Legislative Session
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of H.J. Res. 104, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, Monday of this week, I invited eight of my colleagues to be briefed on an issue that we just found out about from Deputy Director Dan Bongino. What we learned is very disturbing and outrageous political conduct by the Biden FBI.
As most of you know, this year, Senator Johnson and I made records public relating to our investigation of Arctic Frost. Arctic Frost was the FBI investigation that became Jack Smith's elector case against then-citizen Trump. We have shown that partisan FBI agents and the Department of Justice prosecutors created and advanced that matter, and they did so in violation of FBI rules. We have shown that the FBI expanded the investigation to almost 100 Republican groups and individuals, even including Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. And we have learned that Arctic Frost included the targeting of at least eight Republican Senators--the same ones that I invited to that briefing.
In 2023, the Biden FBI sought and obtained cell phone tolling data about my colleagues' personal phones. We have been told the date range for that data was January 4 through January 7, 2021. This is obviously an outrage, obviously an unconstitutional breach. Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel need to hold accountable those that are involved in that serious breach and wrongdoing, and I am confident that those two officials will do just that.
Now, based on the evidence to date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by Federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than the Nixon Watergate scandal.
I have also been informed that Arctic Frost documents, like the one targeting Republicans, have been hidden in prohibited access files.
Now, let me tell you what I think a prohibited access file is. It might be legitimate for national security. It might be legitimate for intellectual property. It may be legitimate for the personal privacy of American citizens. But it should never be used for what it was used for: to hide things from the public that would embarrass bureaucrats and government officials and maybe even political officials.
As I have made public through my oversight, when files are in a prohibited access file, they receive what the FBI calls a false negative search result on their database. So that means that if you ask for emails or some records of the FBI, and they type it in, it doesn't show up, so that it doesn't exist. Clearly, this impedes responses to congressional oversight and court cases. It allows for misconduct.
Because of whistleblowers informing me of this serious problem, the FBI is now reviewing these file types, and only because of that review, the document about targeting eight Republican Senators was located.
Lastly, I started the Arctic Frost investigation in July 2022. Now, it has taken years to get records and to advance the investigation. Sometimes my oversight work is done quietly, outside of the public eye, but what the public is now seeing is the importance of congressional oversight and the importance of whistleblowers exposing government misconduct. My whistleblowers deserve great thanks for what they have helped to expose.
We were all shocked and outraged by the unjustified fishing expedition Deputy Director Bongino informed us about. The FBI told us in our briefing that not a single one of my colleagues on the list was under investigation, so the FBI did its dirty digging without legitimate predication.
We expect Patel and Bongino to shut this abuse down and do it immediately, and I want my colleagues and Iowans to know that I won't give up until I have followed all the facts and accountability is delivered for the American people.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. President, it has now been a full week--a whole week--of Donald Trump's government shutdown, and the country is feeling the sting of Republican intransigence. Over 700,000 Federal employees have been furloughed. Services are being disrupted. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that businesses nationwide with government contracts are in peril.
The Republican-manufactured disaster did not need to happen. The government is shut down for one reason and one reason only: Donald Trump and the Republicans would rather kick 15 million people off health insurance, would rather raise premiums by thousands and thousands of dollars a year on tens of millions of Americans, rather than sit down and work with Democrats on fixing healthcare.
That is the reason. They would rather kick tens of millions off healthcare than sit down with us and work with us in addressing this so important issue--so important to the American people.
Now, Americans are frustrated. The cost of living continues to go up. Donald Trump's tariffs have sent grocery prices spiking. It is even more expensive now to buy a cup of coffee, the first thing many people drink in the morning. They are going to see Trump's tariffs hurting them.
People are worried about paying more on their electricity bill. Forty-one States have seen increased prices. Why? Because in their mania of hating clean energy, they cut out so much of wind and solar, solar being the cheapest form of new energy to go on the grid.
Americans are pessimistic that any of this is going to get any better, and they blame President Trump and the Republicans. A CBS poll from a few days ago found that 75 percent of Americans don't think the administration--the Trump administration--is focusing enough on lowering costs. Fixing healthcare would be at the top of the list for lowering costs for people.
Now, Democrats want to reopen the government right away. We want to have a serious negotiation to fix healthcare so that people can see their costs go down. And we can do both: fix healthcare and reopen the government. This is not an either-or thing, which Republicans are making it, and the American people don't like it.
Democrats have been consistent. Our position remains the same. We have been saying it for months: Republicans are shutting down the government because they refuse to address the crisis in American healthcare.
One sentence sums it all up: Republicans are shutting down the government because they refuse to fix and address the crisis in American healthcare.
Now, our Republican colleagues, being against public sentiment, are flailing. On the one hand, it is starting to sink in for Republicans that their position of not fixing healthcare is untenable in the eyes of the American people.
As President Lincoln said, ``Public sentiment is everything.''
Well, public sentiment is building on fixing healthcare. It is high already. It is getting higher every day, and it is not going to recede. It is getting even stronger.
Republicans refuse to acknowledge that public sentiment is not on the side of Trump and Johnson. And Johnson has become the No. 1 roadblock to ending a shutdown.
He sent everyone home for 3 weeks now. If you care about fixing the crisis, if you care about reopening the government, how the hell do you keep your House not in session for 3 weeks?
And now their buddy Johnson himself is feeling the heat. At first, he and his caucus were telling Republicans in the House: Don't talk about healthcare. They knew the American people were against what they thought. Johnson's leadership team explicitly told Members in a memo not to mention healthcare when talking about the shutdown.
Of course, that didn't work because the public knows, overwhelmingly, that we need lower healthcare premiums and that is what Democrats are fighting for and that is what is preventing the Republicans from coming to the table. They don't want to fix it. That is why they are causing the shutdown.
So feeling the heat, Speaker Johnson held a press conference yesterday and said perhaps one of the most ridiculous things I have heard from Republicans in a long time. He said: ``Let me look right under the camera,'' said Johnson, ``and [I will] tell you very clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about healthcare.''
As he did it, he couldn't look right into the camera. Deep in his subconscious, he knew he wasn't telling the truth. What he said was nonsense. He couldn't even look in the camera when he said this because he knows the American people don't buy what he is saying.
Republicans are the ones who cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid, who tried to repeal the ACA. Three times we asked them to vote to sustain it after the new year. Three times they voted it down.
So that is first.
Second, Donald Trump is making all these terrible threats led by the evil Mr. Vought. Trump is saying, he is going to fire people en masse, saying that Federal workers don't even deserve backpay, even though he signed the law guaranteeing backpay in 2019.
Again, they are threatening. They are bludgeoning. They are using the American people, government workers, as pawns. But these kinds of tactics from the administration are backfiring. Americans don't like being used as pawns. Even if they are not one subject to being held hostage, they don't like watching it happen.
The American people know clearly that it is Republicans who are in charge. Republicans have the White House. They control the House and the Senate. So when people are laid off, when people are not paid, when people are not getting backpay, they know it is the Republicans trying to do it, even though they are using it to try and bully us.
It is not Democrats who are threatening to fire people or threatening to withhold backpay. It is the Republican side, Donald Trump, saying all this, and the American people know it and will blame them for these mass firings and chaos.
The data is very clear that trying to use the public as political pawns will backfire for Republicans, and plenty of Republicans in Congress know this. That is why, behind closed doors, some Republicans are praying the administration tones down its threats because these mean-spirited tactics by Russell Vought aren't going to win in the court of public opinion or the hearts and minds of Americans.
Look, Republicans are tripping over themselves because they are divided on the core issue: fixing people's healthcare.
When someone on the hard right--the hard, hard right--Marjorie Taylor Greene, openly says Republican leaders are wrong and that we need to fix the premiums, that is how you know how deeply Republicans are split.
Let me read what she said. This is Marjorie Taylor Greene, not Chuck Schumer:
Healthcare that is--
More Republicans should listen to her because on this issue, she is right on the money. Meanwhile, Democrats' position hasn't changed. We urge our Republican colleagues to join us in serious negotiation to reopen the government and extend ACA premiums. It is the right thing to do for the American people, and by doing it, we will be able to quickly reopen the government before any more serious damage is done by the Republicans to our country.
Mr. President, finally, on nominations, today, the Senate will vote to advance the nomination of Jennifer Mascott of Maryland to be a circuit court judge for the Third Circuit. I will oppose Mascott's nomination because she does not seem to have any other qualification for the job other than this: She is a career loyalist and sycophant to Donald Trump.
She has no connections to the Third Circuit. She has never lived in Delaware. She is not even licensed to practice law in Delaware. In fact, her only link to the State is a beachside summer home.
If you look at Mascott's resume, the only time she has ever really practiced law is the 2 years she worked in Trump's Department of Justice. That is it, and you are putting her on the circuit court, one of the most important courts in the country?
Well, the only reason Donald Trump is putting Mascott on the bench is because he thinks she will do whatever he wants from the bench. She will be a total, total Trump sycophant--not look at the law, not look at the facts, just look at Donald Trump and see which way he is nodding and follow it.
This nominee is another troubling example of the ``Trumpification'' of the Federal bench, where loyalists replace jurists and obeisance to Trump matters more than adherence to the law or precedent or even the Constitution.
It is just like what we saw yesterday in the Judiciary Committee.
Pam Bondi exposed herself as woefully unqualified to be Attorney General but a supremely obeisant Trump deputy is what she is instead. She spent her time dodging questions, hurling insults, and, most importantly for Donald Trump, defending the President's interests more than anything else, even if the law or the facts or the truth pointed strongly in the other direction.
This troubling pattern of obeisance above all in our judiciary system is dangerous and troubling. So I will oppose today's nominee and urge my colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. President, we are now on day eight of the government shutdown, which is truly unfortunate and unnecessary and totally at the behest of leftwing Democrat special interest groups that have pressured the Democratic leadership into a position that makes absolutely no sense to any thinking person.
I want you to think about where we are. Think about this scenario: You have a bill passed by the House of Representatives, over here in the Senate--24 pages long, clean, short term, nonpartisan, no policy riders, no Republican priorities--a clean resolution to fund the government. And there are 55 Senators--55 out of 100 Senators--who are voting for the clean, short-term funding resolution that would open up the government.
The President of the United States has said that, as soon as it is passed in the Senate, he will sign it into law. So what you have is complete unified support for a short-term funding resolution to keep the government open and make sure that all the government employees who are currently being impacted and their families can get back to work and get paid again.
And so it is always interesting when the Democrat leader comes down here and describes this fantasy world where the bill that they proposed, which would only get 47 votes here in the U.S. Senate--not even 50, not 51, not a majority, and certainly not the 60 that are necessary to pass consequential legislation in the Senate--it wouldn't get a single vote in the House of Representatives.
So they have got a bill, a proposal, that they say keeps the government open, that can't pass the Senate, wouldn't pass the House, and wouldn't be signed into law by the President.
You tell me--you tell me--who is responsible for the government shutdown.
Republicans passed a bill in the House. It is over here in the Senate, 24 pages long, sitting right at the desk. We can pick it up and pass it today and send it to the President, who will sign it into law, and the government opens up again.
Or--or--you can take this proposal the Democrats have, which has $1.5 trillion in new spending, allows for free healthcare coverage for noncitizens, completely obliterates the $50 billion rural hospital fund that we put in place to support rural hospitals in this country that are struggling, and they think that would pass. It doesn't pass here, doesn't pass the House, and wouldn't get signed into law by the President.
So just a logical person, think about this. Think about the juxtaposition of those two positions, and you tell me who is shutting the government down. We have a straightforward, simple proposition: a 24-page funding resolution to keep the government open, with no partisan policy riders, no gimmicks, short term, which funds the government through November 21 to give us an opportunity to do the government funding the way we should do it, through the appropriations process, where we have the committees meeting and Republicans and Democrats contributing, and then bring it to the floor and have an open amendment process here. That is the way the government should normally be funded.
And so what this does is it provides a short-term extension in order for all that to happen. That is all that we are talking about.
They have other issues they want to bring up, which I have said before we are happy to discuss. And, yes, there are some things that I think there is interest on both sides in trying to address when it comes to healthcare in this country. But you can't take the Federal Government hostage and expect to have a reasonable conversation on those issues. The government needs to be funded. Federal employees need to go back to work. Federal Agencies and Departments need to be open and providing the services that the American people expect. It is that simple.
And that is really what this is all about--again, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. It is whether or not they want to support a 24-page funding resolution that keeps the government open or continue to vote for $1.5 trillion in new spending, free healthcare for noncitizens, and completely wiping out a $50 billion rural hospital fund that is designed to support rural hospitals in this country-- something that would get 47 votes here in the Senate and not a majority in the House of Representatives, and wouldn't get a single vote, honestly, among Republicans in the House of Representatives, and would not be signed into law by the President--versus something, again, passed by the House, here at the Senate.
All we need is five more votes. There are a majority of U.S. Senators today who support the short-term funding resolution, 55 out of 100. We need 5 Democrats.
You tell me who shut the government down.
And I think that the public is becoming wise to this debate and this argument and these fallacious arguments that are being made by the Democrats. In fact, there is a new Harvard-Harris poll that came out Monday that found that 70 percent of voters oppose a government shutdown--70 percent.
And of interest to my Democratic colleagues, 65 percent of voters, including 63 percent of Independents, think the Democrats should end the shutdown by accepting a continuing resolution like the clean funding resolution I just described that is in front of us.
So what are my Democrat colleagues doing? Well, after their resounding defeat in the Presidential election last November, you would think they might be paying attention to the strong majority of voters who would like the shutdown to end as well. You would think they might notice that 63 percent of Independents--voters I am sure Democrats would like to capture in the next election--want Democrats to accept a resolution like the clean CR in front of us. But you would be wrong, because Democrats are still deeply in thrall to the far left, and they are taking their marching orders for this shutdown from far-left interest groups. And I mean that literally.
A recent Axios article reported:
Now, that followed an Axios report that found:
And so the liberal groups say ``jump,'' and Democrat leaders say, ``How high?''
Forget the robust majority of Independents that want the Democrats to end this shutdown.
You know, back in the day--and by ``back in the day'' I mean as recently as 6 months ago--the Democrat leader was a pretty robust opponent of government shutdowns. Yes, he was an opponent--so much so that even though he didn't like the continuing resolution we passed in the spring, he voted for it anyway because, in his words, ``a government shutdown would be far worse.''
But then progressive groups got big-time mad, and now the Democrat leader is leading the charge to keep the government shut down-- indefinitely, apparently--and all those Federal workers and hard- working Americans he was so worried about before seem to have slipped his mind.
In fact, Democrats have barely reacted to the fact that Federal workers are going to start missing pay.
When we realized we were going to need a continuing resolution to allow us more time to complete the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills, Republicans wanted to do everything we could to ensure that there was no government shutdown, which is why we put forward a clean continuing resolution with no Republican policies or partisan policy riders.
We knew a shutdown would be costly and disruptive for hard-working Americans, and we were determined to ensure the Democrats had no reason--no reason--to oppose our CR. But Democrats weren't deterred by the fact that there was nothing for them to object to in our bill, and they decided to oppose it anyway.
Now, Democrats will get another chance this week to vote to keep the government open. And I hope the Democrat leader and Democrat Senators can summon up some of that concern they used to have about shutdowns and vote to reopen the government.
At the very least, if the Democrat leader is too worried about his polling to vote to reopen himself, he could allow Democrat Senators who do care about the functioning of our government to join Republicans to reopen.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Bureau of Land Management Relating to "Miles City Field Office Record Of...
Mr. President, following up with what the majority leader just said, I have here the Washington Post from this morning, and they have an editorial. And what they have in bold print says:
That is what the Democrats are doing.
We just heard the majority leader talk about what we are trying to do, what we are facing, how Chuck Schumer is being held hostage by the liberal groups that set up the war room with him. And what we see is a dangerous game being played and threats to the American people.
This goes on to say:
This is the Washington Post, this morning.
The minority leader is leading the Democratic Party into a box canyon. You can't get out, and it is a dangerous game. And it is not just dangerous for them; it is dangerous for the American people. That is where the danger lies.
So I come to the floor because the American people are facing an immediate crisis, and they know why. Anybody watching knows why. It is because Senate Democrats have now voted five times against a clean, bipartisan continuing resolution that would open the government today.
This is day 8 of the Schumer shutdown--day 8. The country is held hostage by the Democrats, and they are playing a dangerous game. This isn't a game, but that is what the Democrats have turned it into.
So the question before us is simple: What have the Democrats accomplished during this dangerous game that they are playing? On October 10, on Friday, in 2 days, Border Patrol agents and other Federal workers will receive only half a paycheck. That is the result of the Democrats' dangerous game. It will be their last paycheck until the Schumer shutdown ends and Democrats vote to reopen the government. They could do it today.
The House of Representatives passed a clean continuing resolution at current funding levels. Democrats voted 13 times under Joe Biden for a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.
A continuing resolution funds our military, pays for law enforcement, continues food assistance for moms and young children, and keeps small business loans flowing.
Thirteen times they voted for this. Now they reject it because they want to please their radical, extreme base--the base that has put up a war room that Chuck Schumer has bowed down to. That is what we just heard from the majority leader--that they are the ones calling the shots--and that is why we find ourselves in this situation.
Democrats are demanding radical, new policies before they allow the government to reopen. I have seen their demand letter--$1.5 trillion in new expenses, as the majority leader just outlined here on the floor. Their ransom note is filled with liberal policies. I look at it--it is stitched together like Frankenstein's monster: $1.5 trillion in reckless new spending; free healthcare for noncitizens; free Medicaid for working-age, able-bodied adults who refuse to work. There are over 5 million of these individuals in the United States, and yet they refuse to work. And the Democrats want them all to get free Medicaid.
Fifty billion dollars the Democrats want to cut from vulnerable rural hospitals, hospitals in rural communities. Do the Democrats not care at all about those communities even though there are rural communities in their States?
That is what we are dealing with here. That is why the Washington Post calls what the Democrats are doing--as I pick it up again, Mr. President--``a dangerous game.'' They are holding the American people hostage to extract far-left wing concessions. They are telling our servicemembers their paychecks are negotiable. They are telling small businesses their dreams are collateral damage in a partisan fight. They are telling mothers and young children that WIC benefits are leverage for the far-left demands of healthcare for noncitizens.
Republicans remain committed to ensuring families receive the support they deserve. The Democrats have chosen repeatedly to keep the government closed for political purposes only.
American families are feeling the pain nationwide.
In Georgia, more than 100,000 Federal employees are wondering where they will find the money to pay their bills and buy their groceries.
In Arizona, 344,000 children enrolled in SNAP face uncertainty. The benefits are running out.
Time is of the essence. Shutdown Democrats are telling these families their problems aren't urgent. Well, they are urgent to those families, and the Democrats don't seem to care.
In New York, almost half a million individuals who rely on WIC will lose access at the end of this week. It is already Wednesday. We are talking about pregnant women. We are talking about new mothers. We are talking about young children. They depend on this program.
In Illinois, every week the shutdown continues, it costs the State's economy over $500 million. That is jobs lost, paychecks missed, opportunities evaporated.
In Michigan, small businesses face delays of $92 million in loans because the Small Business Administration is frozen due to the shutdown. These businesses are the backbones of our communities and our economy. They should be able to make payroll, keep their doors open-- not as the Democrats continue to play what has been termed ``a dangerous game.''
In Nevada, for each month the shutdown continues, consumer spending from lost wages will fall by over $200 million. It is money that won't flow into local businesses, won't pay rent, won't put food on the table.
In New Jersey, telehealth programs are on hold. I am a doctor. Without these programs, patients could be put at greater risk.
In New Hampshire, workers maintaining our nuclear attack submarines-- they face furloughs and unpaid work.
Look, this goes beyond missing a paycheck; this is about national security. The Schumer shutdown--the dangerous game that he is playing-- puts America's safety at risk.
At airports nationwide, we are already seeing the direct effects of the shutdown. Flights are being delayed. Security lines are growing longer.
Even the head of the Teamsters union, Sean O'Brien, says that Democrats' political theater is something he can see right through.
He said:
That is the leader of the Teamsters union, Mr. President.
He goes on to say:
That is where we are today. He is right. But regrettably, Senate Democrats are treating the American people as bargaining chips, as hostages, and that is why they sent the list of demands as ransom.
Democrats have now voted five times against opening the government, five times against supporting our military, five times against paying law enforcement officers, five times against food assistance for women and infants and children, five times against the small business loans that help Main Street. Five times, Democrats have looked at the mounting damage of the Schumer shutdown and shrugged their shoulders. That is the situation we have today.
The American people overwhelmingly say Democrats should pass a clean continuing resolution and end the shutdown immediately.
There is a clean, bipartisan resolution before the Senate ready for a vote right now. It reopens the government today. It would protect the paychecks and the programs the American people depend upon. It would end the uncertainty that is gripping millions of American families.
The question is not whether the Democrats can end the shutdown; it is, Will they have the integrity to do it or will they continue to play this dangerous game with our Nation and with our families?
Mr. President, on a separate matter, before Senate Democrats shut down the Federal Government, they shut down the very Senate floor on which I stand, and they did it by freezing the confirmation process.
For months, their blockade created a growing backlog of qualified nominees, so many of whom have come out of committees with bipartisan votes; nominees for positions that, during prior administrations, sailed through the Senate by unanimous consent or by voice vote--but not with this Democrat minority, oh, no.
So in September, Senate Republicans broke the blockade, and now the blockade is being cleared. At the peak of the Democrat obstruction, more than 150 well-qualified nominees, approved by Senate committees, were waiting for a vote on the Senate floor. Yesterday, we confirmed 107 of those nominees, and we did it in a group. This is one of the largest confirmations in the history of the United States. Now there are only 26 nominees on the Executive Calendar.
Our committees are hard at work to approve more nominees, and we are going to confirm them in short order.
As of this morning, President Trump has had 298 nominees confirmed in his second term. By comparison, at this point, Joe Biden had confirmed only 201 at this point in his first and only term. President Trump had confirmed only 183 nominees at the same time in his first term. So the Senate's constitutional duty of advice and consent is now back.
President Trump now has his team confirmed and ready to be sworn in. From Assistant Secretaries, to Ambassadors, to U.S. attorneys, the Federal Government is in a better position today to keep our Nation safe and secure and prosperous.
Senate Republicans are going to continue to work to get America back on track no matter what obstacles the Democrats continue to throw in our path.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority whip.
Mr. President, I came to the floor a few minutes after Senator Thune, the Republican leader, spoke, and I missed part of his statement, but I think I heard most of it. I listened carefully to the statement by the Senator from Wyoming.
Let me say at the outset that I consider them both to be friends. We disagree on many things politically, but over the years, I have come to work with both of them and look forward to doing that again someday.
I was disappointed in both of their statements because of what was not said. How can you talk about the government shutdown without ever mentioning healthcare costs to American families? How can you do that? I mean, it is a situation where we understand, I hope, that the Democrats are not in this position for any reason other than to stop the dramatic increase in healthcare premiums that American families will face unless we do something and do it now.
In State after State, the notices are going out that the cost of health insurance for working families in America is going to go up dramatically--in some cases, more than 100 percent. That is going to be hurtful to many. They will have to look for different health insurance plans that they can afford, which means more money out of pocket, or they are going to drop their health insurance coverage altogether.
How can the Republican leader stand before us and even refuse to acknowledge that that is the issue that drives this government shutdown?
The Republicans are insisting on their approach to the budget because they don't want to see American families protected when it comes to these
October 27 is the magic date, if you will, for the announcement in my State of Illinois. I know what is going to happen. I am going to hear from hundreds, if not thousands, of families across my State that increasing the cost for families is creating a hardship they never anticipated.
We believe on the Democratic side that this is the time to act, now, to move together to stop these increases from taking place because these increases were part of the big beautiful Republican budget--the Trump budget, voted for by every Republican Senator and no Democratic Senators; the Trump budget, which, of course, he signed into law. That is what is leading to these increases, because the Affordable Care Act insurance plans are no longer going to enjoy a subsidy, a tax credit, to help families pay the premiums, and that is why the cost is going to go up so dramatically.
We can change it. We can do it, but we have to do it quickly. We ought to move on it this week.
I wish the House of Representatives were in session. They haven't shown up for 2 weeks. Speaker Johnson happens to believe that being AWOL is the right thing for his Republican Members. I don't think it is the right thing for America.
Democrats and Republicans should be in this Capitol negotiating, sitting at a table together, and the first item on the agenda has to be healthcare costs for American families.
All this talk about a dangerous game and radical-left policies and management--it is not a radical-left idea that a working family ought to have affordable health insurance; it is basic in America.
As flawed as our health system is in this country and as great as it is in many respects, if people cannot afford to have coverage for their family, then hardship follows.
That is the real reason.
They say: Well, what about the cost? Remember, this is an administration that wants to give $20 billion to Argentina. Twenty billion dollars this President is planning to give. I am worried more about 20 million Americans who will lose their health insurance if we don't do something and do it quickly.
The American people get it. This issue has gone from the beltway to the backyards of America. People know that this is coming, and they are worried about it, and they should be. They want us to do something, and they want it done now.
We are making the fight on this continuing resolution because it is timely, and we need bipartisan support to pass it. So let's do something positive in a bipartisan way, and dealing with the cost of health insurance is my approach that I would suggest.
Mr. President, let me take this to another issue that is near and dear to my heart, and that is what is happening in my home State of Illinois. We all know the popular quote:
Or, in President Trump's case, if a person shows you who they are a million times over, believe them.
President Trump has shown us his unlawful and inhumane priorities over and over again, city after city. He continues to deploy militarized immigration agents and National Guard troops to more American cities purely for political theater. He wants America to talk about the Texas National Guard in Illinois, not about healthcare costs facing American families.
But it is not going to work.
Unfortunately, the men and women of the Texas National Guard who are in the State of Illinois, as of yesterday, have been sent off on a political assignment, political theater. Instead of working to find a bipartisan way to reopen the government, lower the cost of healthcare, President Trump is focused on scoring points against his perceived enemies.
Just yesterday, 200 or 300 members of the Texas National Guard joined Federal law enforcement officers in Chicago, along with President Trump's loyal FBI Director Kash Patel. The truth is that the arrival of the Texas National Guard and the FBI Director will not make Chicago safer; it will only escalate the unnecessary and dangerous situation this President himself has created.
I still can't get the image out of my mind from 2 weeks ago, when the ICE officials, in full combat gear, carrying long rifles, were marching down Michigan Avenue. It was a hateful effort that was used to provoke people into strong emotional feelings. This administration's unlawful use of military resources to police American cities makes our country less safe, and it is a mistake that will be remembered in the history books.
I pray that the court system will respond accordingly as they did in the case of Oregon and Illinois when the hearing tomorrow is brought before the Federal judge. Deploying the Texas National Guard without the consent of Illinois elected officials is, in my estimation, unnecessary and unlawful.
The Posse Comitatus Act expressly forbids the use of our Nation's military for civilian law enforcement unless expressly authorized by statute or the Constitution.
National Guard personnel do not deserve to be used by the President's political pawns. Let me say and make it clear: As much as I regret the decision by the Texas Governor to send his National Guard troops into Illinois and as much as I want them to leave immediately, I do not make those statements at the expense of the individuals who are in the Guard and volunteered to serve their State and Nation. The same thing is true with the federalized Illinois National Guard. They are doing what they were ordered to do according to the military standards.
But the bottom line is, we all know they are not fighting crime. If the Trump administration truly wants to help Chicago--and I don't believe they do--and Illinois, it won't defy our elected leaders; it will work with us. It will restore millions of dollars the Trump administration suspended in crime prevention and public safety grants. Instead, this administration has chosen to use America's military to create chaos and sow fear in our cities.
We all agree on the importance of reducing crime and making our communities safer. The President claims his aggressive immigration raids and threats to deploy troops are to help get violent criminals off the streets.
I have come to the floor 2 straight days, and this is the third, to condemn what happened last week in the city of Chicago on Tuesday. A South Shore apartment building was raided in the middle of the night. Doors were crashed down, families were rousted out of their bedrooms, many of them brought out to the street and questioned as to whether they were in America legally. Some were American citizens. We don't know how many. We certainly don't know if there were any criminals found as a result of that. No report.
But we do know this: What happened on that street on that night was not the way America does business and shouldn't be. It was to terrorize these families, with no warrant for their arrest and no suspicion that they committed crimes, simply because they looked Hispanic and maybe looked like foreigners--I am not sure. This action was taken against them.
These attacks are part of Stephen Miller's personal agenda for mass deportation at any cost. They pulled FBI, DEA, and ATF agents from their assignments, important assignments, to stop narcotics and other things to carry out the President's immigration agenda. They stopped working on fighting crimes like terrorism, gun violence, human trafficking, and drug smuggling to land a helicopter near a building in Chicago and to bring 30 families out into the street in the middle of the night.
I have fought for humane reforms to our immigration system and evidence-based ways to reduce crimes in our cities. If the President is serious about fixing our immigration system or lowering crime in our communities, I will join in on that effort. But sending in militarized Federal immigration agents and National Guard troops to our communities is not the way to do it. These actions have accomplished what I believe is the President's true intention: sowing fear in the hearts of our communities, especially our immigrant communities, and consolidating the President's power in Washington.
The actions taken by this administration undermine the very fabric of America, a nation that was founded on the belief that all people should be free from tyranny. I remember a time when every Member of Congress would have risen in outrage if an administration attempted to use the military unlawfully against cities and communities and States that they represent. Unfortunately, this time has passed. There is nothing but silence from the other side of the aisle. Congressional Republicans are content to stand aside in abject servility to this President as he tramples the Constitution.
But Americans should not stay silent. People across Illinois are peacefully making their voices heard and letting this administration know the attacks on our city will not go unchallenged.
As a Senator from Illinois, I will do everything in my power to hold this administration accountable for their unlawful actions. They may think this is a diversion of attention from the basic issue of controlling healthcare costs and helping working American families afford their health insurance. I think it is much more. It is a threat to our Republic and our Constitution, and I hope that others will join me in condemning this activity.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for 5 minutes, Senator Heinrich be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes, and Senator Daines be permitted to speak for 5 minutes prior to the scheduled votes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given permission to use a prop.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, it is day 8 of the government shutdown, but it is day 19 of the House being on vacation.
How is it possible that the party in charge of the government is sitting at home while the government is shut down?
Well, let's take a look. This is the House schedule. These yellow blocks are workdays. It is already a pretty nice schedule. Most people, if they are fortunate, get either 7 days or 10 days of vacation. Some people get less; some people get more. But nobody gets this amount of time off. We call that a district work period or a home work period. And that is true, we need to be home to interact with our constituents. But that is what August is for.
Here is what happened. They left early on the 25th, specifically, to avoid a vote on the Epstein files. Then they had this week off, this week off, this week off, this week off, this day off; come back, one, two, three, long weekend; one, two, three, four, long weekend; one, two, three, four, long weekend; another break; another break; another break. And now they are taking another break.
Get back to work.
Get back to work.
We are facing a healthcare crisis, and we didn't pull this out of some Democratic strategist's lab. The Presiding Officer knows this in his home State. Prices are about to spike disproportionately among people who voted for Donald Trump, disproportionately in rural communities, disproportionately among farmers. And they are not going to spike a little. This is not like a normally 4-percent increase is now 7 percent.
For 22 million Americans, the price of healthcare is about to go up 114 percent--114 percent. So you can find some people who are only paying like a 40-percent or 50-percent increase. You still can't afford that. Most people can't afford a 40-percent or 50-percent increase in the cost of almost anything, but healthcare is a big chunk of the cost of living.
So here we are as Democrats saying: Help us help you, Republicans. You created this mess that is causing your signature legislative achievement to be a drag on your electoral chances. And if we were a little bit more cynical, we would just let you stew in it.
But we want those 22 million people to have relief. So we are simply saying, we can open the government tomorrow morning if Donald John Trump realizes he is hurting his own people.
Mr. President, I want to follow up on what the Democrat whip was talking about in the city of Chicago in the State of Illinois.
We all swore an oath to the Constitution. I am honestly scared. I used to do this sort of schtick on Twitter. I would say the thing Donald Trump said on Twitter is this, and then I would say he is trying to take your healthcare away. My point was that is a distraction from the main issue, which is that he was going to try to take your healthcare away.
That is not true anymore. He is going through with these authoritarian actions. The last time he posted that one of his political enemies should be jailed, it was James Comey, and then James Comey was indicted. This morning, he pled not guilty. His trial is in January.
So, this morning, Donald John Trump, with the assistance of the Texas Governor, who is endlessly servile to him, is mobilizing, over the objection of the Illinois Governor, 200 or 300 troops to go into Chicago to do nobody knows really what other than to terrorize people.
They are belaying off a helicopter into an apartment building in urban Chicago?
Give me a break.
And lest you think this is theater, this morning, Donald Trump is in one of his moods and he says: Governor Pritzker should go to jail. Are we to assume he is kidding this time? Are you sure he is kidding this time? ``Oh, he is just trolling.'' Last time, 3 weeks ago, he clearly wasn't trolling. The Attorney General went through with what he asked.
So I am asking my Republican colleagues who swore an oath to the Constitution and love this country just like I do to say publicly or privately--I don't care--enough is enough.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, there is a national monument in New Mexico that is extremely important to me and our community. It is called the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. It has rocky spires that jut into the sky and preside over bustling communities in southern New Mexico.
It is also home to nearly 250 archaeological sites, including some of the earliest Native American heritage sites in North America, and places like Shelter Cave, Conkling Cavern, and Aden Lava Flow Wilderness.
This January, the Bureau of Land Management issued its most recent monument management plan for Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks. It sets out in this plan how the land will be used over the coming decades, and it came after years--years--of engagement with public land users. From comment periods to public meetings to feedback sessions, input from public land users is the heart of how we administer our public lands across the country. In the end, land use plans like this one take time and are the result of hundreds, even thousands, of people's work--work that deserves respect.
And that is why I am here. Beginning this week, the Senate is voting on three resolutions of disapproval on resource management plans prepared by the Bureau of Land Management.
Now, resource management plans are a pretty simple idea. Every decade or two, public land managers look at a region as a whole and figure out how to balance all the competing different uses of public land across that landscape. They figure out where recreation should be prioritized and where prime game habitats should be protected. They figure out what lands should be available for uses like grazing or oil and gas production. They identify important cultural sites and historic resources that deserve our protection. They also determine which land use requirements can be eased for things like pipelines or transmission lines. They do all of this with the input of local communities, recreation businesses, public land users, Tribal governments, energy developers, and more.
But I am here now because Republicans want to rescind these land use plans through the Congressional Review Act. By doing that, they brush away all of the local voices and community input that went into making these plans.
Imagine telling Tribal communities that their opinion no longer matters on their ancestral lands, telling hunters that their opinion no longer matters on the lands they use to fill their families' freezers, telling hikers that their opinion no longer matters on the routes that they know like the back of their hand, telling local communities that the way their land is used is no longer of importance--telling all of us that our voices do not matter when it comes to the very lands that are our American birthright.
And here is the thing: They are doing it across the board--on every resource management plan since 1996--without even admitting it. So let me walk you through what they are hoping that you won't notice.
First, it is important to understand that resource management plans affect nearly every use on public land, from bird watching to coal mining. These plans get a whole rewrite every few decades, but, in between, smaller amendments are made to address specific places and specific uses that need to be updated. These amendments have been the normal way for new administrations to change plans that they have disagreed with, until today.
Now, instead of using the usual amendment process, which involves all of those same stakeholders, Congress is voting to outright overturn and repeal these plans. Until today, Congress had never ever used a congressional resolution of disapproval to change or overturn a land use plan. That is because no administration has ever considered these land use plans to be ``rules'' under Federal statute. Let me say that again. No administration--none--since the Congressional Review Act was passed in 1996 has ever treated land use plans as rules.
So here is what that means legally: No land use plan has been submitted to Congress, a legal requirement for rules. It has never happened. Because the Congressional Review Act prohibits rules from going into effect until 60 days after they are submitted to Congress-- and no administration has ever submitted one--then every land use plan after 1996 never legally went into effect. And if they never went into effect, then all of the leases and permits and rights-of-way that flow from those plans may not be legally valid. That means that every grazing permit, every energy right-of-way, recreation permit, outfitter guide permit, timber sale, and even oil and gas leases issued under a plan finalized after 1996 could be litigated--every single one.
That is bad and not just because it is unprecedented but because the actual impacts on real Americans could be devastating.
For the country, it means potential chaos and uncertainty about what areas are protected on public lands. One of the resolutions under consideration this week is for a land use plan in Alaska. A vote for that resolution would mean that the Ambler industrial corridor will be built. This is a 211-mile, private access road that would destroy some of Alaska's wildest habitat and waterways to produce minerals--all for a foreign company.
As someone from American Hunters and Anglers said, in using slightly more colorful language that I will leave out, this move obliterates ``years of public input from hunters and anglers,'' and uses taxpayer dollars to prop up--I will say it again--a foreign-owned mining company.
The headline describing this road in ``Outdoor Life'' magazine reads:
Now, I have been fortunate enough to hunt caribou in Alaska, and I have to say I doubt that my grandchildren will ever have that opportunity.
What is even more concerning to me is the impact the Ambler industrial corridor will have on subsistence hunting and fishing. This private industrial mining corridor will carve its way, in addition, through Gates of the Arctic National Park. You heard me right. We are sacrificing one of our most spectacular national parks to enrich a foreign mining company.
I have to think that Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave.
The damage will be irreparable to the landscape, to our American birthright in these public lands, and to one of the largest caribou herds in Alaska and the communities that depend on that herd.
Imagine sweeping away years and years of input and conversations not just about the public lands on one landscape but about public lands across this country, all because you--what?--found a quicker, easier way, one where you didn't have to listen to anyone? one where some Senators in Washington, DC, get to override and replace the opinions of every single American who contributed to those plans? That is nuts.
Even if you don't care about how land is used by hunters or hikers or Tribes or cattle growers or energy producers--if all you care about is how our lands are used to produce fossil fuels--then look no further than my State. Look at the Bureau of Land Management leases that have been issued in the Permian Basin. Know that, when you vote for these resolutions, when you turn these resource management plans into so- called rules, you call into question those leases--all of them. Know that what you are choosing may be easier, but it is wrong, and it is destabilizing.
I would urge my colleagues to vote no on all of these resolutions of disapproval.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Montana.
Mr. President, in the final days of President Biden's administration, he quickly and quietly issued a rule that had massive impacts on Montana's economy. This happened after the election. Biden's BLM issued an amendment to the Miles City Resource Management Plan that prohibited all new coal development in Eastern Montana. It shuts it down. This means that the BLM prohibited all new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. By the way, that is the home of the largest coal reserves in the United States.
They did this despite strong opposition from local counties in Montana and local elected officials--in fact, the entire Montana congressional delegation and the Governor of Montana himself, Greg Gianforte. In fact, Governor Gianforte specifically requested that the BLM Director withdraw that proposed amendment during the BLM's official ``Governor's consistency review,'' and Biden's BLM ignored him. When the Governor submitted an official appeal to Biden's BLM Director, our Governor was rebuffed.
This lack of respect for Montana's local and statewide elected officials cannot be ignored and will not be ignored, and it is going to get changed and reversed today with the passage of this CRA.
Let's be clear as to what this resource management plan amendment is and what we are doing today with this Congressional Review Act.
The RMPA is an attack on Montana jobs. It is an attack on Montana communities. It is an attack on Montana's energy production. It is an attack on Montana's economy. What today's resolution does is it rolls back officially Biden's war on Montana coal, and it does not affect the underlying resource management plan.
What we are doing today is we are disapproving Biden's ill-conceived amendment and nothing else. This CRA does not prohibit the BLM from issuing a new amendment. This CRA simply prohibits a new administration from issuing a substantially similar coal amendment. In this case, that means they can't permanently prohibit any new coal development.
Today, you may hear from the other side of the aisle that the sky is falling. That is absolutely not true. What we are doing today is righting a wrong--something the Biden administration slipped in after the election.
We are grateful that we were paying attention, and we are going to right this wrong--a midnight Biden rule that was issued without the support from the State of Montana. Talk about Federal bureaucratic overreach.
Taking this action this day, today, will lead to more Montana jobs, more Montana energy, and, by the way, more Montana tax revenue to support K-through-12 education and stronger communities in eastern Montana.
I urge my colleagues to, again, like we did last night with the procedural vote, support, with this final vote, Montana jobs, Montana communities, and to vote yes on its passage.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will read
The joint resolution was ordered to a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:
The joint resolution (H.J. Res. 104) was passed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026: Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the pending business.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Pending:
Mr. President, we know that under Joe Biden and Chris Wray's leadership, the FBI, it turns out, was truly rotten to the core. In many ways, they oversaw the worst political corruption of the justice system in our Nation's history, and now we have proof.
They raided Mar-a-Lago. They indicted President Trump on baseless charges and weaponized America's top law enforcement Agency against conservatives, against parents, and against people of faith.
On Monday, we found out that this abuse of power had reached the Halls of the Congress. Thanks to internal FBI documents provided by Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino to Chairman Grassley, we now know that the Biden FBI tracked the private communications of eight U.S. Senators, including me.
What we have in common is this: We are all Republicans, we all support President Trump, and we all had questions about the 2020 election.
According to the documents that were given, the FBI tracked who we were calling on our phones, who was calling us, where we were physically located when the calls were made or received, and how long each call lasted. This is an abuse of authority. It is despicable. And we know that their abuses were far greater and more numerous than those abuses toward us.
Earlier this year, Chairman Grassley released whistleblower disclosures showing that the Biden FBI obtained the government-issued cell phones of both President Trump and former Vice President Pence.
Last month, we learned that the Agency launched a political investigation into nearly 100 Republican and conservative groups, including the Republican National Committee, the Republican Attorneys General Association, and Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA.
We are only learning about this weaponization of government against conservatives because the Trump administration is committed to total transparency for the American people. The work that President Trump, his administration, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director Patel, and Deputy Director Bongino are doing is so appreciated--not only by us but by the American people.
It is time for the weaponization of government to stop. It is time to make certain that these individuals who did this, who were part of the CR-15 unit that worked with Jack Smith, who were working on Arctic Frost--it is time for them to be fired from their positions. And I appreciate that this work is taking place each and every day.
Mr. President, yesterday, my colleagues and I who are on the Judiciary Committee had the pleasure of hearing from Attorney General Bondi, who has done so much to restore accountability and transparency at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Instead of waging political investigations, the Department, under her leadership, is focused on enforcing the rule of law, and that includes enforcing the rule of law in Memphis, TN.
As we speak, the Justice Department and FBI are among the 13 Federal Agencies that are on the ground working with local and State officials to support the Memphis Police Department and to lock up violent criminals.
In just over a week of operations, President Trump's Memphis Safe Task Force has delivered tremendous results. As of Monday, authorities have made 321 arrests. This includes 82 who were on ICE warrants, 41 on gun charges, 18 for sex offenses, and 1 for homicide. This is on top of the 503 gang members who were arrested by the FBI in their work from July 15 to September 15.
Having the additional Agencies there is support that has truly been needed in Memphis to sustain this work that is rooting out gangs and criminals.
Last year, the city of Memphis saw the highest crime rate in the country. In some parts of the city, shootings, robberies, and murders were a daily occurrence.
Memphians have long demanded action to address the city's crime crisis, but the Memphis Police Department is short 500 officers, with just over 20 people in their current recruitment class. With Federal law enforcement helping to keep the peace, Memphis police are now empowered to track down repeat violent criminals, including gang members who have terrorized city residents for too long.
At the same time as the Memphis operation, the Trump administration has surged Federal resources to other crime-ridden cities to restore law and order. In Portland and Chicago, ICE agents have had to overcome obstruction efforts by Democrat elected officials. They have had to push back on Democrat elected officials to enforce the rule of law and to detain criminal illegal aliens.
To preserve the hard-fought wins of the Memphis Safe Task Force and Federal law enforcement across the country, we need to make certain that these violent criminals are behind bars. Yet, in too many cases, soft-on-crime prosecutors and judges have allowed violent criminals back on the streets without bail to continue their criminal activity.
Last year, in Memphis, an 18-year-old who was released without bond after stealing multiple vehicles went on to murder a man in an attempted robbery. Just days earlier, a man released without bail after being charged with auto theft and unlawful possession of a
During a Judiciary Committee hearing that I chaired last week on blue-city chaos and tragedy, State Senator Brent Taylor, who represents parts of Memphis, told me that soft-on-crime prosecutors are the weak link in the work Memphis is trying to do and the work that Memphis law enforcement is trying to do. Their DA is the weak link. After years of senseless violence, we cannot allow the hard work of the Memphis Safe Task Force to go to waste.
To ensure that the rule of law is enforced, I recently introduced the Keep Violent Criminals Off Our Streets Act. This legislation is backed by the White House, and it would ban the award of certain Federal funds to States and localities that limit the use of cash bail.
There must be consequences for these leftist officials who put criminals ahead of law-abiding citizens. There have to be consequences for these prosecutors, these DAs, that continue to practice cashless bail policies. So banning these jurisdictions from having those Federal funds is a way that we can say: Enforce cash bail and get these violent criminals off the streets.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, in just a few weeks, millions of Americans will start the process of picking new health insurance plans, and I believe a number of them are going to see the cost of their health insurance double. This is, unfortunately, not a mistake. It is the price of Washington failing them. And it is not just a number on a bill. It is the first sign for these families that their lives are going to be much harder.
We are now 8 days into a government shutdown, but, make no mistake, this debate isn't about something happening here in this building. It is about the price Americans pay for their healthcare--because if we don't work together to extend the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits, millions of families will see their health insurance costs skyrocket overnight.
Last year alone, 309,000 Arizonans used these tax credits, saving them an average of more than $400 per month. Many of them would need to pay hundreds of dollars more per month. Some will see their costs more than double.
That is money that a lot of families simply do not have. That means cutting groceries, skipping a car payment, or saying no to the next time that their kid asks to join a school activity, like a Little League team.
For a lot of folks, it will mean losing coverage altogether because they just cannot afford it. So, now, these families are going to be one accident or one illness away from financial ruin.
This uncertainty could also mean that insurers exit the marketplace, leaving people with limited coverage options.
These are not hypotheticals. Over the last week, I have spent time on the phone with Arizonans who have reached out to my office to share what these tax credits mean for them and what also happens when they go away. I want to share a few stories from these folks, who are already bracing for the worst--because if anyone here is still wondering what this debate is about, this is it.
So I talked to a guy named Rusty, from Tucson. He is a cancer survivor. He runs his own small business in Tucson. He also takes care of his mother, who is in memory care. He told me:
He said--
Rusty is not asking for anything extraordinary. He is asking to keep what is already working for him: the ability to afford care while he works hard and contributes to his community.
Robin, who is 60 years old, lives in Northern Arizona and is trying to save for retirement. She said--and this is a quote from Robin:
This is Robin--
Now, Robin doesn't qualify for Medicaid, but she does work hard. She just wants to be able to afford health insurance until she reaches Medicare eligibility. And Robin said she is not looking for a handout; she is looking for a hand up.
Cricket, who is 63, is a realtor from Phoenix. She is self-employed and not yet eligible for Medicare. So for the past 8 years, she has relied on the Affordable Care Act for her health coverage. And if the tax credits go away, her coverage will become unaffordable. She told me--this is a quote from Cricket:
Daylene--this next story should remind all of us of what is at stake in this fight. Daylene, from Casa Grande, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure 20 years ago, when she turned 40. Doctors told her that she might live 1 or 2 years. She said, because of these credits, she has been able to afford her insurance and medication that literally keeps her heart beating. She wrote to us:
She continued to tell me that these credits gave her more than healthcare. It gave her freedom to leave an abusive marriage because, before that, she relied on her husband to afford her healthcare.
That is what this is about. When people can't afford healthcare, they stay in situations they shouldn't stay in just to keep their coverage: a job they don't want; a city they do not want to live in, maybe farther from family; and, in the worst case, an abusive relationship-- because they need affordable coverage.
Survival, dignity, and freedom--that is what we are talking about here when we talk about affordable health insurance and care.
In Arizona, people like Rusty and Cricket and Daylene and Robin, they do not have lobbyists. What they have is faith that when they write their Senator, someone will listen. I am not just listening, I am fighting for them and thousands more across my State who are in the same exact position.
These are hard-working people. They are doing everything right. They are not asking for special treatment. They are small business owners who have to purchase their own plans. They are older Americans who aren't yet eligible for Medicare and folks who live in rural Arizona and don't get healthcare through an employer.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of these people across the country. They are asking for all of us here in this body to work as hard for them as they do for their families. And what makes this so frustrating is how simple the solution is. We can vote today to extend these tax credits and reopen the government. But so far, Donald Trump and my Republican colleagues would rather use people's healthcare as leverage than sit down and work with us to protect it.
Arizonans are counting on us to do what is right, not for political points but for people's lives. That is our job, and I am here ready to work on this with my Democrat and Republican colleagues across the aisle in this Chamber and in the House of Representatives and in the White House. So let's get this done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about one of the greatest threats facing our country today: Islamic extremism.
You know, 24 years ago, September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered in a coordinated terroristic attack carried out by radical Islamic extremists. Those of us who lived through that day remember exactly where we were when those planes hit the buildings. That day changed this country forever.
We were smacked in the face with the reality that there are people who are so hell-bent on destroying America that they will kill themselves just to try to harm us. That is reality. It sends shivers down your spine, but it is true, and it happened.
In the aftermath of 9/11, we created the Department of Homeland Security. Basically, we went to war. We spent the following two decades unsuccessfully attempting to westernize the Middle Eastern countries most responsible for this attack. We strengthened surveillance and gave up personal freedoms in the hope of preventing another large-scale attack.
But 20 years later, we have to ask: Have we made any progress at all in rooting the evil of radical Islam out of this country? Have we done it?
Let's be honest. Radical Islamic terrorism didn't go away after 2001.
In 2009, 13 people were killed in a mass shooting at Fort Hood by an Army psychiatrist who was radicalized by Islamic teachings.
In 2013, three were killed and hundreds injured when two brothers detonated bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. They were inspired by their radical Islamic beliefs.
Then, in 2015, an ISIS-inspired couple killed 14 people and injured 22 at a party in Southern California.
In 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 more at a nightclub in Orlando, FL. Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS during this attack.
It continued in 2019, when a Saudi military trainee opened fire at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, killing three Americans, including one young man from my home State of Alabama.
Earlier this year in Louisiana, a deranged person drove a truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people. To no one's surprise, he said he was ``inspired'' by the Islamic State.
These attacks, they weren't just against people, they were an all-out assault on Western culture, freedom, and the values that we hold dear to our heart. But it doesn't stop there.
Thanks to Joe Biden, thousands of people on the suspected Terror Watchlist were allowed to enter this country over the past 4 years. Islamic extremism and Sharia Law openly call for the destruction of America and Western culture.
Let's be clear about this: The thousands of terrorists we have allowed to enter our country have brought their anti-American rhetoric and ideology with them. We are seeing this in cities like Minneapolis, Dearborn, Portland, Chicago, and even New York City.
You know, the leading candidate for mayor of New York City is a far- left socialist who sympathizes with extremist groups like Hamas.
But this insanity sadly isn't limited to New York. We have elected Members of Congress who openly support the radical Islamic terrorist organization Hamas.
Just yesterday, we paused to remember the more than 1,200 innocent people, including 40 Americans--40 Americans--who were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7, 2023.
Hamas literally means ``Islamic Resistance Movement.'' It has been 2 years, and two U.S. Congresswomen, Omar and Tlaib, they still refuse to condemn these heinous crimes in Israel. These two Members were elected to represent American citizens, and they are sympathizing with Islamic terrorists instead. It is almost hard to believe, but it is true. And they don't hide it.
You know, we are allowing people with extremist ideologies, people who hate American values, to not only live here but to hold positions of power and influence in our government. It is un-American, and it is an insult to the millions of Americans who have sacrificed their lives for this country and its freedom.
You know, if you think this poisonous ideology won't affect your way of life, just look at Europe. The United Kingdom, once a proud nation that helped save the world from Nazi tyranny, has essentially lost its identity. It is gone.
Mass migration has destroyed their society. There is no freedom of speech; crime is through the roof; and openly Anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas riots have become a regular occurrence. This is in Europe; this is the UK.
The UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, recently appointed a person with extreme pro-Palestinian views as Home Secretary. In the UK, the Home Secretary is in charge of protecting national security, ensuring law and order, and overseeing immigration. What a surprise.
So the person who is in charge of immigration and national security is openly a pro-terrorist. If we aren't careful, the United States will look like Europe in 10 years or less. It is coming.
We can't bury our heads in the sand about this any longer. The Quran openly calls for violence against non-Muslims--openly. Radical Islamists take these instructions literally and use them to justify terror.
It is not politically correct to say this, but it is the damn truth, something you won't hear from the deranged leftists who run cover for Islamic extremism is about the inhumane and disgusting ways that they treat women.
In Muslim countries that follow Sharia law, it is considered normal for women to be raped, trafficked, and forced to marry as young as the age of 6. Pedophilia is rampant, and women are lucky if they are allowed to drive.
I am old enough to remember when Democrats championed the #MeToo movement, which was self-described as a ``global, survivor-led movement to end sexual violence.''
But these same Democrats who championed the #MeToo movement have been radio silent when it comes to the way women are regularly treated in countries that practice radical Islam. I have yet to hear my Democrat colleagues who are siding with Hamas talk about the brutal ways Hamas has abused the women they have held hostage since October 7, nor have I heard Democrats who claim to be feminists talk about the fact that some Muslim countries that practice Sharia law require women to be completely covered from head to toe.
These women, they are not allowed to get an education, work a job, or, in some cases, even leave home. They are barred from gyms, parks, and beauty salons. They are forbidden from traveling without a male relative and forced to wear certain covering that covers everything but their eyes.
But meanwhile, the men in these countries are allowed to abuse women, have sex with children, or have multiple wives--no problem. Everyone, but especially feminist groups, should be outraged about this horrible abuse of women, but that doesn't fit the left's narrative. So you won't hear a peep from liberal so-called feminists about the disgusting treatment of women in radical Islamic countries.
You also won't hear from Democrats about how radical Islamic terrorists are currently carrying out a mass genocide of Christians in Nigeria. Think about this, more than 62,000 Christians have been slaughtered since 2000 by radical Islamic terrorists in Nigeria. You heard that right, 62,000.
In just this year alone, more than 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been murdered because of their faith alone.
You can't turn on the TV without hearing about Israel's so-called mass genocide of Palestinians--every day. Yet, when it comes to 62,000 Christians being slaughtered by radical Muslims, it is radio silence. This extreme ideology is straight from the pit of Hell, and it has no place in American society.
We are blessed that freedom of worship is a constitutionally guaranteed right in this country. That is what our forefathers fought for. If you want to come here legally, practice a peaceful version of Islam, and blend into our society life by adopting the treasured values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you are welcome to do so.
But if you believe that Sharia law supersedes American law, you should be
Texas has already taken action to ban Sharia law, and I commend it. Other States should follow. We must protect American values, not apologize for them. I truly believe we are at a crossroads in this country.
For too long, people have tiptoed around this issue, afraid to hurt somebody's feelings or make people uncomfortable. But the time for being politically correct is over. The truth is that radical Islamic extremists want every single freedom-loving American dead--bottom line. They have proven over and over again that they are willing to do whatever it takes to kill just one American citizen, whatever it takes.
It doesn't just happen overseas. It has been allowed to fester and is alive and well in our very own country, just waiting for the right opportunity to attack. It is coming.
Just yesterday, thousands of extremists gathered in New York to champion radical Islam; it is scary. So the question is, Will we continue down this path and end up like Europe or will we honor the sacrifices made by the millions of Americans who have given their lives for our freedoms by standing up against people like the radical Islam?
Now is the time to act because if we don't, we will lose this country as we know it. It will be gone. This isn't about a Republican or Democrat issue; it is an American issue.
I hope my Democrat colleagues will join me in sending a loud, clear message that we will not tolerate Sharia law in this country--not now, not ever.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Bureau of Land Management Relating to "North Dakota Field Office Record Of...
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am here to talk about a bill that is a matter of fundamental fairness to our veterans and most especially to our combat-injured veterans--a group that should evoke the sympathies and support of our Nation as no other.
I am here to talk about the Major Richard Star Act. Many of my colleagues know about it because 76 Members of this body are cosponsors. That is a large number, but so far, it has not been sufficient to gain even a vote. So I am asking today that that support be turned into action.
This bipartisan legislation will correct one of the deepest injustices impacting disabled veterans. It is labeled by stakeholders as the ``wounded veterans tax.''
The wounded veterans tax, as it stands now, causes more than 50,000 combat-injured veterans who were forced to retire to be barred from a full military pension that they earned or were promised. Let me explain. They are getting a dollar-for-dollar reduction of their military retirement pay from their VA disability benefits. The reduction, dollar-for-dollar, in their retirement pay is the result of their receiving those disability benefits for their combat injuries.
They are entitled to each of the separate and distinct and different forms of compensation. They have earned both. They are different, separate, and distinct. But right now, under current law, they are deprived of the full benefits of their pension because they were injured in combat. Just to describe this injustice should make our stomachs turn with outrage.
The Major Richard Star Act is really a commonsense bill. We use that word, ``commonsense,'' all the time in this Chamber, but in this instance, it seems particularly appropriate. It would right this longstanding injustice and finally provide these military retirees their full VA disability and Defense Department retirement benefits.
This cause is not only common sense, it is rightfully bipartisan. It has received overwhelming support--those 76 cosponsors in this body but also 304 cosponsors in the House of Representatives--and it is the collectively top priority of the military and veterans services organization communities of the United States. Yet, year after year, this bill has stalled, and detractors have worked to deny a simple vote.
Now, in public--critics have avoided taking a public position on the bill, and they have given lipservice to veterans and advocates requesting their support. What their real reasons are, I can't say.
But the fact of the matter is that these veterans have been denied this simple justice.
And let me speak to those critics.
We can't balance the Federal budget on the backs of combat-injured retirees. Doing so reneges on our obligation. It is a sacred obligation to take care of veterans after their time in uniform.
The bill doesn't create some great, new, overly generous benefit, but it would be enormously impactful and beneficial for each of those retirees who would be affected. The average is about $1,200 a month-- some more, maybe some a little bit less. At $1,200 a month--you can do the math--it is not a fortune, but it would make a difference in the lives of these combat-injured veterans.
It simply ensures that the benefits we have promised and the benefits they have earned are the benefits that are now delivered--it is that simple--not clawed back, as happens now, from the heroes who have sustained those combat-related injuries.
The veterans and heroes involved in these bills are similar to the namesake of the bill, MAJ Richard Star, a decorated war veteran and engineering officer in the Army. He suffered from lung cancer caused by burn pit exposure.
We all know about Iraq and Afghanistan burn pit exposure. We passed the PACT Act to provide care and benefits for victims of those burn pits and exposure to other toxic chemicals.
They led to his retirement and his death in 2021. He was 51 years old. Until
His wife Tonya Star walked these halls by his side. She died in 2024. She called my staff days before her passing, in tears because another Congress had ended, in 2024, without a vote on the Richard Star Act. Tonya knew the tremendous difference this legislation would make in the lives of caregivers and widows like her.
It would make a difference also in the lives of veterans like Pat Murray of North Kingstown, RI. Pat is a Marine Corps veteran and a staunch veterans advocate. He recently welcomed a baby boy, and he was forced to move back to Rhode Island to be closer to his family because the injuries he sustained from an IED blast in Iraq made it difficult to care for the newborn.
We need to be very clear. This act won't return his amputated leg. But it can provide him and his family with desperately needed financial certainty, which they deserve, they need, and they were promised.
And it would also help veterans like retired MSgt Gabriel Peterson of Biloxi, MS. He was medically discharged as a result of reactive airway disease. He is on five different drugs. They help with his breathing. It is a struggle for him to live, and this act would ensure that he could provide for his family, even if he is no longer able to be employed.
The stories are powerful, and they are persuasive. They depict the scope and impact of this act, if it were passed, in lifesaving and life-enhancing benefits, and what it will mean to the tens of thousands of veterans across this great Nation.
In fact, these veterans and their families--think of their families-- deserve a lot better. They deserve elected officials who will stand up and deliver for them the benefits they were promised and the benefits they earned; and they need them and deserve them today.
I am asking my colleagues to advance this legislation now. The principle of taking care of our veterans has never been Democrat or Republican. The Veterans' Affair Committee is supremely bipartisan. My hope is that tradition will continue, including today.
So let's put politics aside. Let's put partisan differences aside and finally do the right thing and advance this important legislation for our Nation's veterans.
And so notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 1032, the Major Richard Star Act; 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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Mississippi.
Reserving the right to object, let me say that I have deep respect for my colleague and friend, the senior Senator from Connecticut. He is a veteran; I am a veteran. I have no doubt in my mind that Senator Blumenthal has a heart for the veterans and for disabled veterans, and I appreciate that. He is moved with concern for those who have served and who have been injured.
However, my colleague is asking for an entitlement that does amount to a double benefit and that we cannot afford. We are talking about between $9 billion and $10 billion on the Department of Defense authorization act. And we are talking about adding a bill, a piece of legislation, that really belongs in another jurisdiction, as my friend acknowledged.
We cannot possibly add another $10 billion--$9 or $10 billion of entitlement money--to this DOD authorization act and hope to pass it.
And that is the reason that in Democrat majorities and Republican majorities--House Democrat majorities and Senate Democrat majorities-- and in Democratic administrations, this legislation has never been accepted--because we simply cannot afford it.
Historically, Congress has provided permanent new benefits only after we have identified an offset, savings of a similar amount. There is no such offset identified in this unanimous consent request.
And when we do not identify offsets, then that $10 billion--almost $10 billion--has to come out of readiness, out of the strength of our military to defend ourselves in the most dangerous time we have had since World War II.
So I have the deepest respect for my friend from Connecticut, and I admire his intentions. But until Congress and until the authors of this proposal identify a way to offset the expense or to make it less expensive, we should not move forward with this legislation.
Therefore, I do object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Connecticut.
I want to respond very briefly to my colleague from Mississippi and my friend, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. We have worked together, as he does always, in a bipartisan way on armed services issues. So what I am about to say is not personal to him. In fact, I am willing to bet that it isn't his decision to object here.
But I want to refute two points. No. 1, on double-dipping, let's be clear that these are two separate programs, and the right to payment under each of them is separately deserved. Not everyone who is entitled to retirement pay gets disability benefits. You have to be in that club that nobody wants to join of being combat injured. And it is a separate form of right that in no way involves double-dipping, as we commonly refer to it. The retirement pay is for years of service in the military. VA disability compensation is for the loss of future earnings due to service-connected injuries or illnesses.
And I just want to make clear that this point is really about equity and fairness. Congress eliminated this option for nearly a million veterans who have served 20 years and have a 50-percent VA disability rating or higher. It has already dealt with one segment of this group. This unjust assessment ultimately ought to be eliminated for all the 430,000 veterans who had their military retirement pay clawed back because they are receiving VA disability benefits.
But we are starting here or taking the next step with 50,000 of those 430,000 who, in fairness, should receive both, the retirement pay and disability benefits. And we are doing it because these 50,000 have combat-related injuries.
And as to the total cost--again, not personal to my colleague from Mississippi--but the CBO told us that the Republican-supported tax cuts exploded the deficit by about $3.4 trillion.
Let me repeat that: $3.4 trillion, in large part tax cuts to people who didn't need them.
These veterans need these benefits. This cost is a minuscule fraction of those trillions. This country can afford to do right by these combat-injured veterans. The DOD Office of the Actuary has indicated it could implement the Richard Star Act in an ``actuarially sound manner.''
It is not too costly. It is financially sound. I regret that the Richard Star Act will not be passed today, but I have another measure that I would like to bring to the floor. And it is, with regret, that we are not providing unanimous consent to the bill itself.
And I understand the points made by my colleague, but I would like to present a middle ground. Since we don't have unanimous consent for the Major Richard Star Act today, let's agree to a vote. Let's have a time agreement that would authorize the Senate to take a single up-or-down vote on passage of this bill before the end of the year. This time agreement doesn't guarantee passage. It simply guarantees a vote.
One vote, that is all I am asking. Give us a vote on passage of the Major Richard Star bill, and it would be passage by a 60-vote margin, filibuster proof. If we get 60 votes, the bill passes. If not, it goes down. Let's do it before the end of the year.
I happen to think that we ought to spend whatever time is necessary on this bill. But I understand that leadership is concerned about time. And so my proposal strips away all the time-consuming procedural stuff--I have another word for it--but it allows us to go forward expeditiously. One vote scheduled entirely at Majority Leader Thune's discretion, before the end of the year--it could start and finish in half an hour or 45 minutes.
Surely, the Republican leadership can spare that short time, scheduled at
And so notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader but no later than December 31, 2025, the Committee on Armed Services be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 1032; further, that there be up to 2 hours of debate on the bill, equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the bill be considered read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, with 60 affirmative votes required for passage, all without further intervening action or debate and no amendments or motions in order to the bill prior to the vote on passage.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from Mississippi.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, every time my Democratic friends want to advocate for another expensive program, they mention the tax cuts.
Let me just stray from the issue at hand to say, as I have always said, when Republicans cut taxes on job creators, on small business people, on 95 percent of the people who file a tax return back in 2017, jobs were created. And until the pandemic was visited upon the whole world, jobs were created and revenue rose for the United States of America. I have to say that.
Let me also say this: There have been times, very recently, when the Democratic party controlled the Presidency, the House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate. And even in those situations-- those recent situations--this legislation costing in excess of $9 billion in mandatory spending was not brought forward.
Now, why would our friends across the aisle and the President of the United States, who was a Democrat, not advocate for that and make sure it comes to a vote is that you have got to make choices when it comes to national defense. Where would we take the money, the $9 billion? Are we going to take it out of salary increases for our junior enlisted people, which is in this bill? Are we going to take it out of munitions? Are we going to take it out of modernization of our nuclear strategic system, which is behind and needs it so desperately?
We can't just print up another $9 billion or $10 billion for this purpose, particularly when there is the question that has not been answered about double compensation here.
And so I would just say it is easy to point fingers at this side of the aisle on this occasion and on this unanimous consent request, but there is a reason that there has been a bipartisan reluctance to spend this extra money, which we would love to have if we had it, if we could just wave a magic wand and create the money out of thin air, but we cannot do it.
The responsible thing, regardless of who has been in charge of this Chamber, has been to do the best we can for our veterans with one or the other of these compensation programs. And so for that reason, I do object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I respect the points that are being made by my friend from Mississippi. In fact, we share support for every one of those armed services measures that he had described, whether it is bolstering our nuclear force, providing for more drone protection, increasing well-deserved compensation for our military men and women, and it is the reason why he has led, and I have supported, the current National Defense Authorization Act that, hopefully, will be approved by this body within days.
Where we differ is, I think, that I believe that the $9 billion or $10 billion that would go to ensure fundamental fairness to our military is there or a great nation should ensure it is there when we are talking about the trillions that we will spend on many other things, some of them very worthwhile, but, in my view, none more worthwhile than doing right by these veterans.
It isn't double dipping. It isn't overly generous. It isn't going to break the bank, so to speak. To the Federal Government as a whole, with its trillions of dollars, it is a miniscule fraction; to those veterans, it is not only a matter of quality of life and sometimes survival, it is fundamental fairness.
They were promised. They have earned it. They deserve it. They need it. They ought to have it.
And this measure simply would assure a vote--a vote. We ought to face our responsibilities. Maybe my colleagues, even though 76 of them have cosponsored--that is three quarters of this body--maybe it would still fail for whatever reason. But I would like to take my chances. And I assure my colleague from Mississippi, who I think supports the basic goal from what he has said, that I will continue fighting and working for this measure to pass. I know there is deep and broad support in this body for it, and I look forward to a time when he and I will be on the floor together, both of us, supporting this measure in a vote.
I am not giving up, and I am very hopeful that this cause will continue to be bipartisan.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Extension Act, bipartisan legislation led by my colleagues Senator Peters and Senator Rounds.
For nearly a decade, this law has been one of our most effective tools to protect Americans from cyber attacks. It allows the Department of Homeland Security and its Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, to share real-time threat information with the private sector, State and local governments, and critical infrastructure.
When a hospital or water system is hit with ransomware or when a foreign adversary targets one of our Agencies, this law lets CISA warn others before they become the next victims. It is how we connect dots, stop attacks from spreading, and protect Americans in real life.
Just last year, we saw what happens when a single cyber attack can ripple through an entire sector. The ransomware attack on Change Healthcare shut down hospital billing systems across the country, delaying prescriptions and paychecks and patient care for weeks. Imagine if we didn't have the ability to share those threat indicators quickly enough to change that.
But, unfortunately, the law expired on September 30. Right now CISA is operating without its core legal framework for threat sharing, and every day that passes without reauthorization means slower alerts, weaker defenses, and more Americans put in harm's way.
We can't afford for our cyber defenses to be further degraded.
This bill is a simple, bipartisan, 10-year extension of a proven law that protects every American. We should reauthorize it today.
Notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 1377 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; 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 with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from Kentucky.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. President, the authority already is expired. Every day we delay, our cyber defenders have less information to work with, and Americans are less safe. This isn't a partisan issue. It is about whether the United States can see and stop cyber threats before they are hit.
The experts all agree the program is needed. The only people that benefit from inaction are the hackers who try to exploit our systems.
I urge my colleagues to drop the politics and restore this critical act before any more American businesses or hospitals pay the price for our delay.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. President, somewhere off the coast of Venezuela a speed boat
When challenged that killing citizens without due process is a war crime, the Vice President's response was that he ``didn't give a shit.''
Sometimes, in fits of anger, loud voices will say they don't care about the niceties such as due process. They just want to kill bad guys. For a brief moment, all of us share that anger and may even embrace revenge or retribution.
But over 20,000 people are murdered each year in the United States, and somehow we find a way to a dispassionate dispensation of justice that includes legal representation and a trial.
Why? Because sometimes the accused is actually not guilty. Even with the best of care, even with the best of justice, sometimes we find out it is the wrong person.
As passions subside, a civilized people should ask questions. To be clear, the people bombed to smithereens were guilty, right?
If anyone gave a you-know-what about justice, perhaps those in charge of deciding whom to kill might let us know their names, present proof of their guilt, show evidence of their crimes. The administration has maintained that the people that they blew to smithereens were members of a gang, members of Tren de Aragua, and therefore narcoterrorists.
Why? Because we say so.
But certainly, then, if they know that they belong to a particular gang, then someone must surely know their names before they were blown to smithereens. Is it too much to ask to know the names of those we kill before we kill them, to know what evidence exists of their guilt?
At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labeled as ``terrorists.'' How did the people who you say are in a gang, how did they come to be labeled as a ``terrorist''?
U.S. law defines a terrorist as someone who uses premeditated, politically motivated violence against noncombatants.
Show us evidence of that. Show us evidence of their guilt. Show us evidence that they are terrorists, perhaps before we blow people to smithereens.
Since the U.S. policy is now to blow people to smithereens if they are suspected of being in a terrorist gang, then maybe someone should take the time to explain the evidence of their terrorism.
Critics of this whole terrorist-labeling charade, such as Matthew Petti at Reason, explained that, in practice, what we are doing in practice ``means that a `terrorist' is whoever the executive branch decides to label one.'' You are a terrorist because you are labeled one. You can be killed because you are called a terrorist.
But where in all of this is some sort of evidence that you are guilty of something?
While no law dictates such, once people are labeled as ``terrorists,'' they appear to be no longer eligible for any sort of due process--no, the blow-them-to-smithereens crowd, at this point, will loudly voice their opinion that people in international waters don't deserve due process.
Vice President Vance asserts:
Which, of course, raises the question: Who labeled them as ``terrorists''? And what is the evidence of these specific people who had names before they were blown to smithereens? What is the evidence against them individually? What are their names? What, specifically, shows their membership and guilt? Were they armed at the time they were blown to smithereens?
The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd also conveniently ignores the fact that death is, generally, not the penalty for drug smuggling.
The mindless trolls that occupy much of the internet whine that such questions show weakness or commiseration with drug pushers who are killing our children, a ludicrous assertion to most sentient humans but one I fear that requires a response: International law and norms have always granted due process to individuals on the high seas not actively involved in combat. U.S. maritime law explains in detail the level of force and the escalation of force allowed in the interdiction of drugs. You realize we interdict hundreds of ships off the shore of Miami, off the Pacific coast, and we don't always blow them to smithereens. Why? Because some of them don't actually have drugs on them. Hundreds of ships are stopped daily, yearly. The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd might stop to ponder that a good percentage of these ships that we actually search turn out not to be drug smugglers. Coast Guard statistics show that one in four interdiction finds no drugs.
So far, the administration has admitted to blowing up four boats suspected of drug smuggling. So there is a one-in-four chance, statistically speaking, that one of these boats may not have had any drugs on it. We will never know because they were blown to smithereens. We may never know the names of the people because they were blown to smithereens. We may never know whether they had arms because they were blown to smithereens.
It seems someone should ask, if the U.S. policy is to blow up all suspected ships, should that policy really be extolled as the ``highest and best use of our military?'' What an insult to our military.
Jake Romm puts the dilemma of whom to designate as a terrorist into sharp relief. Jake Romm writes:
It is a circular definition which no one ever bothers to say: Why are they a terrorist? What is their name? What are they guilty of? What have you accused them of?
We say just say: You are a terrorist; therefore, you are killable.
It devolves to madness.
Can you imagine a doctrine in which we just blow up ships off of Miami and say ``whoops'' if they didn't have any drugs on board? Twenty-five percent of the ships that we board currently don't have any drugs on them. It is a mistake. And we allow it because it is a search, and typically it is a voluntary search. But we allow searches. But we don't kill every suspected boat off of Miami suspected of having drugs because 25 percent of them don't have any drugs.
There is a shortage of independent legal scholars who argue that these strikes are legal. Even John Yoo, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under George Bush who infamously offered the Bush administration's legal justification for waterboarding, has criticized the administration's justification for the strikes, saying:
John Duffy, a retired Navy captain, eloquently summarizes our current moment:
Congress must not allow the executive branch to become judge, jury, and executioner.
Often, people will say: What about the Barbary pirates? What about the Barbary pirates? Jefferson went after them; it should be OK.
But Jefferson understood that the Framers' intention was that the President defer offensive war to Congress, to authorization.
So while there was always a justification and still is a justification for violent defensive maneuvers to protect your shipping, there was never an authorization for offensive unless approved.
This is why President Jefferson, when faced with the belligerence of the Barbary pirates in 1801, recognized that he was ``unauthorized by the Constitution'' only with the authorization of Congress ``to go beyond the line of defense.'' Jefferson wanted the authority
Our history is prescient. If the Trump administration wants to use military power, they should seek authorization from Congress. There is a difference between war and peace. There is a difference in the rules of engagement. There has to be. Our police don't shoot people on sight. We have a process. Even off of the coast, we have a process.
We have longstanding maritime laws that we obey as well as every other civilized nation in the world obeys. We board ships after announcing who we are and that we are going to board the ship. There is an escalation if there are weapons fired, if there is a reason where the Coast Guard can escalate, but we don't just blow ships to smithereens.
The vote before us today offers every Member of this body an opportunity to reverse the decades-long abdication of this critical responsibility, of leaving this to the executive branch. Our Founding Fathers said Congress shall authorize war. The Executive is not authorized to do this.
I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution.
Terminating the National Emergency Declared With Respect to Energy
Mr. President, I ask the Chair to execute the order of September 17, 2025, with respect to S.J. Res. 71.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, S.J. Res. 71 is discharged, and the Senate will proceed to the consideration of the joint resolution, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Under the previous order, the joint resolution was discharged from committee, and the Senate proceeded to consider the joint resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be up to 6 hours for debate only, with the time equally divided between the leaders or their designees.
Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that we will have over the course of the next couple of hours about this Senate joint resolution--a privileged motion pending before the Senate that I filed, together with Senator Heinrich, to terminate a Presidential declaration of an energy emergency that he issued on his first day in office.
The President took a number of actions on his first day in office, and obviously the one that got the most attention was the fact of his inauguration and the celebrations about that. There were other actions that were taken--the pardon of the January 6 criminal convicts and other pardons of individuals, including one notorious drug trafficker.
But there was also an action that was taken that did not get attention immediately, but I started to pay attention to it a few days after the inauguration. That was President Trump's use of the National Emergencies Act and a related statute known as IEEPA to declare national emergencies in the United States. The IEEPA statute is broadly worded. It allows a President to declare an emergency when there is a significant and unusual challenge to the United States that stems primarily from a source outside the United States' shores.
The President has used the NEA to declare an energy emergency. He has used IEEPA to declare tariffs on virtually every nation in the world.
And he has also used the statute in other ways.
I was puzzled by the President's determination that America, in January of 2025, was in an energy emergency because I went back and checked and found that the United States, at the beginning of the Trump administration, was producing more energy than at any time in the history of the United States. Where is the emergency? We were producing more oil, gas, and coal than at any time in the history of the United States. Where is the emergency?
Even more exciting to me because of its tremendous acceleration, we were producing more alternative energy--low-carbon energy, geothermal, wind, solar--than at any time in the history of the United States.
We have seen this in Virginia. To give you an example, when I came into the Senate, Virginia was deep in the bottom half in this country in solar deployment. Now we are in the top 10. Offshore wind was nowhere in the United States. Now we are nearing completion of an offshore wind farm off the shores of Virginia Beach, VA, and we will be the leaders in the Nation and begin producing components that can help us lead in the world when it comes offshore wind.
So where is the emergency? I look through the President's declaration and can see nothing suggesting that the United States was in an energy emergency. But you declare an emergency for a reason, and the emergency was declared not because there was an emergency but because there was something the President wanted to do. As you read down in the emergency declaration, you found what the President wanted to do was allow a bypass of environmental regulations for energy projects. That is what he wanted to do, and he declared a sham emergency in order to do that.
I found it further interesting as I read--well, what is the definition of energy projects that are getting a bypass around environmental regulations? It was not all energy projects. It was oil and gas and coal but not wind, not solar, not hydropower, not geothermal.
Sometimes, I hear folks say they are for an all-of-the-above energy policy. President Trump is embracing an all-of-the-below energy policy. If it is not a fossil fuel under the Earth, it will not be prioritized by this administration.
That was the President's action on day one. There is an energy emergency, and we need an easy-pass lane for fossil fuel projects, but we are going to make it hard for alternative energy projects.
So I dusted off the statute, IEEPA, and found that a single Senator, even in the minority party, can challenge a Presidential declaration of emergency and be guaranteed a privileged vote on the Senate floor within a set period of time, a prompt vote on a simple majority that cannot be filibustered, and that is what we are doing today.
In fact, you can challenge a Presidential emergency every 6 months. I challenged the President's energy emergency with Senator Heinrich in March, and it was a partisan vote.
Democrats said: There is no such emergency; it is a sham.
Republicans said: We are sticking with President Trump.
Senator Heinrich and I issued a warning on the floor in March. We said: You are going to see higher energy costs because of what President Trump is doing, and you are going to see jobs lost because of what President Trump is doing. Energy costs will go up because the cancelation of clean energy projects will constrict the supply of energy at a time when the demand is increasing, and the natural economic reaction when you constrict supply at a time of increasing demand is that people are going to pay more for household energy.
We were not convincing then. Maybe people didn't believe that our prediction would come to pass, but 6 months later, we are renewing the challenge. We are here to say that what we said on the floor last spring has happened, and we are seeing dramatic increases in the price of energy for American consumers and businesses and the slashing of American jobs so that Donald Trump can give an easy pass to the fossil fuel industry.
It took a while for these effects to come to pass, but by the time we got to the debate over the reconciliation bill here in this body in late June and early July, it was pretty clear that the only energy emergency was our President. President Trump is the energy emergency.
We were debating the spending law, the reconciliation bill, and I am just going to go through some of the headlines.
NPR:
Why would they soar? Because that tax cut and spending law reduced all
Other articles from the same time:
Most of the power that has been added to the grid in the United States in the last couple of years has been solar and wind. It is cheap; it is native; it is clean; it is sustainable; it works. It is bringing people's costs down, but Donald Trump's megabill gives the oil industry what it wants by dropping support for solar and wind. That was from CNBC in July.
The story about how this was to benefit Big Oil was revealed earlier in February, shortly after the emergency order went into effect, in The Guardian:
This was all laid out. There is no emergency other than the President himself. This is nothing but a giveaway to the oil and gas interests.
Shortly after the passage of the reconciliation bill:
Why don't we punish low-income Americans and make their energy costs go up? Why don't we do that? I mean, it is shameful for that thought to cross your mind, much less for you to do it, but that is what the reconciliation bill and the Trump energy emergency put into motion: punishing low-income Americans by making it more difficult for them to access what is now one of the cheapest forms of energy.
Oh, yes, there was a prediction. We predicted it on the floor in March that electricity prices were going to go up, and then others, when the bill passed, predicted it, but by July 24, it wasn't just a prediction.
Newsweek:
Inflation is too high because of tariffs and other chaotic economic moves on food, on building supplies, on healthcare, on pharmaceuticals, but the energy inflation is higher now than the general inflation rate because of Donald Trump's policies.
Here is a chart that is one that got some selfish attention from me:
By a State's monthly bills, in Virginia, it is $250 a month. Other States are listed as $480 in Texas and $350 in Iowa. We see the prices already going up. It is happening just as predicted.
In mid-August, The Guardian says:
This is much faster than the core inflation rate, which is going up. So now, energy inflation is outstripping the rest of inflation, and it is particularly hard for low-income households.
Then, finally, just last month, CNN Business:
Electricity prices--that monthly bill that households pay together with their mortgage or their rent, together with food, together with healthcare--all of these are going up. We have a President who promised, when he ran for office, to deal with the costs of living, the costs to live. What we see is a short attention span focusing on sending troops into American cities and on political prosecutions and on the firing of career prosecutors in Virginia and all kinds of distractions. And the thing he promised the American public he would do--bring down costs--he is not doing.
The only energy emergency in the United States today is Donald Trump, and that is why I am pressing the Senate to vote. Do you want to listen to your constituents? Do you want to decrease energy costs? Do you want to give constituents the ability to have energy that is less costly and that is also cleaner or do you want to just do what Donald Trump says and embrace a sham energy emergency to give an easy pass lane to oil and gas to bypass environmental regulations?
This timing today is bad and good. It is propitious or disastrous. Last night, the administration announced that they were canceling billions and billions of dollars of clean energy projects all over this country in every State--in Virginia, in Missouri--all over the Nation: billions of dollars of projects that hire people, thousands of jobs lost. The projects that are being canceled are going to continue this trend of--at a time of great demand and growth--data centers and all kinds of uses for AI that, through searches, require more energy than what we were doing a couple of years ago.
That demand is growing. In Virginia, we see it all the time, especially with a profusion of data centers. As the demand is growing, if we are cutting off energy projects and constricting supply, we are only going to accelerate the increases.
President Trump has canceled 20 energy projects in Virginia since he became President: an offshore wind staging project in Portsmouth, an offshore wind logistics project in Norfolk, a project dealing with electric vehicles in southwest Virginia, an electric vehicle infrastructure apprenticeship program and workforce training program in Northern Virginia--20 projects.
Here is one in Appalachia, VA: a project that would be implemented by the Virginia Department of Energy, which is part of the Virginia State government. We currently have a Republican Governor. This is an allocation of grant funds to the Youngkin administration's Virginia Department of Energy so they can do carbon capture and storage.
This is a way to take current coal technologies and make them cleaner and more useful--canceled; enhancing energy resilience--canceled; hydrogen deployment--canceled; reducing data center load impacts-- canceled; methane reduction--canceled; other projects to do carbon capture and storage--canceled.
The President has canceled 20 projects just in Virginia, totaling $540 million, and costing us thousands of jobs, including jobs in some very important parts of the State that have struggled with unemployment, like Appalachia.
Many of these projects were announced by our Governor. Our Republican Governor announced these projects with pride--economic development and manufacturing in some hard-hit parts of Virginia--because of tax credits that are available to American innovators so that we not only do the right thing by the Virginia economy but lead the world in the development of innovative and clean energy technology. This was canceled by Donald Trump.
So the prediction--and I make predictions that turn out not to be true. I do have to acknowledge that. I have often made predictions that have turned out not to be true. But on the floor of this body 6 months ago, I said, if this energy emergency is not terminated, we will see energy prices spike, and we will see American jobs lost. I get it that sometimes people might not want to vote on a bill based on a prediction. I could be wrong. It is happening, and it is not just happening in Virginia. It is happening in every State in this country, with energy inflation up and jobs being lost.
We can end it here. That is why the privileged motion is available to even a single Senator. The privileged motions--and there are many different kinds of privileged motions. In fact, we will be arguing about another one later tonight dealing with Presidential war powers. All privileged motions kind of fit into the ZIP Code of enabling a Senator to challenge potential overreach by the Executive. They are very much, kind of, in the framework of the checks and balances. Executives have power, but the legislature should have power as well, and the legislature should have the ability to challenge overreach by an Executive.
In this instance, the declaration of an energy emergency, when we are producing more energy than we ever have in our history, as a way to give oil and gas an easy pass lane to avoid environmental regulation is making our environment worse, our costs higher, and our economy weaker.
So, when we finish this debate on the floor tonight, I will ask my colleagues to support the resolution to terminate this fake emergency and restore to American consumers the ability to afford their energy costs.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, we are down here telling the Trump administration that their energy emergency, as they call it, is the emergency for our country. Trump, Secretary Chris Wright--this whole administration is using emergency authorities to make up a crisis that is resulting in our electric bills going sky high all across our country, and our clean energy jobs are going up in smoke. This energy emergency is just fossil fuel gaslighting of the American people.
Since Trump took office, electricity prices have gone up more than 10 percent--twice as fast as general inflation, which also remains historically high thanks to the Trump administration running our economy into the ground. Their tariffs and their healthcare policies are leading to higher prices--the price of food, the price of clothing, the price of electricity--because of the Trump policies.
So why is this happening? For starters, Trump and the Republicans are failing Econ 101. On the demand side, Big Tech is demanding big amounts of electricity for its data centers. Data centers are projected to demand up to 130,000 megawatts of electricity load by 2030--as much electricity as is used by more than 100 million American homes. Do you want to hear that again? This is all going to happen in the blink of an eye. They are going to be consuming as much electricity as 100 million homes in our country.
On the supply side, well, Trump is cutting off our cheapest and quickest-to-deploy sources of energy that can meet this demand. Trump's sham energy emergency pushes fossil fuels as the solution, but those fossil fuels are polluting, they are pricey, and they are getting pushed abroad to the highest bidder as exports. These fossil fuel exports actually increase energy costs here for Americans. This is what Senator Kaine has been talking about, trying to raise the profile of these issues.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that they are killing nearly $8 billion in grants for grid development and energy innovation, targeting States that did not vote for Donald Trump in 2024. This week, rumors have been swirling about the impending cancelation of tens of billions of additional energy grant dollars that would be out there trying to create more electricity, more energy here in the United States. These lawless terminations hamstring American competitors, drive up energy costs, and hurt domestic manufacturing.
But this is nothing new for this chaos administration, which has already prevented hundreds of thousands of clean energy megawatts from getting onto the grid. That is more than $42 billion in private sector clean energy projects and 80,000 clean energy jobs already wiped out by Donald Trump in the first 9 months of his administration.
Wright, Vought, Burgum, Trump--it is a fossil fuel cabal. It is not a Cabinet; it is a cartel that is now running the United States of America right out of the Oval Office, killing all of the new energy sources that we need from wind and solar, from batteries, all-electric vehicles--this incredible transformation that was taking place in our country that they are now just trying to completely and totally kill.
Republicans' ``Big Ugly Bill,'' which eliminated programs working to lower household costs and get clean energy built, is expected to cause wholesale electricity prices to rise by 74 percent over the next 10 years--that is just in one bill--while keeping 350,000 megawatts of wind and solar off the grid over the next 10 years.
Just think about that. There are massive amounts of wind and solar all lined up, ready to get on to the wires that go up and down the streets of our country--the grid--and what the Republicans are doing is saying: We are killing it all.
Of course, if you don't have all of that extra electricity and AI consumes all of the remaining electricity, guess who is going to pick up the tab? It is going to be residential homeowners. It is going to be small businesses. They will have to pay much higher rates for the remaining electricity. There will be a bidding war for the remaining electricity in our country. Each individual family cannot compete against these big AI companies. So the ``Big Ugly Bill'' is going to mean a lot of big ugly bills arriving in mailboxes for pretty much every American over the next 10 years for their dramatically skyrocketed electricity.
Their crazed push to produce more fossil fuels, whether by cutting pollution regulation, selling off our public lands, keeping retiring coal plants online, will cost Americans billions more. We will see blackouts and we will see bigger bills because Trump and the Republicans want bigger profits for their fossil fuel buddies--buddies who contributed to Trump's campaign and have gotten paid out big time in return, with more than $4 billion in brandnew handouts from the government this year alone.
Let's call Trump's energy agenda what it really is: oil above all, not all of the above.
Trump's energy agenda is killing American energy, especially the most affordable and the most ready-to-go energy out there because--here are the facts: Last year in the United States, 94 percent of all new electrical generation capacity was wind and solar and batteries. Let me say that again so everyone can hear it. Last year, 94 percent of all new electricity came from wind and solar and batteries.
You wouldn't know that if you listened to the White House. You wouldn't know that if you listened to the Department of Energy or the EPA because they are just lying about it. They are just flat-out lying about the role that wind and solar can play in our system because they are over here just doing the bidding of the natural gas and the coal industry. That is who they are.
They are looking at the future in a rearview mirror while young people are looking to the future. Young people want to have this renewable energy revolution unleashed for their century, for the 21st century.
Solar panels today cost 1 percent of what they cost just 30 years ago--1 percent. That is how much it has dropped. Crazy.
They say it is not working, in the White House. What is happening to them? It is working too well. The oil, gas, and coal industry--they are afraid of the future competition that comes from the technologies of this younger generation in our country. They can smell it coming, that their future is in the rearview mirror. That is what this whole thing is all about.
There is a way of now producing solar energy. Even solar plus storage is cheaper than running any coal-burning plant in the United States of America. But you wouldn't know that from listening to Donald Trump, when he says: I love coal. I love clean coal.
Well, young people love clean solar, clean wind. It is cheaper, and it doesn't lead to asthma, it doesn't lead to lung cancer, and it doesn't lead to genetic damage that can hurt future generations of those families who are nearby those coal-burning plants.
Trump and Republicans have taken aim at renewables because they are just plain scared. Even with all the subsidies that Big Oil and Big Gas get from our government, renewables are winning on the market.
Trump is doing his fossil fuel donors' dirty work and keeping American-made competition off of the grid. These are Trump energy taxes on the American people.
So let's shine a spotlight on this fossil fuel gaslighting. Trump's declaration is the energy emergency. Trump's declaration is the energy emergency. He is stopping the future from arriving. He is stopping this generation from deriving the benefits of a revolution that can be led by the United States and then spread around the world--a solar revolution, a wind revolution, a renewables revolution.
We should be the leaders, so let's end his sham declaration so we can get lower bills, not raise barriers to affordable, American-made, clean energy.
I urge my colleagues to enthusiastically support Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution. This is a critical debate. This goes to, yes, the prices for electricity for all American families, all American small businesses, but it also goes to the future of our planet.
Are we going to reduce the greenhouse gases we are sending up? Are we going to recognize that we have a generational responsibility to be the leader? Because the planet is running a
I thank you, Senator Kaine, and I thank you, Senator Heinrich, for bringing this resolution onto the floor.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. President, shortly, the Senate will vote on an important resolution put forward by our colleague and friend Senator Kaine on the topic of U.S. energy production.
As my colleagues know, Senator Schumer and I led the development of the clean energy tax credits, which set in motion the possibility of hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in clean energy and, particularly, a policy that would keep prices down and keep good jobs up. It had policies and ideas in it like technological neutrality that created an opportunity for good science to reign and create incentives for development.
Donald Trump came into office huffing and puffing because he didn't like that. He didn't like that kind of energy dominance based on consumer choice and marketplace forces.
He said our economic problems would go away with one thing: ``Drill, baby, drill.'' Here is the reality. Like so much of his agenda, it doesn't add up, and everything he does is rooted in a sweetheart deal for his wealthy contributors.
Back in February, he signed the Executive order declaring an energy emergency. That is the subject of today's floor action. The emergency declaration has nothing to do with energy dominance, but it has everything to do with giveaways for Big Oil. Donald Trump is looking out for the same oil and gas companies that he solicited for big checks for years and years. His offer to them was: Give me your money. Get me elected. I will let your companies run the show.
I will give you this: Donald Trump kept his promise to Big Oil. He has gutted American energy production, ceded ground to China on the clean energy arms race, and rigged the system. There is no technological neutrality, Senator Kaine. It is all about fossil fuels, to the exclusion of everything else.
After declaring this energy emergency, Donald Trump and Republicans took a wrecking ball to American energy production by gutting the tax credits for wind and solar energy in their budget bill. I was struck, as we were making the decisions, when natural gas leaders came and essentially told the Energy Committee, which at one point I chaired: Look, we are for natural gas, but with AI and all the energy needs for growth, we need solar and wind.
These are the gas people. They are not repudiating gas. They said: We need more energy.
My guiding principle has been crafting that legislation--that legislation that took, really, a decade to put together. After cap and trade went down, it was all about the need to create good-paying jobs and secure a clean energy future--and that those two are not mutually exclusive; you can have both. They go hand in hand.
The tax credits helped to kick off a manufacturing boom in America-- as I mentioned, hundreds of billions of dollars, not through government but through the private sector--hundreds of thousands of jobs. New factories went up around the country. Battery technology, clean vehicles, energy-efficient products for businesses and homeowners--it was already bringing down energy costs for consumers.
In terms of the global arms race for clean energy jobs and investment, the United States went from the middle of the pack, under our efforts, to the front basically overnight--until, at Trump's direction, Republicans destroyed all of that. All of that progress was destroyed, at the first opportunity, by Donald Trump. Why? To pay for more tax cuts for corporations and his wealthy friends.
When Republicans were gearing up to pass a reconciliation bill, I said this would be a bloodbath for clean energy. Fast-forward 3 months: Manufacturing projects are being canceled, jobs are being lost, and utility bills are going up. Their budget bill was a wrecking ball for clean energy, and those workers are going to lose their jobs as a direct result.
Last week, the administration announced plans to cancel over $7 billion in funding for clean energy. Almost every one of those projects was located, as Senator Kaine and I have talked about, in a blue State. Oregon alone had over $400 million in funding canceled.
Are the Republicans stopping there? No way. They have derailed management of our public lands, and now they want to do it to prop up coal. Oregonians see this for what it is--a gobsmacking attempt to hurt American families just to score points with campaign folks they have been close to.
Now, the United States is barreling toward a self-inflicted energy crisis manufactured entirely by Republicans. Energy demand is skyrocketing. Utility bills are rising. Keeping costs low and meeting demand is going to require an all-of-the-above approach based on technological neutrality. Instead, Republicans are focused on giveaways to billionaires--Americans' bank accounts be damned.
It is as clear as our beautiful Crater Lake at home that all the talk from Trump and Republicans about American energy dominance never was going to be a reality. It was just a hollow campaign slogan. The Republican energy agenda is a level of economic self-sabotage that leaves you slack-jawed: How can you make such an unforced error?
It is going to take a huge toll on the economy. Our people thought they were voting for cheaper groceries, utilities, gas, and good-paying jobs and haven't gotten much of any of that. They didn't vote for an energy crisis that benefits nobody except big oil investors.
So beginning, colleagues, with Senator Kaine's resolution, the Senate now has an opportunity, a chance to go to innovation and modernization and bring an end to Trump's manufactured energy crisis. This is a chance for the Senate to use innovation to fight for lower prices, more jobs, and greater energy security, while Donald Trump stands in contrast trying to undermine all that.
I urge my colleagues, when we vote, to strongly support Senator Kaine's resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I rise to deliver two statements on the two resolutions that are before us. First let me comment upon the proposal S.J. Res. 71, led by my colleagues Senator Kaine and Heinrich, to overturn President Trump's sham energy emergency.
You would think that, in an energy emergency, the President would be pursuing the all-of-the-above energy policy his administration has touted, but instead he is throwing up roadblocks at more than 90 percent of the power set to come online, as his Energy Secretary has acknowledged. Meanwhile, President Trump has invoked emergency powers to fast-track dirty fossil fuel projects, primarily to reward the Big Oil donors whom he reportedly asked to donate a billion dollars to his campaign.
The fact is, energy prices are a real emergency for the American people, and we need more energy on the grid to keep up with the proliferation of AI and data centers. But the truth also is, President Trump and the harmful actions his administration is taking are actually restricting supply, killing good-paying jobs, and increasing energy prices, which have risen at more than twice the rate of inflation this year under President Trump.
I will highlight two examples of President Trump's reckless actions in my home State of Rhode Island. Right now, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO is leading a critical lawsuit against President Trump's cancelation of the $7 billion Solar for All Program, which was designed to help low- and middle-income families install solar panels on their homes, saving those families about $400 each year on electricity costs.
Rhode Island received nearly $50 million under this program to help thousands of Rhode Island households install and utilize solar energy while supporting hundreds of good-paying jobs in the State.
President Trump claims to support workers, but he is actually killing good jobs that would bring affordable energy online for our constituents. And just weeks after canceling the Solar for All Program, the Trump administration paused work on Revolution Wind, a nearly complete offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island. This project is 80 percent constructed, with over $5 billion invested and 45 turbines already installed in the Atlantic Ocean. It supports more than 1,000 local union jobs and is poised to deliver enough low-cost energy to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. State officials estimate that losing this project could cost New England ratepayers up to $500 million a year.
I am encouraged that a Federal court in Washington, DC, granted a motion allowing work on Revolution Wind to proceed and that work has restarted, but these cynical moves show that the President doesn't really care about energy prices or supply or jobs; he cares, really, about pleasing his Big Oil donors.
He is also pleasing China, which is becoming the global leader in clean energy technology, building almost three-quarters of the world's solar and wind projects, according to the Global Energy Monitor. And despite President Trump's claims that China is simply exporting these technologies and not utilizing them, the New York Times reported that ``In China, more wind turbines and solar panels were installed last year than in the rest of the world combined.''
At the same time, President Trump is trying to keep the United States hooked on expensive oil and gas and dependent on OPEC and other foreign actors with interests opposed to our own; and while he is doing that, China is launching into a new age of relatively cheap energy that will power their data centers and their infrastructure.
Rhode Islanders deserve infrastructure that creates good jobs; provides affordable, clean power; increases our energy independence; and reduces climate-destroying greenhouse gases in the process. And it is clear Trump's energy emergency is a sham, and I am proud to join my colleagues' efforts to overturn it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am honored to follow the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, particularly in his remarks on the Executive order that Donald Trump issued on Inauguration Day to declare a nonexistent energy emergency. And I join him in support of S.J. Res. 71 to terminate that Executive order.
Let's be very clear. The only real energy emergency that we have in this country is Donald Trump. Since that day of his inauguration, he has used that Executive order to actually create an emergency. This administration's actions are raising prices, killing jobs, and undermining America's global competitiveness.
Now, we have a lot of evidence--and I will be mentioning some of it-- but the most recent is from the International Energy Agency, which has slashed its forecasts for renewable energy capacity growth in the United States this decade, citing the early phaseout of the Federal tax incentives and regulatory shifts under this administration.
Mr. President, I ask that the Wall Street Journal article titled ``IEA Cuts U.S. Renewable Energy Growth Outlook on Trump Policies'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
IEA Cuts U.S. Renewable Energy Growth Outlook on Trump Policies
Mr. President, it says:
So let us now turn to one of those onshore--or, in this case, offshore--energy projects: Revolution Wind, just one example of the reckless energy policies that the Trump administration has implemented.
Let's be very clear. When President Trump came into office, America was producing more energy than at any point in our country's history. Last year, the United States added 49 gigawatts of new capacity to the grid, and 95 percent of that new capacity was solar, batteries, nuclear, and wind power.
Yet this administration has launched an all-out assault on these lower cost, less polluting sources of energy.
President Trump promised to lower energy prices for Americans ``in half.'' Now, across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living. And part of that progress before Inauguration Day for Donald Trump and the emergency energy Executive order was Revolution Wind--now, 80 percent complete.
It is an offshore wind project, off of the coast of both Connecticut and Rhode Island, which is why my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Reed, mentioned it so prominently in his remarks.
The fact is, Revolution Wind is fully permitted. The project was on track to deliver 704 megawatts of power beginning in 2026--that is next year--powering 350,000 homes, a project well underway before the Trumped-up energy emergency.
Forty-five of the planned 65 wind turbines were already installed when the Trump administration, just months ago in late August, issued a stop work order, grinding this project to nearly a complete halt--men and women on the job in New London, offshore, onshore, stopped from going to work, out of jobs; investors, construction companies, supply chain suppliers, all of them grinding to a nearly complete halt.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has found that canceling Revolution Wind would cost taxpayers half a billion dollars a year. Let's be clear--half a billion dollars a year to Connecticut and Rhode Island ratepayers every year.
The project has a 20-year contract at 9 cents per kilowatt an hour-- less than half of today's regional price. Connecticut families are already facing surging energy costs. Our electricity bills are among the highest in the Nation. Blocking Revolution Wind undermines efforts to make energy more affordable. It undercuts our work to lower prices for consumers, locking in higher bills for decades and impacting, as well, jobs.
Revolution Wind is providing thousands of jobs in Connecticut and Rhode Island. More than a thousand local union workers have already logged more than 2 million hours on the project. The stop work order put hundreds of these workers on the sideline, and I was proud to stand with a number of them at the Connecticut State Pier to support the offshore wind industry.
Let me thank them and thank the unions that were there. The unions were compelling and powerful, and they are representing their workers. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into that State pier to support the offshore wind industry.
So the Revolution Wind cancellation threatens our economy, jobs, and, most immediately, affordability for everyday Americans, most particularly in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
But it is not just Connecticut that has benefitted from Revolution Wind. The supply chain for this project stretches across the country, in red States and blue States. The construction of the first American- made offshore wind vessel provided hundreds of jobs. Where? In Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi. Steel for the project was sourced in Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Offshore wind components were sourced and manufactured in Kansas and South Carolina.
Just as our military construction and manufacturing often is sourced throughout the United States, in this case, all of America is helping to build Revolution Wind.
And what is most galling about the administration's actions on Revolution Wind is they defy logic. Eighty percent complete, all of it permitted, reviewed by the Department of Defense for national security, as well as every other Federal Agency that had anything to do with it, any say at all, approved.
And yet in the eleventh hour, the administration swooped down with a stop work order, citing ``national security concerns.'' And that is it--national security concerns.
Well, that phrase is not a pass for everything the Federal Government wants to do, and so I demanded to know what they were, to be provided with information in a classified briefing, if necessary. I demanded it in a letter. I have yet to receive a satisfactory response. In fact, those concerns collapse under even the slightest scrutiny.
A Department of Defense letter, last year, confirmed, and I quote DOD here, ``construction of the Revolution Wind project . . . would not have adverse impacts to DOD missions.'' No adverse impacts.
So the idea that somehow it might interfere with the movement of submarines from the Groton sub base or maybe testing of submarines by electric boat or some other national security or national defense need, no adverse impact to DOD mission.
So these national security concerns, quite clearly and outrageously, were just a pretext, a flimsy excuse to continue this administration's all-out assault on offshore wind. The President said he doesn't like it. He has got something in for it. There is an animus. Who knows what the reason is.
But, thankfully, there is the law. Yes, a Federal judge saw the administration's stop work order for what it was:
Now, Federal judges do not often say that actions by the President of the United States are ``the height of arbitrary and capricious,'' nor do they lightly issue a preliminary injunction against that kind of stop work order, but this judge did. And it was based on the fact and the law, so work was allowed to resume on Revolution Wind.
But let's be very clear, a lot of the harm was done. Work was stopped for almost a month, with workers sidelined and progress halted to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, not the way for the United States to do business, not the way for the United States of America to advance economic growth or provide jobs or, equally important, make energy more affordable.
If this administration can derail a fully approved energy project, whether it is natural gas pipelines or offshore wind farms, why would any developer--why would anyone invest in the United States?
The credibility of the United States as a place to do business craters when projects can be derailed by the personal whim of a President, lawlessly and recklessly, as was done here because this President doesn't like wind power.
On the first day of the government shutdown, the Department of Energy canceled nearly $8 billion in clean energy funding for the whole country. It included $53 million for 12 projects in Connecticut supporting lower energy prices, grid reliability, and American energy independence.
It was done in a way that was as illogical, chaotic, and likely illegal as canceling Revolution Wind was. Again, a self-inflicted wound in every way by this President, and that is why he is the energy emergency. He created it in just months, not even a year. He declared it on his first day in office when there was no energy emergency.
He is denying funding for innovative, promising projects. He is stopping nearly complete offshore wind projects. He is creating chaos. It makes America weaker.
And so I urge my colleagues to vote to end the Trump energy emergency and recommit to finding real solutions to lowering energy costs for consumers and supporting American energy.
And I will just close with, again, referring to the Wall Street Journal's report of today on the International Energy Agency's conclusion about how our capacity for renewable energy will be cut by 50 percent as a result of Trump administration action.
And we wonder why we are in danger of losing competitive advantage to China, not because we lack the resources or the innovators or the workers. It is a failure of leadership, and it begins in the White House.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I have come to the Senate floor today to say what every New Mexican I know can easily tell you: Americans are reeling from an affordability crisis. It doesn't matter if you are talking about the price of groceries or rent or healthcare, everybody is stretched thin.
They need help and they need it now and they need it from Congress and the President. But help is not what the President and his administration are delivering. Instead of working to lower healthcare and energy costs for American families, the President, his administration, and Republicans in Congress are choosing to drive those costs through the roof.
They repeal energy tax credits making it harder and more expensive to build and deliver energy to the grid or even just to put solar panels on your own roof. They made it more expensive to make your home energy efficient. They imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum, driving up energy costs, infrastructure costs, and they are blocking energy from coming onto the grid.
Now, if it feels chaotic, it is probably because it is. They are trying to sow chaos. While all of the numbers and
According to the Energy Information Administration, residential electricity bills have already increased by almost 10 percent since President Trump took office. Household energy costs are expected to increase by another $170 annually by 2035 thanks to tax credit repeals and tariffs.
And when it comes to the impacts on energy supply, it is the same story. As of August, clean power estimated that 25,000 megawatts--that is like 25 gigawatts, it is 25 nuclear powerplants' worth of energy-- 25,000 megawatts of planned energy generation have been lost to projects being canceled or delayed since the President's election.
That is more than enough power for 8.4 million homes in the United States. And I have bad news: It is about to get a whole lot worse. That is because President Trump is strangling the energy supply we badly need to drive down costs for everyone.
From canceling energy projects to withholding energy permits, to issuing illegal stop work orders on fully permitted generation projects, President Trump is waging a war on affordable, American-made energy. Most recently, that came in the form of canceled energy projects. Last week, the Trump administration unlawfully canceled nearly $8 billion in Federal investments in 223 energy projects across 21 States, including 10 in the State of New Mexico.
In Albuquerque, two projects by the same company were targeted. They have already had to make their first round of layoffs. If these awards are not restored in the next 45 days, they will be forced to lay off 50 percent of their workforce. These are people's lives we are talking about.
And their local partners and collaborators who were anticipating growth opportunities because of the investment are being left in the cold. In Socorro, NM, one technical university lost funding for four projects--$67 million in total. One project alone will impact 36 student researchers, all of whom now have to search for new funding or lose their research roles altogether.
In Fruitland, NM, another canceled project could have unlocked the key to keeping 600 people working. In Taos, NM, more chaos is playing out. Funding for Kit Carson Electric Cooperative's project to provide a battery energy storage system and microgrids to rural communities, canceled.
This project would have directly improved reliability in Picuris Pueblo, the Taos Ski Valley, and El Rito West. Millions of dollars have already been expended, and countless New Mexicans were depending on that project. Now they are all left wondering whether those funds will ever be reimbursed or if New Mexicans will simply be left to pay the price and pick up the pieces.
But it looks like cancellations may just be getting started. This morning there was another article about rumors of even more cancellations coming.
According to reports, this next round of cancellations could involve another 260 awards and $13 billion in revoked funds. Whether that happens or not, I can tell you, without a doubt, that the harm done from the first round will be irreparable.
The cancellations will mean lost jobs for Americans, lost educational opportunities for students. It will mean higher energy bills for households and businesses across this country.
It will make it even harder for folks who are already struggling to make ends meet because of the affordability crisis instigated by this administration's tariffs and economic policies.
It will mean less domestic manufacturing and innovation, all while diminishing America's competitive leadership globally, and it will make it harder for impacted developers and utilities to secure their financing.
That is not just true for the now-canceled projects but also for any future opportunities that depend on the stability of things like government permits and regulatory structure, investments, grants because that is another casualty of this administration's war on American-made affordable energy: the reliability of the permitting process.
In January, on his first day in office, President Trump paused all new leasing and permitting of wind energy projects on public lands.
In February, the Army Corps of Engineers singled out and delayed 168 energy projects on private land.
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency withdrew the permit for Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind.
In April, the Department of the Interior imposed a stop-work order on the Empire Wind 1 project.
In July, the Interior Department released a directive requiring the Secretary's personal review and approval of every wind and solar energy project on public lands--a move that will undoubtedly cause long delays.
In August, the Department of the Interior issued an illegal stop-work order on Revolution Wind's offshore wind project--a project that was already 80 percent done. It was fully permitted, and it was 80 percent complete, and they told people to go home. They said: Your job doesn't matter.
In September, the Trump administration asked a court to cancel the permit on a wind farm off of Ocean City, MD. It is a project that would generate 2.2 gigawatts of energy--enough to power 718,000 homes and, just as importantly, support almost 2,700 jobs every year over the next 7 years.
That is just among the ones that have actually been in the news. I have heard from companies across the Nation about delays and difficulties getting their projects permitted.
So let's be clear. Spending your time canceling ready-to-go energy projects isn't doing anything to address the energy crisis.
Instead of fixing any of this, President Trump's Executive order makes it worse. Here is what his order actually does: hikes energy costs for millions of Americans by doubling down on expensive fossil fuels when it makes no economic sense, sends hundreds of thousands of American jobs overseas as other countries continue to develop their next-generation energy sources, decreases our American-made domestic energy supplies, forces us to be more reliant on foreign energy sources, and erodes our economic competitiveness and energy dominance.
It does not have to be this way. The last time we faced an energy crisis in the United States, it was the 1970s. Energy prices were skyrocketing because of the 1973 oil crisis, when barrels of oil--then, our most in-demand energy source--quadrupled in price. U.S. energy production could not meet domestic demand, and the country saw blackouts and brownouts.
With an energy crisis on its hands, Congress actually acted. In a bipartisan effort, Congress created the Department of Energy. It funded significant research around the country to explore new ways to power things--solar, geothermal, nuclear--including the Energy Research and Development Administration. It worked on advancing transmission systems to create more competitive energy markets, saving money for everyone.
Congress met the moment and defined our energy future for decades to come. As part of that, in 1976, construction began on a 5-megawatt thermal solar test facility at the Energy Research and Development Administration's Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Before it was even complete, the facility became the largest operational solar installation in the world. This solar test facility was just one small example of the huge bipartisan effort to meet that moment.
Today, we are at a similar crossroads. Demand for new technology has once again outpaced available power reserves. Infrastructure is aging. Across the country, utility prices are rising as demand for energy rises too.
Again, Congress can meet this moment. We cannot do that by doubling down on expensive fossil energy or generation sources that take 5, 6, 7, even 10 years to build. If you order a gas turbine today, it would take you 5 to 7 years just to receive it, and its price is going through the roof because of the tariffs that the President has put on things like aluminum and steel. That is not going to solve the rising costs we are dealing with right now.
In contrast, solar, wind, and battery are modular, faster to permit, and easier to construct with fewer supply chain restraints. That is especially true when they are--or were--already permitted, with shovels in the ground, workers ready to build.
Instead of accepting this reality, President Trump and congressional Republicans are flailing, and it is leaving everyday Americans to shoulder the costs.
By eliminating energy sources instead of adding more, this administration is raising your energy prices, raising your electricity bill, not lowering it. The impacts are real, and they are far-reaching.
For many households, the choice to pay hundreds more in energy costs means the choice to not pay for other things--groceries, doctor's bills, school supplies. That is not a choice you should have to make. You shouldn't be a pawn in President Trump's political games.
Senator Kaine and I introduced S.J. Res. 71 to put an end to Trump's war on American-made, affordable energy, to bring down costs for American families, to save jobs that American families rely on, and to call out this administration for its chaos and its incompetence and the fact that it doesn't seem to care about the impacts on everyday Americans.
So I call on all of my colleagues here in the Senate to join us. Vote yes on S.J. Res. 71. Do not make American families pay the price for Trump's war on affordable American energy.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk about President Trump's completely fake energy emergency, which is nothing more than a pretext to move money from the pockets of Americans to his big fossil fuel mega donors.
You may remember that he had a meeting with big fossil fuel donors and asked for a billion dollars in campaign money in return for giving them whatever they want. Well, I don't know that he got a billion, but he got hundreds of millions, and, sure enough, he is giving them everything they want.
But the side effect of the fossil fuel industry having ownership and control over the Trump administration and all of its policies and decisions is that people's electricity rates are going to go up. They are already going up, and they are going to go up more.
This graph shows how voters are feeling about electricity prices, and it says most voters are feeling some pain from electricity prices.
This is already. It is going to get worse. Already, 26 percent of Americans say it has a lot of impact on their lives; 31 percent say a decent amount of impact on their lives; another 30, a little bit. Only 9 percent say: None at all. It is cool. Electric prices are good with me.
So that is a pretty big hit.
Even among Republicans, 25 percent say it hits them a lot, 29 percent say it hits them a decent amount, and 32 percent say it hits them a little bit. Only 11 percent say: None at all. Electric prices are cool.
So electric prices are going up, and they are going up big time, and they are going up for deliberate reasons.
The one deliberate reason has to do with the AI, crypto, tech bros data centers problem.
As you know, the data center crypto people gave a lot of money to Donald Trump. They are big political donors. They are getting pretty much everything they want from this administration. In return, they are making the Trump family hugely rich in crypto billions. But in the meantime, they are driving people's electric prices up.
They are doing so this way. This is an interesting graph. This shows places where electric bills are going down. Blue means the prices are going down. And what is measured here is how far away you are from a data center.
So here is 0 to about 25 miles away from a data center. So if you live between 0 and 25 miles from a data center, if you are in the range of the electric utility that has to serve that data center when it drops in with its huge electric load, with its huge water demand, with all the traffic and pollution and everything else that it means, you see very, very little in the way of cost decreases.
In fact, if you compare it to places that are farther and farther away--this is about 225 miles away from a data center--you can see that the electric prices going down happens much more the farther away you are from a data center.
This shows the opposite. This shows the places where electric prices are soaring--the price increases. And it is the same deal. This is how far away you are from a data center. If you are from 0 to 25 miles away, compare that to this. The comparison between your electricity price increases, if you are near a data center, versus your electricity price decreases, if you are near a data center, couldn't be more clear.
This is me, with a gold marker, marking off the difference. That is not in the original graph, but it focuses your attention on how, when you are near a data center, you are less likely to have low electric prices. You can see how low it is compared to the further away you get.
But if you are near a data center--the nearer you are to a data center, the higher your electric prices go. And if you are really near one, if you are in this block here, within 25 miles, your electric prices are skyrocketing, and that is not a mistake. That is being done on purpose because the Trump administration won't make these big donors who are in crypto world and data center world bring their own clean energy or provide their own clean water, for that matter, to the grid.
So what they do is they arrive, they dump a huge amount of demand into the existing grid, and that means that new and more expensive units have to come online. As those new and more expensive units have to come online, the price goes up and up and up because in almost every grid, it is the most expensive unit running at any minute that sets the price for the entire grid in that minute.
So if you can drive up demand, you drive up these huge, inefficient, polluting, expensive, powerplants and the price goes through the roof. That is precisely why you are seeing this huge increase in costs when you are near a data center, and it is almost impossible to find a decrease in costs if you are near a data center.
So problem 1, energy emergency 1, caused by the Trump administration to pay off its big crypto donors is this: It is the data center bomb falling on regular electric utility ratepayers who suddenly watch their bills skyrocket.
Here is the other bomb. This is the plot in the Trump administration for the sake of their big fossil fuel donors to try to hamper and hinder and injure clean energy. They have the big lie, which is to say clean energy is more expensive; it is clean energy that is driving costs on the grid.
Oh my gosh, expensive clean energy--wrong. That just isn't true. That is a complete fabrication.
This graph shows the Texas grid. This is an illustration of how that plays out. Texas has a unique grid. It is unique to Texas. It doesn't interact with the other grids the way most of the grids do. They have interconnections, and they can interact with each other. Texas is isolated. That is why that big freeze in Texas shut down all the power and caused people to freeze. That took place because that grid was unified, and they couldn't call in power from elsewhere.
This graph does two things. It takes a look at 1 month, August back in 2018, and it looks at what power costs at different levels of demand on the grid. So in 2018, if you had 40 units of gigawatts of demand, then you were paying about 20 cents per megawatt hour. It stayed about the same until demand got bigger. If you get up to 50 megawatts, 60 megawatts, then it starts to spike here, and it hits $75 per megawatt hour once it approaches 70 gigawatts of load.
So what is important here is the comparison. In 2018, these were the prices in August for that increment of load during August. This, the yellow graph, is 2024, 6 years later. What happened to the Texas grid between 2018 and 2024? What happened to the Texas grid between 2018 and 2024 is that huge amounts of clean energy came onto the grid. In fact, last year, 95 percent of the new power coming on the U.S. grid was clean energy. It was solar, it was wind, and it was battery--95 percent.
Between 2018 and 2024, you see this move in the Texas grid. And look at what happens. Pick, let's say, 60 megawatts of load at a given moment in August of 2024. You paid 20 bucks per megawatt hour for the exact same circumstance. Six years earlier, you would have paid 35, maybe 40 bucks--20 bucks, twice as much, basically.
The reason the cost went down from 2018 to 2024 was new, inexpensive, clean energy coming on the grid.
Why is it inexpensive? It is inexpensive because wind is free. It is inexpensive because solar is free. Once you
For a fossil fuel plant, you still have to build it, but once you have built it, you have to bring in the fossil fuel, pipe in the fossil fuel, burn the fossil fuel. It is expensive. And so almost always, the unit that is setting the price on the grid for electricity is a fossil fuel unit because they are the most expensive ones. So they set the price for the whole grid.
You can see the difference. Let's go to--let's call this 68 megawatts of load, just comparing these two points. Back in 2018, that would have been a $75 per-megawatt-hour cost--75 bucks, and yet here, it is $25. It is a third the cost on the Texas grid because all that clean energy came on. And you have to get way out here before the price spikes when those polluting, expensive, fossil fuel plants have to come on at 80- plus megawatts of load to even begin to match the prices from 6 years earlier.
Clean wind and solar power save consumers money. So when the Trump administration says it is going to inhibit, hinder, injure clean energy development, that is backing this back out of the grid. Now it starts to look more like 2018. If you are buying electricity at this level of grid load, you are paying three times as much--three times as much.
And this is deliberate. You don't think the Trump people don't understand this? They know perfectly well.
And here is the deal. The extra two-thirds of your cost here that comes out of your pocket if you are in Texas is because the clean energy isn't there lowering the cost. That comes out of your pocket.
Where does it go? Where does it go? I will tell you where it goes. It goes to the fossil fuel units that had to get called up to meet that amount of load. The most expensive units on the grid have to be called up to meet that load, and they drive the price up.
If you are a fossil fuel billionaire and you own a bunch of polluting powerplants, sometimes, particularly with clean energy around, they are sitting idle. They are not being called up. They are too expensive to be called up because clean energy is in there beating them. So if you own those plants, you want to go and talk to the Trump administration and say: Hey, knock that clean energy out of the grid. I want my polluting, expensive plant to run again because that is money in my pocket.
And if you are selling that plant to fossil fuel, you go to the Trump administration and you say: Hey, clobber those clean energy guys. I gave you good money. Clobber those clean energy guys and now I get to sell all that fossil fuel to burn to run those expensive plants.
So the people that make a bundle out of knocking down clean energy are the fossil fuel people who cut that deal for hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump's campaign in return for him clobbering their rivals by making it difficult to develop clean energy projects. And what they don't want you to know is that this is on purpose and this is for fossil fuel.
They don't want you to know how this works. They don't want you to know about how the most expensive units get called up as demand grows-- that when you take out the clean energy, even more expensive units get called up; that those are the polluting fossil fuel units that tend to set the price.
It is a massive transfer of money from the pockets of ratepayers, whose electric utility rates go up, to the fossil fuel industry in return for all the political money they gave Donald Trump. That is the deal. It is a huge transfer of wealth from ratepayers to big fossil fuel donors.
What they are hoping is that you won't know this. They are hoping you will blame it on the electric utility that sends you the bill. They are hoping that you won't notice that behind that soaring electric utility bill is manipulation of the grid to knock out clean energy, to drive up prices.
And if that is not bad enough, what you then find out is that the climate consequences of all that fossil fuel pollution start coming home to roost, as well.
We did some work on this in the Budget Committee. I will use three quick slides.
These are places where nonrenewal rates for homeowners insurance are increasing. What is the nonrenewal rate, you may ask, for homeowners insurance? That is how often the insurance company says to you, their longtime customers: Hey, thanks for being my longtime customer, but you are fired now. I don't want your property. I can't insure it. There is too much climate risk.
If you looked at where it is really spiking, where did you get? Florida--Florida, because they have huge risks from flooding, sea level rise, hurricanes, and storms. Their whole insurance market is melting down. Where else? Out West, where wildfires are making properties uninsurable.
I tell you what, if you know somebody in Florida, ask them about their home insurance. Just do that for me. If you know somebody who lives in Florida, ask them about their home insurance. You will hear an earful from them.
It is not just getting shot down; it is also that insurance rates are going up. Again, look where--along these coastal areas, along these wildfire-prone areas.
What the Trump administration is doing to reward its big fossil fuel megadonors isn't just to transfer money from your pockets to the big donors through electric utility rates. It is not just to transfer money from your pockets to their big crypto donors by letting them irresponsibly dump their demand on the grid. They are also breaking down the home insurance market so that not only are the insurers saying to people, ``I can't insurance you any longer; your climate risk is too great,'' but they are also saying, ``Wow, if I am going to insure you, we have to really raise our rates.''
These are premium increases--100 percent, 200 percent, 300 percent-- that you can find in these areas. In Florida, the average homeowners insurance is $14,000. If you go to Miami-Dade, it is $21,000 for homeowners insurance. If you go to Louisiana here, it is $11,000.
You have got people who try to buy a home in these places. They get the deal together, and they get the mortgage together. They show the Realtor that they can make the nut on the mortgage. Then they try to get insurance to close the deal, and they can't get insurance, and the deal falls apart. There are young families who can't buy homes because of the skyrocketing prices or because the insurers won't insure them because it is too dangerous. And guess what that does. Where does that land? That lands in home values declining.
This is not just me saying this. The chief economist for Freddie Mac--the huge mortgage company--predicts that climate risk makes homeowners insurance unavailable.
When you can't get homeowners insurance, what can you also not get on your property? You can't get a mortgage. If you are a Palm Beach billionaire who is swapping mansions with other billionaires, great, you can pay cash. But for regular families who have bought their homes with a mortgage, when they need to sell them, they need to find somebody who can buy them with a mortgage 9 times out of 10, maybe 99 times out of 100. So when you can't get a mortgage, what happens to that piece of property? When the property is uninsurable and unmortgageable, its value goes down.
That is why the chief economist for Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, predicted the cascade from climate risk to uninsurability, to no mortgages, to what he called a coastal property values crash that could lead to a recession like in 2008.
I remember 2008. It was ugly. I do not want to go there again.
But here you see places in which home values are predicted to change--along the coast here, where there is all the coastal risk; and here, where there is big wildfire risk. And guess what. If you look at the graph, it goes from no change--that is the tan; that is most of it--all the way to--how about that one? You can't read it; so I will tell you what it says: minus 100 percent--a total wipeout of your home's value because it is uninsurable and unmortgageable.
That is the future we are looking at. This is the energy emergency. This is the real energy emergency, and it is an energy emergency that is caused by
So if you want to know what the real emergency is, the real emergency is that the Trump administration has sold out to the crypto industry; it has sold out to the fossil fuel industry. It denies climate change; it pretends it is a hoax. Literally, the President has said that in, like, words. And that climate change problem is destroying home insurance markets, mortgage markets, and property values. And it has already begun.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, I rise today to bring before the Senate a resolution concerning one of our most serious constitutional responsibilities: whether the United States should engage in armed conflict against a particular adversary.
The Constitution clearly and intentionally places the power to declare war in the hands of this body, the Congress, not with the President or the executive branch. Our Constitution's Framers, having just endured a war and having paid the toll that war always takes, wanted to ensure that our newly independent Nation would see the representatives of the people make the decision of whether and when to put American lives on the line.
In 1798, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the danger of leaving that power in the hands of an executive.
He said:
For the past month, Congress's power to authorize or refuse to authorize the use of power has been usurped by the Executive. This administration has carried out at least four military strikes against vessels that it asserts have ties to drug trafficking organizations. These strikes were not authorized by Congress. Congress has not been shown the evidence of who exactly was on board these ships, whether they were all headed to the United States or some other destination, or whether they posed an imminent danger of attack on the United States. Such strikes are not legal, and they are not made legal or constitutional by the claim--correctly or incorrectly, with or without evidence--that some or all of the occupants of these boats belong to a list of organizations kept secret by the administration.
Being put on a list by the executive branch does not deprive Congress of its vital role in approving the use of force, but such a list kept hidden from the American people, if used as a justification, may drag our Nation into an unintended war.
If it were as simple for a President--any President--to claim that war power for himself by placing an individual or a group of individuals on a list, let alone one held in secret, there would be no limiting principle to the executive's use of force--no limits whatsoever--and that is deeply inconsistent with the intent of our Framers' and the desire of the American people to be kept out of unnecessary military conflicts.
Indeed, the President has confirmed that he does not see a limit. He saw targets at sea, and now he sees potential targets on land.
Now, I know that the word ``unprecedented'' gets used so much these days that perhaps it has lost some of its value, but we need to put in context just how far from normal these strikes are.
For perhaps the first time in our history, a President of the United States ordered the U.S. military to use lethal force against individuals who posed no imminent threat of attack and who could have been stopped thousands of miles from our shore had we interdicted and arrested those on board just as they routinely are by our Coast Guard. Instead, the U.S. military used lethal force on four separate occasions, killing everyone on board.
Despite this breathtaking departure from more than two centuries of law and practice, we still know almost nothing about these strikes, some taking place as far as 2,700 miles away. It may be that there were narcotics traffickers on board some or all of these vessels. It may also be that some of these boats were being used for human trafficking and that the victims of that offense were killed along with the perpetrators, or, if not on one of the first four ships destroyed, then perhaps on the next one.
The lack of detail concerning these strikes is telling. We have learned of these strikes through social media posts from the President, the Secretary of Defense, and from the press. In fact, administration officials have offered differing accounts of where these vessels were heading. Media reports have suggested--without rebuttal from the administration--that the first vessel to be struck had turned around prior to being hit. The Secretary of State originally claimed that one of the boats wasn't even heading to the United States.
Given our Coast Guard presence in the region and with a sizable Navy deployment and expansive intelligence resources, U.S. personnel could have boarded all of these vessels, detained those aboard, seized any drugs or cash, and gathered additional information about ties to drug trafficking organizations, just as they normally do. Secretary of State Rubio even acknowledged publicly that this could have been done but said that the President wanted to send a message by killing all of those on board.
We all agree that the scourge of drugs is real and that scores of Americans die from such poison every year. We are all committed on both sides of the aisle to battling the importation of illegal drugs, even as we work to beat back addiction here at home. But we are also committed to our Constitution, to a system of checks and balances that wisely places the power to make war in our hands, not with an Executive who may grow too fond of using it.
That is why Senator Kaine and I have introduced a resolution to direct the President to stop engaging in armed strikes against these vessels or the country from which they emanate without the explicit authorization of Congress. We are here today to ask our colleagues to join us in this nonpartisan vote, in this affirmation of Congress's authority to declare war or to refuse to declare it; to authorize force or to refuse to authorize it.
We have been precise and deliberate in crafting it. This resolution does not affect the United States' ability to target terrorist groups covered by Congress's existing authorizations to use military force, including al-Qaida, ISIS or its affiliates and offshoots, or to address real threats posed by other groups, like the Houthis. It also in no way limits the United States' ability to defend our own citizens and interests or to come to the collective self-defense of our allies and our partners.
It comes down to this: The President has used our military to strike unknown targets on at least four occasions, and he is promising more. With at least 21 people dead and more killing on the way and with the President telling us that strikes on land-based targets may be next, we ask you to join us in reasserting Congress's vital control over the war power.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I would like to move to the topic before the Senate with respect to the War Powers resolution regarding Caribbean military operations.
I rise to express my deep concern about the Trump administration's ongoing military operations in the Caribbean and to voice my strong support for the War Powers Resolution introduced by Senators Schiff, Kaine, Wyden, and Sanders.
Over the past month, the United States has carried out four lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean, reportedly killing 21 individuals. These attacks have been retroactively explained by the President's unilateral declaration that the United States is in ``armed conflict'' with unnamed ``non-state armed groups'' throughout the Western Hemisphere.
He has deployed thousands of U.S. forces, ships, and aircraft to conduct
Let me be clear. The drug cartels that traffic poison across our borders are violent and reprehensible. They have devastated families and communities across our country. We must do everything in our power through law enforcement, intelligence, and international cooperation to bring these organizations down. But that is not what this is all about. These are not police actions or defensive operations; these are targeted, lethal military strikes using weapons designed for warfare, not interdiction or law enforcement.
The administration has offered no positive identification for those killed, nor any information linking the boat crews to cartels. In fact, they have not proven that these vessels were engaged in drug trafficking, nor even that they were destined for the United States.
I would note that even if this evidence had been provided, that would only justify interdiction by law enforcement, not lethal military strikes.
The justification thus far has relied entirely on the President's word, and that is not good enough. Our Constitution does not vest the power to wage war on one man's word. The White House has claimed that these strikes are allowable under the President's article II powers as Commander in Chief, but article II is not a blank check. The Framers of our Constitution deliberately separated the powers of war and peace between the branches.
James Madison warned:
The War Powers Resolution exists for moments like this. It ensures that before we send American forces into hostilities, the people's representatives have debated and voted on that decision. It ensures accountability. It ensures legitimacy.
If we allow these unauthorized operations to continue unchecked, we will have surrendered Congress's most solemn constitutional duty. We will have set the precedent that the President--any President--may initiate military action at will, without oversight, without transparency, and without the consent of the governed.
We have seen this pattern before. Over the past several years, this administration has repeatedly tested the limits of Executive power-- ordering strikes in Iran and Yemen and now the Caribbean, while refusing even a brief consultation with Congress. Each time, the lines blur a little further. Each time, the balance of power tilts a little more toward the Executive.
This body, the U.S. Senate, cannot afford to shrug and move on. The slow erosion of congressional oversight is not an abstract debate about process; it is a real and present threat to our democracy.
The War Powers Resolution before us does not tie the President's hands in responding to genuine threats; it simply requires him to do what every Commander in Chief should: come to Congress, present the facts, and seek authorization from the people's representatives before initiating hostilities. That is not weakness. That is constitutional strength. It is the principle that has guided our Republic for nearly 2\1/2\ centuries.
Finally, I will say this: Even setting aside the constitutional questions, this campaign is deeply unwise. The notion that we can bomb our way out of a drug trafficking crisis is not strategy; it is wishful thinking. Using the U.S. military to conduct unchecked strikes in the Caribbean risks destabilizing the region, provoking confrontation with neighboring governments, and drawing our forces into yet another open- ended conflict without a clear mission or exit strategy.
Conflict in the Caribbean or with Venezuela is entirely avoidable, but the risk that we stumble into war because of one man's impulsive decision making has never been higher. Our troops deserve better--much better.
This War Powers Resolution would restore that balance. It reaffirms that the Constitution has always required that decisions of war and peace belong to the legislature, not the Executive.
Mr. President, for that reason, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution and to reassert the fundamental role of Congress in matters of war.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senators Schiff and Kaine's resolution regarding war powers.
This resolution would just say very simply that if the Trump administration wants to be at war against a terrorist organization, they should come to Congress, notify us, and seek our approval.
Currently, the administration is waging a secret war against a secret list of unnamed groups that they will not tell us about. There have been four lethal strikes against boats in the Caribbean. The administration wrote us a letter--wrote this body a letter--about what they were doing in September. They said they considered themselves to be in a ``non-international armed conflict''--that means a war--against a secret list of ``designated terrorist organizations.''
I received a briefing last week on the administration's strikes in the Caribbean. During that briefing, Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, from both sides of the aisle, asked a Senate- confirmed official whether the Department of Defense could produce a list of the organizations that are now considered terrorists by the United States. They said they could not provide that list.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am a CIA officer. I am a former Pentagon official. I did three tours in Iraq--armed--alongside the military. I participated in the targeting of terrorist groups. I actually have no real problem going against cartels, given what they have done in their inserting drugs in our community and with the death of so many Americans. But as a nation, I think we should have as a basic principle that you can't have a secret list of terrorist organizations that the American public and, certainly, the U.S. Congress don't get to even know the names of.
The problem for me is that this is unprecedented. You know, during the Global War on Terror, which is kind of my era, it was very clear. Terrorist organizations would be notified. If we wanted to declare a new terrorist organization, it would be notified to Congress. Then our intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement would spin up to go after information about that group and prosecute--you know, target against that group. But that is not what is going on today, and we will not understand, apparently, the dozens of terrorist organizations that we have now named until we understand their names.
This is important in the foreign context, right? This is unprecedented in terms of what we have done against foreign adversaries, against foreign terrorist organizations; but what I want to draw people's attention to is the implication for what is happening inside of our own country.
In September--also last month--the Trump administration put out a new Executive order about domestic terrorist organizations. They said that they were going to, again, make secret lists of ``terrorist groups'' inside the United States and send the full force of the U.S. Government against those terrorist organizations. They are not telling anyone the name of these organizations, but they are authorizing law enforcement and the intelligence community to double down and come up with that list.
This is a problem because the Trump administration defined in that document a ``terrorist organization'' or ``domestic terrorism'' incredibly broadly. It suggests that any group that talks about anti- Christian values, views they don't like on migration or race, differing views on the role of the family, religion, or morality could all be grounds for labeling an organization ``domestic terrorists.''
If this administration is not telling us who is on their secret designated terrorist list for groups in the Caribbean, they are definitely not going to tell us who is on their list of domestic terrorist organizations.
We saw, to start us off, the attorney general down in Texas put out publicly that he is now going to launch a campaign against domestic terrorist organizations in his own State. So it has begun.
Meanwhile, we know what is going on in some of our American cities. Trump
This is important, and I think every American should understand what it means if the President of the United States follows through with what he said and says--that he is now invoking the Insurrection Act. That means--a certain city--if the violence has gotten to a level of an insurrection, it means that the U.S. military can now be used as law enforcement in our cities. It means the U.S. military can raid; they can arrest; they can detain. You can easily see a world where the President of the United States labels protest groups ``terrorists,'' doesn't tell anyone, and creates an excuse to unilaterally use the military inside our cities, similar to the way he used them in the Caribbean.
Just to be clear, this is straight out of an authoritarian playbook where the President gets to play judge, jury, and executioner. This time, instead of stopping drug traffickers, it will be stopping Americans potentially from exercising their right to freedom of speech.
This is not theoretical, using the U.S. military in our streets. It is not something that the President hasn't already thought about. We know that in the first Trump administration, the President called up his Secretary of Defense and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs because he was upset about protests that were going on in front of the White House. Mark Esper was the Secretary of Defense. He wrote about this in his book called ``A Sacred Oath,'' and he talked about some of the things President Trump asked him to do.
President Trump wanted him to send in not the National Guard but the 82nd Airborne--an Active-Duty military unit, one of our most elite, a large unit--to quell protests here in Washington, DC. He asked for them to be moved into the city. And when the back-and-forth happened with former Secretary Esper, President Trump asked him point blank: ``Can't you just shoot them in the legs or something?''
I want to just flag for everybody that we are seeing a repeat of that story but in exponentially more gruesome detail play out right now. The President is looking for an excuse to send the U.S. military into our streets, to deploy the U.S. military against his own people, to prompt confrontation, and to hope that confrontation justifies even more military force and military control.
This is a well-worn authoritarian playbook. It is one that quite literally the United States of America was founded on rejecting--the idea that the British soldiers, when they occupied American cities, abused American citizens to the point where Americans turned against them.
I am a former CIA officer, a former Pentagon official. I have worked alongside the military my entire life. I cannot stomach the idea that the American people would fear the uniformed military who have given their lives to protect them for so many years.
But all of us in this Chamber and certainly those of us who have served in the past swore an oath to the Constitution--not to a King, not to a party, not to any one person. Nobody gets to rewrite the Constitution--not a President, not an adviser, no one.
If the President wants to use force abroad or at home, he needs to come to this body and explain it publicly to the American public.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. President, incredibly, the Democrats are here to condemn President Trump's recent strikes against narcoterrorists operating in their backyard. Maybe they want to distract from the Schumer shutdown by tying the President's hands and siding with narcoterrorists who have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans on their hands. Whatever the reason, this would be foolhardy.
If you think I am exaggerating here, let me remind you of the kind of depraved savages we are dealing with. Recall the Tren de Aragua gang member who tried to rape 22-year-old Laken Riley while she was out for a jog on a college campus. After Laken fought back, this savage smashed her head with a rock and strangled her to death.
Also, recall the two Tren de Aragua gang members who, after being released into our country by Joe Biden, raped and murdered 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. These animals threw this innocent little girl's body off a bridge.
Finally, consider the recent arrest of the Tren de Aragua gang leader who kidnapped three women and shot them in the back of the head in an alley in Chicago. Only one survived to call for help.
These are the sorts of horrific acts of violence that narcoterrorists commit against Americans. And, of course, these narcoterrorists--many affiliated with Tren de Aragua--also flood our country with dangerous drugs that have taken the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year after year after year. They target every State in our Union with their poison.
This is among the many reasons why President Trump was well within his constitutional authority to take action against these narcoterrorists who put American lives at risk. These recent strikes fulfilled President Trump's constitutional duty to protect Americans as their elected Commander in Chief.
This should come as no surprise. President Trump stated very clearly and repeatedly during the campaign that he would attack these cartels if necessary. This is simply him keeping his word to the American people.
Also, the President's strikes were lawfully sound and extremely limited. Because they have been going on for less than 60 days, they don't even fall within the War Powers Resolution threshold.
I would also note that Presidential action like this is hardly unheard of or unique. For context, as of the mid-20th century, scholars identified more than 100 military deployments or actions that lacked express prior congressional authorization.
I could go back to the beginning of the Republic, with the Barbary pirates off the coast of North Africa, but there is another example much closer in time and, for that matter, on the border. That would be President George H. W. Bush's decision to invade and topple the Government of Panama in 1989. Without prior congressional approval, he ordered 12,000 American troops into that country. We toppled Panama's illegitimate regime. We apprehended the country's dictator, and he spent the rest of his life in foreign custody.
Let's compare these two cases. In both cases, you had the leader of a country who is indicted by the U.S. courts for drug trafficking. In both cases, that leader is not recognized by the U.S. Government as the legitimate leader of his country. I would say the comparison ends there because the case is much stronger here than it was in 1989.
Maduro also has I think a $50 million reward on his head from our government. Maduro is associated with a designated foreign terrorist organization. Noriega didn't have a reward. Noriega wasn't associated with a designated foreign terrorist organization. Maduro is in league with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. Noriega was not. Yet George Bush invaded Panama and overthrew its government.
I don't hear many Democrats, in retrospect, saying that this was an unwise action or it made our country less safe. And somehow Donald Trump is doing those things merely by striking a few boats of drug traffickers in international waters?
Even if you had misgivings about these strikes, even maybe if you were a Democrat in Congress in 1989--as some of our colleagues were-- and you condemned President Bush for taking action to defend our country, I would still point out that the resolution before us is overbroad.
The resolution prevents the President from taking offensive action against any foreign terrorist organization designated on or after February 20 of this year. This includes the Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
It appears our Democratic friends have forgotten that the Houthis are responsible for at least--at least--150 attacks against the United States and allied naval and commercial ships, which have killed at least 3 people. These terrorists have also targeted our friends in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates--mostly civilians, for that matter.
So if the Democrats had their way, President Trump would not be able to, for example, strike a secret meeting of senior Houthi leaders; wouldn't be able to strike imminent attacks on our friends in countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, or United Arab Emirates.
I think we should all agree that we want a President, when terrorists are gathered together for the purpose of planning attacks against American civilians, our troops, or our friends abroad, to have the authority necessary to take action.
The Democrats claim: Oh, there is a carve-out in our resolution. Oh, we have a saving clause. We have a rule of construction that says our troops can defend themselves.
Once again, they are misleading the American people. I invite you to read it closely. They may allow our sailors to defend themselves if these Houthi terrorists shoot a missile or a drone directly at their ship, but it absolutely ties the President's hands if, for instance, we have intelligence about a senior meeting of Houthi terrorist leaders. It absolutely ties the President's hands from protecting our friends in places like Jerusalem and Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. There is no question about that. It is the black letter of the resolution. It only goes for about three lines. I would invite anyone to read it, and you will understand that the Democrats are once again dissembling.
No reasonable person denies the authority of the President to strike a terrorist threat on foreign soil. Yet the Democrats are here tonight questioning the President's authority to do the exact same thing in our own backyard--in international waters, no less; not even foreign territory. This is a dangerous double standard.
Therefore, I encourage my colleagues to vote no on this resolution and to get back to the more pressing business of reopening our government.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, let me just take this opportunity to address some of the remarks of my colleague who has, I think, rightly pointed out the horrors of drug trafficking and those that are engaged in that poisonous, deadly trade. I agree with that, and we should do everything we can to fight back against those who are trying to traffic that poison into this country. And I agree with him about the murderous dictator that is Maduro.
But here is the thing. If my colleagues in this Congress want to go to war with Venezuela, if they want to use military force to bring about regime change in Venezuela, or if they want to wage a literal war using the military and armed force to blow up traffickers, then they need to come to Congress and seek an authorization to use military force for that purpose because our Constitution is clear.
There are, essentially, three circumstances in which we can constitutionally use force. One is if Congress declares war. We have not declared war on Venezuela. We have not declared a literal fighting war using military troops either.
Or we authorize the use of military force. We have not done so.
Now, the third circumstance in which a President is authorized to use force is in the event of imminent threat of attack from our adversaries. And that is simply not the circumstance here.
Instead, what the administration seems to be relying on is a claim that it has the power, somehow, to put organizations on a list and go after them wherever they may be, without the approval of Congress. That is what this resolution is about.
Now, my colleague also made an argument about the Houthis. Nothing in this resolution affects the ability to defend ourselves from the Houthis as necessary. The President and the former Presidents who have taken action against the Houthis have not done so on the basis of the Houthis being added to some list. Being added to a list, even the foreign terrorist organization list, empowers an administration to put sanctions on that organization. But being placed on a list by the Executive does not give any greater authority to use armed force against an organization.
The basis in which this President and previous Presidents have used force against the Houthis is the Houthis have attacked us, and if the Houthis attack us again, the President will have the article II power to defend ourselves. And nothing in this resolution touches that in any way, shape, or form.
But let me just underscore the perils of what we are discussing today. Now, this is an article that just came out. I haven't had the chance to vet it: ``Colombia president claims U.S. bombed Colombian boat in strike off Venezuela.''
So I don't know whether we have now struck a Colombian ship or what the circumstances were or who was on board, and that is exactly the problem. That is exactly the problem. Now, maybe this is real and maybe it isn't, but the fact that we don't know, the fact that the Executive asserts the authority to blow up ships without coming to Congress for the authorization of that kind of force could invariably lead to mistakes, could also lead, inadvertently, to war with another country.
This resolution says: If you want to use force against narcoterrorists by blowing up ships, come to Congress for an authorization because at this point you don't have it. If there is an imminent threat of attack, you have all of the authority you need under article II. But if you want to engage in a war with Venezuela or a regime change with Maduro and you want to use military force to do it, you need to come to Congress for an authorization. There being none, these strikes are unconstitutional and unlawful.
I would urge my colleagues to join Senator Kaine and myself in supporting this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. President, we are here today to talk about a resolution put forth by the Democrats that is very, very not well- taken.
We are all aware in this body that on September 4, President Trump notified Congress of his initial strike against narcoterrorists who were bringing deadly and illegal drugs into this country--the first of four such strikes.
Now, my colleague just referred to the fact that the President can-- if there is an imminent attack on our country, that they can strike. This wasn't an imminent attack; this was an actual attack. It was in progress. It was going on. People were attacking our country by bringing in poisonous substances to deposit into our country that would have killed Americans all over America, including your constituents.
Fortunately, most of those drugs are now at the bottom of the ocean. Had that not happened, I guarantee there would have been hundreds-- maybe thousands--of people in this country that would have been killed with the tremendous amount of drugs that were being brought in. The facts of that are obviously well-known, well-reported, and if you want to see more, it is certainly available in the Intelligence Committee.
The people carrying those drugs were terrorists, plain and simple. They were trafficking drugs that financed a designated foreign terrorist organization. These strikes were fully compliant and fully justified under the President's article II constitutional authority-- and not only authority but duty as Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces to defend this country. And he took an oath to do so.
So why are we here today? We are looking at a resolution saying that he can't do this anymore. This is nonsense. It is unreasonable. It is why the American people look at Congress and say: Are you people crazy? You have the President of the United States trying to do something about this terrible scourge that is going on in America, and you in Congress are saying: Don't be doing that anymore unless you come here and ask us for permission to do it.
So these actions are political, pure and simple. These actions here are political. This was a good decision on the part of the President, and the President acted legally. So what are my Democratic friends doing here? They are putting forth this joint resolution No. 83 to stop the President from acting in the way he has just acted to stop these drugs from coming into the country. So let's look at what it says. Let's look at the actual language:
His date of inauguration--
You are telling the President to stop using this against organizations and people who are trafficking drugs for distribution and on the way to the United States.
And it goes on to say that he can't do this unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force by this organization.
How long do you think it would take him to get that? Those drugs not only would have been delivered to the United States, they would have not only been distributed in the United States; there would be dead Americans, and we would still be here yapping about it.
So even if this passed--and it is not going to, but if it did pass, he is not going to obey this order. He can't obey this order. He took an oath to defend this country. When he sees an attack like this coming--an attack of drugs or explosives or anything else that is going to kill Americans--he not only has the authority to do something about it; he has the duty to do something about it.
We should have a resolution out here not condemning what he did and telling him ``don't do this anymore''; we should have a resolution out here thanking him for the hundreds--probably thousands--of lives that he saved with these four attacks, including constituents in your districts.
Thank you, Mr. President, for what you did. Thank you. And continue the good work of taking these drugs out of the traffic and putting them on the bottom of the ocean.
My friends, this is Trump derangement syndrome. These people hate President Trump; I get that. But simply because you hate him, you should not wallow in that hate like you have and produce this kind of a product that stops the President from doing what he is supposed to do. This is shameful and it should be defeated and it is going to be defeated.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho's emotional speech notwithstanding, this is not about hating a President; it is about loving a Constitution. It is about loving a Constitution.
The resolution that my colleague Senator Schiff has filed, which I gladly cosponsored, does not say there cannot be military action against terrorists or cartels or drug traffickers. It just says that the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress, the United States should not be at war against groups on a secret list prepared by one individual who is unwilling to share it with Congress and with the American public.
My colleague said that we should put a resolution on the floor thanking the President. I have an idea for my Republican colleagues: put a resolution on the floor declaring war against narcotraffickers. Why haven't they done that? That is what the Constitution says they should do. They are so strong in their belief that we should be at war with narcotraffickers, why haven't they put a resolution before this body to say we should be at war with cartels and narcotraffickers?
There are two reasons: They know it would fail, even in a Republican Senate. And second, they are afraid to vote on that resolution because they know their constituents are tired of wars and don't want Congress declaring more wars and treating serious law enforcement problems as challenges for the U.S. military.
I strongly support the resolution my colleague has filed.
When President Trump announced in August that he might undertake this action, Senator Schiff and I conferred with other Senators. And when the first strike was taken on the 4th of September, we wrote a letter to the President, as the article I branch charged with the power of declaring war, asking him a basic series of questions: Give us the evidence that these boats were actually carrying narcotics. Give us the legal rationale for striking them without coming to Congress. If you knew where they were enough to strike them, you could have interdicted them. Why did you choose to strike them and not interdict them? We hear that drugs are now at the bottom of the sea.
If you interdict a ship and you seize drugs, you get evidence, you get individuals that you interrogate, and you build cases against the higher-ups in the narcotrafficking ring. When you destroy a boat, you don't get the evidence; you can't build the case.
And we asked: Why not interdict? Why strike rather than interdict? These were questions that Congress has a right to know the answer and the American public has a right to know the answer. And we asked the President: Give us answers to these questions in 7 days--not unreasonable.
We have yet to get answers to these questions. The administration believes it does not have to justify these actions to Congress, it does not have to tell us the evidence about the narcotics content of these boats, it does not have to give us a clear legal rationale, it does not have to explain the decision to strike rather than to interdict.
When you ask the basic questions and you are not given answers, you get suspicious that the answers are not forthcoming because there aren't good answers to the questions that we asked.
We did have a followup hearing, the Armed Services Committee, in the secure facility last week. And I can't really talk about what was said there, but I can sure talk about what wasn't said there. No answer to the question of ``Why not interdict?'' It was asked over and over and over again, and aside from asserting that ``we have the ability to do what we did,'' they could not provide an answer about interdiction.
They could not provide clear evidence that all of those boats actually had narcotics on them, even though they knew we would be asking that question.
And so, to the legal rationale, all they said was ``the President has an article II ability to undertake these actions.'' Saying ``I can do whatever I want under article II'' is not an answer, and that is no legal rationale, but it is essentially what the President is saying: I can put groups on a list--and we understand it is many groups and their affiliates--and not tell Congress and not tell the American public, and I get to make the decision about whether the Nation goes to war.
That is not what our Constitution says.
My colleague Senator Schiff is talking about the Constitution, so I won't belabor it. But there are a couple of points that I do want to stress because there is nothing more important in the Constitution than the power to declare war.
The Founders who wrote the Constitution in 1787 debated this topic extensively, and they recognized the reality in the world at the time: Decisions about war were made by the Executive, King, Monarch, Emperor, Czar, Pope. It was made by the Executive.
The Framers of the Constitution in 1787 were dealing with leadership that included the first President of the United States, George Washington, the greatest general that has ever been President of the United States. They revered George Washington.
But when they had to make a decision about who declared war, they said: Even George Washington--even George Washington--is not smart enough to carry that sole decision on his shoulders to make war. So they decided to do something almost completely contrary to the whole flow of human history, and they invested the power to declare war in the legislative branch, in Congress.
And my colleague read Madison's exchange as the principal drafter of the provision with Jefferson, many years later, about why they had done it. They wanted, with studied care, to vest the question of war in the legislative branch.
It is not only in the Constitution, it is in the Constitution for a reason. And here is the reason: A decision about war puts troops in harm's way, puts troops in a position where they may be injured or killed; they may see their best friends injured or killed; they could come home with physical injuries or mental injuries that could affect the remainder of their lives.
The Constitution of the United States, in a somewhat unique way, requires congressional approval for war
If a President goes off unilaterally without getting Congress on board, then we are asking people to risk their lives with no national consensus that the mission is worth it. Could there be a grosser example of public immorality than to order troops into harm's way where they could be killed and their lives and their families affected for the rest of their lives without a national consensus that this is a mission worth you risking your life?
That is why that provision is so sacred in the article I branch, and that is why even George Washington was not entrusted by the Framers of the Constitution to make a decision like this on his own.
I will finish where I started. This is not about dissatisfaction with President Trump. I filed similar resolutions, as my colleague from Idaho knows, when President Obama was President. I came into the Senate in 2013 with an absolute obsession because of the military nature of my State, because one of my kids is a marine--with an absolute obsession that the Nation should never go to war--never--without a debate in Congress that the American people can see, can learn from, and a political consensus that the war is worth it.
Yes, there is an exception for defense or imminent attack. That has been understood as part of the Presidential power of Commander in Chief since the very first days of this Republic.
But even in that instance, it was foreseen that Congress would come in and have a debate and agree or not with whether they blessed the mission or not. Letting a single individual take us to war based on a secret list that he won't even reveal to the public and to Congress sets such a dangerous precedent.
And if my colleagues, as they have stated, believe we should be at war in the Caribbean or at war with nations in the Americas or with the narcotraffickers, they have had the ability the entire time to bring a resolution before us and have that debate in front of the American public. I have a feeling that debate would produce some positive votes if it were limited enough, but to allow a President to do it by secret without Congress having the guts to have the debate and vote about whether the war is worthwhile is contrary to everything this country stands for, to the oath we take.
I would urge folks to support my colleague's resolution.
Mr. President, I ask consent that we yield back all remaining time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will read the joint resolution by title a third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read a third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Montana (Mr. Sheehy).
The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 51, as follows:
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 71) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
