Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, 8 years ago almost to the day, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, otherwise known as DACA. At the time, I remember the conversations a number of us had with President Obama, saying please give us a chance to work this out by passing appropriate legislation in the Congress. He heard those pleas, but in spite of the fact of saying numerous times he did not have the authority to do so, he proceeded to issue a memorandum that gave rise to the DACA program.
Rather than rolling up our sleeves and working together to create lasting immigration policy, President Obama chose to do this through an Executive memorandum. It is that Executive memorandum that has made its way through the courts over the last 8 years and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, this is the bitter fruit of what President Obama did when he attempted to usurp Congress in a way to provide certainty and comfort to hundreds of thousands of young people--a goal that we all share--but to do so in a way that ultimately created more harm. It sent them on a years' long tumultuous journey, which is not over with the Supreme Court decision today. Basically, what the Supreme Court said was, under the Administrative Procedure Act, he didn't do it the right way, so go back and try it again and get it right this time.
Well, I think these young people deserve better. The debate over President Obama's authority has held these individuals hostage, leaving them wondering if they might ultimately be deported to a country they have no memory of and forced to leave their families, their jobs, and the opportunities they have worked so hard to build here in the United States behind.
Make no mistake about it, today the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Homeland Security didn't follow the proper procedures to rescind the DACA program and thus allowed the program to continue for now, but this is just a temporary measure. DACA recipients must have a permanent legislative solution. They deserve nothing less. These young men and women have done nothing wrong. They came to the United States as children, and in America, we don't hold children responsible for the mistakes of their parents, in this case, the mistake of not going through the legal immigration process. So these kids--young people, I should say--are innocent.
Texas is home to more than 100,000 DACA recipients who are a vital part of our communities. They have grown up with our kids, attended the same churches, shopped at the same stores, and defended our freedoms in the U.S. military. Many of these young people are in their 30s now with careers, families, plans, hopes and dreams of their own.
So the uncertainty about their status and what will happen to them is no less terrifying for them than it would be for any of us. It is simply unfair for these young people who, again, through no fault of their own, find themselves in this situation to rely solely on an Executive memorandum instead of a law passed by Congress. I believed that when President Obama rejected our request to work with Congress and come up with a permanent solution, and I believe it now.
I believe the Supreme Court has thrust upon us a unique moment and an opportunity. We need to take action and pass legislation that will unequivocally allow these young men and women to stay in the only home in the only country they have ever known.
In the past, I have supported a number of bills that would have allowed these individuals to remain in the United States without the fear of a court decision hanging in the balance, but each time, partisan disagreements have prevented us from turning anything into law. When it comes to immigration laws, Congress, on a bipartisan basis, never fails to fail.
Well, I hope we can all agree, given this opportunity, that it is not time for politics as usual, but it is time to provide some certainty, some compassion, some support for these young men and women. After years of being yanked around from courtroom to courtroom, these young men and women deserve that certainty. They deserve to know that, when they apply to college, grow up with their families, live their lives, and do all the things everybody else wants to do, that they can do so without a dark cloud hanging over their plans. But, as usual, in order to come up with any solution, it is going to take buy-in from the Senate, House, and White House.
I have been having conversations for years about this topic, but most recently, I have been having conversations about the most efficient and effective way to protect these young people in the long-term, and I am willing to work with anyone, Republican or Democrat, who is interested in solving the problem--not grandstanding, not posturing, not acting like you care when you really don't, elevating politics over a solution. I am not interested in that. If anyone is interested in solving the problem and providing support for these young people, I am all in.
Over the years, I have engaged with the Texas Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, LULAC, Catholic bishops, and a number of other individuals and organizations that share my commitment to providing certainty for these young people. I hope we can come together and help them. These folks want nothing more than to continue to be part of the American dream. I hope we can deliver Juneteenth
Madam President, on another matter. One of the most defining days in our Nation's history was when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, finally freeing all slaves in Confederate territory, but slaves in Texas wouldn't learn this life- altering news for 2\1/2\ years.
I know it is hard for us to understand. Now, we can tweet and communicate instantaneously, but it took 2\1/2\ years for slaves in the South to learn that they were free. That day came on a day we now celebrate as Juneteenth. That was the day that Major General Gordon Granger and the Union troops arrived in Galveston, TX, and shared the news to formerly enslaved people that they were now free. These free men and women set out to spread this news, with many traveling toward Houston, and eventually reaching more than 250,000 slaves throughout Texas.
As we do every year, tomorrow, Texans will celebrate Juneteenth and the 155th anniversary of the end of slavery in our State. It is an opportunity to reflect on our history, the mistakes we have made, but yet how far we have come in the fight for equality and a reminder of just how far we still have to go. That is especially true this year.
Over the last several weeks, Americans of all races, backgrounds, and of all ages have raised their voices in the fight against inequality and injustice that continues to exist in our society, especially those in our criminal justice system. As the list of Black men and women killed by police officers in custody grows, the calls for action are getting louder and louder, as they must and as they should. There is a clear and urgent need for leaders at every level to come together and to deliver the change that we need to deliver in order to match up with our ideals.
I and others have said before, slavery was the original sin of the United States of America. We said: We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal and at the same time embraced a system that didn't acknowledge African Americans as being fully human. That was a sin. We have been paying a bitter price throughout our Nation's history. While we have come a long way, we know there is more we need to do. JUSTICE Act
In the context of police reforms, our friend Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina has introduced a bill which I have cosponsored, as have many other Members of the Senate. It is called the JUSTICE Act, and it will reform our police departments to provide much-needed transparency and accountability. It takes aim at a number of practices and policies that have led to a number of tragic deaths, that have united these nationwide protests and captured our conscience.
To prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place, this bill emphasizes things such as deescalation training. As I looked at the video of the two police officers in Atlanta, waking up somebody asleep in a fast-food line, then interrogating him for 45 minutes before it then broke out into a violent confrontation, I thought they could have used some deescalation training. Maybe, just maybe, a life would have been saved. Maybe they would have said: Give us your car keys, take a cab, go home, and sleep it off. But that is not what happened.
We also need training for police officers that otherwise haven't had that training or don't know to know when they need to intervene when they see another officer exert excessive force. We need more transparency--things like body cameras--and we need more information on things like use of force and no-knock warrants so that we can hopefully come up with a set of best practices that police departments all across the country should employ.
To gain a better understanding of the problems that exist throughout our criminal justice system--and this is just one of them--the bill establishes two commissions, one to perform a top-to-bottom review of our criminal justice system and another to study the challenges facing Black men and boys.
This legislation would also make lynching a Federal crime, it takes aim at the dangerous practice of choke holds, and it strengthens minority hiring. I could go on and on, but I believe these changes have the potential to create real and lasting change in America's police departments and begin to repair the broken relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
Beyond the merits of the bill itself, there is another quality worth noting, and that is it includes a number of measures that have bipartisan support. In other words, there is a lot of overlap between what Democrats want to do and what Republicans want to do. We have to just learn how to take yes for an answer.
We all want to get 100 percent of what we want, but as a practical matter, you need to follow the 80/20 rule sometimes. That is, if you can get 80 percent of what you want, that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, then you need to grab it. That is what we need to do here, not focus on the differences, but focus on the commonality, on the overlap.
By the way, when I first got to the Senate, Teddy Kennedy was one of the great liberal lions here. I asked one of my conservative colleagues, the senior Senator from Wyoming who worked very productively with him, how they did it, one of the most liberal Members of the Senate, one of the most conservative Members of the Senate. Senator Enzi, our friend from Wyoming, said: It is easy. It is the 80/ 20 rule.
That is how they were so productive. That is how they got so much done. They didn't focus on what separated them; they focused on what they shared in common, and that is what we need to do particularly now at this time to demonstrate to America that we hear you, we understand the reason for the protests. We understand the reason for concern, and we share your anguish when innocent lives are lost.
Madam President, as we prepare to debate the JUSTICE Act on the floor next week, finding that common ground is more important than ever, but I am worried that the same old partisan dysfunction which hijacks so many good ideas here in the Congress may dominate over our need to actually pass legislation.
I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will allow us to get on the bill, and hopefully, we will have an amendment process that will allow them to contribute, maybe even make the bill better. That is what we should do. That is what we used to do in the Senate. We had debates, we offered amendments, and then we voted.
We didn't shut it down before we even got it started, which is what I know--at least based on press reports--Senator Schumer, Senator Harris, and others are considering doing, voting no and not allowing us to get on the bill in the first place.
Well, this is an important moment. We will begin debating this legislation on the floor of the Senate next week, and we will demonstrate whether we have risen to the challenge, whether we have set aside political and partisan differences in order to find the common good or not, so I hope our discussions will prove more productive than what we have seen reported so far.
As we continue to try our best to deliver for the American people, I encourage all of us to remember the importance of the 80/20 rule. There is a lot more that unites us than divides us. I know the news, social media, and maybe in our debates we seem to focus on who divides us, but that is not who we are, what divides us. We are what unites us. There is a lot more that unites us.
Tomorrow, I will be privileged to be in the city of my birth, Houston, TX, with Mayor Sylvester Turner and a number of community leaders for a roundtable to talk about these very issues. I was in Dallas last week doing the same thing with my friend, the mayor, Eric Johnson, and it really a great opportunity to do something that Members of the Senate don't do enough, myself included, and that is to listen.
I am excited to report on what we are doing here, but more importantly, I am eager to spend some time listening and learning from the people closest to the problem and then bringing that knowledge back here to the floor of the U.S. Senate so that we can deliver real results for the American people.
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