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19Senate Resolution 389: Condemning the Extreme Anti-Vaccine Policies of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Strongly Opposing the Policies of the State of Florida That...
22Senate Resolution 392: Expressing Support for the Designation of November 16, 2025, as "National Warrior Call Day" and Recognizing the Importance of Connecting Members of the Armed Forces And...
25Senate Resolution 396: Condemning the Tragic Act of Violence on September 10, 2025, in Evergreen, Colorado, Recognizing the Victims, Survivors, and Responders, and Expressing Condolences And...
Nineteen bills and nine resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 2807-2825, S.J. Res. 77, and S. Res. 389- 396.
Pages S6647-48
Measures Passed
Charlie Kirk life and legacy: Senate agreed to S. Res. 391, condemning the assassination of Charlie Kirk and honoring his life and legacy.
Page S6637
National Warrior Call Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 392, expressing support for the designation of November 16, 2025, as ``National Warrior Call Day'' and recognizing the importance of connecting members of the Armed Forces and veterans in the United States to support structures necessary to transition from the battlefield, especially peer-to-peer connection.
Page S6637
National Lobster Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 393, designating September 25, 2025, as ``National Lobster Day''.
Page S6637
National Literacy Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 394, designating September 2025 as ``National Literacy Month''.
Page S6637
National Forensic Science Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 395, recognizing and supporting the goals and ideals of National Forensic Science Week.
Page S6637
Measures Considered
National Defense Authorization Act: Senate resumed consideration of S. 2296, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2026 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, taking action on the following amendments and motions proposed thereto:
Pages S6625-26, S6626-31
Pending
Wicker/Reed Amendment Modified No. 3748, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S6625
Wicker (for Ernst) Amendment No. 3427 (to Amendment No. 3748), to require the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct a study on casualty assistance and long-term care programs.
Page S6625
Thune Amendment No. 3863 (to Amendment No. 3427), relating to the enactment date.
Page S6625
Thune Amendment No. 3864 (to the language proposed to be stricken by Amendment No. 3748), relating to the enactment date.
Page S6625
Thune Amendment No. 3865 (to Amendment No. 3864), relating to the enactment date.
Page S6625
Motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on Armed Services, with instructions, Thune Amendment No. 3866, relating to the enactment date.
Page S6625
Thune Amendment No. 3867 (to (the instructions) Amendment No. 3866), relating to the enactment date.
Page S6625
Thune Amendment No. 3868 (to Amendment No. 3867), relating to the enactment date.
Page S6625
Emissions Budget and Allowance Allocations for Indiana Under the Revised Cross-State Air Pollution Rule Update
By 47 yeas to 51 nays (Vote No. 520), Senate did not agree to the motion to proceed to consideration of S.J. Res. 60, providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to ``Emissions Budget and Allowance Allocations for Indiana Under the Revised Cross-State Air Pollution Rule Update''.
Pages S6631-35
Budget Resolution
By 36 yeas to 62 nays (Vote No. 521), Senate did not agree to the motion to proceed to consideration of S. Con. Res. 22, setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2026 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2027 through 2035.
Pages S6635-37
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: Routine lists in the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.
Pages S6657-65
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S6650-53
Record Votes
Two record votes were taken today. (Total--521)
Pages S6633, S6637
Recess
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and recessed at 6:27 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, September 17, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S6656.)
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: 45 of 95 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Legislative Session
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of S. 2296, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant executive clerk read as follows:
Pending:
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. President, I want to be very clear about something. When Donald Trump goes on FOX News and says to Republicans ``Don't even bother to deal with Democrats,'' when he says out loud that he doesn't need or want our votes, that means Donald Trump wants a shutdown--make no mistake about it.
Trump can say a million times he doesn't want a shutdown, but he is acting as if he absolutely wants one. His words say one thing, but his actions say another. He is ordering Republicans not to even bother working with Democrats. He is telling Republicans to ``fight back'' against ``the radical left democratic demands.'' He is telling them to vote yes on a partisan CR that fails to meet the needs of the American people and had no Democratic input.
These are the kinds of actions a President takes when he wants a shutdown: closing negotiations; forcing partisan votes; ignoring the needs on healthcare, on costs, and on so many other issues of the American people.
It is the same story with Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson. They are doing exactly what Donald Trump wants. They say they want a vote on a partisan CR as soon as possible here in the Congress, but they have refused even to sit down at the table with Leader Jeffries and me, despite repeated requests.
So, look, our Republican colleagues can say whatever they want, but it is clear as could be that they want a shutdown. They can say they don't; they are acting as if they do. They can try to play the blame game, but their actions tell a different story. Their actions show clearly they want to shut things down because they don't want to negotiate with Democrats.
And it is more than that. It means Republicans don't want to help the American people with the crisis they have created, raising people's costs, particularly their healthcare costs. They don't want to do anything about the crisis they have created for their hospitals despite the outcry from hospitals, hospital workers, and patients from one end of the country to the other. They don't want to do anything about the fact that people's premiums are going to shoot through the roof. They don't want to stop the rampant and illegal abuses of Donald Trump when he steals or cancels congressional-approved funding for medical research--medical research--or other things.
By refusing to sit down with Democrats, Republicans are telling the American people that they are happy to help Donald Trump burn this country down; they are happy to let the government shut down.
The American people don't want Republicans to shut the government down. The American people expect Republicans who are in charge to sit down and negotiate, as any responsible leaders would do. They expect Republicans to do their jobs.
On Friday, Donald Trump said on ``Fox & Friends'' that he all he needs is Republican votes. He is wrong. He doesn't know how to count. It takes 60 Senate votes for anything to pass. That means you need Democratic votes. That is a plain fact. To get those votes, he needs some input from Democrats. We particularly want to talk about people's high costs--particularly in healthcare--created by the Republican Big Beautiful Bill. Those are the plain facts.
If Donald Trump says no negotiations at all, then it is Donald Trump's shutdown.
Mr. President, now on a happier note--His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I. I would like to welcome this morning to Washington His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of all the world's orthodox Christians. It is an honor to have His All- Holiness with us this week in our Nation's Capital. He is a great example not only to the world's Christians but to people of all faiths and to everyone who seeks peace, justice, and unity in a world in desperate need of all three.
I particularly commend the patriarch for his legacy as an advocate for protecting our planet, for interfaith dialogue, and for justice for every corner of the Earth.
We welcome Patriarch Bartholomew I to Washington this week. We thank him for his leadership, and we wish him the best during his stay here.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I am going to speak in just a moment about the border, but just to kind of set the stage a little bit on sort of where things stand, you just heard the Democrat leader talk about their willingness to fund the government--something he said repeatedly in the past. In fact, in the past, as I used quotes on the floor yesterday, he said that he likes clean CRs--clean CRs--and that we need to keep the government open for all kinds of reasons, including people who are served by the VA hospitals, for example.
I agree with him. I think that is important. I don't think anybody benefits from a government shutdown, which is why we are trying to advance a clean CR--a CR that incorporates anomalies that have been requested by his side of the aisle, some on ours, things that we normally incorporate into a continuing resolution.
But the objective in all this would be to fund the government into the foreseeable future. What is being talked about is somewhere in the November timeframe--pre-Thanksgiving, perhaps--which would give us, after the end of the fiscal year on September 30, another 6 to 7 weeks to consider individual appropriations bills and to fund the government the way it is supposed to be funded: under regular order, where the committees are doing their work and where we are doing our work on the floor.
As the Chair knows, earlier this year, we already passed three appropriations bills across the floor of the Senate--something that hadn't been done before the August recess going back as far as 2018, I believe. So it has been a long time since we have enacted under regular order appropriations bills, and that ought to be the goal. The goal here should be to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded--through the normal appropriations process.
Now, I realize that is a little out of the ordinary, given the past few years under the Democrat leadership or the Democrat leader's leadership here in the Senate, where these issues, a lot of times, got decided behind closed doors in his office. That seems to be what he wants to have happen again.
He is suggesting that he would like to have conversations about this. Well, he knows my office is right down the hall. He knows my phone number. I haven't heard from him.
All we are simply doing is asking for the very thing that in the past he has said he wants, and that is a clean funding resolution to fund the government. That is what we are proposing here. That is what I hope we will have the votes to pick up later this week.
If the Democrat leader chooses to oppose it, that is his prerogative, but I would hope there would be Democrat Senators who would give us the requisite number of votes to get to 60 in order to keep the government open. That is my objective in all of this.
I would say that we have, I think, a process whereby the Appropriations Committee and our chair Senator Collins have been working with the ranking Democrat, Senator Murray, and with their House counterparts on funding the government in this way, in this fashion. Those discussions, to the degree that they are occurring, are occurring because we allow them to have those conversations and don't get in the way of that.
I think what the Democrat leader is suggesting is that he wants to interject himself into those discussions and perhaps even instruct his ranking member not to participate. I hope that isn't the case.
But my expectation is that we will proceed to fund the government in a way that keeps it open for that foreseeable time period. I think right now what they are talking about in the House of Representatives is somewhere in the November 21 timeframe. That would give us an additional 6 to 7 weeks in which to move individual appropriations bills, which is the way we should be funding the government and
That was one of the issues, when I was running for this job, that Senators on our side of the aisle had suggested--that we want to do this in the light of day; we want an open process; we want regular order to work; we want the chairs to be empowered and individual members of the committees to be empowered and, just as importantly, individual Senators to be empowered to be able to have their voices heard in that appropriations process.
So that is where we are right now. Now, what is being suggested by the Democrat leader is that they are willing--he is willing--I hope they aren't--he is willing to shut the government down over a clean CR--something that last year and the year before he said he wanted because that is the way to do this, not with all kinds of things attached to it and poison pills but clean, straight-up fund the government. That is what he has wanted.
I hope his Members are smart enough to know that it is a really bad idea, for lots of reasons, to shut the government down over a clean funding resolution extended to a foreseeable date in the future that would enable the Appropriations Committee and this institution, the Senate, working with our colleagues in the House, to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded--through the normal appropriations process. I sincerely hope we can do that.
That is what we are advocating: a clean funding resolution--not with all kinds of ornaments and attachments to it but a handful of anomalies that both sides agree to--that would fund the government into November, until such time as we have the opportunity here to debate and hopefully report out and actually move annual appropriations bills so the Senate's voice--Senators' voices--can be heard in that process.
That is a very, I know, foreign concept to the Democrat leader and certainly something--at least right now--that it doesn't sound like he is open to. But the alternative is a government shutdown.
If you refuse to move a clean CR so the Appropriations committees can do their work and we can do our work here in the Senate, essentially, you are advocating for a government shutdown, and I don't know how that doesn't fall on you.
He is suggesting that is going to fall on Republicans, but if, in fact, the House of Representatives can act on this, the President is prepared to sign a continuing resolution that funds the government--a clean resolution--for the foreseeable future, and we have the number of votes here in the Senate to pass it, then it will be only the Democrat leader who is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means. So I would hope he will come to a different conclusion.
To the question of whether or not he would like to sit down with me, my office is right down here, and he has my cell phone number. At any time, we can do that. It doesn't seem necessary given the fact that if we hand the ball to the appropriators, which is where this should be decided, and they negotiate this and then we have a clean CR to fund the government for the next 7 weeks, that, to me, seems like a very straightforward solution to this, at least in the near term, and one which in past Congresses the Democrat leader has supported.
That is what we are trending toward, and if the Democrat leader wants to chat about that or any other subject, he knows where to find me. By the way, as many of his colleagues were out here trying to negotiate the bipartisan compromise of nominations last week, he was nowhere to be found. So this is time if you want to actually engage and try and come up with some bipartisan solutions to some of these problems, I certainly welcome that.
I look forward to those conversations in the future.
Mr. President, if there is one thing for sure, it is that things look very different at the southern border these days than they did a year ago. Encounters at the southern border have dropped precipitously to as low as just 7,832 encounters in July.
Now compare that to the southern border under the Biden administration when U.S. Customs and Border Protection was encountering more than 100,000 illegal immigrants per month and sometimes many more. In a number of months, that number was up over 200,000. And in one memorable month in 2023, the number of encounters at the southern border exceeded 300,000--300,000 in just one month. Many of those individuals were processed and then allowed to take up residence in the United States.
Well, no longer.
Under President Trump, illegal border crossings have slowed to a trickle, and border communities that were once overwhelmed are quiet. Border Patrol's El Paso sector, which covers 268 miles in western Texas and all of New Mexico, is emblematic of the progress that has been made.
The sector chief says agents there are currently encountering about 40 to 50 people per day. Now, compare that to the 2,700 per day that they would see not that long ago.
Then there is the known ``got-aways.'' These are individuals that Border Patrol saw but was unable to apprehend. The current daily average in the El Paso sector is nine--nine; nine known ``got-aways'' per day. Last summer, it was 400 per day in that sector--400.
One has to wonder just how dangerous some of these individuals were who were avoiding law enforcement, considering that a lot of illegal immigrants encouraged by catch-and-release policies actually sought out Border Patrol during the Biden years.
Under President Trump, the situation at the southern border has been turned around. Our laws are being enforced. The wall is being built, and criminal illegal immigrants who had taken up residence in our country are being arrested, detained, and deported. Thanks to President Trump's leadership, we have made an incredible amount of progress, and we need to sustain that progress for long term.
That is why Republicans made the generational investment in border security in the One Big Beautiful Bill. That includes funding to finish the border wall and hire more Border Patrol and ICE agents, plus additional detention space and deportation capacity.
We also included funding for the Department of Justice to hire more immigration judges to address the massive backlog of immigration cases, a backlog made exponentially worse by the Biden administration's policies.
The open border policies of the past were a danger for everyone. The chaos at our southern border under the Biden administration was an invitation to terrorists, criminals, and other dangerous individuals to enter our country.
It placed an incredible burden on our Border Patrol agents, many of whom were pulled off the essential work of guarding the border to process the flood of illegal immigrants. And it placed a big burden on border cities, and nonborder cities as well, who struggled to deal with an influx of migrants.
Then there were the dangers to illegal immigrants themselves who were encouraged by President Biden's policies to put themselves at the mercy of human smugglers and the cartels, criminals who profited off of the open southern border.
In fact, the New York Times reported in 2022 that human smuggling had become a $13 billion business for the cartels--ballooning from $500 million just a few years earlier. New border security measures, however, have cost the cartels an estimated $1 billion since the start of this year.
Now law enforcement has the bandwidth to go after these criminals and disrupt the networks whose activities endanger immigrants and Americans alike. We have a responsibility to keep America safe, and that starts with security at our borders. President Trump takes that responsibility seriously.
He has acted swiftly to turn the disaster at the southern border around, and Congress has acted to support that mission and make the success we have seen these last few months the new normal. That work continues.
I am grateful to the men and women on the frontlines carrying out the important work enforcing the law and making America safer.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, once again, Senate Democrats are threatening to shut down the government. A government shutdown is bad for everyone. The cost of a Democrat shutdown is staggering.
Reopening the government after a shutdown is even more costly. And who pays the price of a Schumer shutdown? Well, it is the American people.
It is not the people in this room. No. It is hard-working Americans. It is seniors who rely on Social Security; they are going to be impacted. People living on a fixed income; they budget down to the last dollar. They need to pay for rent; they need to pay for groceries; they need to pay for prescriptions. Democrats don't seem to worry about that. Oh, they say they can wait.
Because a Democrat shutdown means that customer service applications to the Social Security Administration--well, they will be delayed.
Now, many military families also live paycheck to paycheck. They are going to face a lot of uncertainty. The men and women who protect our families will be left to wonder how they can protect their own families. Border Patrol agents, they put their lives on the line every day to protect the American people. They are going to be forced to live without a paycheck.
Democrats already tried to defund the Border Patrol. Now they want Border Patrol agents to go home without a paycheck until the government reopens.
National parks, they risk being closed as well. In my home State of Wyoming, we have Yellowstone National Park; we have the Grand Teton. These are more than parks; they are part of our State and our Nation's rich history and heritage.
Families from across America and around the world visit Wyoming, our national parks, and other national parks. They do it every year.
Under a Schumer shutdown, those plans will be forced to be canceled.
Local businesses like hotels, restaurants, they will lose revenue. Park staff are reduced to skeleton crews. Trash piles up. That is not stewardship. That is neglect.
That is what the Democrats are risking. It is what Democrats are threatening with this reckless talk of a shutdown.
The American people shouldn't be forced to pay the cost of Democrats' political games. That is what it is. Shutdowns are political games. Political acts are choices.
Congress has the tools to avoid this chaos. It requires, however, cooperation from the Democrats.
The appropriations process, it exists. It exists for a reason. It is how Congress fulfills its basic mission--the power of the purse. That is our duty, and that is what Republicans are doing.
For the first time in 4 years, the Senate passed bipartisan appropriations bills before the August recess.
More are on the way.
Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins is working hard to get each and every bill passed. That is something that the current Minority Leader refused to do when the Democrats were in the majority.
Last year, 11 out of 12 funding bills passed the Senate Appropriations Committee. They passed many along bipartisan ways, many were unanimous, all done in regular order. That was last year when Schumer was, at that time, majority leader, but he refused to bring a single one of them to the floor of the U.S. Senate for a vote. He let those 11 bipartisan appropriations bills die in the drawer of that desk rather than let the Senate vote on them.
He shut down the appropriations process, and now he and the Senate Democrats are threatening to shut down the government. He himself has recently suggested a shutdown. He said: It is preferable to accepting bipartisan solutions.
Senator Cory Booker, who is another member of the Senate Democrat leadership, went even further. When asked about a short stopgap measure that we are talking about now to keep government open so we can proceed with additional appropriations bills, he said:
That is what he said--block the normal process to regular order.
And it is not just the Democrat-elected officials calling for a shutdown. Liberal columnist Ezra Klein recently wrote in the New York Times and he was on television urging Democrats to shut down the government. He did it despite the costs and consequences to the American people, but that is where the radical left is.
He said joining Republicans to fund this government is worse, he said, than failing at opposition.
That is what they think their job is: to disrupt, to make it harder on the American people's lives. That is not what we ought to be doing here in the U.S. Senate. Democrats are ignoring the needs of keeping the essential functions of our Nation open. And what are those essential needs? Securing the border, Social Security, supporting our military--doesn't seem to care if you are a Democrat these days. What is so wrong with doing the job voters elected us to do?
To my Democrat colleagues, I would say: Stop this political theater. The Republican message is simple: Let's fund the government; protect Social Security; keep servicemembers and border agents paid; keep the government open in order to serve the American people.
Senate Republicans are ready. Ready to keep the government open. Senate Democrats are bragging about being ready to shut it down. The choice is theirs, and the consequences of that choice will be felt by the people of our Nation.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, when parents send their kids to school, they rightfully expect that they will be safe and protected. Parents expect their kids to bring home knowledge, not polio. They expect them to share stories, not measles. They expect them to get smart, not smallpox.
The reality is, this has been the case for decades because we have had vaccines to safely and efficiently keep students protected against these terrible, terrible diseases.
Unfortunately, there is an extreme movement that relies on conspiracy theories that is trying to overturn commonsense, science, vaccination guidelines, and make children vulnerable to life-threatening illnesses.
Earlier this month, Florida announced it was rolling back longstanding vaccine requirements--longstanding vaccine requirements-- for schools; requirements that have prevented the death of more than 1 million children in the last 30 years alone--1 million children. Think about that number. Protecting them from devastating diseases like measles, polio, and whooping cough.
Removing these safeguards will cost kids' lives. There is no other way of putting it, parents will bury their children.
It will bring us back to a time before vaccines, when parents prayed their child would be spared from polio so they wouldn't have to spend the rest of their life in an iron lung. That is not freedom. Living inside of an iron lung because someone refused to get a vaccine is anything but being free.
As my dad used to say: When you don't have your health, you don't have anything. These extreme policies will lead people to die as a result.
Let's also be clear: This is not what parents want. In fact, more than 80 percent of parents support vaccine requirements for schools to prevent diseases like polio, measles; to prevent
That support crosses party lines. In fact, three-quarters of Republican parents agree schools should require vaccines for measles and polio, including 73 percent of parents who identify themselves with the MAGA movement.
Even my Republican colleagues have spoken up about this, saying:
I am going to quote again:
This was a Republican:
These extreme policies are not only way out of step with science, they are way out of step with the very families that these Florida politicians claim to represent.
What is happening in Florida is not an isolated case. And what happens there, it won't stay there. It is part of a broader effort to weaken our Nation's health. Disease knows no boundary and is, unfortunately, an equal opportunity predator.
At the heart of this dangerous misinformation campaign are people like the Secretary of Health and Human Services, R.F.K., Jr., who has built a career by spreading lies about vaccines and spreading rhetoric that has been debunked time and time again by doctors and scientists.
In fact, he fired, just recently, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because she allegedly stood up to his anti-vax efforts. Since then, the CDC has made it practically impossible for healthy adults in many States to receive the COVID-19 vaccination if they so choose--if they so choose.
This goes beyond getting rid of COVID vaccine mandates. It actually imposes a new Republican mandate that no one can receive the vaccine, and it does not matter even if they want to. This goes above and beyond, forcing everyone to bend to their will. It is not freedom. It is imposing their radical beliefs on everyone else.
Because of Secretary Kennedy's willingness to push lies and conspiracies that will hurt our health, the Senate must speak out against what he is doing and what Florida is doing and make it clear we support making vaccines accessible and that we support making sure our children are vaccinated against polio, smallpox, rubella, and other life-threatening illnesses.
Washington Republicans cannot and should not stay silent while extremists in Washington and in Florida are trying to make it more likely that children--children--won't receive critical vaccines.
That is why I introduced a resolution opposing these extreme policies, reaffirming something the overwhelming majority of Americans already know, and this is this: Vaccines save lives. Vaccines protect kids. Vaccines protect every American, and every American deserves the freedom to access them.
This is about the safety of our children. It is about making sure diseases like polio and smallpox remain eradicated. It is about standing up for the overwhelming majority of parents--Republican, Democrat, Independent alike--who want their children just protected from these horrific, terrible illnesses.
So, today, I am calling on my colleagues in the Senate to join me in this effort. Let's send a strong bipartisan message that we reject this extreme, dangerous agenda.
If all of my Republican colleagues disagree with what Florida is doing, let's do more than just give a disapproving statement to reporters. They have something they can do about it. I am going to give them the opportunity--Washington Republicans--to do something to protect our kids. Let's pass my resolution by unanimous consent right now to protect the children of the United States.
So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 389, which was submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, 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.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me say to my colleague from Nevada that neither one of us represent Florida.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is clear that the Federal Government has a limited set of powers, and most powers are delegated to the States. I think we should let decisions for the people of Florida be made by the elected representatives of the people of Florida.
Let me just also address real quickly some of the statements that were just made about children going to school.
It is decently ironic, given that during COVID, kids were prevented from going to school because schools were closed. Schools were closed, in some cases, up to a year and a half.
If we look at the epidemic of childhood violence, youth violence in this country, we can directly trace that to the enormous mistakes made during COVID by locking kids up, by forcing children to get a COVID vaccine that we now know, objectively, absolutely should not have been given to children.
Let me make also another point. You can't, on one side, bemoan the termination of a CDC Director and, on the other side, having not voted to confirm said CDC Director--so when you voted no, you can't also say: Well, why was that person fired, because you wouldn't have hired him in the first place. That doesn't make any sense.
Let me just make one final point. This is very important. Any vaccine that any parent wants to get is available. What R.F.K. is saying--our Secretary of Health is saying is: We are not going to mandate that people have to put things into their body that they choose not to put in their body.
In fact, I believe over my lifetime, what I have seen the Democrats say is: My body, my choice. I guess that only applies when you are murdering babies.
It is very simple. If we don't have sovereignty over what goes in our body, we are not free people.
I believe that people should make a choice, an educated choice. I have faith in the American people that they can make the decisions that they feel are right for them. For that reason, I object.
Mr. President, this is very disappointing. We know that childhood diseases have been eradicated in so many ways because of these vaccinations. And we often know that the way that they are available or the way they are paid for relies on the recommendations from the U.S. Government. So we do put children at risk, and we are saying, in the case of COVID, that people may not get them.
But I remain disappointed. This is really disappointing. By blocking my resolution, Washington Republicans are saying they are OK with extreme policies that can make vaccinations inaccessible, unaffordable, roll back vaccine requirements for schoolchildren, and put us all at risk for diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox, to our families, to our communities, to those most vulnerable.
I don't believe this is a partisan issue. Disease is an equal opportunity predator. Diagnosis can change your life this fast. So it isn't partisan.
The overwhelming majority of parents, including three-quarters of Republicans, support school vaccine requirements. Blocking my resolution ignores parents, ignores science, and it puts kids at risk.
Before some Washington Republicans try to insinuate that because they didn't personally block this resolution, they may support it--it has been introduced, and everyone is welcome to support it today. So if you believe schoolchildren should be able to access vaccines, you can cosponsor my resolution today.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, the HIRE Act, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and
I think one of the things that I can agree on with my colleague from Nevada--and there are a lot of things I think we can work together on. I think she is a good person--the one thing we can agree on is we want stronger families. We want strong family structures. That means that a mom or a dad can have one job that allows them to provide a family-sustaining wage to be able to raise kids so that parents could stay home with their kids--again, a mom or a dad-- and provide those kinds of resources that are necessary.
But, right now, corporations are taking a lot of good jobs and shipping those jobs overseas. For example, where I started my career, believe it or not, right out of college, was in a call center. I helped start the Saturn Corporation's customer assistance center. I can tell you firsthand, those are good jobs. I can also say that the people who do the best job at call centers are people with some form of disability. Whether it is blindness, they are in a wheelchair, they don't have a lot of other opportunities for good, high-paying jobs. That used to be the case. They have much higher levels of empathy. They speak our language. They know our culture.
But corporations, unfortunately, chase slave wages in other parts of the world where they can pay people $5 a day. And our calls--our American consumers that need help and assistance are calling these foreign countries. They have a language barrier, a culture barrier, and more importantly, that money is leaving our country to go into those communities versus having that money stay here in America. So that call center operator can go pay rent, go to the grocery store, buy a car, et cetera. We could create that ecosystem.
I know having been in your State just recently, that there are a lot of needs for jobs there--a lot of needs for jobs. Let's agree that we want these jobs to stay here in America. My bill is very simple. We are not going to control what corporations do, but we can create guardrails.
So what my bill does is very simple. If you outsource American jobs to a foreign country, you will pay a 25-percent fee for the value of that contract. And here is the best part, we take that 25-percent fee that we collect, and we use it to fund trade schools to upskill workers to be able to step up into a better, higher paying job.
The bill is called the HIRE Act.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, the HIRE Act, which is at the desk; further, 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, Senator, we do agree that cracking down on outsourcing and supporting American workers is an important goal and one that does deserve serious debate. I am willing to work with you in a bipartisan way to help address this issue that is hurting our country.
But for some things, this isn't the way we make laws. There is a process. A bill is introduced. It gets reviewed and considered by committee, brought to the floor, worked on with colleagues. We may have different considerations in Nevada than we do in Ohio versus Mr. President's State of Utah.
So what we want to do is work together in a bipartisan way, not rush this complex legislation through by unanimous consent. So you have my commitment to move forward. I am with you, but I am objecting today.
Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Nevada's willingness to work with me to get this bill across the finish line. You have my commitment that my team will reach out to yours. Let's get this bill going.
I think this is something that we can all agree on that we want to do. Let's put the thoughtfulness into it. I look forward to working with you to make this happen.
Mr. President, it seems these days--and this is not a great development, but it seems these days as if Democrats love to hate anything that Republicans--and particularly President Trump--suggest or propose or do, especially when it comes to ways to try to shrink the size of our government and rightsize bloated Federal programs.
They have spent a lot of time and energy catastrophizing about all the supposed dangers of the One Big Beautiful Bill--one of the most important achievements of this administration and Congress so far. The truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill is that it prevented the largest tax hike in American history and puts more money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans.
Now, you would think that alone would be a good reason to support the One Big Beautiful Bill, but there is more.
The main way they have opposed that bill is by mischaracterizing it and outright misrepresenting what is contained in it. One of the accusations made is that it will take away healthcare coverage from people who need it.
Democratic Leader Senator Schumer said of the bill:
Minority whip Senator Durbin claimed that we are going to be taking coverage away from 16 million families.
Now, if true, these accusations would be serious, but they are not true. In the more than 2 months since the One Big Beautiful Bill became law, the Congressional Budget Office has shed some light on this matter and I think done a tremendous job of truth-telling, and it is important to delve deeper into what they have said about this so the American people can know what the truth is.
CBO estimates that 10 million people will lose coverage due to the One Big Beautiful Bill. Now, again, that estimate without context seems pretty serious, but we have to ask, who are these 10 million people? Are they elderly grandmothers? Are they disabled citizens? Are they children? people who have no access to other resources? In fact, they are not. And I have no doubt that my colleagues will argue that they are in the coming months. In the coming months, ahead of the midterm elections, we will hear more about that, which is one reason why I wanted to come in and present the facts.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, 3.7 million of this 10 million--3.7 million of this 10 million--already had access through another form of federally subsidized healthcare. That is more than a third of that 10 million.
When we take this examination of the facts a step further, we see that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 5.3 million Americans out of that 10 million are individuals who choose not to work, which is one of the new requirements of the One Big Beautiful Bill.
These programs are supposed to go to the deserving and the needy, not to people who like to sit on the couch and play video games or otherwise not contribute to their own welfare. Work requirements for able-bodied adults were an important provision that I championed in this bill, and I am glad we
Those are other alternatives to work: looking for a job or volunteering or training for work. Seems like a reasonable requirement to me.
There is just no reason for taxpayers to continue to pick up the tab for able-bodied Americans who choose not to enter the labor force.
And the truth is, we need them in the workforce. We need more people in the workforce, which is one of the issues I hear people talk about as I travel my State and around the country. We need the workforce to be able to keep our economy going and to provide for those who need help.
So able-bodied adults who are choosing not to comply with these work requirements make up more than half of those 10 million who will lose coverage, but they can change that. They can simply choose to work or study or go to school or volunteer, and they would get those benefits. But if you consciously choose not to, it makes sense to me that taxpayers should not be required to subsidize that.
Next, the CBO also estimates that 2\1/2\ million of the 10 million are not actually eligible for the program to begin with. That is a quarter of that 10 million aren't even eligible.
If we want to make sure that our safety net programs work and are stable, we have to ensure the benefits are actually going to people whom Congress has made eligible for these programs in the first place.
As the Presiding Officer knows, one of the biggest issues confronting our country is that we are $37 trillion in debt, and we can't just keep printing money and spending money and bankrupting our country and threatening the welfare of future generations. We have a present-day responsibility to address that, and we know that the status quo was not sustainable.
Assuring those who do not actually qualify are not taking benefits away from those who do is only common sense. It is the least we can do.
But that is not all. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million of those who would lose coverage are actually not citizens in the first place, which is another category of ineligible individuals. So Congress has never authorized federally subsidized health coverage for noncitizens.
I don't think the American people who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump last November did so because they want to see taxpayers subsidize illegal aliens' healthcare.
In addition to the categories I just mentioned, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the remaining loss of coverage will be the result of reducing waste, fraud, and abuse within these programs-- again, something that is not particularly controversial, and I can't think of a single Texan I have talked to who was supportive of spending more of their hard-earned money for fraudulent or wasteful programs. In fact, the opposite is the case.
So at the end of the day, when we look at the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office that keeps the official scorecard for the U.S. Government, the story it tells is far different from the tale that our Democratic colleagues are trying to tell the American people.
The One Big Beautiful Bill is not taking healthcare coverage away from grandmas who are on a fixed income or single mothers. Rather, the reforms to the Medicaid Program in the One Big Beautiful Bill will ensure that the money that is spent goes to people who are eligible and who need it the most. That is the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill.
So as much as my Democratic colleagues love to hate it, at the end of the day, this single legislative achievement of President Trump's second term of office delivers necessary reforms that will make life better for the American people.
Republicans will continue to never mind the naysayers and keep telling our constituents the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to "Emissions Budget and Allowance...
Madam President, I am here, I guess, to offer a eulogy for the supposed Republican principle that government should not be used to pick winners and losers. It turns out that principle is soluble in money.
Months before the 2024 election, President Trump offered big oil and coal cronies a super deal: They give him $1 billion to take the White House, of which he got at least several hundred million, and he would pay them back bigly; he would use government to make them winners and clean energy losers. So he has bent over backwards to make Big Oil, big polluters happy.
His efforts to prop up his coal industry donors have been particularly flagrant. Coal as an energy source is a dirty and dying industry. Coal is expensive to mine, coal-fired powerplants are expensive to operate, and coal-powered electricity is expensive to buy. So besides being toxic to mine and burn, coal is a bad financial play-- at least in the real, open market that Republicans claim to want to honor.
So to pick his winners and punish his losers, Trump issued a series of Executive orders directing State and Federal actors to revive the zombie coal industry.
At the beginning of this year, several Indiana utilities had announced plans to retire polluting coal plants and shift to cleaner energy sources. Following Trump's Executive orders and who knows what other private conversations, several of these utilities canceled plans to retire the polluting coal units.
This is a pretty big deal well outside of Indiana because coal plants like these emit hundreds of thousands of tons of pollution each year, including the pollution which forms smog. Exposure to smog is serious. It causes lung disease, it causes cardiovascular problems, and it even causes reproductive issues. It has been documented to cause premature deaths. And it blows into other States. Prevailing winds take the pollution and blow it into other States. In fact, I have argued that there are smokestacks designed specifically to get the pollution out of the home State and land it on the downwind States, like Rhode Island.
Under the cross-State air pollution rule, EPA sets emissions ``budgets'' to protect people in the downwind States from dangerous, smog-forming pollution that comes out of another State and blows across the border from the upwind, coal-fired powerplants. Well, after these Indiana coal plants got their inducement to extend, EPA had to loosen its previously-set emissions budget for Indiana that protected the downwind States in order to allow more smog to spread, because that is what reopening these plants does--it allows more smog to spread.
EPA promulgated this deregulatory rulemaking without a notice and comment process, giving no opportunity to anyone downwind--vulnerable to smog pollution from Indiana--to communicate into the EPA process their concerns.
Well, back in 1996, Congress enacted the Congressional Review Act to give Congress the opportunity to vote on regulations like this. During the Biden administration, the Senate actually conducted 35 rollcall votes in relation to Republican-sponsored Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval.
Now the Trump administration is engaged in an effort, at breakneck speed, to pick winners and punish losers, and if doing so requires them to tear down protections of Americans' health, of our safety, of the environment, that is all fine with them.
Congressional Review Act resolutions like this one can help hold the administration to account. I strongly urge a vote upholding our response against this polluting regulation.
I move to proceed to Calendar No. 142, S.J. Res. 60.
If the Senator wishes to speak, I am willing to withdraw my motion to proceed, which actually is not debatable and would cut him off. But I would like to know how much time the Senator would like, and then I would like unanimous consent that we then proceed to the conclusion of Calendar No. 142--and Senator Capito as well.
Madam President, I would say that I love all of our States, and I am very proud that the State of Indiana plays such a critical role in ensuring economic resiliency and the manufacturing potential of this great Nation--something so important to all of our citizens irrespective of where you live.
I represent the most manufacturing-intensive State in the country. Energy demand is up, manufacturers are invested in expanding, small businesses are plugging in, and our Nation's energy needs are rising. Indiana is foremost a manufacturing State. About 45 percent of our instate electricity generation comes from coal. That is the reality. That means dependable, around-the-clock capacity isn't optional; it is how the Hoosier economy runs.
Yes, the expectation was that four Indiana coal-fired power units would be offline by 2024, but the facts on the ground have changed, and our responsibility here today is to keep power dependable and affordable with the megawatts we have--the megawatts we already have.
So what the EPA is doing now is a commonsense correction. That is all we are talking about--updating Indiana's summer emissions limit to match the plants that are actually in operation while keeping the underlying clean air guardrails in place. Keep those in place. Plants still have to meet current environmental standards. They still have to run controls. No one is getting a free pass here. This is merely a housekeeping correction that lines up the State limit with active generation so unrealistic, retroactive costs aren't forced on powerplants and ultimately the ratepayer.
This is common sense, pushing aside the bureaucracy and using the flexibility that we have in the law. It keeps the numbers honest, it keeps the planning stable for the hottest months of the year, and it avoids regulatory whiplash. Imagine if we are changing the rules nonstop in DC. It would create great uncertainty. So this accommodates the realities on the ground.
If this fix were overturned, Indiana would revert to older limits designed for a fleet that no longer exists, so, in practice, that means less operating room during heat waves and higher costs right when our citizens need power the most--all of our citizens.
Hoosiers are already feeling it. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Indiana's average home electricity prices are up roughly 11.5 percent year over year, and the Trump administration aims to do something about it.
Rather than working to keep generation steady and reliability predictable, my colleagues--at least some of them--on the other side of the aisle are advancing a repeal effort that would punish Indiana at the worst possible time.
Hoosiers should not pay more because government insists on regulating yesterday's grid instead of today's realities. Instead, we should focus on adding new capacity--new capacity--before prematurely retiring existing assets and cut redtape so that generation, pipelines, and transmission get built faster. That is what we should do. Let's not write off active megawatts and then act surprised when bills rise and lights flicker.
So if your priority is reliability and protecting American families from price spikes, the choice is clear: Keep what works today so we can build what we need for tomorrow.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this disapproval resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Madam President, I would like to thank the gentleman from Indiana for really framing the debate for his home State of Indiana.
I rise today in opposition as well to S.J. Res. 60, a CRA that is introduced by my colleague from Rhode Island Senator Whitehouse to overturn this technical correction to the State of Indiana's emissions. The interim technical correction is necessary due to the Supreme Court's stay of the good neighbor rule.
I urge my colleagues to vote no and return the Senate floor to our business of confirming President Trump's nominees in the face of historic obstruction.
Allow me to explain just a little bit--and both of them have explained this. In 2021, the EPA issued a Federal implementation plan covering Indiana. In doing so, they relied on the announced retirement of four electric-generating units projected to happen in 2023. In 2022, those powerplants announced they would no longer close, which EPA counted for in their good neighbor rule, so the Supreme Court subsequently stayed that rule, meaning that Indiana was forced into their now-outdated 2021 emissions budget.
The Trump administration's EPA finalized this interim rule that this CRA would repeal to adjust Indiana's emissions budget to reflect what it would have looked like in 2021 had those plants not announced retirement.
I will say that every single day, every one of our offices is deluged with people coming in, saying: We need more power in this country. If we are going to win the race in AI, if we are going to win the next race in innovation, we have to have more power.
So this is an example, I think, of the Trump EPA working to make changes that ensure legal durability and reflect practical energy and environmental needs for specific States that the Biden administration had neglected.
It is surprising to me that anybody would want to spend time on this minor interim rule specific to one State that will not have a material impact on air quality or attainment of the 2008 ozone standard, which is the purpose of the rule. However, as we have seen time and time again, they are relentless in their efforts to weaponize our environmental statutes to shut down powerplants and manufacturing that provide good-paying jobs in States like Indiana and in the rest of the Rust Belt. This straightforward action only received five comments-- five. I have got them right here. Yes, a majority of the comments that the EPA received were in support of this rule, and the two others were anonymous comments.
Where was the outrage against this rule and then when the EPA was accepting comments?
Just to frame how many comments you got, when I did my Congressional Review Act of the Obama clean powerplant, I got 4.3 million comments; with the Biden clean powerplant 2.0, 1.3 million comments; with the Biden WOTUS rule, 115,000; with the California waiver, 53,000.
This is all the people in this country who care about what we are doing right now. It is just attempting to waste floor time in the U.S. Senate, trying to reverse a technical correction in an underhanded effort to close powerplants that provide affordable electricity and jobs for American workers and help us progress in this race for superiority in the race to AI. We need more energy, not less; and the CRA is a deliberate attempt to shut down powerplants in Indiana that are not popular. They are coal-fired power plants--love it--when grid reliability experts are warning of a shortage of baseline power.
I am fully against this CRA, and I hope that my colleagues will join me in that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, as America confronts a period of darkness, still I rise, full of bright hope. Why bright hope? ``Bright Hope'' was the name of the church that my grandmother attended for 70 years in Philadelphia. But, for me, it is more than just a name. It is a call to action. It is a feeling. It is what drove me to run for the U.S. Senate and what keeps me going in my darkest of times.
So once again, I rise with bright hope and tremendous humility to deliver my maiden speech as Delaware's 58th U.S. Senator. My presence here would not have been possible without my God, my family, and the people of the great State of Delaware who have put their trust in me.
The word ``trust'' is important here because this is not a time when Americans are eager to trust their elected officials. Partisan tensions are so high right now that we can barely talk to each other, let alone work together.
So the question is this:
As much as I would like to take credit, those are not my words. They are the words of the late great Barbara Jordan, the Congresswoman from Texas, the conscience of her Congress, who, in the midst of our Nation's bicentennial in 1976, spoke about the ``collective spirit of our nation,'' about the deeply troubling reality that people did not trust their government. And she offered a path forward, saying:
We are now 50 years removed from the bicentennial, and our present is rhyming with our past--wars built on false pretense, painful economic downturns, incomplete recoveries that leave many behind, and Presidents who abuse their power. The problems persist.
So how do we, before our tricentennial in 2076, build what Barbara Jordan called our common spirit? How do we restore the belief that a more perfect union is even possible? How do we rekindle bright hope for America? These are big questions, but they are not confined to the Halls of Congress. Go into any coffee shop, a sports game, or a family home, and Americans are saying the same thing and asking the same questions. I saw it firsthand in the grocery store about 10 years ago when a dad with three kids in front of me in line put back a bunch of grapes because they were too expensive. It shook me to the core.
You see, the year before that, my husband Charles, the love of my life, played a game of basketball before his business meetings, ruptured his Achilles tendon, and blood clots went to his heart and lungs. At the age of 52, the love of my life died, and I was consumed with grief. But seeing that dad woke me up from my own pain. I would be OK.
At that moment, I decided I had nothing to lose and everything to give. Having never run for anything in my life, I decided to run for Congress. I spread a huge piece of white paper on my living room wall, and I started to write. I asked: Why me? Why now? What for?
And the answers appeared--three words that have driven me forward, three words that have given me bright hope: purpose, peace, and planet. It was clear that if we can help Americans live their purpose, provide peace, and protect our planet, I believe we will be able to rebuild the trust we have lost.
It begins with purpose. I am a big believer that a good-paying job or starting a business can help us find purpose and that the dignity of work is essential to what it means to be an American.
I have often said that if I had another middle name, it would be Lisa Blunt ``Jobs'' Rochester. For me, I got my first job at the age of 14, and I flipped burgers, worked retail. I was a CEO. I even served as Delaware's secretary of labor. As a matter of fact, in Delaware, a union leader said to me: You can't spell ``labor'' without ``L-B-R.''
I know jobs. I love jobs. And I can tell you, we need a new and different approach to jobs in this country, especially as we look to the future of work in the age of artificial intelligence. With reports that AI is poised to push unemployment rates upwards of 20 percent in the next 5 years, we need big, bold solutions now.
Fortunately for us, America has a track record of taking on historic challenges and transforming them into opportunities for success. When the Soviet Union started the space race in the 1950s, we pushed American innovation to new heights. The groundbreaking research from that era still impacts us today--GPS systems, weather satellites, the COVID-19 vaccine, even the internet.
We need to harness the innovative spirit that landed us on the Moon and apply it to our economy. We must mobilize our Nation's leading labor experts, supply chain strategists, and economic innovators and pursue the future instead of waiting for it to come to us.
From workforce development and apprenticeship opportunities to emerging technologies, our common goal must be for everyone to succeed and find purpose in a rapidly changing economy. Access to economic opportunity is a good start.
But many families derive their sense of purpose from where they live, the communities they belong to, the place they call home.
Growing up, my family lived with my grandparents--my mom's mom, my dad's mom. We lived in apartments. We lived in public housing for a short time. But I will never forget the exhilaration I felt on the day we moved into our own home, a place that was truly ours.
But for millions of Americans, that feeling is out of reach. Instead, home ownership feels impossible. And the rent in America is too doggone high. Yet, for too long, the Federal Government has been missing in action. Our Nation's zoning frameworks date back to the 1920s--100 years ago. Times have changed, and it is time we get back in the game.
That is why, a week ago, I was proud to unveil my very first policy agenda as a Senator, ``The New Way Home''--a blueprint that will touch every corner of the housing crisis. Together, we can expand housing supply, build stronger communities, make housing more attainable, unlock innovative housing models, and invest in smart tax policy. Together, we can chart a path to a new way home and help Americans find purpose, even peace, in the stability that comes with a roof over your head.
Peace--that is something we all need right now, isn't it?
I studied international relations in college, and I have lived and traveled and worked in over 30 countries. My son was even born abroad. I fundamentally believe that we need peace at a global level.
But today, I want to talk about the need for peace at a more personal level--the peace that comes with knowing our purpose and having a steady job and a place to call home and the peace that comes when we can take care of our families.
Not every family looks the same, but we all want the same things: quality healthcare, affordable childcare, and the comfort of knowing that Social Security and Medicare will be there for us too.
Last summer, I sat at a kitchen table with a mother of young children, one with disabilities. She was taking care of her aging father as well--a role that she inherited from her mother because her mother passed away from all the stress. And I will never forget the look of frustration in her eyes. She was drained physically, mentally, and emotionally from all the administrative hoops and barriers and things she had to jump through and financially from all the bills she had to pay. She was barely holding on.
How are we supposed to rebuild trust in our government, rekindle bright hope in our democracy, when families are struggling to care for their aging loved ones and their children at the same time? We have failed the sandwich generation, their children, and their parents as well.
We now have a patchwork of solutions in States, but we are not working together as a nation. We have an opportunity to provide peace of mind and create jobs by investing in childcare and healthcare, but that is only half the battle. We must also focus on those caring for aging parents by addressing the urgent shortages in home care and nursing workforces.
It is also time to revolutionize Medicare, to truly uplift Americans living in their twilight years, because we all deserve peace of mind, of knowing that we can retire with dignity.
Ultimately, the solutions are clear. By simplifying access to care and making it more affordable, we give families the tools they need to strive while strengthening our economy, and we have the power to give our families peace of mind.
But none of this will be possible without a planet. Who doesn't want clean drinking water and clean air? How is this controversial? Yet there are many communities in America where unsafe water, dirty air, and playgrounds built on brownfields are still a reality.
In 2022, I was able to work with the Ellendale community in their decades-long fight for clean drinking water. It is still one of the proudest moments of my career thus far. But for many across this country, there are Ellendales everywhere, many communities that still need champions in this Chamber, especially as we confront the threats of climate change.
Let me be clear. As the junior Senator from the lowest lying State in the Nation, from our farms and our beaches to our environmental justice communities, in Delaware, we know climate change is real. Now is not the time to pull back from our oversight of Agencies like the EPA and FEMA; now is the time to lean in. With rising insurance rates pricing people out of their homes and recordbreaking disaster seasons draining State and local budgets, the health and wealth of our Nation depends on our collective action to preserve and protect our environment.
Purpose, peace, planet--this is how we can earn the trust that has been lost, how we can rekindle bright hope in our democracy, because when people have a good job, a roof over their head, the ability to care for their family, and a healthy planet to call home, they will know they have a government that works for them.
It is on all of us, the people that serve in this Chamber, to meet this moment. And if we are successful, 50 years from now, as we celebrate our tricentennial, Americans will not need to read a speech from 2025 and say these are the challenges of our time, too. They will, instead, be able to freely write the next chapter of the American story.
Mr. President, I will end where I began--with bright hope. I often said: Bright hope shines brightest in the darkness. Right now, a lot of people are asking me how I still have bright hope in the moment that we are in.
Well, let me tell you, I have bright hope because God mended my broken heart after the death of my husband and blessed me with the opportunity to serve my State and my country. I have bright hope because I stand here as a descendent of the enslaved men and women who built this place. I have bright hope because I prayed in the Gallery on January 6, and I am here, alive, standing firm for democracy and love. I have bright hope because in the words of the renowned poet Langston Hughes:
Mr. President, it is by way of real honor to bring the interns on their shadow day to track my participation in hearings and speeches and floor votes and conversation with other Senators because it is really hard for our interns to get a full vision of what we do as Senators if they are just in the office helping to answer the mail-- because a good share of what they do is writing responses to all the questions that Oregonians write about.
I will never forget the time I spent with Senator Hatfield when I was an intern and had a chance to essentially be his floor monitor 49 years ago. At that time, there was no television on the floor, and there was no fax machine. Of course, there was no internet. There was no cell phone. So each Senator had somebody monitoring the debate, and my assignment was monitoring the debate on the Tax Reform Act of 1976.
There were 125 votes on that. And I sat up in the balcony up here, in the staff section, with many other staff members. The bells would ring, and we would run down to where the reporters hang out outside the double doors now here. I and other staff members would hang out, waiting for our Senators to come out of the elevator, and brief them about the amendment that was being considered. Because there was no television on the floor, folks back in the office had no idea what was being debated and what folks back home thought about the issue.
So I do appreciate the opportunity to help our interns get a fuller vision of the work we do here in the Senate.
Mr. President, my reason for coming to the floor now is to weigh in on Senator Rand Paul's proposed budget.
Now, if we could turn the clock back to the beginning of July, Senate Republicans passed President Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
Many of us consider it a big, ugly betrayal because its core message was that families lose and billionaires win. That was not President Trump's message during his campaign. During his campaign, he said he was going to be fighting for families. Then he gets sworn in just down this hallway in the Rotunda. Who does he have standing behind him? Champions for families? healthcare? for education? for housing? for investment in infrastructure? No. Billionaires.
That revealed what he was really up to, and that entire bill hurt families.
Every single person who gave speeches back home that said ``I am all about being fiscally responsible''--what could possibly be more irresponsible than cutting nutrition for children and cutting healthcare for 15 million Americans in order to make the richest Americans even richer? It is like the worst possible reason for a deficit or a debt.
Families lose; billionaires win.
Now Senator Paul has introduced a budget resolution that compounds that. He says that over the next 10 years, we should cut an additional $22 trillion out of the programs that serve Americans.
Now, if he had come to the floor and said ``We just passed a bill that runs up $30 trillion in debt to fund tax breaks for billionaires, and we are going to take away those tax breaks for billionaires in order to not run up $30 trillion,'' I would be right with him because that would be wise. But cutting fundamental programs for families and our national security?
Now, any responsible budget plan is going to tell you when its cuts are going to happen. So where does Senator Paul, my good friend from Kentucky--where does he say those spending cuts will happen? Where will that $22 trillion come from that he is eliminating over the next 10 years? Well, he doesn't answer the question. He says: I am going to create a new category in the budget called ``New Efficiencies, Consolidations, and Other Savings.'' Not one damn detail. How convenient that is.
I am just going to magically cut $22 trillion out of the spending over the next 10 years and not say a word about the damage it is going to do.
This is kind of a replay of what we saw in the reconciliation debate when our Republican colleagues used magic math and budget gimmicks and smoke and mirrors to slash programs for families and explode the debt.
Don't we owe it to our constituents, don't we owe it to Americans to be honest about what is being proposed? So I will tell you where those cuts are going to come from, something of that size. Well, they are going to come from Medicare. They are going to come from Medicaid. They are going to come from child nutrition. They are going to come from border security. They are going to come from law enforcement. They are going to come from national defense. They are going to come from veterans' care. They are going to come from environmental protection and investments in infrastructure.
Now, if you spread those cuts evenly over the discretionary budget lines over those 10 years, it cuts 38 percent of what we spend--38 percent. I am pretty sure some of my colleagues will say: Well, whatever you do, don't cut national defense and certainly don't cut support for our veterans.
So then what are we talking about? We are talking about a 48-percent cut in everything else.
OK. So voting for this Rand Paul budget, you are voting for essentially a 50-percent cut in Medicare, a 50-percent cut in Medicaid, a 50-percent cut in cancer research, a 50-percent cut on top of the cuts already made in child nutrition, and a 50-percent cut on investments in infrastructure. That is what you are voting for, and that is really beyond damaging to our Nation.
You want to cut Medicare in half? Well, then, put that in the line, explain what it is, and then vote for it. That would show some courage. If you really want Medicare cut in half, tell the American people that. Have the courage of your convictions. Don't hide it behind this funny line called ``New Efficiencies'' or something of that nature.
Well, there are obviously all these things you can find in the budget that need to be cut, and there have been some examples given. I am sure you can find some scientific research that most Americans would look at, even with full information, and they would say: Oh, yeah, we don't need to research that.
But, you know, sometimes the insights in science come from the most unexpected places. For example, there has been some commentary about silly-sounding Federal grants like studying Gila monster venom. Why would you study that? Well, then you find out that what was learned there helped create the drug Ozempic. Well, that is pretty big medical insight that has huge applications in terms of a variety of diseases but also in terms of addiction and in terms of weight loss.
You might say: Why would you study bird songs? Well, it turns out that the study of bird songs led to advances in hearing aid technology, allows people to distinguish sounds they want to hear from background noise so they can have a conversation in a crowded room.
I am just saying that I am sure there are individual items that could be found that sound absurd, but you know what--those are little tiny pennies. It is not cutting Medicare by 50 percent; it is not cutting Medicaid by 50 percent.
If you want to cut $22 trillion, cut it out of the tax breaks for billionaires. That is the real crime done by the families lose; billionaires win, big, ugly betrayal of a bill. Maybe that is the budget we should be voting on.
Setting Forth the Congressional Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2026 and Setting Forth the Appropriate Budgetary Levels for Fiscal Years 2027 Through 2035: Motion to Proceed
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a budget that balances over 5 years. My budget, the Six Penny Plan, the Six Penny Plan budget, cuts 6 percent of all spending to rebalance in just 5 years.
I am able to introduce this budget because neither Republicans nor Democrats introduced a budget this year. So we are running a $7 trillion government without a budget this year. So I think it is important that we have at least some debate and vote on a budget.
Most Republicans say they are for a balanced budget amendment. Most of them have voted for it at some point in time. Yet most of the budgets and most of the spending that go through here seem to be adding to the debt, not canceling it out.
Since I was elected, Congress has passed a budget less than half of the time. For almost five decades, Congress has passed all required annual appropriations bills only four times. So four times in 50 years has Congress actually gone through and individually passed the appropriations bills. As a consequence, the looting of the American taxpayer continues.
By promising yet another so-called clean continuing resolution, Republicans are doubling down on embracing what they once considered to be reckless spending levels.
Today, I propose a clear path back towards fiscal responsibility. I urge the Senate to adopt my Six Penny Plan that will balance the Federal budget.
This year, the United States will spend $6.7 trillion while bringing in about $4.7 trillion. That is $2 trillion more being spent than what is coming in. A deficit of this magnitude should be concerning enough even on its own merits. But to add insult to injury, Congress passed a budget just 5 months ago which set a spending cap of almost $6 trillion for the year. So 5 months ago, Congress did actually pass a budget-- halfway through the year we were already in--to spend $6 trillion this year. Turns out, though, we have spent $6.6 trillion. So we couldn't even get it right 6 months ago when the vast majority of Republicans voted for a budget that said they were going to spend $6 trillion in a year that was half over, and now they have spent $6.6 trillion.
Next year, it is going to be even worse. The budget that was passed in the spring said we would spend $6.3 trillion next year, but it turns out it is going to be $7.2 trillion next year.
What is going on here? We keep passing budgets. We keep saying we are going to get better. We keep saying the bills we are passing are making the deficit less. Yet the deficit keeps getting worse.
So even when Congress passes a budget, they seem to immediately renege on the deal they just passed. The numbers in the budget end up not being of consequence because the spending goes on unabated.
This week, Congress will likely vote on locking in spending levels. The spending levels will be the same spending levels that Republicans criticized as the Biden spending levels last December. So when there was a Democrat in the White House, when President Biden was there, all the Republicans were unified in saying ``We despise the Biden spending levels. We are against spending in deficit and deficit spending. We are against all of that''--until the Republicans got in charge, and 3 months later, they voted for the exact same levels.
The continuing resolution from March of this year is the exact same levels as the Biden spending levels. What are we going to vote for in a couple of days here? The Biden spending levels again. What does that lead to? Two trillion dollars in deficit.
So every time we vote for a continuing resolution, for continuing the spending at the same level, we are voting for a level of spending that is $2 trillion short of what comes in.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, enacting a yearlong CR--continuing resolution--will result in blowing through next year's spending target by nearly $1 trillion.
So the target that was passed last spring was 6.3, but the spending is actually going to be 7.2. How can you be off a trillion dollars? How can you with a straight face go home and say: Oh, well, we were just off a trillion.
And this year, we don't have a budget because--I don't know--maybe our math was so bad last year, we decided not to do it. But the deficit next year is going to be $2.1 trillion.
It is getting worse, not better. Next year's deficit will be $100 billion more than the deficit this year.
It was not that long ago that Republicans were castigating the Biden administration and saying they were reckless. Now we are doing the same thing.
It was not that long ago that Republicans argued to the American people that Biden's overspending inevitably was causing inflation; it was to blame for the rise in the cost of goods. Anybody remember Bidenomics? Anybody remember Biden inflation? It was accurate because it was based on debt, and debt causes inflation. When the Federal Reserves buys the debt and monetizes the debt, that recreates inflation.
But the same thing is happening. Nothing has changed. A new party in charge, and the same spending and the same debt.
It wasn't that long ago that conservatives were staunchly opposed to raising the debt ceiling, and only the unholy alliance between Democrats and Big Government Republicans would get the spending bills through, would get the debt ceiling through.
But now it has evaporated. Virtually the entire Republican Party now supports this debt. On an inauspicious day, March 15 of this year, the Republican continuing resolution was signed into law. On the Ides of March, Republicans took ownership of the Biden spending levels. The Biden spending levels are now Republican spending levels.
To make matters worse, this summer, Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. We have never ever voted to raise the debt ceiling that much. It used to be the conservative line that we held the line and said: We are not doing that or, if we are going to raise the debt ceiling, we are going to do it in a small amount for a short period of time in order that we would discuss this again and again and again until we get it right.
But Republicans now own the spending problem. Republicans now own the debt expansion. Republicans must rediscover our principles of fiscal responsibility. Our country's future depends on it.
Our national debt now stands at $37 trillion and grows with each passing second. If you have ever seen the usdebtclock.org, the website, the numbers are spinning literally out of control. To put this debt in perspective, every American household is on the hook for over $238,000 to cover Uncle Sam's reckless spending spree.
To put it bluntly, the state of our Nation's fiscal health is bleak. The government now spends over a trillion dollars just on interest. This is more than we spend on our national defense.
We should heed this fact as a warning. As Hoover Institution Historian Niall Ferguson points out, ``Any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense will not stay great for very long.''
We must act now if America is to, once again, be a rising nation, but we are currently on a path toward decline. If we continue down this unsustainable path, American families will be forced to deal with even higher inflation, confiscatory tax rates, rising interest, and a weak economy. It will be harder to find a job and provide for your family because the deals made in the Halls of Congress always stick the taxpayers with the bill. You either are going to have to pay for it through taxes--the debt will always be paid either through taxes or through inflation and high prices at the grocery store.
Government spending and fiscal malfeasance have not only weakened every American family's purchasing power, but our national economy is weaker as well. At $37 trillion, the Federal debt is nearly twice what it was 10 years ago. The Federal debt is now larger than the entire economy. Our economy is about $29 trillion; the debt is at $37 trillion or, to put it in more tangible terms, the U.S. debt is large enough to fill 34 NFL stadiums with $100 bills.
Government spending is so out of control that even if every bank account in the United States were emptied to pay down our debt, it would only cover just about half of what Washington owes. So if everybody's bank account was liquidated in the whole country, it only would pay for half of the debt.
This is an amazing problem. This is an extraordinary problem. Something must be done.
America is in a historic state of financial disarray. Right after the end of World War II, the world's most expensive war, our accumulated debt was 18 percent larger than the entire economy. We are now 20 percent. So we have now exceeded even the debt of World War II.
America's leading financial minds have already sounded the alarm. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that Federal spending is on an unsustainable path, and it is past time for Congress to correct it.
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank, warned that the Federal Government must reduce its deficits before lenders finally say enough and stop loaning the government money.
Just this week, the Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office suggested that the U.S. economy is weakening. The people who rank our credit have downgraded the U.S. credit rating.
As interest payments on the national debt crowd out the rest of the government's budget, entitlement cuts, inflation, and eventually default on the debt are what lie ahead for the American economy.
Unfortunately, a debt crisis will not just stop with our economy. A threat to our financial security is also a threat to our national security. We must remember that the surest path to peace is leaving no doubt in your adversary's mind about your ability to respond with aggression.
With increasingly dubious financial health and a larger share of resources devoted to interest payments, the United States is sending a message of weakness.
Yet Congress has reportedly chosen to ignore the deficit, raise the debt ceiling, and continue to fund foreign wars. Instead of budgeting, Congress decided to kick the difficult decisions down the road. Unfortunately, continuing spending at the Biden administration levels is a path that is not sustainable and will further our fiscal decay with $2 trillion annual deficits as far as the eye can see.
Since entering the Senate, I have introduced several proposals to lead us back to a balanced Federal budget. In 2017, I introduced a budget that would freeze spending. In 2017, if you simply froze spending--you didn't cut one penny from anything, but you froze spending for 5 years--we would have balanced in 5 years just by freezing spending.
I introduced a budget a few years later, and it would have taken one penny--1 percent across the board
How can we possibly survive a 6-percent cut?
I will tell you how I present it to people. I have people come in. They always have something that seems to be of value for people. I will give you an example. The folks that come in and they are looking for Alzheimer's research. I have family members with Alzheimer's. I have a great deal of sympathy. I look at them and tell them where we are, and I tell them we are a rich country; we ought to have some government money researching Alzheimer's. And I say: You know, we are $2 trillion short this year. If we cut everybody by 6 percent, we will be able to balance the budget. So the Alzheimer's research, we spend $100 million on. If next year we spend $94 million and we did that for everyone, we could balance the budget.
Interestingly, people who are emotionally involved with this--moms, dads, grandparents with Alzheimer's--look at me and say: You know what? For the good of the country, we can do that.
Yet if you talk to people around here, they go: Oh, you hate old people. I don't hate old people. I aspire to be an old person.
The thing is, you have to have a little bit of a haircut for every program up here. If you just cut one program, you will never get through it. You have to cut everything all across the board, not because you don't like the recipients, not because you don't want to help people, but because you don't want to destroy our country.
For just six pennies on the dollar, we can reverse this dismal trajectory. In just 5 years, we can restore trust in the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and steer the U.S. Government away from this fiscal cliff. History will remember who had the courage to stand up to make these hard choices. History will remember those who chose not to leave this enormous bill to their children.
Vote yes on this plan. Vote yes on restoring fiscal sanity. Vote yes on securing the future for our country.
Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 159, S. Con. Res. 22.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions which are at the desk: S. Res. 391, S. Res. 392, S. Res. 393, S. Res. 394, and S. Res. 395.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolutions were agreed to.
The preambles were agreed to.
(The resolutions, with their preambles, are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Congressional Record the adopted U.S. Senate Professional Liability Insurance Regulations.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, earlier this month, the State of Hawaii officially designated September 2025 as Hawaiian History Month. Designated on September 2, 2025, the 187th anniversary of the birthday of Hawaii's last ruling monarch Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaiian History Month aims to recognize, reflect, and share Hawaii's true history. I had the honor of recognizing the accomplishments of two pivotal Native Hawaiian leaders, Edith Kanakaole and Mary Kawena Pukui. Both women were chosen to be included in the U.S. Mint's American Woman Quarters Program and Native American $1 Coin Program, respectively. Having celebrated these pioneering women in their respective fields of Native Hawaiian education and culture, I come to the floor to celebrate Hawaiian History Month by highlighting three more Native Hawaiian leaders that shaped Hawaiian history. These biographies are necessarily brief, and I encourage my colleagues and all Americans to take the time to learn more about these revered leaders.
Hawaii's last reigning monarch Lydia Liliu Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamakaeha--Liliuokalani--was born in Honolulu on September 2, 1838. Liliuokalani was an avid scholar and a talented musician, eventually composing more than 150 songs throughout her lifetime including the beloved ``Aloha Oe.'' When her brother, King David Kalakaua, was appointed to the throne in 1874, Liliu--then granted the title Liliuokalani--was named his heir.
Upon King Kalakaua's death in 1891, Queen Liliuokalani assumed the throne and sought to amend the Bayonet Constitution--a document King Kalakaua was forced to sign under threat of violence from a group of predominantly American and British businessmen, which significantly reduced the monarchy's power and disenfranchised most Native Hawaiians. Fearing the Queen's desire to restore power to the monarchy and the Hawaiian people, those same businessmen--supported by U.S. marines-- orchestrated an illegal overthrow of the Queen in 1893 and formed a provisional government.
All the while calling for peace among her people, Liliuokalani traveled to Washington, DC, to seek assistance in undoing the overthrow from President Grover Cleveland. Despite her efforts, President William McKinley signed into law a joint resolution of Congress annexing Hawaii as part of the United States. Through the adversity she faced, Queen Liliuokalani continued to petition Congress and advocate for the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy. Her commitment to the people of Hawaii and her dignified resistance serve as examples of courage and resilience for all Native Hawaiians.
Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole was born into royal lineage on March 26, 1871. After his parents' death, his uncle King Kalakaua took him in as hanai son and gave him the title Prince. An avid scholar during his youth, Prince Kuhio was also a notable athlete in football, rowing, track, cycling, horsemanship, and marksmanship. He later studied abroad in California and England. During his travels, he was hosted as a guest of the Japanese Government. Following the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, Prince Kuhio joined an unsuccessful attempt to restore the monarchy.
Years later, Prince Kuhio entered public service, representing Hawaii in the House of Representatives from 1902 until his death in 1922. Despite his nonvoting status, Prince Kuhio played a significant role in shaping Hawaii's future and was a tireless advocate for the
Most notably, Prince Kuhio championed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, HHCA, landmark legislation that serves as the first expression of the United States trust relationship with the Native Hawaiian community. Enacted in 1921, the HHCA set aside approximately 200,000 acres of land to create a permanent homeland for Native Hawaiians, who had suffered from diseases, the overthrow of their kingdom, and the loss of their lands. Through the HHCA, Prince Kuhio sought to return Native Hawaiians to their land and promote self-sufficiency through homesteading on these leased, trust lands.
Prince Kuhio's persistence and effectiveness in advocating for the Native Hawaiian community continues to impact the Native Hawaiian community, especially through the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. His legacy lives on in the many Native Hawaiian families who have benefited--and will continue to benefit--from his vision and leadership.
Daniel Kahikina Akaka was born in Honolulu, HI, on September 11, 1924. Senator Akaka graduated from the Kamehameha School for Boys in 1942. Upon completing high school at the height of World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1943 to 1945 and the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1947, with deployments to Saipan and Tinian. Following his military service, Mr. Akaka earned both a bachelor's and master's of education from the University of Hawaii. He went on to serve as a teacher, vice-principal, principal, and chief program planner within the Department of Education. He later became the director of the Hawaii Office of Economic Opportunity and served as a special assistant for Human Resources, as well as director of the Office of Progressive Neighborhoods Program.
Mr. Akaka was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, where he served until May 16, 1990. He was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1990 to fill the vacancy caused by the passing of Senator Masayuki ``Spark'' Matsunaga. After winning a special election later that year, Senator Akaka became the first and only Native Hawaiian to serve in the U.S. Senate, where he represented Hawaii until his retirement. During his tenure, Senator Akaka served on the Committee on Armed Services, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Committee on Indian Affairs, and Committee on Ethics.
Throughout his distinguished career, Senator Akaka was a tireless advocate for Native Hawaiians and worked to ensure that the U.S. Government fulfilled its trust responsibilities. In 1993, he helped pass the Apology Resolution, which acknowledged the U.S. Government's role in the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and issued a formal apology to Native Hawaiians. The resolution also committed the United States to a process of reconciliation. Senator Akaka also championed the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, which sought to establish a pathway for Federal recognition of Native Hawaiians and their right to self-governance, based on their unique political and historical relationship between the United States. Although the bill did not pass, it laid critical groundwork for ongoing discussions about Federal recognition and justice for Native Hawaiians.
Senator Akaka's unwavering commitment to the people of Hawaii and the Native Hawaiian community serve as an inspiration. His legacy reminds us of the importance of humility, service, and steadfast dedication to the communities we are called to represent.
Every day, but particularly during this month, we honor and thank Queen Liliuokalani, Prince Kuhio, and Senator Akaka for their extraordinary vision, leadership, and commitment to the Native Hawaiian community.
Mr. President, I rise, on behalf of all Floridians, to recognize the meaningful visit of Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Bartholomew of the Orthodox Church to our Nation's Capital. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been on the forefront of religious freedom for his entire ministry, and now as the longest serving Archbishop of Constantinople in the two millennia history of Christianity, he has worked to bring people together for the purpose of advancing greater cooperation and mutual understanding. He has been honored with the Congressional Gold Medal and, soon, the Templeton Prize. Florida is home to many Orthodox churches, Orthodox Christians, and communities who share deep gratitude for the leadership of His All-Holiness Bartholomew and his mission to serve others. I join with Floridians and the U.S. Senate in welcoming His All-Holiness Bartholomew to the United States and our Nation's Capital.
Mr. President, I rise today to welcome to our Nation's capital His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Spiritual Head of the second-largest Christian Church in the world. His All-Holiness serves as the current Archbishop of Constantinople and leads over 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
His All-Holiness is visiting Washington, DC, from September 15 through September 17 and will meet with President Trump at the White House. This visit coincides with his receipt of the Templeton Prize, a prestigious award previously bestowed upon renowned figures such as Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
For decades, His All-Holiness has been a steadfast advocate for religious freedom and unity among Christians worldwide. He has consistently called for the protection of religious minorities and has championed the rights of Orthodox Christians to worship freely. His efforts to promote dialogue between the Orthodox Church and other Christian denominations have significantly strengthened interreligious understanding.
In my home State of Kansas, we are honored to have a strong and active Greek Orthodox community, with more than 4,300 Orthodox Christians and two parishes: St. Dionysios in Overland Park and Holy Trinity in Wichita. These churches embody the deep spiritual connection that Kansans share with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Orthodox Christians around the world.
I now ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing this historic visit and in honoring His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for his unwavering commitment to faith and the common good.
Mr. President, I welcome His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Eastern Orthodox Church to the United States of America. Since 1991, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has served as the spiritual leader for 300 million Orthodox Christians across the world. Throughout his diakonia, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has dedicated himself to fostering inter-religious dialogue, advancing initiatives to promote understanding and tolerance amongst Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle East.
In addition to his commitment to religious tolerance and freedom, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been a champion for ecological justice and the protection of the environment. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew's dedication to the spiritual responsibility of environmentalism and the necessity of caring for God's creation led to him being referred to as the ``Green Patriarch.'' As a result of his efforts, the John Templeton Foundation has awarded Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew with the 2025 Templeton
It is an honor to have him visit Washington, DC, and our government officials during his trip to receive the Templeton Prize.
Mr. President, today I would like to recognize His All- Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew's visit to Washington, DC. His All-Holiness is visiting our Nation's Capital in conjunction with his acceptance of the prestigious Templeton Prize, an award which has been received by faith leaders including Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Greek Orthodox community in Ohio and across the country take great pride in this recognition of their faith leader's global influence.
Mr. President, I have three 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 the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at 9 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 16, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to grant floor privileges to my interns for their shadow days on the following dates: Flora Xia for October 1, 2025; Alexander Aguilar for October 7, 2025; Samuel Armour for October 9, 2025; Nidhi Nair for October 21; Maxwell Robben for the 23rd; Audrey Schlotter for the 28th; Malina Yuen for the 30th of October; Andrew Faris for November 4; Jeremy Zwick for November 6; Mrinmayee Kulkarni for November 19; and Inez Nieves for December 3, 2025.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, September 17, and that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand in recess under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Durbin.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, last week, the world witnessed an unprovoked violation of NATO airspace by Russia. Nearly 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace, some traveling up to 300 miles in the country. For nearly 6 hours, NATO aircraft sought out and destroyed these Russian intruders.
Then this weekend, fighter jets intercepted another Russian drone that entered NATO airspace--in this case, Romania.
The EU's chief diplomat Kaja Kallas promptly said of the recent incident: ``The violation of Romanian airspace by Russian drones is another unacceptable breach of an EU member's state sovereignty. This continued reckless escalation threatens regional security.''
I couldn't agree more. With such brazen testing of NATO defenses, one would expect our leader, the President of the United States, to make a similar condemnation and reaffirm the alliance's formidable defensive capabilities.
But the response from President Trump has been silence or bizarre musings saying maybe it was just a mistake by Russia. After months of Russian President Putin ignoring Trump's deadlines for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, he is once again letting Putin embarrass him on a global stage.
Can anyone here imagine Ronald Reagan being played over and over again by the Russians like this? How about John McCain? How about the Republican Party before Trump, which has sat quietly month after month afraid to speak the truth about Vladimir Putin?
Is there anyone in this Chamber who would argue with a straight face that a Democratic President repeatedly kowtowing to Russian aggression wouldn't be met with howls of criticism?
So let me say this once again to President Trump: I don't fault you for trying to negotiate an end to this horrific war in Ukraine, but it has been clear for some time to everyone that Mr. Putin is not serious about your overtures.
In fact, he has repeatedly responded with embarrassingly clear replies. What did he do when we told him we wanted peace in Ukraine? He increased bombing. He violated NATO airspace. He teamed up with other global despots in acts of sabotage and mayhem all across Europe.
I urge President Trump to finally see Putin for the person he is and what he is doing to America's reputation and the President's own personal legacy. And we in Congress should finally move this week to pass the Russian sanctions bill, which I understand has 85 cosponsors. It is long overdue. Let's do it.
Mr. President, there are life experiences which you carry for the rest of your life because they are so meaningful and change the course of your life.
I will never forget what it was like to be the father of our new baby when she had a serious medical condition and I had no health insurance. I never felt more helpless than I did at that moment. It is a terrible feeling I wouldn't wish on anybody. That experience comes to mind when I think about healthcare. I thought about it when we passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and again when we expanded the ACA premier tax credit in 2021 and 2022, making insurance more affordable for tens of millions of Americans. We set a record.
There were more Americans covered by health insurance as a result of those actions than ever in our history. Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues are preparing to subject millions of Americans to the stress-filled sleepless nights as part of heading up a family when you have no health insurance.
At the end of this year, the ACA's enhanced premium tax credits will expire. If they are not renewed, insurance premiums will spike across the country for the people least likely to be able to pay, and millions and millions of Americans will lose their healthcare.
These tax credits subsidize the price of healthcare for lower and middle-income families, ensuring that premiums for marketplace health plans never exceed 8.5 percent of the families' income. This cap on premiums makes healthcare affordable for millions of Americans. Some only have to pay as little as $10 a month for coverage; others pay almost nothing.
Since the creation of these enhanced tax credits, the number of Americans enrolled in ACA plans has almost doubled, from 11.4 million in 2020 to 24.3 million in 2024. These credits are especially important for people living in small towns, as they often have few options and higher insurance premiums. The expiration of these tax credits as part of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill will devastate families of limited means and threaten the existence of hospitals all across the country, including in my State of Illinois. The people who run these hospitals in small towns, which are absolutely critical for healthcare, for the local economy, are bracing for the Medicaid cuts that are coming, again as part of the Republican Big Beautiful Bill.
If Republicans allow these tax credits to expire, insurance premiums are going to skyrocket by more than 75 percent for most marketplace plans. In Illinois, a family of four making $126,000 can see their annual premiums increase by $7,500. A couple making $82,000 can see more than a $17,000 increase. These price increases can be too much to bear for many families who are already dealing with some of the impacts of the tariff policies.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people will become uninsured because of the ACA credit expiration. That is 4 million people who won't know if they will be able to afford a hospital bill if their child has an injury; 4 million people who might have to forego a doctor's visit because they can't afford it. Millions of people might be forced to put off a dentist visit because they lost their healthcare.
The expiration of these health insurance subsidies will be devastating for families across America in red States and blue States alike, and it will deal yet another blow to the American public who were promised by this President that he will bring down their cost of living.
I had two of my constituents contact me about this issue, Kristin from Rochester, IL, just outside Springfield said:
She writes--
And Zachary from Highland, IL, in Madison County near St. Louis writes:
Real people, real life, real problems, brought on by the passage of the big beautiful budget bill of Donald Trump.
When these credits for health insurance hit, we are going to hear about it all over the United States, and it is just a matter of days before they are announced. Now it is time to do something meaningful.
Let us come together on a bipartisan basis and say that this was a serious mistake. Families of limited and modest means need a helping hand for health insurance. Let's give them the peace of mind to know that the most expensive medical bills will be covered.
