John Cornyn: “I again wish to express my gratitude to the senior Senator from Vermont, Senator Leahy, for his critical role in making…”

“I again wish to express my gratitude to the senior Senator from Vermont, Senator Leahy, for his critical role in making sure this legislation becomes law, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on similar topics in the future. Legislation Before the Senate Mr. President, we are about a week into the lameduck session, and we have already tackled some pretty significant legislation. Last week, I was proud to see two bills that I introduced pass the Chamber. The first was the Cross-Border Trade Enhancement Act, a bill that will help staffing, safety, and efficiency at our ports of entry, and it passed the Senate unanimously. In Texas, as the Presiding Officer knows in Arizona, this is not a new concern. Some of our border communities have seen the infrastructure and the staffing prove to be inadequate at our legitimate ports of entry, with a negative impact not only on the environment, as cars stack up to cross the border, but it also provides an unnecessary drag on legitimate trade and commerce. Through the use of innovative public-private partnerships, we have seen that we can increase staffing, improve the infrastructure, and basically end up filling the gap left by the Federal Government not doing its job by dealing--as it, of necessity, must--with our international borders and making sure they work as they should.…”