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21Senate Resolution 93: Expressing the Sense of the Senate That the Operations of the National Institutes of Health Should Not Experience Any Interruption, Delay, or Funding Disruption in Violation...
22Senate Resolution 94: Authorizing Expenditures by Committees of the Senate for the Periods March 1, 2025, Through September 30, 2025, October 1, 2025, Through September 30, 2026, and October 1...
23Senate Resolution 95: Expressing Support for the Designation of February 23, 2025, to March 1, 2025, as "National Fentanyl Awareness Week" and Raising Awareness of the Negative Impacts Of...
Thirty-five bills and nine resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 700-734, S.J. Res. 24-27, and S. Res. 93-97.
Pages S1344-46
Measures Reported
S. Res. 94, authorizing expenditures by committees of the Senate for the periods March 1, 2025, through September 30, 2025, October 1, 2025, through September 30, 2026, and October 1, 2026, through February 28, 2027.
Page S1344
Measures Passed
Rule Submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management: By 54 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. 92), Senate passed S.J. Res. 11, providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management relating to ``Protection of Marine Archaeological Resources''.
Pages S1322-33
During consideration of this measure today, Senate also took the following action
By 54 yeas to 42 nays (Vote No. 91), Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to consideration of the joint resolution. Honoring the Life of Howard L.
Page S1322
Hawks
Senate agreed to S. Res. 97, honoring the life of Nebraska community leader Howard L. Hawks.
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Public Schools Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 96, designating the week of February 24 through February 28, 2025, as ``Public Schools Week''.
Page S1359
Appointments
Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group Conference: The Chair, on behalf of the Vice President, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 276d-276g, as amended, appointed the following Senator as Vice Chairman of the Senate Delegation to the Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group Conference during the 119th Congress: Senator Klobuchar.
Page S1359
British-American Interparliamentary Group Conference
The Chair, on behalf of the President pro tempore, and upon the recommendation of the Majority Leader, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2761, as amended, appointed the following Senator as Vice Chairman of the Senate Delegation to the British-American Interparliamentary Group Conference during the 119th Congress: Senator Whitehouse.
Page S1359
British-American Interparliamentary Group Conference
The Chair, on behalf of the President pro tempore, and upon the recommendation of the Majority Leader, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2761, as amended, appointed the following Senator as Chairman of the Senate Delegation to the British- American Interparliamentary Group Conference during the 119th Congress: Senator Boozman.
Page S1359
Terminating the National Emergency Declared With Respect to Energy and Greer Nomination: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that at approximately 10 a.m., on Wednesday, February 26, 2025, the order of Tuesday, February 18, 2025, in relation to S.J. Res. 10, terminating the national emergency declared with respect to energy, be executed; that at 12 noon, Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination of Jamieson Greer, of Maryland, to be United States Trade Representative, with the rank of Ambassador, as provided under the previous order of Monday, February 24, 2025; and that following disposition of the nomination at Jamieson Greer, Senate resume consideration of S.J. Res. 10.
Page S1359
McMahon Nomination: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the nomination of Linda McMahon, of Connecticut, to be Secretary of Education.
Pages S1333-36
A motion was entered to close further debate on the nomination, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a vote on cloture will occur on Thursday, February 27, 2025.
Page S1333
Prior to the consideration of this nomination, Senate took the following action
By 51 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. 93), Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the nomination.
Page S1333
Nomination Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nomination: By 66 yeas to 28 nays (Vote No. EX. 90), Daniel Driscoll, of North Carolina, to be Secretary of the Army.
Pages S1317-22
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S1347-59
Record Votes
Four record votes were taken today. (Total--93)
Pages S1321-22, S1332-33
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 7:32 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, February 26, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Acting Majority Leader in today's Record on pages S1359-60.)
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 47 of 120 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Mr. President, soon, we will be voting on the nomination of Jamieson Greer of Maryland to be U.S. Trade Representative.
I will be supporting that nomination. I voted for his nomination to get out of the Finance Committee because I believe we need a clear change from the last 4 years, when there was never any attempt to do anything to reduce trade barriers.
Unlike his predecessor, I am confident that Mr. Greer will pursue an aggressive trade strategy that includes opening access to new markets through new trade deals. I also believe that Mr. Greer will work to level the playing field for U.S. farmers to compete with Brazil fairly and to deal with China head on. As my colleagues know, I am a free and fair trader, and though I would not like to see extreme tariffs, I am hopeful that Mr. Greer and President Trump will bring us to freer and more fair trade.
We often think of Europe, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, and China as being big problems for us when it comes to trade. I would like to remind my colleagues that there are about 190 other countries on this globe that we can seek agreements with, and taking time to seek those agreements would be good.
Along this line, Senator Boozman, chairman of the Ag Committee, and I, a member of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade, sent letters to members of the Finance Committee, the Agriculture Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives. We asked our colleagues to listen to somebody who has had some experience in dealing with some of these smaller nations with bilateral trade agreements. That person is a person by the name of Al Johnson.
During the George W. Bush Presidency, he negotiated trade agreements with about a dozen countries that added up to about six or seven different agreements--all bilateral. I think, this is the way President Trump prefers--bilateral negotiations rather than multilateral negotiations. He was very successful, and that success can be measured by the fact that he has shown in his studies that, with these dozen countries with which we negotiated bilateral free-trade agreements during the George W. Bush administration, we increased our trade with those nations by about 600 percent.
So I hope my colleagues will give Al Johnson a chance to talk to them. I know he has already visited with some Members of the U.S. Senate, and he is very vigorously promoting the idea that we ought to have bilateral negotiations--and with a lot of countries that we never think about--that could be beneficial to American exports.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, yesterday evening, we invoked cloture on the
Mr. Greer is admirably qualified for this position. He spent most of his career specializing in trade law and has extensive international experience. He served as a missionary in Brussels, received a master's degree from two Paris institutions, served as law clerk for the European Court of Justice, and was stationed in both Turkiye and Iraq as a member of the Air Force. Most significantly of all, he spent 3 years of the previous Trump administration serving as Chief of Staff to then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who spoke highly of Mr. Greer's work. He is, in short, very well prepared for this role.
One of my top priorities when it comes to trade is expanding opportunities for our Nation's agriculture producers, like the many farmers and ranchers in my State of South Dakota.
The Biden administration frequently seemed to have no interest in trade beyond negotiating on climate and labor issues. Witness the fact that there was not a single FTA negotiated during the Biden administration--not a single one--with all the opportunities across the globe to enter into trade agreements to open up and provide access to America's farmers and ranchers and small business people. Well, that was a real disservice to America's ag producers and to our small businesses.
Trade is critical to the continued success of American agriculture. Twenty percent of U.S. ag products are exported yearly, and exports provide substantial farm income. Soybeans and corn alone accounted for 22 percent of all U.S. exports by value in 2024.
Thanks, in part, to the Biden administration's almost complete inaction on trade, the current agricultural trade deficit is at an alltime high. That is an area of our economy where we have always run trade surpluses historically. Consistently over time, decade after decade, we had always run trade surpluses in agriculture until the last few years under the Biden administration, when we started racking up not only deficits but now record trade deficits. They are at an alltime high. I have to say that is a real problem for our ag producers, especially considering the other challenges that they have been facing, and it is something that needs to be addressed.
I know that the Trump administration is committed to meeting the needs of farmers and ranchers, and I am looking forward to working with Mr. Greer to expand opportunities for our agricultural producers.
I am very encouraged by the fact that Mr. Greer has expressed his commitment to working closely with the Senate Finance Committee, of which I am a member, and with Congress.
President Biden's Trade Representative was completely uninterested in working with Congress. So it is very encouraging to hear of Mr. Greer's commitment to communication and collaboration.
I look forward to a close partnership between the administration and Congress in the coming months and years, as we work to expand opportunities for American producers.
Mr. President, over the last month, it has become clear how Donald Trump and Republicans govern. Donald Trump and Republicans have focused on things most Americans don't care about or don't like while refusing to focus on things Americans actually do care about.
Donald Trump and Republicans have focused on things most Americans don't care about or don't even like while refusing to focus on things Americans actually do care about.
Exhibit A of these things that Americans don't like is what is happening today in the House of Representatives. As soon as today, House Republicans will advance a budget resolution clearing the way for perhaps the most draconian cuts to Medicaid in American history, all so Republicans can cut taxes for their billionaires club and have the American people pick up the tab and pay the price. This is in the
There is only one proper way to describe the Republican plan that is moving through the House this week: radical. Radical. The Republican plan radically hurts American families while radically helping the billionaires club. Republicans are so eager to cut taxes for billionaires that they would increase the deficit by a trillion dollars or more to make room for their sweetheart-deal tax cuts for billionaires like Elon Musk.
Republicans are also pushing for trillions in cuts for working- and middle-class Americans, endangering everything from Medicaid to nutrition programs, to housing assistance, and so much more. The Republican bill could cut as much as $880 billion from Medicaid alone. That means 80 million Americans--kids, veterans, people with disabilities, rural Americans, the elderly--are all at risk.
And why? Why are Republicans putting these people at such risk and hurting things that benefit them--not waste; things that actually go to people and help them? They are doing it to make life easier for the billionaires club. They are doing it to cut taxes for the ultrawealthy.
Last week, here in the Senate, during vote-arama, I pushed an amendment that said we should have no tax breaks for billionaires. I pushed an amendment calling for no billionaire tax breaks if even one dollar of Medicaid spending was cut. What is more important: helping people get healthcare, helping the elderly stay in nursing homes, helping our veterans--especially those who may be out of work--get the healthcare they need? What is more important--that or a tax break for someone who is very wealthy already?
Well, on both amendments--the one that said no tax breaks for billionaires and the one that said no tax breaks for billionaires if even one dollar of Medicaid spending was cut--both times, Republicans overwhelmingly said no.
Let us hope--let us hope--it may be a distant hope, but let us hope that House Republicans show more courage, more compassion, and more common sense to reject these horrible, harmful, radical cuts.
This is not what the American people signed up for in this election. Billionaire tax cuts is a clear example of things Americans don't like. Just look at all the backlash Republicans are seeing in their townhalls. And Republicans know this. Republicans know that cutting taxes for wealthy billionaires is something most Americans don't like at all. They didn't campaign on it. Oh, no. I didn't hear any of our Republican colleagues who were running go home and say ``I want to cut taxes for the billionaires,'' although that is the first thing they are doing when they get here. Yet Republicans seem to be full steam ahead all the same.
This, of course, is part of the pattern I am talking about. Over the last month, Donald Trump and Republicans have spent their energy focused on things Americans don't like while refusing to focus on things Americans actually do care about--like inflation, rising prices.
We already see that Americans are upset with the Trump administration because prices continue to rise, as they have over the last many years. Donald Trump promised to bring down costs on day one. He said that the first day he is elected, he is going to start bringing costs down, but instead, inflation has gone up, grocery prices are up. Chicken, pork, steak--all more expensive. Eggs are up 15 percent from last month. All the while, Republicans are focused on things that Americans either don't like or don't care about.
Americans don't like, for instance, pardoning violent insurrectionists. It was one of the least popular things we have seen; a recent poll in the Washington Post is clear. But that was the first major decision Donald Trump made as President, the first major decision.
Most Americans don't care whether you call it the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America or something else. Most Americans don't care about building hotels in Gaza or annexing Canada. Yet these are the things that Donald Trump is focused on to distract people from the fact that he doesn't actually have real solutions to the things Americans really worry about.
Of course, there are things that Republicans are focused on that make things actively worse. Most Americans don't think it is a great idea to get into a trade war with our closest allies. That is going to make trips to the grocery store even more expensive than they are now.
Of course, most Americans do care about making government more efficient. While everyone certainly supports cutting waste, Americans don't like the harmful chaos that Elon Musk and DOGE have unleashed. They don't want to see a rich billionaire treat Federal workers with immense disrespect. And make no mistake, Americans did not sign up for DOGE to endanger their Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid benefits. That is not government efficiency; that hurts the American people.
What DOGE is doing is chaos, and Americans know that the chaos being unleashed by DOGE is causing a lot of harm to the country. Americans don't want to see their air traffic safety personnel fired in droves, no questions asked. That is not government efficiency; that is chaos and danger at the airports and in airplanes, at security checkpoints.
Our veterans don't want to see the VA starved of resources. Someone came over to me the other day and said: My brother is in a VA hospital. He has a rare disease. Seven of the people were let go. Who is going to take care of him?
They don't want to hear about cuts to the Veterans Crisis Line, where veterans who may have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan with PTSD or other problems have a place to go and a place to call. That is not government efficiency, cutting the Veterans Crisis Line; that is just more chaos, more harm, more hurt. Can you imagine the callousness of firing personnel who operate the veterans suicide crisis line, as was reported by the staff at the VA? It is a cruel and vindictive way to treat America's heroes.
Of course, our 9/11 families did not sign up for DOGE trying to cut the 9/11 survivor health program--the people who rushed to the Towers, the brave heroes, police, fire, first responders, and others who rushed to the Towers in the days after that horrible day of 9/11 and got illnesses in their lungs and gastrointestinal tracts and now are getting some help. The 9/11 families didn't sign up to cut that, but that is precisely what DOGE tried to do. We pushed back, and I am glad that President Trump and DOGE reversed themselves on that issue. They should be reversing themselves on many other issues also that hurt people so badly.
But the takeaway is they are very clear: What DOGE is doing is not making government more efficient; it is creating more chaos. And if there is one thing Americans don't want in these turbulent times, it is more chaos.
Rather than actually cut waste in government in a smart way, a careful way, an efficient way; rather than putting the needs of working people first, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the Republican Party have plunged basic government services into chaos and taken a meat ax at programs that help workers, middle-class families, and low-income Americans, all for the sake of cutting taxes for billionaires and mega corporations.
Republicans are focused on the wrong things. They are helping the wrong people, and they are ignoring the vast majority of Americans they promised to serve.
Under Donald Trump's Republican Party, billionaires win, American families lose.
So let me say it once again. Over the last month, it has become clear how Donald Trump and Republicans govern. Donald Trump and Republicans have focused on things Americans don't care about or don't like while refusing to focus on things Americans actually do care about.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I have just come to the floor, having listened to the minority leader, the
As he was saying this, I recalled a poll, a Harvard-Harris poll, conducted just this past week. Trump's policies--the key thing why he won election as President of the United States--huge popularity of what the President is doing today: promises that he made prior to the election, promises kept now that he is in the White House.
Let's take a look at No. 1--deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes. Mr. President, 81 percent of the American people--and that includes a lot of Democrats--say that is a very popular position taken by President Trump and now being enforced by President Trump.
Eliminating fraud and waste in government expenditures--76 percent of Americans agree. What have we seen happen with DOGE? What we have seen is actually pointing out fraud and waste in government. The American people are supportive.
Then, of course, closing the border. Again, 76 percent of Americans-- Republicans, Democrats, Independents--all across the board support what President Trump is doing.
President Trump ran for office against a party that was a party of high prices and open borders, and it is because of those things that President Trump won and Republicans won the House and the Senate.
So now the minority leader comes to the floor and says that what President Trump is doing is not popular. Well, they sure are in terms of wasteful Washington spending and closing the border, which were the two reasons that President Trump and Republicans won the elections in November.
Let's talk about the things the American people care about. Republicans, President Trump--all of us promised to get America back on track. That is what we said we would do. That is what we are doing right now. We committed to cutting Washington's wasteful spending. We committed to reducing the size of a bloated government. This is going to make life more affordable for all Americans.
President Trump and Republicans are now doing exactly what we promised we would do. We are rooting out waste, we are rooting out fraud, and we are rooting out abuse by a bureaucracy, all across a bureaucracy. We are ripping it out root and stem.
The Department of Government Efficiency has already uncovered more than $55 billion in savings. Who benefits from the savings? The American taxpayers.
U.S. taxpayers were spending $2 million--take a look at this list--$2 million to develop ``sustainable recycling models'' in the Balkans. Well, we have canceled that.
U.S. taxpayers were spending $19 million on ``biodiversity conversation'' in Nepal. Well, that has been canceled.
U.S. taxpayers were spending $47 million to improve ``learning outcomes in Asia.'' We canceled that.
U.S. taxpayers were spending $1.5 million on ``voter confidence'' in Liberia, Africa. Well, we have canceled that.
U.S. taxpayers were spending $21 million for voter turnout in India. Canceled.
More savings are on the way.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who we recently confirmed to that post, uncovered $20 billion--with a ``b''-- $20 billion in taxpayer money that the Biden EPA shoveled out the door on their last days before leaving office.
This was a slush fund, and it was funneled to eight leftwing climate groups. Now, all of this was in the service of the left's extreme, radical climate agenda--an agenda that makes energy more expensive and life less affordable for American families.
Who received these taxpayer-funded, undeserved gifts? Does anybody remember Georgia Democrat Governor candidate Stacey Abrams? Well, she was one of them. Her leftwing organization got a $2 billion kickback from the Biden administration. I am so glad that Ambassador Zeldin caught this scam and is working to claw back the money for the taxpayers of this Nation.
I heard the minority leader admit just this morning--he said: Of course there is some wasteful spending. He didn't mention any of those things. He didn't actually point out what it is. But I don't hear him say what wasteful spending he wants to cut. In fact, I haven't heard any Democrats say what wasteful spending, if any, should be cut. What about that $2 billion that was sent to Stacey Abrams?
Democrats added almost $5 trillion to our debt in 4 years. Joe Biden and Democrats' reckless spending caused painfully high prices.
Cutting wasteful Washington spending is long overdue. President Trump and Republicans are uncovering massive evidence of wasteful Washington spending, and we are stopping it.
Democrats seem more upset that the waste they support is now being exposed than about the massive waste itself. Instead of defending the indefensible and the obscene level of spending, what are they doing? What do the Democrats do? They are demanding that the courts intervene. Hey, let's get the courts involved. This is the next chapter of destructive Democrat behavior.
Democrats have now filed over 80 lawsuits in 1 month against the Trump administration. Now, often, they go judge shopping. What are they looking for? They are looking for partisan, activist judges.
So how does that work? Well, last month--and it is unbelievable--last month, the State of New Jersey wanted to sue the administration, so they filed suit not in New Jersey but in Massachusetts. They sued in a district where 11 of the 13 district judges were appointed by Democrat Presidents. They didn't think they could accomplish what they wanted to accomplish in their own home State, so they go to Massachusetts, one of the most liberal States in the country. That is not a coincidence. It is intentional. It is premeditated. What is the aim of it? It is to obstruct President Trump's popular cost-cutting efforts.
Let me tell you how far the Democrats are taking this. Earlier this month, a Federal judge in New York issued a knee-jerk order that forbids political appointees from accessing records within the Treasury Department. The judge actually went so far as to block the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, from accessing important data within the Agency that he runs, that he has been confirmed to serve as the Secretary of the Treasury by this very body, by the U.S. Senate, and you got a judge saying he doesn't have access to the Treasury records.
So a Federal judge blocks a Senate-confirmed Secretary of Treasury from getting the information he needs to run the U.S. Department of the Treasury. That is where the Democrats are headed.
District courts should not get to micromanage the executive branch. Yet that is what Democrats want to do with the courts, and that is why they have filed 80 lawsuits so far. It is not based on the law. It is not based on policy disagreements. This is based solely on political disagreements.
This is the real crisis we are facing in America. It is what I hear about in Wyoming. I heard about it this past weekend. It is unelected, unaccountable, heavyhanded Federal bureaucrats who have taken America off track. We are getting America back on track.
The American people are being strangled by Washington's wasteful spending, by burdensome redtape. According to a poll last month from the Associate Press, almost two in three Americans say government inefficiency is a major problem.
The bureaucracy must be accountable to the American people, and they are there to serve the American people. Americans voted in November for more accountability. They voted to drain the swamp. This is the swamp I am talking about, and that is exactly what President Trump is doing.
Working with President Trump, Senate Republicans are going to deliver on our mandate, and it is going to involve massive change in Washington because it is time, Mr. President, to get America back on track.
Mr. President, did you see over the weekend Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, dancing on a stage with a chain saw? Did you see that? Most Americans did. That was his approach to DOGE government efficiency--take a chain saw to it, put an
Yes, we have gone to court. Many of the Agencies in the government-- the employees and their representatives--have gone to court to question this ham-handed approach to making this government work, and they have been successful in the overwhelming percentage to receive temporary restraining orders and the like because on its face, serious questions are raised as to the authority of this President.
We have time-honored traditions when it comes to things like impoundment of Federal funds. The President cannot make that decision unilaterally. The power of the purse happens to be with the article I agency of the government, the legislature, not with the article II agency, the executive. As a consequence, when the President decides to do this unilaterally, he is being challenged in court, and he should be challenged in court.
This is not just a political issue, as one Senator just described; it is more importantly a constitutional issue and a legal issue, and it is going to be resolved ultimately by the court. Perhaps the President will win some of his cases and lose others. But this is a legitimate exercise of the authority in the Constitution.
I might add that this notion that we are going to start lopping off air traffic controllers and people who are responsible for aviation safety--I would just say to those who are for that and believe that is draining the swamp: Pay attention to what is happening across America. These terrible aviation disasters like the one that happened here in Washington, DC, should be taken seriously by us every day, and putting people in charge of these Departments who don't have adequate staff to monitor the flights of our Nation is active irresponsibility, as far as I am concerned.
The same thing is true with avian flu. Yes, the price of eggs is terrible. One of the reasons is avian flu is killing off the flocks of laying hens. As a consequence, we have fewer eggs and higher prices.
It is a very real concern because the avian flu is going to jump from these birds and fowl into the human chain, and we will face another pandemic. Do we want that? For God's sake, no. But the notion that we are going to lop off employees that are responsible for public health one after the other and somehow make this a safer nation is irresponsible on its face. Should it be challenged in court? Of course it should be, and I stand by that.
I just want to say to the Senator and others who make these comments: Think about what you are inviting here, to give the President the authority this Congress has, the authority under the Constitution--to just give it away. Are we going to give away our responsibility under the Constitution because of the popularity of this President with some Members? I pray that we won't.
(The remarks of Mr. Durbin pertaining to the introduction of S. 710 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) would have voted ``yea.''
I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Ms. Alsobrooks), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 66, nays 28, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
(Mr. CURTIS assumed the Chair.)
The VICE PRESIDENT. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kennedy be recognized for up to 15 minutes and, upon the use or yielding back of time, then make a motion to proceed to Calendar No. 15, S.J. Res. 11.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I rise today for two reasons. No. 1, I am losing one of my best colleagues--she is sitting right here next to me--Ms. Jess Andrews. Jess has run my communications shop for--I don't know how many years--5 years.
I try to hire really good people, and, certainly, Jess is one of them. She is a very moral person. She is whip-smart. But when you hire good people, you know you are going to lose them because good people, capable people, like Jess, are ambitious people, and they want to move on to new positions.
Jess is becoming deputy chief of staff to our new Senator from Ohio. I wish her well, and I just wanted to thank her publicly.
Jess Andrews is the real deal, and she has just done an extraordinary job for the people in Louisiana and for the American people, and I am so, so grateful.
I congratulate our new Senator from Ohio. He is getting a good one.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Relating to "Protection of Marine...
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the provisions of 5 USC 802, there will now be up to 10 hours of debate equally divided.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Relating to "Protection of Marine...
Madam President, it has been a little over a month since President Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. One of his key promises on the campaign trail--and, really, throughout his service in the White House--has been to confront the threat of the Chinese Communist Party and to hold China accountable for failing to play by the rules. The American people voted resoundingly for that agenda this past November, delivering both the electoral vote and the popular vote to President Trump, as well as Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. Now, the task at hand is to actually begin to implement those promises to hold China to account.
Xi Jinping has made clear his plans to ``reincorporate'' Taiwan in 2027, just 2 years away. We don't know exactly what that entails, but the threat is ominous.
Time is running short to make any potential conflict with China undesirable from their standpoint--in other words, to reestablish deterrence. But the good news is, we have a number of tools available to us and a track record of success on confronting the threat of the CCP during the Trump administration.
Back in 2018, I was proud to work with President Trump on modernizing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, otherwise known as CFIUS. This interagency committee reviews foreign direct investment into the United States for potential national security concerns.
The bill we ultimately passed and that was signed into law by President Trump was called FIRRMA, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act. In that law, we updated CFIUS to expand its scope and process to ensure that we are more comprehensively reviewing any investments that might allow influence by foreign entities for nefarious purposes in the United States.
This bipartisan legislation was signed into law by President Trump as part of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. FIRRMA was a critical step toward derisking from China.
While this was a big win for Republicans and for President Trump, the truth is we still have more work to do. The top of our to-do list now is to address outbound investment flowing into China by American investors.
At this very moment, American investors--some of these are businesses; some of these are individuals. The investments they are making are fueling China's military buildup and modernization by funneling capital into potentially dual-use technology and military capabilities that could eventually be used against the United States and our allies.
According to the U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission's 2024 Report to Congress, U.S. investments in China's semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI alone totaled about $2 billion in 2023.
In 2020, more than 90 percent of these investments were concentrated in the semiconductor industry. And from 2015 to 2021, U.S. investors made up 37 percent of China's global funding for artificial intelligence.
Congress is acutely aware of the threat posed by China's rapid capture of the autonomous vehicle market, advanced cellular technologies, and semiconductor manufacturing. We have acted on these issues before, and it is time to do so again.
I was proud to lead the CHIPS for America Act to help the United States reestablish manufacturing for advanced semiconductors here in America, where the percentage of advanced semiconductors that fuel everything from our cell phones to the avionics in an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter--only 12 percent of those were made here in the United States. The rest of them were made in Asia, principally in Taiwan and South Korea. But we are in the process of turning that around.
But there is another side to this coin. How can we expect to outcompete or even catch up to Chinese companies if, unbeknownst to us, American dollars are continuing to fuel their rise, economically and militarily?
We are simply not being serious about confronting our greatest strategic adversary if we continue to be blind to the investment of billions of dollars in the very technologies that could be potentially used to kill American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.
Now, we have an opportunity on a bipartisan basis to finish the job we began with CFIUS reform just a few short years ago. We can do this by passing legislation to address outbound investment into China. To start with, we need greater transparency. We need some sort of accountability so we know exactly what the facts are.
It is no secret to any of my colleagues that I have been working on this issue for some time now. During the previous Congress, my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act with provisions to increase transparency around outbound investment passed by a vote of 91 to 6, demonstrating the high level of consensus in this Chamber on this issue. But, unfortunately, this amendment was dropped from the National Defense Authorization Act when it went to conference, and it didn't make it into the final version that was sent to the President's desk and ultimately signed into law.
Then, last year, we made progress along a bipartisan path and in a bicameral manner, with Speaker Johnson and Congressman Michael McCaul, who was then the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, working on the House's legislative provisions around outbound investment. But, unfortunately, that didn't make it across the finish line before the end of the year.
But there are reasons for optimism that this year will be the time we get these provisions over the finish line. We have worked hard to work with the House's version and to work with the Senate version that passed overwhelmingly, previously, to make sure we marry those up and we establish a bill that enjoys bipartisan, bicameral support.
I have been working with everyone, from the Speaker of the House to the chairman of the Select Committee on the CCP, John Moolenaar, to Congressman McCaul, as well as Tim Scott, chairman of the Banking Committee here in the Senate. We have all made input into a piece of legislation that will finally accomplish what we have been working on for these last few years.
We know time is of the essence, and we are working hand in glove with the Trump administration to ensure this legislation actually accomplishes the goals that we set out for it.
I can't emphasize what a great opportunity this is and what a great win it will be for all parties involved. Addressing U.S. outbound investment in China will be a great opportunity for all of my colleagues here in the House and the Senate to deliver a big win for our country and for our national security.
It will be a home run for all Americans, who can feel safe that American companies and investors are not helping China not only rebuild its economy but also its military as well. And, of course, China continues to be our greatest strategic adversary on the planet.
The only party that stands to lose from this legislation will be the Chinese Communist Party, and it is high time that they be held accountable.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Madam President, I rise today in opposition to S.J. Res. 11, which would repeal a policy that helps protect archeological sites in the ocean when oil and gas development is planned in the area.
I want to be clear that this policy does not prevent any oil and gas development. It simply requires that companies take a good look at the ocean floor with sonar where they are planning to drill a well and see what historic and prehistoric resources are there.
The Outer Continental Shelf, where these wells are typically drilled, is home to one-of-a-kind cultural resources, from incredible historic shipwrecks to old maritime infrastructure, even evidence of human settlements on land that used to be on dry ground but is now on the sea floor.
This policy is a small change, and it simply brings offshore oil and gas up to the exact same standard that we already apply to offshore wind projects. It is entirely reasonable to require energy developers to identify archeological sites and other cultural resources on the ocean floor, just as they do when they produce energy on land.
In fact, in my home State of New Mexico, energy companies routinely work with Tribal representatives, State agencies, and other experts to identify cultural resources in an area proposed for development and to make a plan to limit the impact of development on those resources. It is reasonable for us to expect the same of offshore energy developers.
This policy was supported by two federally recognized Tribes, the Chickahominy and the Rappahannock. Passage of this resolution means not only that this would be repealed but that any similar policy could never be put back in place.
Our cultural resources are too valuable to let them go unprotected just because they are on the ocean floor, and I would urge my colleagues to oppose the resolution.
Mr. President, over the years, Federal funding for medical and scientific research has helped split the atom, defeat polio, create the internet, map the human genome, and so much more. No nation has ever made such a significant investment in science and medicine--none. And no nation's researchers have done more to approve the quality of life, not only here but around the world.
But we are in a pivotal moment in history. All the progress we have made--all the progress we hope to make--is in danger because of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That is right. These two men promised to bring down the price of eggs and gasoline and make housing more affordable. Well, none of that has happened. Instead, they are carrying out an unprecedented and devastating campaign to cut research on cancer, ALS, Alzheimer's, dementia, and infectious diseases.
Instead of making life better for Americans, they want to slash research funding for the National Institutes of Health. If you have never heard of this Agency, I hope you will Google it or take a look and research to figure out who they are and what they do. It is the premier medical research agency in the world.
If you or someone you love receives a dreaded diagnosis, you turn to the doctor and ask: Is there a cure? A surgery? A medicine? I know I have been there and asked those very questions.
There is a difference between the doctor saying, ``I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do'' and ``I have got some good news; there has been some research at NIH we should look into.''
You know all the miracle drugs you see on TV? You can't get away from them, can you? And 99 percent of those drugs approved in the last 10 years were the product, in some way, of NIH research. NIH funding is why people are beating cancer, why babies are being spared from preventable diseases, why HIV is no longer a death sentence, why progress is being made on dementia and other neurological diseases.
Since the start of this administration, we have seen the White House unleash a lawless chaotic attack on everything from funding for farmers to biomedical research. Planes are crashing, and they are cutting aviation safety. Avian flu is on the rise and threatening to make that leap to humans, and we are cutting public health experts. Elon Musk dances across the stage with a chain saw; people laugh and cheer. First, let me tell you this: There is nothing to cheer about when it comes to medical research.
It was this bizarre memo from Office of Management and Budget that illegally froze Federal grant funding. They even prohibited the recipients of Federal grants and medical research from physically meeting in the same place. Oh, you are going to hear arguments: We have got to cut back on the waste and fraud and abuse. I am all for that. But having researchers unable to even sit down and talk about the next breakthrough, how can that possibly be good for our country?
These cuts that were announced by this administration were quickly halted by a Federal judge in a Federal court. There was comment on the floor earlier today that too many people are going to courts. Thank God they went to courts to keep this policy from being implemented by this administration.
But it seems, even though the court made a ruling, this administration is still holding up funding in violation of the court's order. As a result, NIH is delayed awarding approximately $1 billion in grant funding, delaying research at institutions nationwide. Does the delay hurt? Not unless you are the one sitting in that waiting room at a doctor praying to God there is a breakthrough to save your child.
Listen to what is at stake for one of my constituents, Dr. Timothy Koh, professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois in Chicago. For 15 years, Dr. Koh has been researching why people with diabetes develop wounds that do not heal, as well as researching treatments to address these wounds.
While having steady Federal funding for his research through the years, Dr. Koh was recently informed in the last few weeks that his NIH grant application is on hold because of the Trump-Musk Federal funding freeze. His current grant is scheduled to end on Friday of this week. And if his grant is not renewed, he will have to lay off his lab staff and will see major setbacks in the research he has been involved in. Dr. Koh said:
Is diabetes research important? If it is someone in your family, it is very important.
Make no mistake, under the Constitution, Congress is supposed to have the power of the purse--that is what it reads. But over the decades, bipartisan Members of Congress have worked in concert on a bipartisan basis to do something about NIH funding. It was a little over 10 years ago--Francis Collins, I consider to be an American hero and a saint. He headed up the NIH. And I went out to see him, and I said: I can't double your appropriation. I would do it if I could. What can I do to help you?
He said: Give the NIH Agency 5 percent real growth every year, and I will tell you this: Two things will happen. We will line up the scoreboard with breakthroughs and cures for diseases in America; and, secondly, my researchers will take heart because one of the things that destroys their interest in pursuing a career is the uncertainty of Federal funding.
Well, we went from $30 billion to $48 billion in 10 years because we had a bipartisan team to do it. Patty Murray joined me on the Democratic side. She has always been a champion of medical research; and on the Republican side, Senator Blunt of Missouri was the leader. He was the best. When he chaired a subcommittee on Appropriations that funded this Agency, he was committed to the 5 percent. And then Lamar Alexander of Tennessee--both of those gentlemen have retired. The four of us put together an effort to raise the NIH funding from $30 billion 10 years ago to $48 billion--a dramatic, dramatic increase.
We did it because we all agreed this is not a partisan issue. It should never be. We knew that NIH funding leads to new cures and treatments for patients in need. It supports well-paying jobs nationwide. And it cements our global leadership.
Illinois universities and hospitals receive approximately $1.2 billion in NIH funding a year, which supports 14,000 jobs in our State and 3.5 billion in economic activity. But I will tell you, Mr. President, virtually every State in the Nation can tell that story in one form or another.
Each year, the State of Wyoming receives approximately $12 million in NIH funding. Now, Wyoming is a small State, but they clearly have good research facilities that merit NIH grants. This money supports 265 jobs in Wyoming and $49 million dollars in economic activity. The top NIH funded institution in Wyoming is the University of Wyoming.
With this NIH funding, researchers at the University of Wyoming have recently conducted the following projects. See if any of these sound close to home or close to your family:
No. 1, why Alzheimer's disease and dementia can worsen at specific hours of the day.
No. 2, a project in Wyoming, links between menopause and cardiovascular disease in women.
And developing a new noninvasive tool to help treat people suffering from epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety, and autism.
They all sound like worthy projects to me.
Unfortunately, President Trump and Elon Musk aren't finished there. They tried indiscriminately to slash how NIH pays for indirect costs. Without funding, universities wouldn't be able to afford the technology that allows them to conduct research. Cuts to indirect costs are, simply, cuts to research, period.
The other day, we had a debate on the floor on this NIH. One of the Republican Senators talked about the outrageous outlying indirect cost in this country. Let's look at them. Let's review them.
But to stop all meetings of all medical researchers while we do this, to stop the funding for all the grantees, to stop all of the medical research because there might be 1 or 2 or 10
Trump and Musk illegally froze Federal medical research funding. They tried to illegally cut funding for medical research, and now they are firing the medical researchers themselves.
Reports indicate that 1,200 NIH employees have been fired so far, from experienced vaccine researchers to the next generation of scientists to the Acting Director of the NIH's Alzheimer's and dementia program.
Further, Trump and Musk have reportedly ended a popular trainee program that brought 1,600 young scientists just out of college to the NIH world-renowned campus in Maryland to get them started working in labs and eventually running labs. They are our future when it comes to medical research, and the Trump and Musk chain saw of chaos of budget cuts has made them victims.
How does this make us a greater nation? How does this make us a healthier nation? A better nation? It doesn't.
NIH research leads to new cures and treatments that extend, improve, and save lives, which is why I am introducing this resolution today to simply say to Senators of both sides of the aisle: Let's pledge our support to make NIH an exception. Let us not let wanton cuts stop something very valuable.
The resolution is straightforward. It says: The work of NIH should not be subject to interruption, delay, or funding disruption in violation of the law--in violation of the law. And it reaffirms that the workforce at NIH is essential to sustaining medical progress.
Can we really debate that point? Do we think the best medical research Agency in the world is being staffed by people who aren't the best? This is not controversial. It shouldn't be. Americans get sick on a bipartisan basis; shouldn't we support medical research on a bipartisan basis?
For as long as I can stand and for as long as I can speak, I will fight to protect NIH and medical research. I hope my Republican colleagues wake up and join me before it is too late.
So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 93, submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object. The American people voted to get spending under control.
Two in three Americans say that a major problem that we face today in this country is government inefficiency. And I agree. Three in four Americans support eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending; and there is plenty of it.
We need to review how much money we spend. We need to see where it is going. We need to see what is effective and what is not. This is common sense. Families have to do it. States do it. Washington ought to do the same thing.
Every family audits their own budgets, their own spending. Every CEO audits their business operations.
President Trump and Republicans are doing exactly the same thing, and it is something that the Federal Government has not done for a long time.
Let me be clear. I am a doctor; I support so much of the good work being done by the National Institutes of Health and through the universities around the country. It is essential that America continues to lead the world in medical innovation.
I am a strong supporter of continuing smart investment in our National Institutes of Health. Americans deserve better care. Americans deserve better prevention and, of course, better transparency.
So the total budget for the NIH is almost $48 billion. Hard-working taxpayers deserve smart scrutiny and serious transparency over that kind of money.
There is indisputable evidence that there is wasteful overspending of administrative costs associated with medical research, and this is why I am here saying this must stop. In 2024, Harvard University spent $135 million of government grant money on overhead costs. Clearly, we can do better. They used hard-working taxpayer dollars to pay for heating bills, electricity bills, for maintaining buildings. They used it to cover payroll for people not involved in research. This is money that should have been spent on advancing researching for cures.
Harvard's overhead costs related to the National Institutes of Health research--69 percent of the money goes for overhead. That is taxpayer money, Mr. President. That is one university, one year. Clearly, we can do better--if you look at that all across the country.
Imagine all the new cures we could find if we just spent the money efficiently. That is what is at stake today, and that is why I am here on the floor of the Senate.
Democrats don't want to have a serious debate about wasteful Washington spending. Instead they are wasting the Senate's time on predictable distractions like this one. And, therefore, Mr. President, I object.
Mr. President, if standing in this Senate and asking Republicans and Democrats to come together to preserve and build medical research is a waste of time, what in the world are we doing here?
If you were asked to take the Federal budget and put your priorities in there, maybe No. 1 would be national defense. Well, I might make that No. 1 as well; but I can tell you, No. 2 is medical research.
Because what happens when you reach a point where you cut off medical research? These researchers leave the laboratories and say: Honey, I don't know if I will have a job here next year. Let's start looking someplace else.
That is not an unusual thing to occur. So the next generation of researchers are being discouraged by the uncertainty of funding, and this notion that we have to get spending under control--how much does it cost to find a cure? What does it cost to have no cure? Let's get down to the bottom line here. We are talking about how long people stay in the hospital or whether they are alive at the end of the experience or not.
Some of these medical treatments they have to turn to are extremely expensive, unless you can find a cure at the front end of it. And you don't find it by saying, Well, maybe next year we will spend some money on medical research. That isn't the way it works. You want to have a good doctor you can trust from year to year, not a new one every year with a question mark.
The same thing is true with researchers. If you have the best researchers, why in the world would you discourage them from their continued work?
I listened to this comment about $48 billion. It is a lot of money, for sure. That is taxpayers' money, and I take it very seriously. But how much do you think it would cost if we didn't find these cures, didn't find these drugs? What would it cost in human terms and the experience of families who would give up hope because there is no place to turn? That is the reality.
We all have friends--and I had one today--I won't get into the details--who has just learned that he has pancreatic cancer. We don't have a cure yet. If we could find one, do you know how that would change the lives of so many people and their families? Is that worth putting our research into, our tax dollars into, or is it, as the Senator who objected to my resolution said, just wasting time here on the floor?
Well, I am going to come back and waste time over and over again. I am not giving up on this. I am not giving up on families who are waiting for cures and research. I am not giving up on the researchers who dedicate their lives to finding them.
Of course, if we have some overspending, whether it is at Harvard or Illinois or even the University of Wyoming, let's clean it up. But is it possible to clean that up without jeopardizing the basic mission of the National Institutes of Health? I certainly hope so. To think that we would have to close down the whole Agency because a handful of schools are overcharging the Federal Government--and there is no
This is an issue that is important to every single American whether they know it or not. We can get spending under control and do it thoughtfully but not at the expense of the best researchers in the world and the expense of cures which would give families hope once and for all.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The verdict is in: It has been a colossal failure. It has done immense damage to many of our institutions and inflicted immense pain on innocent people. Also, it is not going to be successful in its stated goal of reducing spending and wasteful spending.
But before I go on, let me just say what all of us know. Every single person in this U.S. Senate is all in when it comes to attacking waste, fraud, and abuse. Every single one of us knows that we should kick the tires on every program we have in the Federal Government and look to see how we can make it be more efficient. And there may even be some programs where we say: You know what, its purpose has been served; it is time to move on.
So those of us who are being critical of DOGE are just looking at what DOGE is doing but not at all quarrelling with the notion that every one of us, Republican and Democrat and Independent, has a responsibility to be the best stewards of taxpayer money that we can be.
But here is my problem with DOGE: They are not looking in the right places. There is so much rip-off that is going on. Let's just talk about a couple of examples in our healthcare system. United Healthcare is rigging the system on Medicare Advantage Programs. Our seniors--we want them to have the healthcare they need. But they have set up these billing systems where they have paid nurses and forced doctors essentially to overanalyze and overprescribe and overstate what medical conditions were. This was not to help the senior on a Medicare Advantage Program; this was to pad their bottom line and make billions of dollars.
Of course, I am referring to the series of articles that was in the Wall Street Journal that documented the rip-offs and what I think were corrupt practices by United Healthcare.
Where is DOGE? All that money is just wasted. It has gone into the pockets of executives at United Healthcare. It has gone into shareholder payouts and dividends, but it hasn't gone into improving healthcare for seniors.
Another one: the pharmacy benefit managers. They are ripping us off so badly. We had a bipartisan bill with enormous Republican support and Democratic support to curb the rip-offs in the PBM industry. That was in our final budget deal last year. It got derailed. Why? Elon Musk. He was against it, and he gave the word that this has got to go down. The thing blew up, and we don't have the PBM reform that both sides of the aisle knew was necessary--something that was going to save hundreds of billions of dollars for American taxpayers and allow us to reinvest in healthcare and make things better.
So my first question with DOGE is, Why don't you look where the money is, where the rip-offs are, instead of just sending out emails overnight telling people they are fired whose performance has been absolutely exemplary?
So that is the core question I have about DOGE. Why are you leaving these practices that we know are really corrupt and a rip-off untouched, unexamined, and allowing them to continue when it is hammering taxpayers and citizens?
We have work to do on saving money, and we have places where it is absolutely essential that we act. DOGE is blind to all of those, all of those situations, and that is disgraceful, especially when you have Elon Musk as the person who sabotaged our effort for PBM reform.
The second thing is, there is a basic question if you are going to go about examining a program. You can ask hard questions. You can look under the hood. How is it working? How is it not working? Where do we have too many personnel? Where can we actually improve the practices and the performance by some reforms?
DOGE is not doing that. It literally is not doing that. It has not even taken a day, an hour, to come up with a plan on how to examine the various programs they are engaging with. What they are doing is firing people. People are waking up in the morning, and they are getting an email that says: Due to your poor performance, you are gone.
Now, this is a situation that obviously is incredibly cruel. You are working at the Department of Agriculture, you are working at the NIH, you are working on a USAID program, and life is going on, and suddenly you get this email out of the blue that clearly is a mass email but has a very specific impact on you, your life, your livelihood, and your hopes and dreams. That is just a savage, savage way to treat people who have been working in our various governmental Agencies, and it has enormous impact on our communities.
By the way, DOGE is picking on veterans. Literally thousands of veterans have been fired. The VA has announced the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees. That includes researchers working on cancer treatments, opioid addictions, prosthetics, and burn pit exposure.
So the issue here was not ``How do we help them do that job better? Where are there ways we can economize?'' The procedure is ``You are gone; that is it.''
President Trump and Elon Musk fired around 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration. These are folks who safeguard nuclear weapons. Now, it was so embarrassing that even Musk had to acknowledge it was a mistake, and those people are now back on their job.
But what it does I think very clearly is show how there is nothing about a plan to execute a thoughtful way to save taxpayer money. It is just shoot first and aim later. And 4,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
By the way, this is incredibly important: These are all things that affect red States and blue States. This has no political orientation on one side or the other because the impacts of these are going to be felt by the farmers in Indiana just as they are going to be felt by the farmers in Vermont.
Another example that is really pretty cruel, and I just don't understand this: We have farmers across the country that I have spoken to--farmers in Vermont--who entered into contracts with the Federal Government under the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. What the deal was is the farmer agreed, say, to install solar panels or create a buffer zone between cattle grazing in a streambed or change the tillage practices to try to improve the soil.
I get it that President Trump and Mr. Musk are against the Inflation Reduction Act, and they have a right to do everything they possibly can to try to reverse that policy. So this is not about their right to use Executive authority. But here is what I don't understand: How do you stiff farmers who went out and borrowed money because they had a contract, they agreed to do certain things around their farm, and then they get an email saying: Just kidding. We, the Federal Government, are not going to honor our contract.
I am thinking of one farm in my own town of Norwich, VT, where folks did borrow the money and they did the work, and it was in anticipation of the Federal Government keeping its part of the bargain and coming through with the cash that it had agreed to, and they are told: No, we are not doing it anymore.
I know that the Presiding Officer is like me when it comes to keeping your word. You give your word; you keep your word. The folks you represent, the folks I represent, that is what they do, that is what they expect. But we have DOGE saying: Well, that doesn't apply to us because we want to ``save money.'' That is just flat out disgraceful and unacceptable.
FEMA. FEMA is absolutely essential to help folks respond to a catastrophic event. We need reform in FEMA, and I
We are hearing that DOGE and the President want to just abolish FEMA. We have to be there for one another when it is our community that is affected by a catastrophic event where our citizens, the folks we represent, to whom we have a real duty--it is no fault of their own-- they are on the receiving end of Mother Nature. It has always been the tradition in the Senate that we help one another on that. That is not a partisan deal. DOGE is hammering us on that.
The people who get hurt--it is the everyday people whom we represent that are working hard, who are struggling each month to pay their bills. They are anxious about the safety of their kids, they are anxious about inflation, they are anxious about meeting the challenges of daily life, and they want to make a contribution to strengthening their community as well as their family, and they are getting hammered.
I mentioned, too, that among them are the 6,000 veterans who have been fired by DOGE across the Federal workforce. I mean, that just astonishes me. How do we say to a veteran who showed up to serve us and protect our country and to whom we claim we have great respect and allegiance--how do we send them an email that says ``You are fired,'' with no explanation, no sitdown, no face-to-face, just contempt for the value of what they contribute and how hard they are working? I do not understand that. I just don't.
Even in a tough business environment where some of our employers have to make tough decisions because they just know their business can't handle the workforce they have and they may have to make, against their desires, some reductions in force, our employers will sit down with folks face to face: Here is what we can do. Let's work out a plan. We know you need healthcare.
DOGE just dispenses with that when it has no plan. So the cruelty-- the cruelty of this is so abhorrent to me.
We as a society, really, despite whatever our differences are, have to have some mutual respect, and is it so essential to people that they have meaningful work. If we are going to make adjustments, we have to have a plan to include them, where DOGE says: We don't have to do that.
This isn't just about Elon Musk being a multibillionaire. No matter what happens, it is not really going to affect him. It is about Elon Musk treating people with what I think is the utmost cruelty. You are gone--you are gone--such disrespect for people who work hard at the VA, work hard in the NIH, work hard in the Department of Agriculture, work hard in the Department of the Treasury. So that element of this, we should all be shocked at.
You know, I can give a few examples of people in Vermont, but I know I am like every single Member of the U.S. Senate: We can give examples of people in the States we represent.
Our Small Business Administration Office has been a real help to Vermonters--very effective. One employee there got a performance review that--this is shortly after the performance review:
That was the performance review. The next day, February 7, she was fired because the email said:
So arbitrary, so unfair, so Elon Musk-like. We have a scientist at the Department of Agriculture, Caitlin Morgan. She studies sustainable agriculture and food systems at the ag services Food Systems Research Center. She was fired despite glowing performance reviews.
So what we have with DOGE is an assertion that they are seeking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. Who is to argue? There is not a person here that wants to vote in favor of waste, fraud, and abuse, but the reality is they do have a plan. It is not to look at each Agency and then make adjustments so that the Agency, at the end of the operation, will be fit for purpose and better able to do its job.
They have a very simple plan: Kill the headcount, reduce the headcount, fire people. That is it. That is the plan.
So we are going to be left with a decimated FEMA, a decimated Department of Agriculture, a decimated National Institutes of Health, and then who is going to put it back together? This brings me back to the cruelty of a guy like Musk. He doesn't have to worry about that. That is not his concern. Tesla is doing fine. SpaceX is doing fine. You know, things are great for him.
But they won't be great--not just for the people whose jobs have been savagely terminated, it will be bad for the cancer research that scientists are doing. It will be bad for our Vermont farmers who now find themselves deeply in debt because the Federal Government stiffed them. It will be bad for our FEMA response to the next community in our country that gets hit hard by a natural disaster.
So we have got to wake up here and be honest about what is going on with DOGE. We do agree--we do agree, I believe, Republicans and Democrats--that we have got to kick the tires on programs in government, and it is everything from food programs to commodity programs to the Defense Department. And we may have some fierce debates about what the priorities are and what we think is important and what we don't think is important, but that has got to be an on-the-level debate.
What Musk has done is just said: Hey, leave it to me. Let me send out a bunch of emails. Let me fire a lot of people in a lot of Agencies. Let's move fast and break things, and it will come back together.
It doesn't work that way. You know, you destroy the foundation of your house just like you destroy the foundation of a government program like FEMA or the National Institutes of Health, it just doesn't come back overnight because the organizations that we are trying to build, institutions that are essential to the well-being of our own country, those often take generations to create. It takes the commitment, the service, the dedication, and hard work of Americans of all kinds in all States.
This guy Musk is just destroying it all and cavalier about it and contemptuous to the rest of America about what he is doing. We can pay the price.
It is wrong what they are doing and how they are doing it. My view is that we do, in fact, have an opportunity here because both sides are quite willing to come to the table and ask these questions: How can we do it better?
But you know, if we came to the table and we asked how can we do it better, we would be looking at the long-term function: How do we have FEMA work better; how do we have our NIH work better; how do we assess grants better; how do we help our Small Business Administration be more effective in helping our young entrepreneurs? We would be asking those questions.
The other thing we would be doing--and I believe this because I have such respect for all of my colleagues here--we care about how it affects the people. We might have to make some tough decisions because this program could be cut; this one might have to be expanded. But we wouldn't just send off an email telling people to get lost. We wouldn't just be sending off an email to a farmer who just went to the bank and got a loan based on the credit of the United States of America promising to contribute a grant.
We would be considering that. DOGE isn't. In my view, we should all be outraged at the cruelty with which DOGE is operating. It is cruel to the institutions that are important for each of our States, and it is cruel to the people who have been doing this work in good faith for so long.
We have got to speak up and acknowledge that DOGE is destructive. We can embrace the effort to address waste, fraud, and abuse. We can embrace the opportunity to streamline and save money, make things work better, but we can never abandon our commitment to the people of this country who work so hard. We can
Mr. President, DOGE is pretty dumb and pretty cruel and pretty destructive the way that it has operated under Elon Musk.
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of President Trump's energy dominance agenda and to oppose my colleagues who want to keep America literally in the Dark Ages when it comes to producing energy. This, the greatest energy-producing country, is being asked to take a step back.
Our energy is cleaner. We produce it cleaner. We transport it cleaner. And yet the Biden agenda had us deferring to other countries that produce energy dirtier, transport it to countries that are paying for it so the Russians, for example, can spend money to fight a war that we are on the other side of.
These are matters that President Trump is addressing and has committed to the American people, pursuant to his Executive order on January 20 of this year--the first day he took office--to make it a priority. As we all know, during President Trump's campaign, he chose to make exporting energy dominance and energy independence a hallmark of his campaign.
He did it because he knows about the connection between energy independence and bringing down inflation. When you go to the grocery store, we see products all over the shelves that have been brought there by trucks--trucks that are paying a lot for gasoline and diesel fuel.
You see frozen food refrigerators lining the aisles that are plugged into electricity that comes from oil, gas, coal, wind, and solar. And the more expensive it is, the more expensive the products are that we buy in those stores.
The same is true in any retail store around this country. Over the last 4 years, the Biden administration worked overtime to stick it to the energy industry at every turn while my colleagues here cheered them on and helped them. On day one, President Biden placed a moratorium on public land energy development that never truly went away until January 20, 2025, when President Trump was sworn into office and signed an Executive order.
Wyoming and the West have fallen victim to the previous administration's regulatory regime designed specifically to kill the industry. Then, once he kills it, he goes overseas and asks countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to fill in the difference. These are countries that cannot produce energy as cleanly as we can and do, and yet he would rather get the energy from them to placate the radical environmental community in this country--that very same community that knows that we can do it cleaner here.
During the Biden administration, the BLM declined to offer up lands for oil and gas leasing. And when they did, they ignored the spirit of the law and offered the fewest acres possible.
In September 2023, the BLM collected a measly and insulting $27,000 from an oil and gas lease sale in Wyoming. Compare that to the September 2021 lease sale that netted over $1.3 million.
The people of Wyoming are elated that President Trump, on day one, committed to fixing the sins of the previous administration by declaring a national energy emergency.
You know, I was in Seoul, South Korea, last spring. And one day, we had clear air. The next day, it was so dirty that you couldn't see, Mr. President, from where I am standing to where you are sitting. And I said: What went wrong over 24 hours? And they told me the wind shifted and was coming in from China. China's dirty air was blowing in because China is producing dirty energy.
And yet we would rather defer to them when we know we can produce it cleaner. In my State of Wyoming, the Dry Fork energy plant is the cleanest coal-producing energy ever produced anywhere. In fact, it is so clean that when they began emitting from that plant, they didn't want to tell the U.S. EPA how clean they could do it for fear that the EPA would apply that same standard to all of America's legacy coal plants--none of which could afford to retrofit to the modern technology of Gillette's coal-fired powerplant.
In Wyoming, we have abundant oil, gas, uranium, coal, and more. Under the order, Wyoming's public lands can return to Congress the intended goal of multiple use, which includes responsible resource extraction. If you go back to FLPMA, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which passed in the 1970s, it mandates multiple use of public lands-- not single use, not preservation or conservation alone, not oil and gas alone, not recreation alone. It is all of these multiple uses.
Energy production is the backbone of my State and many other Western States. We are proud to power the Nation and to support a President who supports us.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and a thriving data center industry, our Nation will need all the energy it can get. I was out in California during October and went to AI companies--large, medium, and small--and they all told me the same thing: that the bottleneck for America in being the world leader in AI is energy.
We are going to need way more energy than we have needed in the past, and in order to make artificial intelligence work for us and to be dominant in this technology, we need more energy, not less. And we know we can do it cleaner than other countries.
If my colleagues succeed in passing their resolution that is under consideration, we are setting the stage for failure. We are setting up our economy and future generations for failure. Voting to approve the resolution is a vote for an unstable energy supply, higher energy costs, and more.
I urge my colleagues to vote no against the resolution that is brought by my colleague Senator Heinrich from New Mexico. I urge my colleagues to stand with President Trump and to oppose this resolution.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I rise to describe an amazing journey that I took this weekend that was a powerful journey connected to my Virginia National Guard and also to issues that are very, very prominent right now in the world.
We finished voting on the Senate floor a little bit before 5 a.m. on Friday, on the reconciliation bill, and, a few hours later, I went to Dulles Airport and flew to Finland, landed in Helsinki at about 1:30 on Saturday, went back to the airport at 1:30 on Monday--spent 48 hours on the ground with one of our newest NATO allies to work together with them on a number of issues.
The reason for the visit over the weekend was to see my Virginia National Guard. The Virginia Guard, as in most States, are active participants in the State Partnership Program that was established back in the 1990s, where a State's Guard unit connects with the military of an allied country and engages in joint training exercises. Once Finland decided to join NATO, Virginia--which already has a partner in the State Partnership Program--reached out and said to Finland: We would like to work together with you as well.
My Governor, Governor Youngkin, helped preside over the signing of this partnership program in 2024, and the Virginia Guard--about 50 members of the Guard--were engaged in the first training exercises in Finland.
As Governor of Virginia, I used to be the commander in chief of the Virginia Guard. I have been very close to them, and I wanted to go see my Virginians training in snowy birch forests in southern Finland this weekend, and I was able to do that.
My Guard unit is training with the Karelia Brigade, which is one of the three brigades of the Finnish Army. It has got a long history of very heroic service. And on Sunday, it was a delight to drive 2\1/2\ hours outside of Helsinki and visit with my 50 Virginians and to hear the Finnish Army brag about them: Your Guard are well-trained. They are great marksman, even shooting Finnish rifles, which are
In addition to my time with the Virginia Guard. I spent time in Finland with our own Embassy team; with representatives from EUCOM, the European Command of the U.S. Army; with the President of Finland, President Stubb, who is a pretty amazing guy, who attended Furman University on a golf scholarship and manages to drop the word ``y'all'' into a lot of sentences in a pretty thick Finnish accent. I spent time with the Foreign Minister and the Permanent Defense Secretary, and also visited the Helsinki Shipyard, which is about to start working in tandem with the United States and Canada to build icebreakers, which is something we desperately need.
So it was a great trip--too short but really powerful--and I returned last night having interacted with my Virginians and knowing a lot more.
There was a sobering element to it, too, and that is really why I wanted to come and speak. To be in Finland, a nation that had to fight two wars against Russia in the late 1930s, early 1940s, to maintain its independence, and to be there with those leaders on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was sobering and thought provoking.
Finland knows Russia and Russian leadership better than just about anybody because of these hundreds of miles of border between the two nations. And that memory of fighting two wars against Russia to maintain Finnish independence is still a very present-day and palpable memory for the Finns, even though those wars happened in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
And you can be sure that our friends, our allies, those we are training together with, had some pretty strong thoughts about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the commemoration of the third anniversary. I was very disappointed and I think many were yesterday that the U.N. considered competing resolutions on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One was a Ukrainian resolution that talked about Russia as the invader, Russia as the instigator of the war. That resolution passed the General Assembly, but in a shocking move, the United States voted against it because of the language placing the blame for the war on Russia.
There had been previous resolutions after the invasion and on the second anniversary and the first anniversary saying that this war was started by Russia. The United States led those resolutions. But now the United States, through our President, through our Secretary of Defense, through the U.N.--we don't have a permanent U.N. Ambassador now-- through the U.N. representative at the U.N. was unwilling to sign on to and vote for a resolution that talked about Russia as being responsible for the war.
So we opposed the Ukrainian resolution. Who voted with us to oppose this resolution? Russia opposed, North Korea opposed, Nicaragua opposed, and another 15 nations opposed. About 60 nations abstained, including China. China wouldn't vote no. China abstained, and 90-plus nations voted yes. The resolution passed, but it passed with the United States unwilling to sign on to the proposition that Russia started this war and should not have done so.
There was also a U.S. resolution that was tendered to the U.N. General Assembly. That U.S. resolution did not mention anyone being responsible for the war but called for a cease-fire and peace, obviously. The U.S. resolution was subject to an amendment that was offered by the UK and other nations inserting the language that Russia was responsible for the war and should not have done so. That amendment passed, and because it passed, the United States ended up not even being willing to vote yes on its own resolution and instead abstained.
These Finnish colleagues who are friends and allies were pretty candid about their disappointment in the United States for not being willing to state a truth--that this war was instigated by Russia--and they deeply want to be partners with the United States on defense; hence their accession to NATO; hence their agreement to the State Partnership Program with Virginia. But they are puzzled with an American leadership--from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the U.N.--that is unwilling to state that Russia started this war.
I came home last night. It was a long flight made too long because of a cancelation. I got back a little bit later than I originally planned. But I had a lot of time to think. What I thought about was basically this: We need to learn some lessons.
We need to remember the lessons of 1938. Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, went to Munich, thinking he could find an end to war and deliver what he called ``peace'' in our time. He negotiated with the German Government and came back to England and said: There is now peace in our time--which anyone in politics would love to be able to say. But we all know that Munich Agreement was a disaster. It was negotiated between England and Germany, but many of the other nations that were later invaded by Germany weren't there, and it wasn't a peace agreement, and they suffered.
But did England at least protect itself from suffering by signing a deal and proclaiming peace in our time? No. England was attacked as well after the Germans had attacked Belgium and France and Poland and other nations.
So an illusory ``peace in our time'' deal was just that--it was illusory. You can't appease a bully. They will bully you and others unless you stand up to them.
We could remember 1975. In 1975, the Helsinki Accords, right in the community where I was visiting, were signed--the Soviet Union was a signatory, along with the United States and Canada and European nations--to guarantee certain principles, including the guarantee of the inviolability of national sovereignty and that no nation should be able to invade the sovereignty of others. We need to remember that. We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords this summer. We need to remember those principles and who has violated them and who has not.
Let's remember 1995. In 1995, as an aftermath of the Helsinki Accords, we helped form the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co- Operation in Europe. It is the one organization that includes all European nations, including Russia. NATO doesn't include them all; the OSCE does. The OSCE was committed to the principles of the Helsinki Accords protecting national sovereignty, and we need to remember who has violated those principles and who hasn't.
We should remember 2020, 5 years ago this week in 2020--the Doha accord. President Trump negotiated a ``peace'' accord with the Taliban--a peace accord with the Taliban. Afghanistan was not allowed to be at the table. The Government of Afghanistan that had been our partner, in whom we had invested hundreds of billions of dollars, was not allowed to be at the table. So, yes, there was a ``peace'' deal. There was peace in our time, but the peace proved to be illusory and catastrophic months later when the United States removed troops pursuant to the Doha accord.
The absence of inclusion of the Afghan Government led to a demoralization and a collapse. The inspector general that analyzed the end of our military participation in Afghanistan had plenty of blame to assign--blame to the Biden administration but also blame to a President, President Trump, who negotiated a deal without including the party that was most affected.
I thought of the Doha accord when I saw the news of negotiations in Riyadh between the United States and Russia to end the war in Ukraine and noticed Ukraine was not at the table. A peace deal about a nation's sovereignty where you are not allowing that nation to be at the table is doomed to failure.
We need to remember those lessons in connection with any discussion about the future of Ukraine.
Mr. President, you don't even need to completely remember history; just remember what your mom or dad told you. I know I had this call, and I think most people will remember this. You are getting bullied at school, and you go home and complain to your parents. What do your parents tell you about bullies? If you give in to them, they will keep bullying you and others. If
The United States should have been willing yesterday in the U.N. to stand up to a bully. The United States should have been willing to say that this was an illegal war unjustly initiated by Russia. If you are unwilling to state a truth, you begin in a very weak position.
So my thought in coming home from visiting my own troops, who are sacrificing and risking to train for an action that they know they may one day be called on to support--else they wouldn't be conducting training in a snowy birch forest in southern Finland in February of 2025--they are there because they are willing to sacrifice. It takes sacrifice to protect democracy.
Our Nation is coming up on the 250th anniversary of our democracy-- and not only our democracy but our leadership role in democracies around the globe. The world needs us to continue to stand strong. Our friends like Finland are hoping and praying that we continue to stand strong. It is my belief that in the heart of the American people is a desire to continue to stand strong.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. President, we are dealing with a crisis that all hundred Members of this body understand has taken the lives of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, and that is the scourge of fentanyl.
One of the things we have been doing as a result of that is temporarily scheduling fentanyl analogs, these horrific substances that are manufactured in order to pour onto our streets. Such a small amount of this drug--it literally could be the size of one pill--as they say, one pill can kill. It is very important to me that we see the temporary scheduling of this continue until the Senate finds a more wholesome response to this crisis. We must rise to meet this crisis in a wholesome way, in way that meets the gravity of the crisis and does not just continue to do the things we have done over and over again.
So as we are working in a bipartisan way in the Senate Judiciary Committee with the understanding that the temporary scheduling may expire in the coming weeks--in order to remove that pressure and allow us to work in a bipartisan fashion, I have come to the floor today to ask for unanimous consent that we continue that temporary scheduling while we work in a bipartisan fashion to make sure that we give the most fulsome response possible to this crisis.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 724, the Temporary Extension of Fentanyl-Related Substances Scheduling Act, which is at the desk; I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, for years, one more time, Congress has refused to make a definitive, permanent decision. It has failed to make schedule I classification of fentanyl- related substances permanent.
Law enforcement needs permanence. It needs a definitive change to combat the opioid crisis and go after the criminals flooding communities with deadly drugs.
Congress's inaction only emboldens China, drug cartels, and other criminals who exploit our communities, and that should not happen.
We need a lasting solution. There is no reason to do any temporary extension. We have the bipartisan votes to make the schedule I classification permanent.
This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the support of Judiciary Chairman Grassley and Senator Heinrich, is marking up the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act, or the HALT Fentanyl Act. This legislation permanently classifies fentanyl-related substances as schedule I controlled substances.
Let's be clear. The HALT Fentanyl Act is not controversial. For two consecutive Congresses, it passed the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support. There are enough votes to pass HALT in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor this Congress. My Democratic colleague's legislation delays that permanency. Schedule I classification will once more be in jeopardy when the next deadline comes around. Law enforcement cannot continue to have this uncertainty.
That is why, after my objection, I will ask unanimous consent to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act. This legislation has already passed the House of Representatives and has bipartisan support in the Senate. I hope all my Democratic colleagues will join in supporting the bill.
We have a responsibility to provide law enforcement the tools they need to address the scourge of deadly drugs in our communities. Failure to act puts Americans in harm's way.
Mr. President, because of my objection, I ask unanimous consent to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act to permanently classify fentanyl- related substances as schedule I controlled substances. The bill also removes barriers that impede the ability of researchers to conduct studies on these substances.
The HALT Fentanyl Act has already passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support. It has support from Democrat and Republican Senators now.
This is the bill the Senate should be voting on today, not just a temporary extension that creates greater uncertainty in our effort to address the opioid crisis but, again, one which establishes permanence, something which gives certainty to law enforcement to combat this, as I said earlier, scourge of illegal fentanyl.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 27 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table
In reserving the right to object, this is why I am down here today--really, literally, at this point--and I want to jump here.
I thank the Presiding Officer for recognizing me. I truly appreciate that, but this gets me excited because this is the point that I want to illustrate.
My colleague is far smarter than I on medical issues. I could not have passed organic chem at Stanford. I am sure he passed it with flying colors. Of my colleague, who is truly one of my more favorite colleagues in this place because of how rational and pragmatic he is on approaching real crises like this, I am begging and hoping he will listen to me, and I am begging this body to listen to me.
We have had a fentanyl crisis in this country of monumental proportions. It is one of the greatest killers in America. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogues have literally been responsible for lowering the life expectancy for Americans. It is one of the greatest crises we have seen to human life in America in my lifetime. There is so much data- driven evidence and evidence-based answers to this, of how we can approach this crisis, but yet the only bill that we seek to do is a bill that does what we have already done on a temporary basis. I support classwide scheduling for fentanyl analogues, but here we have this bill, the HALT bill, that my colleague pointed out did pass in a bipartisan way and now is in the Judiciary Committee.
The reason I am down here is not to drag my dear friend down here because he is a busy man, and I wanted to go over to him before this conversation started to apologize, but I needed to make this point on the floor in this kind of standoff.
He is asking us to pass the HALT bill, which would give classwide scheduling to fentanyl analogues, which we have already done. For years, it has been temporarily scheduled, and what
Now, here is the beauty of the conversation we are having and why we should be passing the temporary one to let us go back to work, and I know this because I know his heart and I know your heart. There are evidence-based, bipartisan amendments to that HALT Act that are widely supported. My colleague's partner Senator from his State, in committee, said: I don't understand why we are not putting the test strips on this. Why? Because kids who are using fentanyl right now don't know that they are using this fentanyl analogue. Kids in your State and my State think they are taking Adderall, not realizing that this has those toxic things that can kill.
Here we were in committee, with a bipartisan test strip bill, and my colleague's partner Senator said: This makes sense to me. And the one excuse they were using for not doing a bipartisan bill to give us more of a response than doing what we are already doing and wiping our hands and saying, ``We did great things,'' was saying, ``We didn't have time'' because of this artificial deadline.
So I am down here to say: Wait a minute. Let's do the temporary extension and take time to do bipartisan bills.
But don't take my word for it. Take the word of the Republican witnesses who came to our hearing. We just had a painful hearing of law enforcement leaders and other Republican witnesses who told us the scourges of fentanyl that we all know. Those people all said that this can't be all Congress does; that the HALT bill cannot be our only response because the whole bill permanently schedules what we have already scheduled temporarily.
I believe in the 99 Members here who know that our response to this crisis cannot be what we have already been doing for the last 5 years when there are bipartisan bills that we could be putting on this bill to show America that we are not going to just puff ourselves up and make permanent something that was already done in a temporary way.
Let me read some of this pleading from Republican witnesses.
Republican witness Jaime Puerta, a courageous parent who lost his child to an overdose, testified:
That doesn't even cost money.
We could be doing things through the Department of Education in supporting education campaigns. Bipartisan support for that idea--is it on the HALT bill? No. Let me go on.
Republican witness Sheriff Donald Barnes highlighted the successes of a multifaceted strategy to address both supply and demand for illicit drugs. These are the bullet points he said that we should do, imploring Congress: Don't just do what you have already done. Do something more. Give law enforcement officers naloxone to reduce overdoses; education for fifth and sixth graders; ensure the continuity of care and successful reintegration of people who are returning to the community from the scourge of these drugs.
Witness after witness--from law enforcement to scientists to doctors--have offered up bipartisan supportive ideas so that our response to one of the biggest scourges of our country isn't just to do what we have been doing for the last half decade or more.
I have got bipartisan bills on the committee, and my colleagues from Texas have bipartisan bills on the committee, and the only excuse that people gave for us not to have more consideration was: Oh, well, the deadline is coming up in a few weeks for temporary passage. But I realize we have passed temporary scheduling by unanimous consent before. It is not hard to do.
I beg of my colleagues--I beg of my colleague who is here and others: We have a moving bill that has to go back to the House because we have already added a managers' package to it. I promise you, if we add truly bipartisan things that give a more fulsome approach--a more comprehensive approach--to stop our children from dying, it will pass in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives because it was a bipartisan year. I am in agony over the deaths in New Jersey. I have met with parents who have looked at me and said: What are you going to do?
Let me read to you the words from one of these parents.
Susan Ousterman, who is a courageous mother who lost her son to an overdose--I beg of my colleagues listen to this--said:
I am a former mayor. I oversaw a police department that had to answer the calls with children dying on floors. They had these law enforcement tools. They would tell me more needs to be done. The HALT Fentanyl Act will get passed. Fentanyl analogues will never again be unscheduled in our country. That is not the challenge right now to save lives. The challenge to save lives in America right now is, What are we going to do more than is being done right now? Fentanyl analogues are scheduled right now, and if the only thing we can do--the only bill that is moving through here--is to just do what we have been doing, shame on us.
I am asking this body to give time. Extend the temporary scheduling so that we can work in a bipartisan fashion, like Senator Kennedy, who said: I want more time to look at this. This seems rational; this seems logical; it seems like something we should do. Then, when bipartisan Senators step up like that and say, ``I want to work with the man or the woman across the aisle,'' we will have the time to do it.
So, God, I am sorry that my friend who is truly a great American leader and one of the smarter people in here--I am sorry that he objected to my bill, but I will stand up in our committee meeting on Thursday and make this same plea; that we don't just pass the HALT Fentanyl Act but that we actually put things in it that aren't partisan ideas. They are the ones that law enforcement is calling for. They are the ones that scientists are calling for. They are the ones that doctors are calling for--bipartisan bills.
Dear God, the parents of dead children are calling for us to step up and do more than the same old thing we have been doing around the War on Drugs since I was a kid myself.
Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague's passion.
Everybody watching me right now knows somebody who has died from a fentanyl overdose. You cannot minimize the impact of this on everyday families, but what is presented to us is a false choice and I would say the wrong choice.
I think my colleague is saying, unless we pass his amendment to put this temporarily on hold--and, once more, refuse to make a decision to make this permanent--that somehow things will not get better.
Let me repeat what I said in my earlier remarks: This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the support of Judiciary Chairman Grassley, a Republican, and Senator Heinrich, a Democrat, is marking up the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act, or the HALT Fentanyl Act. This Thursday is when it is going to be marked up.
Now, this is a moving piece of legislation. If you want to do something more than this legislation does, you should have 2 months ago started working with that committee. Don't stop now. Call people tonight, and say: Listen. On Thursday, we are going to be marking this up. Will you consider my amendment? Make the case that was so impassionately given that we have got to do more than what we are doing.
I agree. So the way to do it--because this has not yet been marked up this
There is something about deadlines. Deadlines sharpen a man's mind. If there is a deadline Thursday to get this on and then, when it is brought to the floor, there is a deadline to amend it on the floor, now is the time to act, but now is not the time to delay.
I appreciate my colleague's passion, and I look forward to working with him. Neither of us ever wants to go to a family member, to a friend, to a fellow American and have to comfort them over the issue of another death from opioids. I just think that this is an important step and that, if there is more to be added, then let's add it, but let's not complain because it hasn't already been added.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. President, I just want to clarify because my colleague pounded on the desk, and that was hard for me to watch. I am not here because we haven't been trying to get a bipartisan consensus on this and calling and doing all the work. I have watched this now for three Congresses. Number 2, I am here not because I am trying to stop the HALT Act. I am here because I heard two Republicans in our committee say the only reason we can't consider bipartisan approaches, even if they are good ideas, is because of the urgency of this moment.
All I am saying is--this is, obviously, a fait accompli--I just don't want my colleague to walk away thinking this is some kind of stunt. This is my attempt to take away an argument for us to do the work on Thursday. Clearly, it has been objected to. I am going to go back and try my hardest on Thursday to do something more.
The one prediction--I don't want to call it a ``prediction.'' But my colleague says we have a lot more time. I have watched now for at least three Congresses that I have worked on trying to get a larger approach to meet the fentanyl crisis; and in three Congresses, this body has failed to rise to the challenge.
I am dying to be here when my colleague tells me: I told you so--and I give him permission to do that--that this body would do something beyond just scheduling. Because, as I have read, law enforcement, scientists, doctors, and parents are not just asking for the HALT Fentanyl Act; they are asking for us to do more to save lives.
Now, I have only been here 12 years, but I know the window is open to get things done when something is a must-pass bill to move. This is an opportunity to put some things on to show the larger public that we are not going to do what we always do.
I am really worried when this window closes, there will be a lot of people thumping their chests and saying: We have dealt with the fentanyl crisis, and all these other ideas won't have vehicles to go through.
I will not stop working until this body does more than just scheduling what has already been scheduled. People on both sides of the aisle are demanding us to do more. And we don't need to go left; we don't need to go right. We need to do the commonsense, evidence-based approaches that are being supported and called for. In fact, some of the commonsense amendments are already bipartisan supported by Senators. So I am grateful.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. President, I have a resolution under the--we call it a CRA, to rescind one of President Biden's regulations.
In 1938, we drilled the first well in the ``Gulf of America,'' which some people still call the Gulf of Mexico.
Since then, 87 years have passed, and we have drilled about 6,000 wells in the gulf. We have laid hundreds of thousands of miles of pipelines.
The oil and gas companies who did this have surveyed, they have x rayed every square inch of the seabed in the gulf. They have surveyed, they have x rayed 311,652 square nautical miles in the gulf. Put Texas and California together, that is the geographical area that has been surveyed by the oil and gas industry.
Why did they do that? For safety reasons. So before they put a platform in the gulf, they knew where they were putting it. And, No. 2, to preserve history, because we have--or had a lot of shipwrecks in the gulf, from which we can learn about the past.
In fact, as a result of this effort by the oil and gas industry to x ray the entire gulf, we have discovered 4,000 shipwrecks.
In the waning days of the Biden administration, September of 2024, the Department of the Interior, under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management--we call it BOEM--promulgated a midnight regulation. This is what the regulation said: You have to survey it again. Even though the entire gulf has been surveyed, you have to do it again, oil and gas industry. If you want to drill a well, or if you want to lay some pipeline, you have got to x ray it again. Why? Because the government says so.
This is going to add anywhere from--I don't know--$20,000 up to, potentially, $1 million to the cost of drilling a well, to x ray after an x ray has already been done. That, of course, is going to increase the cost of the well, which is going to increase the cost of the oil and gas from the well, which is going to be passed on to the consumer, which is going to raise the price of energy, which is going to contribute to inflation in America.
You want to know why we had such outrageous inflation under President Biden? Because of regulations like this. And there are hundreds more that increased prices needlessly. That is why under President Biden, the average person's electricity bill in America went up 20 percent under President Biden.
We don't need this regulation. I do not know--well, let me put it another way. I am not saying that the person at the Department of the Interior who came up with this idea is the dumbest person in the world. I am not saying that. But I am saying that the person at BOEM who came up with this idea better worry that the dumbest person in the world doesn't die because he is in the running.
My CRA would kill this rule dead as Woodrow Wilson, and I hope my colleagues will vote for it.
I yield back all time on Calendar No. 15, S.J. Res. 11.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, the Committee on Rules and Administration has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 119th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Padilla, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
Mr. President, this morning I attended the funeral of former Maryland Congresswoman Beverly Byron, an extraordinary public servant who represented the people of western Maryland and expanded the rights of women in the military as the first woman to chair a subcommittee on the Armed Services Committee and author of the Byron amendment that allowed women to fly combat missions. She was a mentor and friend, and I was grateful to pay my respects to her this morning among her many friends and family.
Due to this conflict, I missed rollcall vote No. 90, confirmation of the nomination of Daniel Driscoll to be Secretary of the Army. Had I been present, I would have voted no.
Due to this conflict, I also missed rollcall vote No. 91, the motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 11, a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management relating to ``Protection of Marine Archaeological Resources.'' Had I been present, I would have voted no.
Mr. President, today, I am joining Senator Capito to introduce the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act of 2025 in order to improve access to needed therapies for children.
Children are not just small adults. Drugs affect their developing bodies differently, so new treatments need to be studied carefully to ensure that they are appropriately prescribed and that dosages are properly adjusted. Additionally, drugs that are designed to treat a specific condition in adults may have enormous benefits in treating completely different illnesses in kids. But research is needed to unlock these potentially lifesaving possibilities.
Unfortunately, drug development still leaves children behind. The legislation we are introducing today would help speed therapies to children who need them by making needed changes to the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, BPCA, and the Pediatric Research Equity Act, PREA--two laws that encourage and require the study of drugs in children.
Data resulting from BPCA and PREA studies are added to drug labels to give parents and providers essential information on the safety and efficacy of drugs used in children. I was proud to have helped author these laws when I was a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. While we have made tremendous progress in advancing treatments for children because of these laws, there are gaps. For example, there is a loophole in PREA that exempts drug companies from pediatric study requirements when the treatment would only be used for a rare pediatric condition.
There are close to 7,000 rare diseases without appropriate treatments, and the vast majority of these diseases affect children as well as adults. But in developing new drugs also known as orphan drugs to treat rare diseases, pharmaceutical developers focus their research on adult patients only since they are not required to study their impact on children.
Since the majority of new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, are orphan drugs, this means that the majority of newly approved drugs have not been studied for their impacts on kids. This leaves doctors, parents, and sick kids in the dark about the best possible treatments. Our bill closes this loophole to require studies for children so that that they, too, can benefit from new and innovative treatments for rare diseases.
In addition to this change, the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act would invest in pediatric studies of older, off-patent drugs. The FDA incentives and requirements under BPCA and PREA work for many newer drugs, but unfortunately cannot help encourage studies of older drugs. For this reason, in 2002, Congress authorized a program which funds the National Institutes of Health to conduct studies of off-patent drugs used in children that would never be completed otherwise. Drug studies are expensive, and costs have only increased since then, but the program has been flat-funded at $25 million since it was created more than 20 years ago. Our legislation would increase the authorization for the BPCA NIH program to ensure we have better data about older drugs to treat diseases in children.
Lastly, the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act would give FDA the authority it needs to ensure that legally required pediatric studies are completed in a timely manner. Due dates for studies required by PREA are typically deferred by FDA until after the approval of the drug for adults, but FDA has no effective enforcement tools to ensure that these studies are completed on time--or at all.
I am pleased to be working with my colleague Senator Capito again on pediatric health issues. We have worked closely for many years on pediatric cancer, first authoring the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research, STAR, Act in 2015. That bill was signed into law in 2018, and we worked to fully fund the law every year since.
I look forward to working with her to move the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act forward, to give children and their families more options for treatments.
S. 710. A bill to amend title 31, United States Code, to prevent fraudulent transactions at virtual currency kiosks, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Mr. President, now on a totally different subject, I would like to tell you about one of my constituents. He is a man from New Lenox, IL, in the suburbs of Chicago.
Late last year, he received an urgent phone call from someone claiming to be a deputy in the Will County Sheriff's Office. This self- proclaimed deputy informed my constituent that he had missed jury duty. As a result, the deputy said, there is a warrant out for your arrest.
The man was stunned. Don't worry, the deputy further explained. The man could avoid arrest, put the whole matter behind him. All he had to do was pay the fine. But he couldn't pay it by check or credit card. The deputy directed the man to a local cryptocurrency ATM machine and told him to deposit $15,000 into the machine, pay the fine, and all would be forgiven.
If you have been following the news, you might have guessed by now that the man on the phone wasn't a sheriff's deputy at all; he was a scammer. Once my constituent deposited his money into the crypto-ATM, it was gone--gone. There was no way to trace the transaction to the scammer and no way to get the money back.
This is just one example of a growing and alarming trend of crypto- ATM fraud. There are now more than 30,000 crypto-ATMs in this country, and they are being used by criminals to cheat Americans out of their hard-earned savings, to the tune of $114 million in 2023 alone. Most of the victims are senior citizens.
While these scams aren't all identical, they generally play out just like the one I described. A stranger calls and pretends to be from the government or the victim's bank. They make claims of unpaid fines, a frozen bank account, a credit card in default, or even threaten arrest.
The scammer then tells their victim that they must immediately go to a crypto-ATM at a nearby grocery store, gas station, or convenience store. Often, the scammer will try to stay on the phone with the victim throughout the scam, warning of dire consequences if they don't make the payments immediately. It is a way of preventing their victim from getting a moment to take a breath and just maybe realize what is going on.
Once the victim arrives at the crypto-ATM, the scammer will walk them through the process of depositing real money--cash--into the machine, buying Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, and sending it to the scammer's digital wallet.
Last summer, a small business owner in my hometown of Springfield, IL, removed a crypto-ATM from the store after witnessing senior after senior walk in, talking on their phones, looking stressed, and depositing huge sums of cash into the machine. He said:
This is in a small store in Springfield, IL.
It wasn't just happening there. There are tragic stories of seniors losing their savings through these machines in every State in America.
A South Carolina retired couple lost $390,000 over the course of several months through a scam involving crypto-ATMs. Just this month, a sheriff's office in Walton County, FL, reported a resident that was cheated out of $129,000 through a crypto-ATM.
It is past time that we put some commonsense guardrails in place to stop fraud in this largely unregulated industry. That is why, today, I am joining with Senators Blumenthal, Reed, and Welch to introduce the Crypto ATM Fraud Prevention Act. This bill will require crypto-ATM operators to warn consumers about scams and take reasonable steps to prevent fraud at their machines.
It will also put in place measures to limit the amount that consumers lose when they do fall victim to scams and would give law enforcement new tools to track down and fight back against criminals.
I want to share a few key measures in this bill with you. First, the bill will provide special protection for consumers during the 2 weeks after they make their first transaction at a crypto-ATM, the period when a consumer is most likely to be a victim of fraud. During this time, customers will be limited to deposits of $2,000 per day and $10,000 total. While this is still a lot of money, it ensures people's entire life savings are not put at risk.
The bill will also require crypto-ATM operators to obtain verbal confirmation via a live phone call for any transaction with a new customer over $500. Do you remember when I told you scammers often stay on the phone with victims until the money has been deposited in their digital wallet? Well, this requirement will break that communication, give victims a chance to think, perhaps reach out to another member of the family, and make sure crypto-ATM operators can assess whether the customer is being scammed.
Next, the bill requires crypto-ATM operators to give prominent, clear warnings about the risk of fraud and tell consumers about common types of scams. While warnings alone are not enough, they are part of the key to preventing fraud.
Operators also will be required to issue paper receipts to customers after each transaction. The receipt will include, among other things, the date, time, and amount of the transaction and the transaction hash, which will allow law enforcement to more easily trace the transaction, collect evidence of the crime, and maybe even recover the stolen funds.
Next, operators will be required to use the analytics to screen for suspicious, illicit transactions. Some companies are effectively using this technology already. It should be used across the board.
Finally, crypto-ATM operators will be required to issue refunds to consumers who are victims of fraud. As long as victims make a sworn report to law enforcement and notify the operator within 30 days of the transaction, they will be entitled to a full refund. New customers will get full refunds. All other customers will be entitled to a refund of, at minimum, any fees associated with the transaction.
These measures are commonsense guardrails that will prevent countless Americans, particularly senior citizens, from losing thousands of dollars of their hard-earned savings to criminal scams. I urge all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me to pass this bill into law. We don't have any time to waste.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 720. A bill to establish an Office of Environmental Justice within the Department of Justice, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Empowering and Enforcing Environmental Justice Act of 2025. This bill would establish in statute the Office of Environmental Justice within the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice.
The principles of environmental justice call for environmental fairness, regardless of race, color, national origin or income, and the meaningful involvement of communities in the development of laws and regulations that affect every community's natural surroundings and the places people live, work, play, and learn. California was one of the first States in the Nation to codify a definition of ``environmental justice'' in statute, understanding the disproportionate impact that frontline communities face.
This reality could not be more relevant today in light of the recent firings of environmental justice and ENRD employees at the Department of Justice. During the 117th Congress, I was proud to work with my colleague Representative Barragan on a bill that called for the creation of an Environmental Justice Office at the DOJ, and we were pleased that the Department moved forward to establish this office in May 2022.
However, on her first day as Attorney General, Pam Bondi eliminated all environmental justice efforts at the DOJ, in line with President Trump's orders to eliminate all DEI initiatives at Federal Agencies. Her order effectively terminated the office and halted all programs designed to fight pollution and enforce environmental laws.
I therefore urge my colleagues to join me in working to codify this office so that environmental enforcement does not fall victim to political agendas. The work that this office did made a real impact, making progress in ensuring that all people can breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in healthy, resilient environments.
S. 723. A bill to require the Bureau of Indian Affairs to process and complete all mortgage packages associated with residential and business mortgages on Indian land by certain deadlines, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Mr. President, today, I am joining Senator Capito to introduce the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act of 2025 in order to improve access to needed therapies for children.
Children are not just small adults. Drugs affect their developing bodies differently, so new treatments need to be studied carefully to ensure that they are appropriately prescribed and that dosages are properly adjusted. Additionally, drugs that are designed to treat a specific condition in adults may have enormous benefits in treating completely different illnesses in kids. But research is needed to unlock these potentially lifesaving possibilities.
Unfortunately, drug development still leaves children behind. The legislation we are introducing today would help speed therapies to children who need them by making needed changes to the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, BPCA, and the Pediatric Research Equity Act, PREA--two laws that encourage and require the study of drugs in children.
Data resulting from BPCA and PREA studies are added to drug labels to give parents and providers essential information on the safety and efficacy of drugs used in children. I was proud to have helped author these laws when I was a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. While we have made tremendous progress in advancing treatments for children because of these laws, there are gaps. For example, there is a loophole in PREA that exempts drug companies from pediatric study requirements when the treatment would only be used for a rare pediatric condition.
There are close to 7,000 rare diseases without appropriate treatments, and the vast majority of these diseases affect children as well as adults. But in developing new drugs also known as orphan drugs to treat rare diseases, pharmaceutical developers focus their research on adult patients only since they are not required to study their impact on children.
Since the majority of new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, are orphan drugs, this means that the majority of newly approved drugs have not been studied for their impacts on kids. This leaves doctors, parents, and sick kids in the dark about the best possible treatments. Our bill closes this loophole to require studies for children so that that they, too, can benefit from new and innovative treatments for rare diseases.
In addition to this change, the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act would invest in pediatric studies of older, off-patent drugs. The FDA incentives and requirements under BPCA and PREA work for many newer drugs, but unfortunately cannot help encourage studies of older drugs. For this reason, in 2002, Congress authorized a program which funds the National Institutes of Health to conduct studies of off-patent drugs used in children that would never be completed otherwise. Drug studies are expensive, and costs have only increased since then, but the program has been flat-funded at $25 million since it was created more than 20 years ago. Our legislation would increase the authorization for the BPCA NIH program to ensure we have better data about older drugs to treat diseases in children.
Lastly, the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act would give FDA the authority it needs to ensure that legally required pediatric studies are completed in a timely manner. Due dates for studies required by PREA are typically deferred by FDA until after the approval of the drug for adults, but FDA has no effective enforcement tools to ensure that these studies are completed on time--or at all.
I am pleased to be working with my colleague Senator Capito again on pediatric health issues. We have worked closely for many years on pediatric cancer, first authoring the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research, STAR, Act in 2015. That bill was signed into law in 2018, and we worked to fully fund the law every year since.
I look forward to working with her to move the Innovation in Pediatric Drugs Act forward, to give children and their families more options for treatments.
Mr. President, now on a totally different subject, I would like to tell you about one of my constituents. He is a man from New Lenox, IL, in the suburbs of Chicago.
Late last year, he received an urgent phone call from someone claiming to be a deputy in the Will County Sheriff's Office. This self- proclaimed deputy informed my constituent that he had missed jury duty. As a result, the deputy said, there is a warrant out for your arrest.
The man was stunned. Don't worry, the deputy further explained. The man could avoid arrest, put the whole matter behind him. All he had to do was pay the fine. But he couldn't pay it by check or credit card. The deputy directed the man to a local cryptocurrency ATM machine and told him to deposit $15,000 into the machine, pay the fine, and all would be forgiven.
If you have been following the news, you might have guessed by now that the man on the phone wasn't a sheriff's deputy at all; he was a scammer. Once my constituent deposited his money into the crypto-ATM, it was gone--gone. There was no way to trace the transaction to the scammer and no way to get the money back.
This is just one example of a growing and alarming trend of crypto- ATM fraud. There are now more than 30,000 crypto-ATMs in this country, and they are being used by criminals to cheat Americans out of their hard-earned savings, to the tune of $114 million in 2023 alone. Most of the victims are senior citizens.
While these scams aren't all identical, they generally play out just like the one I described. A stranger calls and pretends to be from the government or the victim's bank. They make claims of unpaid fines, a frozen bank account, a credit card in default, or even threaten arrest.
The scammer then tells their victim that they must immediately go to a crypto-ATM at a nearby grocery store, gas station, or convenience store. Often, the scammer will try to stay on the phone with the victim throughout the scam, warning of dire consequences if they don't make the payments immediately. It is a way of preventing their victim from getting a moment to take a breath and just maybe realize what is going on.
Once the victim arrives at the crypto-ATM, the scammer will walk them through the process of depositing real money--cash--into the machine, buying Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, and sending it to the scammer's digital wallet.
Last summer, a small business owner in my hometown of Springfield, IL, removed a crypto-ATM from the store after witnessing senior after senior walk in, talking on their phones, looking stressed, and depositing huge sums of cash into the machine. He said:
This is in a small store in Springfield, IL.
It wasn't just happening there. There are tragic stories of seniors losing their savings through these machines in every State in America.
A South Carolina retired couple lost $390,000 over the course of several months through a scam involving crypto-ATMs. Just this month, a sheriff's office in Walton County, FL, reported a resident that was cheated out of $129,000 through a crypto-ATM.
It is past time that we put some commonsense guardrails in place to stop fraud in this largely unregulated industry. That is why, today, I am joining with Senators Blumenthal, Reed, and Welch to introduce the Crypto ATM Fraud Prevention Act. This bill will require crypto-ATM operators to warn consumers about scams and take reasonable steps to prevent fraud at their machines.
It will also put in place measures to limit the amount that consumers lose when they do fall victim to scams and would give law enforcement new tools to track down and fight back against criminals.
I want to share a few key measures in this bill with you. First, the bill will provide special protection for consumers during the 2 weeks after they make their first transaction at a crypto-ATM, the period when a consumer is most likely to be a victim of fraud. During this time, customers will be limited to deposits of $2,000 per day and $10,000 total. While this is still a lot of money, it ensures people's entire life savings are not put at risk.
The bill will also require crypto-ATM operators to obtain verbal confirmation via a live phone call for any transaction with a new customer over $500. Do you remember when I told you scammers often stay on the phone with victims until the money has been deposited in their digital wallet? Well, this requirement will break that communication, give victims a chance to think, perhaps reach out to another member of the family, and make sure crypto-ATM operators can assess whether the customer is being scammed.
Next, the bill requires crypto-ATM operators to give prominent, clear warnings about the risk of fraud and tell consumers about common types of scams. While warnings alone are not enough, they are part of the key to preventing fraud.
Operators also will be required to issue paper receipts to customers after each transaction. The receipt will include, among other things, the date, time, and amount of the transaction and the transaction hash, which will allow law enforcement to more easily trace the transaction, collect evidence of the crime, and maybe even recover the stolen funds.
Next, operators will be required to use the analytics to screen for suspicious, illicit transactions. Some companies are effectively using this technology already. It should be used across the board.
Finally, crypto-ATM operators will be required to issue refunds to consumers who are victims of fraud. As long as victims make a sworn report to law enforcement and notify the operator within 30 days of the transaction, they will be entitled to a full refund. New customers will get full refunds. All other customers will be entitled to a refund of, at minimum, any fees associated with the transaction.
These measures are commonsense guardrails that will prevent countless Americans, particularly senior citizens, from losing thousands of dollars of their hard-earned savings to criminal scams. I urge all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me to pass this bill into law. We don't have any time to waste.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Empowering and Enforcing Environmental Justice Act of 2025. This bill would establish in statute the Office of Environmental Justice within the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice.
The principles of environmental justice call for environmental fairness, regardless of race, color, national origin or income, and the meaningful involvement of communities in the development of laws and regulations that affect every community's natural surroundings and the places people live, work, play, and learn. California was one of the first States in the Nation to codify a definition of ``environmental justice'' in statute, understanding the disproportionate impact that frontline communities face.
This reality could not be more relevant today in light of the recent firings of environmental justice and ENRD employees at the Department of Justice. During the 117th Congress, I was proud to work with my colleague Representative Barragan on a bill that called for the creation of an Environmental Justice Office at the DOJ, and we were pleased that the Department moved forward to establish this office in May 2022.
However, on her first day as Attorney General, Pam Bondi eliminated all environmental justice efforts at the DOJ, in line with President Trump's orders to eliminate all DEI initiatives at Federal Agencies. Her order effectively terminated the office and halted all programs designed to fight pollution and enforce environmental laws.
I therefore urge my colleagues to join me in working to codify this office so that environmental enforcement does not fall victim to political agendas. The work that this office did made a real impact, making progress in ensuring that all people can breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in healthy, resilient environments.
Mr. President, I have seven requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination.
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination.
The Committee on Rules and Administration is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 2 p.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a joint hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet in closed session during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, at 4 p.m. to receive a briefing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns in my office be granted floor privileges until February 26, 2025: Jazmine Wildcat and Karli Woodruff.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privileges of the floor be granted to the following members of my staff: Durva Trivedi, during the pendency of her legal fellowship, until September 12, 2025; and Zachary Rosenfeld and Rachelle Domond, during the pendency of their legal clerkships until April 23, 2025.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 97) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
I ask unanimous consent that the preamble be agreed to and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, February 26; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the order of February 18 in relation to S.J. Res. 10 be executed; further, I ask unanimous consent that at 12 noon the Senate proceed to executive session and vote on confirmation of the Greer nomination, as provided under the previous order, and that following disposition of the Greer nomination, the Senate resume consideration of S.J. Res. 10.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, Senators should also expect two votes tomorrow evening: passage of S.J. Res. 10, and No. 2, motion to proceed to Calendar No. 14, S.J. Res. 12, Senator Hoeven's CRA.
