On the recordDecember 19, 2018
I want to give a lot of gratitude to my colleague, Senator Coons of Delaware. He is not only with us today on this call for a vote on a bill that was voted out of this Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan manner, but he is also a cosponsor of this legislation and somebody I have been proud to work with. I want to thank my colleague Jeff Flake for putting himself so far out there in pushing for this legislation. It is a consistent pattern with Jeff Flake. If you know him, you might know that he and I might disagree on a lot of policy, but he is one of the people I have looked up to in the U.S. Senate as someone who understands the role of Congress, the article I branch of government--that the powers of Congress articulated by the Constitution should be seen as sacrosanct, and that the erosion of these powers or the surrendering of these powers to the executive undermines the very ideals of our Constitution that our government should be one of checks and balances on power. I have seen him step forward and lead in the manner he is showing today. I have seen him step forward when it came to war powers and talking about the authorization of the use of military force and speak forcefully in a bipartisan manner with another of my colleagues, Tim Kaine, in saying: Hey, we have to have a system of checks and balances or the very foundations of this Republic begin to be undermined.…
