American Energy and Conservation Act of 2016--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, we are living in historic times. The 115th Congress will be the first time in a decade that Republicans have held both Chambers of Congress and the White House. Before the George W.
Bush administration in the early part of this century, you would have to go back to the Eisenhower administration--I believe it was 1953--to find a comparable time of Republican control.

Interestingly, for the history buffs who may be listening, there have actually been 14 times since 1945 when we have had single-party majorities in both Houses and the White House. Eleven of those times have been our Democratic colleagues and three times have been Republicans. So I come back to where I started in saying these are truly historic times.

This morning, our Republican conference met to elect our leadership team to serve in the next Congress during this extraordinary time.

After gaining the majority 2 years ago, it has been a pleasure to look back and see what we have been able to accomplish even with the President from the opposing party in the White House.

Yesterday I mentioned the rewrite of No Child Left Behind, which sent more authority back to the States, parents, and teachers to make education decisions for children in kindergarten through 12th grade. I also mentioned passing a long-term highway bill for 5 years--something we hadn't been able to do for a long time. Those are just two concrete examples of how, working together, we can tackle big, intractable problems. Frankly, nothing happens in the Senate unless it is bipartisan.

We also passed some other important legislation, something negotiated by the majority leader in the House at the time, Nancy Pelosi, or Leader Pelosi, and Speaker John Boehner, which was the reform of our Social Security laws in terms of how doctors under Medicare are paid.

It is an important item because if doctors are not paid a prevailing fee or competitive fee for their services, they are simply not going to see Medicare patients and seniors are not going to have access to the care they deserve. We passed a bill sanctioning North Korea for its nuclear program and its human rights abuses. We also passed legislation to better support our troops, who fight and put themselves in harm's way to keep us safe every day.

I am grateful to our Republican colleagues for voting to continue the direction of progress for the American people by reelecting their current leadership, including the senior Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell. As all of us have, I have had the honor to serve alongside Senator McConnell for several years now, although I have served for the last 4 years as the whip or the right hand of the majority leader when it comes to trying to corral votes and trying to promote our legislative agenda. I found the majority leader to be a wise and steady hand in a town marked by the absence of those virtues, among many. So I am proud to serve with him in the next Congress, as I am with all of our colleagues, and in his case as the majority leader, as his assistant.
We also had a chance, having come back together after the election, to talk about the future and to talk about our agenda going forward.

Yesterday I pointed out several legislative priorities at the top of the list--policy items we have to get right on behalf of the American people--such as confirming a Supreme Court Justice who will interpret the laws as we write them and as the Constitution is written, rather than as another policymaking branch of government.
We have also promised we would repeal and replace ObamaCare, which was a failed experiment--failed because the President, when he promoted it, said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. He said: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And he said: An average family of four will see their premiums go down $2,500. None of that has been proven to be true. So it is very important we keep that promise of repealing ObamaCare and then replace it on a step-by-step basis over a transition period with more affordable health care that will preserve the choices in health care through Americans and their families and not Washington, DC.

And then there is the matter of legislation. After our Democratic friends lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate and the Republicans flipped the House, providing for a divided government, the one thing that has characterized the Obama administration has been its Executive actions and overregulation. In August, it was reported the President and his administration had issued 600 major regulations with a pricetag of more than $740 billion.

If there is one thing I hear from my constituents back in Texas-- small business owners and the like--it is that they are feeling the strangling effect of overregulation, along with the cost of compliance and the uncertainty that goes along with it. So it is no surprise to see that our economy has essentially flatlined and not been growing because none of this is good for the small business owners we are relying upon to create jobs and opportunities, and it is not good for American families looking for those jobs in order to provide for their families and simply put food on the table. So we are eager to roll back those expensive, and in many instances unnecessary, certainly in every instance burdensome regulations so the economy can have some breathing room and begin to grow again.

Many of us are interested in addressing tax reform as well. There is bipartisan consensus that our Tax Code is simply too complex and counterproductive. In fact, it is literally a self-inflicted wound when it comes to forcing $2 trillion-plus overseas that American-based companies would like to bring back, but the reason they do not is they would be subject to double taxation, first, in the country where the money has been earned and, secondly, when they bring it back to the United States. Rather than do that, many of them will leave that money overseas. That means that rather than investing in American jobs and American infrastructure, they are literally investing in jobs overseas and in building infrastructure to support their facilities in other countries. That makes no sense whatsoever.

So tax reform is high on our agenda. I believe, and I am optimistic, that at a time when everybody understands our Tax Code has simply gotten too complex, too expensive, and too counterproductive, we will be able to make some real progress.

Coming from a border State, I can tell you I am delighted to hear President Elect Trump talk about the importance of border security. In a post-9/11 world, it is simply critical we know who is coming into our country and make sure they do so only by legal means. So securing our border is something we need to deal with, and thank goodness there is no shortage of good ideas.

Chairman Mike McCaul of the House Homeland Security Committee has a bipartisan bill I think would make great progress along those lines, but obviously we are going to have to have an important discussion among all Members of Congress and the administration about how best to accomplish the goal.

We also need to remember our ports of entry are where legitimate trade and travel occur, and we should do nothing to impede that because legitimate trade and travel are very important to our economy. The U.S.
economy enjoys about 6 million jobs as a result of trade between the United States and Mexico alone.
So I look forward to working with the administration and with our colleagues to make sure we secure our border against illegal immigration, including human trafficking, drug trafficking, and the potential violence that goes along with that, while making sure our legitimate trade and travel at our ports of entry are supported so we can benefit from those as well.

Of course, as we debated earlier this Congress, having an updated and efficient infrastructure is vital to the health and well-being of our economy. I mentioned the Transportation bill we passed. A long-term Transportation bill will provide for some of that, but certainly not all that is necessary. We need to take a look at the proposals the President-elect is going to send our way, but there is no shortage of good ideas being discussed both in the House and the Senate as well.

I look forward to learning more about those, but one thing that hasn't been talked about very much is how we are going to pay for it, and that is going to be an important item to discuss as well. Frankly, we can't keep spending our kids' and grandkids' inheritance or at least forcing upon the younger generations the obligation to pay for bills we incur today.

One of the things I hope will occur as a result of this historic election is that we will have the courage and the willingness to sit down and come up with structural solutions to our financial situation, which is $19 trillion-plus in debt. Because of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates very low, we are not having to pay huge amounts of money in order to service that debt or pay interest to the people who own that debt, but that is going to change if the Federal Reserve begins to raise interest rates, and we are going to find ourselves paying more and more money to service that debt to the bondholders and less and less of that money will be available for our priorities domestically, whether they be national security or other investments in things such as medical research and the like.

So finding out how we can crack that nut and come together on a bipartisan basis, working with the White House to deal with our long- term fiscal problems and continuing to meet the needs of our Nation are going to be challenging but exhilarating to do.

Many are talking about the next steps and what should and shouldn't happen in light of the new political reality, but what is clear to me today is that Republicans are united by a strong desire to listen to the concerns of the American people and to deliver results--results that make their lives easier and our collective futures stronger. I want to say that as committed as the majority party is to that, we can't do this without the cooperation and consensus building that comes along as part of the legislative process.

Unfortunately, we have seen the last years characterized by obstruction and filibusters and blocking things that essentially have already received bipartisan support. I am talking particularly about the appropriations process. One of the terrible things that happened this last year in the Congress is the Appropriations Committees have gotten back to work on a bipartisan basis. We would see bills coming out at a fiscally responsible level, with agreed-upon spending caps and Democrats and Republicans supporting them, only to see them dead on arrival on the floor of the Senate. That is the kind of mindless obstructionism I hope we can avoid going forward.

Just from the conversations I have had as a result of this election, many of our Democratic colleagues appear to be willing to work with us.

Certainly, with the new leadership on the Democratic side of the aisle, I am more optimistic than I have been in a long time that we can come together while maintaining our strongly held convictions and principles--I am not talking about compromising those but rather working together when we can--and try to develop more ideas to better serve the American people.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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