Senator Cornyn: (10:21 AM)

• Spoke in tribute to the retiring Dallas police chief, David Brown.
  • "Of course while many Americans know Chief Brown from his leadership during the shooting in July, Dallasites have benefited from his service for a long time. He grew up in southwest Dallas in Oak Cliff and has been on the Dallas police force, as I said, for the last 33 years. I know the people of Dallas will miss his leadership and hearing him sing a little Stevie Wonder from time to time. So I want to express my gratitude and thanks to Chief Brown and wish him well in the next chapter of his life."
• Spoke on the continuing resolution.
  • "We've been trying since last May to get that Zika funding done, and for some reason, even though the amount of the funding, $1 billion, was agreed upon, for some reason or another our Democratic colleagues wouldn't take yes for an answer. But finally yesterday they decided to give up their filibuster and allow this legislation and this important funding to be done. But my point is we could have done this a long time ago. In fact, we wouldn't have even had to pass a continuing resolution taking us over into December, just ten weeks from now, where we'll have to start all over again, if it weren't for the obstructionism and the filibustering of our Democratic colleagues. Of course the cause of this is all about a fight over federal spending."
• Spoke on Senate accomplishments.
  • "But I just simply want to make the point that leadership matters. And under the leadership of Senator McConnell, our committees are now actually actively producing legislation on a bipartisan basis that's then available to the majority leader to bring to the floor for us to debate, for senators to offer suggestions for improvement by way of amendment, and then to allow everybody to participate in the process, and vote that legislation and then put it on the president's desk."

 

Senator Alexander: (10:46 AM)

• Spoke on the Obama administration's overtime rule.
  • "I'm introducing a bill today with the co-sponsorship of Senator Collins of Maine, Senator Lankford of Oklahoma, Senator Scott of South Carolina, Senator Flake of Arizona, that would protect America's nonprofits, churches, colleges, and communities from the effect of the administration's so-called overtime rule that will go into effect on December 1 unless we act. When we talk about employers that will be affected by overtime, we're talking about places like Operation Smile, a charity that funds cleft palate operations for children. Operation Smile says this rule may cost them 3,000 surgeries a year. The effect of this rule may mean 3,000 children won't have surgeries each year for cleft palates because of the cost of this regulation. We're talking about the Great Smoky Mountain Council of Boy Scouts. That's my home Boy Scout council. That's where I grew up, where I live. They tell me the new rule will cost about $100,000 in annual costs during certain seasons because employees staff weekend camping trips which mean longer hours."

 

Senator Lankford: (11:00 AM)

• Spoke on the Obama administration's overtime rule.
  • "As he mentioned multiple times, Senator Collins and I dropped a companion bill here in the Senate that was already passed in the House that delays the overtime rule's implementation by six months. As he also mentioned, I am most certainly a co-sponsor of his bill as well. That is another approach and quite frankly we're all looking for different approaches to be able to accomplish something that needs to be done and needs to be done immediately. That is to address a regulation that has been put in place that can have serious, I believe unintended consequences, but most certainly serious consequences across our economy. I don't have some accusation that this administration wants to be able to damage the economy, wants to be able to damage small businesses, or wants to be able to damage universities and nonprofits. But I believe absolutely that is what is occurring. I am concerned, though, that the administration seems to have been deaf to the message that's come up over and over again from many of us here in the Congress."