Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I guess I have to give my friend, the Senator from New York, credit. Once he made his bed, he decided he had better lie in it.

Democrats made a risky gamble when they bet against the American people in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that we passed in December. No Democrat supported it--none--and now I think they are beginning to worry that it is actually working. Otherwise, I don't understand why the Democratic leader, the minority leader of the U.S. Senate, would say: We need to raise your taxes because we can spend your money better than you can. I guess he means that we also need to eliminate the doubling of the standard deduction, which makes sure that the first $24,000 earned by a married couple is tax-free--zero tax rate. I guess he thinks we ought to repeal the doubling of the child tax credit.

As much as he rails about corporations, the fact is, what we did on the business side with taxes has made the United States more competitive globally. It is the same argument that he, President Obama in a State of the Union speech, and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Wyden--it is the same argument they made that we embraced.

We got a little more aggressive than they did in terms of the rate. We lowered it, not to 25 percent, as Senator Wyden had proposed, but to 21 percent; thus, we made ourselves roughly average in the industrialized world, making America more competitive. We were seeing people going overseas and investing because they had better tax rates than we had here in America.

Who owns the stock? You have heard the Democratic leader talk about stock buybacks. He said: Well, these corporations are using this money to buy their own stock back. Do you know who owns stock in America? I am not sure of the exact percentage, but a huge percentage of it is owned by retirement funds and pension funds of firefighters, teachers, and others who want to see that their retirement is not only safe but also grows. What they have seen since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in December is the value of their retirement funds go through the roof. The stock market is at an all-time high--or thereabouts. It has set huge records.

I know our friends on the other side of the aisle are worried because they made a dangerous gamble against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but the fact is, all the polling is showing that as people are seeing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act actually being implemented, they are seeing more money in their paychecks. Because the withholding tables were changed to reflect lower tax rates, people are seeing more take-home pay. And as the economy continues to grow, there is going to be more competition for workers.

Unemployment claims are the lowest they have been since 1969. As there is more competition for workers, that is going to force employers to pay more wages, so everyone is going to benefit from a growing economy.

Sometimes I think our colleagues across the aisle have settled for too little. They settled for a stagnant economy, frozen wages, and an America that could no longer compete in the world when it came to attracting business and investment. We changed that.

Every single person on this side of the aisle--all 51 of us--voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Everyone on that side of the aisle voted against it. I think the Democratic leader now is getting pretty worried, especially leading up to the November elections, when a number of his colleagues on that side of the aisle are going to have to go to voters and say: I voted against your pay raise; I voted against take- home pay; I voted against increasing the standard deduction; I voted against an increase in the child tax credit. I think they are pretty worried about it; otherwise, I couldn't imagine the Democratic leader coming out here and saying what he said today.

He said: Well, we want to raise your taxes so we can spend it. I think the folks I represent--the 28 million Texans I represent--would say: No thank you. We want to spend our own hard-earned money the way we see fit, not send it to Washington to see it go into some black hole, and then we will not know what we actually benefited from.

I didn't necessarily intend to come to the floor to talk about that, but I couldn't resist responding briefly to my friend's comments.

Mr. President, I do want to congratulate the senior Senator from Idaho for a moment, Mr. Crapo, the chairman of the Banking Committee, on the bill that is pending on the floor. He has done stellar work to bring this Dodd-Frank reform bill to the floor, one that will release some of those shackles on small community banks and credit unions.

They were the victims of overkill when it came to regulation under the name of Dodd-Frank, which was designed to address Wall Street and the excesses of Wall Street. But as I have told my friends who are community bankers and members of credit unions back home: You weren't the target, but you were the collateral damage. We are going to remedy that on a bipartisan basis, thanks to the Banking Committee, its chairman, Senator Crapo, and our colleagues. Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act

Mr. President, this morning, I want to mention another area where the Banking Committee and Senator Crapo are showing great leadership, and that is on a bill that will improve the CFIUS review process. Let me unpack that.

CFIUS is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. That acronym stands for the interagency body led by the Treasury Department, in this case by Secretary Mnuchin. It polices foreign investment in the United States for national security risks.

The Banking Committee has held two hearings on the bipartisan bill that I introduced with the senior Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, which is called the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act. I hope the committee will have a markup on that bill soon.

The House Financial Services Committee has also been holding hearings on our bill, including one last week, and has more planned in the future.

The time to act is now because this process is outdated, and the committee's jurisdiction remains too narrow. Let me explain why that is so important.

This review process was not originally designed, and is now insufficient, to address today's rapidly evolving threats to our national security. Perhaps most alarmingly, many transactions that could pose a national security risk often go unreviewed altogether.

In particular, China has proved adept at cheating the current CFIUS system. It exploits gaps and creatively structures investments in U.S. businesses to evade scrutiny. They literally have been vacuuming up startup technology firms that are going to produce the next cutting- edge technology that would give America a competitive advantage against the rest of the world when it comes to our national security, and they are thinking strategically in the long term by showing up as investors in some of these businesses and flying beneath the radar screen. They are unreviewed under the current CFIUS process.

To circumvent review, China will often pressure U.S. companies into arrangements like joint ventures and coerce them into handing over their technology and their know-how. This enables Chinese companies to acquire and then replicate U.S.-bred capabilities on their own soil, destroying jobs here in America in the process, as well as our industrial base. Many of these technologies have a direct military application, and my bill, cosponsored with Senator Feinstein, addresses this problem.

As we speak, China is turning our own technology and know-how against us and seeking to erase our national security advantage little by little. They are doing it relentlessly and strategically. This massive technology transfer, which occurs out of the public eye and is achieved through China's deliberate campaign of evasion of our security safeguards, must end.

We don't have to look very far to see how technology is increasingly the realm where U.S. national security interests and China's economic and military interests lie in tension with one another or, in the worst case, they actually collide. It is happening almost every day.

Consider the widely reported news this week that CFIUS--the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--has ordered a full investigation into a foreign bid to take over a prominent American computer chip manufacturer. That company, Qualcomm, plays a leading role in supporting U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, especially by doing the research and investment of 5G technology, which is important for autonomous vehicles and the internet, increasing the use of cellular technology for what is transforming our lives. It supports our national security through classified work in the Federal Government.

The cause for alarm is that the deal is a hostile takeover, and the consequences of the takeover could put China in the driver's seat for the next generation of mobile technology.

Chinese companies, beholden as they are to the Chinese Communist Party, would fill any void that is left once the deal is complete, much to the detriment of our national security and our economy.

We are still gathering information, and not all the facts are known yet, but I want to stress that we need to do our due diligence. We need to have a comprehensive review of this hostile takeover. In my view, CFIUS, with Secretary Mnuchin leading at the Treasury Department, is right to be extremely cautious and to investigate this matter further.

Today there is a growing recognition that foreign investors are getting more sophisticated in accessing our technology. As this week's developments show, we can't be naive in thinking that this isn't happening or that it is not a clear and present danger or naive about State-owned enterprises in countries like China, where there is no such thing as the private and public sector. The government controls everything because that is the nature of their Communist system.

The Chinese Government has plans to dominate mobile technology, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other industries; that much is clear. One tactic is to force American companies to transfer high-tech industrial capabilities to China's homegrown players in exchange for the U.S. firms gaining access to the Chinese market. That, too, is well documented. But the quid pro quos don't stop there. They aren't even confined to the technology space.

Recently, there have been calls to investigate China's involvement in American college campuses through the so-called Confucius Institutes. These institutes are proxies for the Chinese Communist Party. They offer schools financial benefits in exchange to set up shop in close proximity to U.S. researchers and students whose views they attempt to influence for what are essentially manipulative propaganda campaigns-- ones that conveniently whitewash over the Communist regime's less flattering attributes and their troubling history of human rights abuses and belligerence in places like the South China Sea.

I know our colleague, the junior Senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio, who cochairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, has called on schools that host Confucius Institutes to end those partnerships, and he is right to do so. Steady and stealthy forms of information warfare should be a perpetual concern, especially when none other than Gen. Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that by 2025, China will pose the greatest threat to U.S. national security of any nation.

The bipartisan bill Senator Feinstein and I have introduced is an important piece of our overall response to this threat. It has been endorsed by the administration and is supported by the current Secretaries of Defense and Treasury, as well as the Attorney General. Let's not hold this up any longer.

I congratulate the chairman of the Banking Committee for the good work on the bill that is on the floor. I thank him for his leadership and willingness to work with us on this important CFIUS reform bill. I look forward to the upcoming markup of this bill in the committee soon. Fix NICS Bill

Finally, Mr. President, let me say that every day that goes by since the shooting in Parkland, FL, on February 14--every day that goes by, we are distracted by other concerns, and our memories dim of the terrible mass tragedy that occurred at that school, the shootings that occurred there that day.

I know the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, was at Stoneman Douglas High School yesterday for the students' first full, normal schoolday, 3 weeks after the shooting. She said it was a sobering moment--and I am sure it was--speaking to the students and teachers, who still flinch remembering the sounds of bullets in the hallways of their school. Fourteen students died, along with one teacher, the school's athletic director, and a coach who was shielding students with his body so they would not be hit.

That is the thing about these events--these stories make us sad and angry and sometimes numb, all at the same time, but from these stories, from these tragedies, heroes do emerge.

We saw one of those heroes last fall at Sutherland Springs, TX, where people were gathered to worship at a small Baptist church just outside of San Antonio. A man who prefers not to be recognized grabbed his rifle and ran to the church that was under attack, and he saved lives in the process by preventing the gunman from continuing the carnage. That is a case of somebody taking an AR-15 out of his gun safe. He is a certified shooting instructor. He came to the aid of people who were defenseless and who were being slaughtered at that church, and he saved many lives.

The person who was shooting at that church in Sutherland Springs was a convicted felon, and he was, under existing law, legally permitted to purchase or possess firearms. That is why, when I came back to Washington after visiting Sutherland Springs at the next Sunday service, I introduced a bill to fix the holes in the national instant background check system--to make sure that shooters like the one at Sutherland Springs could not legally purchase firearms.

Part of the reason I did that was because after I talked to Pastor Frank Pomeroy, who lost his daughter Annabelle in the massacre, I promised myself I would do everything in my power to prevent similar events from occurring in the future. I did the same after I spoke with a man by the name of Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter Meadow in Florida last month. I met Andrew last week, along with Senator Rubio, who I know has been similarly moved to take action.

After having these difficult conversations, I can't tell my colleagues how disappointed I am that the Senate has done nothing-- nothing--to prevent them from happening in the future. We can't even tell fathers and mothers that we have taken the first step toward ending some of the violence that plagues our country, that puts bullet holes in our classrooms and spills blood inside some of our most sacred places.

The bill that I introduced to fix the National Instant Criminal Background Check System is called Fix NICS. That is what it does. It fixes the holes in the background check system so that people like Mr. Kelley, the shooter at Sutherland Springs, could not legally purchase a firearm. I am grateful to my colleagues who have cosponsored that bill. It includes the majority leader and the minority leader, Senator Schumer, as well as Senator Murphy and Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut and all of our close to 60 bipartisan cosponsors. They believe that what the bill tries to do, which is to fix our broken background check system, is important and will save lives and will keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons.

Recently, we saw that the bill could make a real difference in places like Ohio. There, it was reported that dozens of courts are failing to upload conviction records into the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System and that this failure could result in convicted felons purchasing guns. This bill would help alleviate that problem. A similar glitch is one that allowed the gunman in Sutherland Springs, of course, to purchase the firearm he used when the Air Force failed to upload his conviction records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, as they were obligated to do. The law requires that these convictions be uploaded, and now we need to make sure those laws are enforced.

Sixty is how many votes we need to pass this legislation in the Senate, and I am confident, were that bill to be brought to the floor and we had a vote on it, it would actually get many, many more--close to unanimity--here in the Senate. Last week we tried to get an agreement to have a debate on the bill followed by an up-or-down vote. Sadly and inexplicably, the minority leader blocked that agreement. I don't think the minority leader opposes the bill--he is actually a cosponsor of it--but he is in a bind. He is being pressured by a handful of those in his conference who say that this is not sufficient.

I know people on both sides of the aisle would like to do more, but I want to make sure we don't fail to do anything at all or that we don't end up doing nothing. Many of these Members have indicated that they want votes on other measures. Frankly, I would be fine with that, but let's make sure we don't leave here another day emptyhanded by failing to take action on the one consensus piece of legislation that would be supported by an overwhelming majority of the Senate.

I would like to be able to report good news to Pastor Pomeroy and his wife Sherri. I am sure my colleagues from Florida would like to do the same for the shocked families who are still grieving in Parkland. We need to send a message to families that when they drop their children off at school and when they go to church to worship, they will be safe--or safer than they would be if we fail to act.

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