taiwan with mainland China, settling an old civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists that started many years ago.

But can you imagine what would happen if President Xi decided to invade Taiwan and what that would do to our supply chain of critical semiconductors that operate everything from our iPhone to our F-35, fifth generation stealth fighters?

Well, our national defense is at stake, obviously, too, not just our economic future. From advanced fighters, quantum computing, and missile defense systems, all of them rely on semiconductors.

We may have read in the public domain that Russia and China are now touting their development of hypersonic missiles--missiles that travel 10 times the speed of sound. Well, our ability to defend our Nation and defend our allies and help them defend themselves depends on our access to these advanced semiconductors that make things like missile defense systems operate.

But, just for example, a single rocket interceptor like the kind that the State of Israel has been using to intercept rockets coming into Tel Aviv and other major cities, each one of those interceptors, which is part of the Iron Dome missile defense system, contains more than 750 semiconductor chips. This is our Achilles' heel.

The funding from the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act will help bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and ensure that we won't be at the mercy of other nations for access to critical components of our supply chains. This bill is over in the House, and Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer have entered into an agreement, which I hope will be consummated, that, in February, we will have a conference on that bill and pass, I hope, that CHIPS for America Act, together with the other efforts we have made to strengthen our defenses against a more aggressive People's Republic of China.

Well, we don't have much time to waste because we know one of the preeminent challenges that we have in the world today is not terrorism, like we experienced after 9/11. On 9/11 and thereafter we were focused like a laser on counterterrorism. Meanwhile, Russia and China continued to rebuild and replenish their arsenals and develop new and dangerous weapons that threaten our national security and, in the end, threaten our freedom.

In addition to these big, bipartisan bills that I have mentioned, I was glad that a number of bills that I introduced became law last year.

After years of fighting, we finally succeeded in making Juneteenth a national holiday. Juneteenth started in Galveston, TX, when, 2 years after the Civil War was over, the former slaves in Galveston were told: You are free.

We have been celebrating that for 40 years in Texas, and I am proud to say we have now made this a national holiday. Hopefully, this will be a source of education and reconciliation, and so people will understand our history because, as the old saying goes: Those who don't remember their history are condemned to relive it.

This would not have happened without the support and the tenacity of advocates across Texas, including my friend Ms. Opal Lee of Fort Worth, who is widely known as the grandmother of Juneteenth.

By the way, the Dallas Morning News editorial board named her as the woman of the year for last year, quite an appropriate recognition.

But this bill and this holiday will preserve the history of Juneteenth for generations to come and ensure that we never forget the significance of that day when Major General Gordon Granger's troops declared that all slaves are forever free.

Then we passed bipartisan bills to strengthen the policies and procedures for reporting missing servicemembers, something very near and dear to those of us in Texas, given the terrible and tragic loss of Vanessa Guillen.

We also strengthened our defense against China by strengthening our relationship with Taiwan.

We passed bipartisan legislation ensuring that for Federal officers-- no matter where they serve--that their attackers, their killers can be brought to justice.

For border States, like the Presiding Officer's and mine, we have modernized and increased staffing at points of entry at our borders with Mexico, without spending taxpayer dollars.

We have also closed a loophole abused by some companies fueling the opioid epidemic.

Again, I could go on and on, but these are just a few of the bipartisan bills that I was privileged to work on and that were signed into law last year.

When you add the bipartisan bills introduced by our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, it adds up to a lot of bipartisan wins for the American people. Again, you don't read about it much in the paper, you don't see it much on cable TV or read about it on social media, but it is real and it is true. It is true, and it is what I think we were sent here to do.

So my conclusion is perhaps an obvious one: that even in an equally divided Senate, if we try, if maybe we resist our impulse to go it alone, we can actually work together and find bipartisan solutions.

One of our former colleagues, Mike Enzi, who passed away in the recent past--when I came to the Senate, he was on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee with the liberal lion of the Senate, Teddy Kennedy.

You know, I came here to the Senate, and I was kind of in awe of the people I had seen on television, and, particularly, the Kennedy family, who had served our Nation in so many different capacities. But I asked Mike Enzi, who was perhaps one of the most conservative Members of the Senate, how he and Teddy Kennedy, one of the most liberal Members of the Senate, could work together and actually pass legislation.

He said: It is easy. It is called the 80-20 rule. You find the 80 percent of what you can agree on, and then you leave the 20 percent for another day and another fight. Depending on your viewpoint, it can either be a recipe for gridlock or a really big opportunity.

And I have subscribed to the wisdom of the 80-20 rule. From what I have seen, I believe the Presiding Officer agrees with that as well.

So instead of just focusing on the things we can't agree on and perhaps will never agree on, because we have different visions for the role of the Federal Government in our lives--that is OK. Those are the debates we have been having since the founding of this country, and we will have forever, as long as this great Nation lasts.

But let's not just focus on the 20 percent we can't do, which seems to be the obsession of the news media and others. Let's think more about the 80 percent we can do. Rather than waste floor time, which is coin of the realm here--I mean, if it can't come to the floor because there is no floor time, it is not going to happen. So rather than waste time on partisan bills that will ultimately go nowhere, let's find common ground and work on our shared priorities.

I have got one idea. How do we help families struggling to keep up with the highest inflation in nearly four decades? I have lived long enough to know when interest rates were close to 20 percent and we had double-digit inflation. It was a miserable time in this country because people's paychecks were eaten up by inflation and they couldn't afford to buy things, like houses, that they ordinarily might buy to increase their standard of living because interest rates were so high on mortgage loans.

Or let's work on supply chains that have been unable to keep up with demand. The vulnerabilities have been exposed by COVID-19. Again, the definition of intelligence, as my dad used to say, what he called the hallmark of intelligence, is learning from your mistakes, not doing the same thing over and over again, like Albert Einstein said, and expecting different results.

There is also a humanitarian crisis on the border that has led to the highest number of annual apprehensions on record.

I am not confident our colleagues on the other side actually believe in enforcing our immigration laws, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe there are some areas that we could work on. The Senator from Arizona, Senator Sinema, and I, and Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, and Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, we have worked on the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act, and we would love to be able to work with our colleagues across the aisle to find some way to address the uncontrolled access that people who have no reasonable grounds for asylum are getting and coming into our country and then fading into the great American landscape.

There are other things I would like to do in the immigration space, things like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Ten years ago, President Obama issued an Executive memorandum saying that if you were brought here as a child, under certain criteria, you will be able to stay and you will be able to get work permits. But it has been in litigation for the last 10 years. The last decision by a Federal district judge in Houston, TX, Judge Hanen, said that basically the DACA and DAPA--in this case, the DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--memorandum is unconstitutional and that only Congress can address this.

And I suggest we should. I have asked the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to put a bill on the floor in the Judiciary Committee that provides some certainty in the future for these young people, who are now young adults, living in uncertainty. Give them some certainty and some comfort knowing that they don't need to fear deportation or some other negative consequence, because I believe there is a broad consensus that we ought to give them some relief.

In America you don't hold children responsible for the mistakes parents make, and I believe that we could find a bipartisan solution to at least that part. And do you know what? Maybe--just maybe--by doing some things together, we can increase confidence among ourselves.

Yeah, we really can. We can work together. We can find bipartisan solutions. We don't have to just fight and emphasize the 20 percent we can't agree on. We can work on that 80 percent and make real progress.

I believe these are the types of issues that the American people sent us here to solve. Forget legislation that hands tax breaks to the wealthy or federalizes America's elections, notwithstanding the provisions of our Constitution. Let's work together to solve real problems where there is an opportunity for us to find that 80-percent solution.

So, as we welcome the start of a new year, I hope the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, and our colleagues across the aisle will look at the 50-50 Senate with a fresh perspective. We do have an opportunity to deliver big wins to the American people this year, and I hope the Senate majority leader, who sets the agenda on the floor, will allow that to happen.

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