Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. President, I will speak very briefly. Then I would like to yield to Senator Leahy for some comments he would like to make on the President's nominee to be our next Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. The Senator has known Mr. Mayorkas for a number of years, worked very closely with him through his committee's oversight of the EB-5 program.
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Our leadership is the most important element of any organization, be it a public or private organization, a business, school, a military unit, an athletic team. Leadership is key in everything.
The Department of Homeland Security, which protects us from all kinds of attacks--foreign and domestic, manmade and natural--needs leadership. They need confirmed Senate leadership. They haven't had it for months.
I am going to thank my colleagues who voted this week to confirm Jeh Johnson's nomination as the Secretary of this Department. He will be sworn in next week, thank God. He needs a team. On top of that team he needs Ali Mayorkas to be the Deputy Secretary.
Those are not only my words or the words of Senator Landrieu or Senator Leahy or Senator Feinstein. We received dozens of letters from people who know him. We know these names. We know their faces. We know their reputation. Some are Democrat and some are Republican. A number of them have helped lead the Department of Homeland Security--lead it.
This is a vacancy we are trying to fill. Jane Holl Lute is the last Deputy who stepped down 6 or 8 months ago. She literally oversaw his work and she was his boss, if you will. She thinks the world of him, not only in a role he served but as a guy who can step in and fill the shoes she used to fill.
I want to talk about this investigation. There are two tracks we are going down here. One is an investigation that was launched in September of 2012 by the IG--the OIG for the Department of Homeland Security--in 2012, 15 months ago. How did we find out about it? We found out about it through a leak, information leaked by the office to our friends on the other side 3 days before the hearing was supposed to occur.
We asked to talk to folks who came forward as whistleblowers. We asked for them to talk to the minority. We have asked and asked and asked and have never been given the chance to talk to them to find out what are their allegations, what is their story. Let's hear it. By the same token, they have refused to turn to the one person who knows the most about what is going on in this agency for the last 4 years--Ali Mayorkas--to say: You have been accused of this. Under our system of justice in this country the accused actually has a chance to defend himself, and when he did--we had a hearing--they didn't show up. They won't meet with him either.
So here is the situation. We have people who may be very good people. We don't know them, we don't know their names, and we don't know what they are saying. We just know we haven't had a chance to meet with them, and we know the one guy who is being accused here hasn't had a chance to give his story to those who are accusing him. Is that fair? I don't think so. I don't think so.
So we had that hearing at the end of July and no Republicans came. We put every tough question we could to Mr. Mayorkas, under oath, and he came through. He said about this case involving Terry McAuliffe that Mr. McAuliffe and his company wanted something; they didn't get it. The guy who really made the decision, who works for Ali Mayorkas, basically said--Mr. Rhew--that he made the decision. He made the decision. He was not pressured to make the decision. He ruled against Terry McAuliffe's company. End of case.
Here we are at the end of July. We have the hearing and the Republicans don't come. Dr. Coburn joined me in a letter to the Inspector General and said: Please, provide the resources to expedite and make a priority of this investigation. They were 9 months into that investigation at that time. That was the end of July. In August, we reached out and said, through staff: What kind of assets, what kind of priority are you giving this case? They had three people working on it. They have 650 employees in this office--650--and they had 3 full-time people working on it, an investigator and two research assistants. So we go into August, and they say we need a couple more months. A couple more months was October. Dr. Coburn and I sent another letter to the IG and said: How are we doing? Let's provide some priority to this, and let's get to the bottom of this.
That was in October. Two weeks ago, minority staff and majority staff from the committee had a phone conversation with the OIG's office and said: How are we doing? They said: There is no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing by anybody--not by Mr. Mayorkas, not by anybody at DHS--but we are not done yet. We need several more months. Maybe come back in February or March.
In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have the leadership it needs--at least confirmed by us. How long are we going to wait? The terrorists aren't going to wait. The ones in foreign countries aren't going to wait. The ones in this country aren't going to wait. We need leadership. It is the key for everything--everything.
There is another audit that has been going on as well by the IG--the same IG--of the EB-5 program. I'm an old Governor--here we have an old State treasurer. We used to get audits all the time in State government. Auditors came in to do audits. It drove me crazy when the auditor would come in, make an audit for sometime in the past, and refuse to acknowledge that the department or the agency being audited had actually fixed those problems and submitted an audit that pretends like nothing is different. You have seen this. Senator Durbin has seen this. I have seen this. It drove me crazy.
We have an audit that is going to be released, I think publicly in a day or 2, that has been shared with us in the Senate this week, and there are really four recommendations. As it turns out, of those four recommendations one of them needs the Congress to do something. We need to pass a law. Ali Mayorkas, 18 months ago said to the Judiciary Committee--to Senator Leahy, Senator Grassley: In order for us to make sure there is not fraud in the EB-5 program, to make sure there are not national security concerns, we need you--Congress--to do something about it.
When they reauthorized the EB-5 program in 2012, guess what. They didn't take his recommendations--none of them. This year we were doing immigration reform in committee--Senator Durbin was one of the key players there--and when we did it, Pat Leahy, chairman of the committee, made sure those recommendations were actually included in the immigration reform law--the recommendations from Ali Mayorkas--and they are in the immigration reform bill. We voted for them. It is over in the House now. It is sitting there gathering dust, unfortunately.
If Senator Leahy doesn't introduce as a stand-alone bill those provisions allowing the EB-5 program to have the kind of governance it needs through the USCIS agency, if he doesn't do it, I said to him, I will introduce the legislation myself. I hope we will have a lot of cosponsors.
There are four recommendations. One of them needs us to do something in order for it to occur. The other two are either acknowledged, completed or done. On the other one, we just are in disagreement. It is outside the scope of the law. That is the audit. That is the audit.
So, my friends, I just want to say this: This is not a criminal investigation. The things Terry McAuliffe and his company sought were denied. The one person within the agency who has actually worked on these investigations and worked on these EB-5 programs has come forward and said: Look, Mayorkas did nothing wrong. I decided. I decided against Mr. McAuliffe's company and Mr. Mayorkas stayed out of my way.
We have endorsements. We don't know who the detractors are of Mr. Mayorkas. I wish we did, and I wish we had a chance to talk to them. We are never going to have a chance. I wish my friends on the other side had taken the time to talk to Mr. Mayorkas to say: Listen, this is what you are accused of. The Democrats don't know what you are accused of, but this is what we have been told by these six people. What is your story? What is your story?
Whatever happened to the Golden Rule? What happened to the idea that justice delayed is justice denied? You know, Mr. Mayorkas, as Senator Landrieu said, has a wife, they have two kids. They have a life to live. We have put them through hell for months. What kind of message does this send to other people, other agency leaders who go in and take on an agency that is in trouble, that has problems and needs to be fixed, needs to be shaken up? That person goes in and does it and gets whistleblowers or complaints out of it as a result? What do we say to other leaders who go into agencies that are in trouble and need to be shaken up, to those who are willing to get people to do things differently? What do we say to them? Don't do it; don't rock the boat; just let things slide? Is that the message we want to send? I don't think so.
We will not have a chance on this side to hear from those six people, but I tell you the other people who work in that agency had a chance to say something about the way they feel about how their agency is going. As my colleagues know, every year we get a report from a nonprofit organization that looks at 300 Federal agencies and asks the questions: How is morale? How do you feel about the work you are doing? One of those 300 was this agency led by Ali Mayorkas, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Department of Homeland Security, again this year--we just got the results this week, and again this year, the worst morale in the Federal Government of any department--in our government, the worst morale. But guess what. There is one agency in this department that stood up, that stood out, because out of those 300 agencies, No. 76--the top 25 percent--No. 76 was this agency led by Mr. Mayorkas.
Another question asked of the employees: Do you feel better or worse about your senior leadership this year than last year? Since 2009, since he took over this organization in 2009, Madam President, guess what. Satisfaction with senior leadership increased by more than 20 percent. They feel better. They feel better about the senior leadership with Mr. Mayorkas than they did without his leadership.
Something is going on in that agency, folks. We are not getting the full story, but that survey that we got this week says a lot.
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Madam President, my friend Senator Durbin, from Springfield, IL, Land of Lincoln, reminds me as I close here this morning of something Lincoln once said. He was meeting with his Cabinet during the heart of the Civil War. Things had started to turn for the better for the Union. The Union leader on the military side was a guy named Grant. He allegedly liked to drink, a lot. Some of the folks on the President's cabinet didn't like him. They said: Mr. President, we need to get rid of Grant. He is not the kind of guy we want to have leading our forces.
Grant had led a reversal of fortune, so that the Union having been on the losing side ended up on the winning side again and again. Lincoln looked at his Cabinet, and he said these words, and I paraphrase them: Find out what Grant is drinking, and give it to the rest of my generals.
Rather than criticize or hang out to dry a leader of an agency who has turned it around, who enjoys the broad support of the folks within his agency; rather than criticize him and finding fault and leaving him out there unable to defend himself against unknown accusations, we should find out--in the words of Lincoln--what Grant is drinking. In this case we should find out what Mayorkas is doing, what has he done to turn around an agency and make sure the other people who come into positions of authority are taking of the same beverage.
With that, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I yield the floor.
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