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19Senate Resolution 874: Requesting Information on the Republic of Paraguay's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
20Senate Resolution 875: Requesting Information on the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
21Senate Resolution 876: Requesting Information on the Republic of Sierra Leone's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
22Senate Resolution 877: Requesting Information on the Republic of Uganda's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
23Senate Resolution 878: Requesting Information on the Republic of El Salvador's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
24Senate Resolution 879: Requesting Information on the Republic of Ecuador's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
25Senate Resolution 880: Requesting Information on the Commonwealth of Dominica's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
26Senate Resolution 881: Requesting Information on the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
27Senate Resolution 882: Requesting Information on the Central African Republic's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
28Senate Resolution 883: Requesting Information on the Republic of Burundi's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
30Senate Resolution 885: Requesting Information on the Republic of Guinea-Bissau's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
31Senate Resolution 886: Requesting Information on the Republic of Liberia's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
32Senate Resolution 887: Requesting Information on the Republic of Palau's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
33Senate Resolution 888: Congratulating the Paseo Verde Little League Baseball Team on Winning the 2026 Little League World Series United States Championship
34Senate Resolution 889: Recognizing the Contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans to the Musical Heritage of the United States and Designating September 2026 as "Latin Music Appreciation Month"
35Senate Resolution 890: Remembering, on the 105th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, the Countless Lives the Chinese Communist Party Has Destroyed and the People Currently Living in Fear Of...
36Senate Resolution 891: Designating the Week of September 27, 2026, Through October 3, 2026, as "Religious Education Week" to Celebrate Religious Education in the United States
39Senate Resolution 894: Designating September 25, 2026, as "National Ataxia Awareness Day", and Raising Awareness of Ataxia, Ataxia Research, and the Search for a Cure
41Senate Resolution 896: Expressing the Sense of the Senate Regarding the Importance of Religious Freedom, Authoritative Texts, and Transparency in Artificial Intelligence Systems
Thirty-five bills and twenty-five resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 5459-5493, and S. Res. 873-897.
Pages S4929-30
Measures Reported
Special Report entitled ``Legislative Activities of the Committee on the Budget During the 118th Congress''. (S. Rept. No. 119-151) S. 1055, to amend the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to modify the notification requirement for emergency contract health services for certain beneficiaries. (S. Rept. No. 119-152) S. 3219, to transfer certain Federal land into trust for certain Indian Pueblos in the State of New Mexico, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. (S. Rept. No. 119-153) S. 3313, to require the Secretary of the Interior to issue a right- of-way for an emergency exit on certain National Park Service land in the State of Virginia, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Page S4926
Measures Passed
Critical Infrastructure Manufacturing Feasibility Act: Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1721, to direct the Secretary of Commerce to conduct a study on the feasibility of manufacturing in the United States products for critical infrastructure sectors, and the bill was then passed.
Page S4892
New Mexico Land Grant-Mercedes Historical or Traditional Use Cooperation and Coordination Act
Senate passed S. 1363, to provide for greater cooperation and coordination between the Federal Government and the governing bodies and community users of land grant-mercedes in New Mexico relating to historical or traditional uses of certain land grant-mercedes on Federal public land, after agreeing to the committee amendment.
Pages S4898-S4901
Hearts of Gold Playground
Senate passed S. 2933, to redesignate a playground in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in the State of West Virginia as the ``Hearts of Gold Playground: In Honor of West Virginia Children and Families Impacted by Childhood Cancer''.
Pages S4901-02
Romance Scam Prevention Act
Senate passed H.R. 2481, to require online dating service providers to provide fraud ban notifications to online dating service members.
Page S4902
Secure Space Act
Senate passed S. 1962, to amend the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from granting a license or United States market access for a geostationary orbit satellite system or a nongeostationary orbit satellite system, or an authorization to use an individually licensed earth station or a blanket-licensed earth station, if the license, grant of market access, or authorization would be held or controlled by an entity identified on the Covered List or an affiliate of such an entity, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute, and the committee reported title amendment.
Page S4956
Satellite Cybersecurity Act
Senate passed S. 3404, to require a report on Federal support to the cybersecurity of commercial satellite systems, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S4956-58
National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions was discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 863, expressing support for designation of the week of September 13 through 19, 2026, as ``National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week'', and the resolution was then agreed to.
Page S4958
Congratulating the Paseo Verde Little League Baseball Team
Senate agreed to S. Res. 888, congratulating the Paseo Verde Little League baseball team on winning the 2026 Little League World Series United States Championship.
Page S4958
National Concussion Awareness Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 892, supporting the designation of September 18, 2026, as ``National Concussion Awareness Day''.
Page S4958
National Country Music Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 893, designating October 2026 as ``National Country Music Month''.
Page S4958
National Ataxia Awareness Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 894, designating September 25, 2026, as ``National Ataxia Awareness Day'', and raising awareness of ataxia, ataxia research, and the search for a cure.
Page S4958
National Community Policing Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 895, designating the week of October 4, 2026, through October 10, 2026, as ``National Community Policing Week''.
Page S4958
Artificial Intelligence Systems
Senate agreed to S. Res. 896, expressing the sense of the Senate regarding the importance of religious freedom, authoritative texts, and transparency in artificial intelligence systems.
Page S4958
Honoring the Life of Former Senator Jon Llewellyn Kyl
Senate agreed to S. Res. 897, honoring the life, service, and legacy of the Honorable Jon Llewellyn Kyl, former Senator for the State of Arizona.
Page S4958
Measures Considered
Protect College Sports Act--Agreement: Senate continued consideration of S. 4668, to protect the name, image, and likeness rights of, and provide protections for, student athletes and to promote fair competition among intercollegiate athletics, taking action on the following motions and amendments proposed thereto:
Pages S4885-92, S4892-97, S4902-12
Pending
Thune (for Cruz) Amendment No. 6776, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S4885
Thune Amendment No. 6777 (to Amendment No. 6776), to change the enactment date.
Page S4885
Thune Amendment No. 6778 (to Amendment No. 6777), of a perfecting nature.
Page S4885
Thune Amendment No. 6779 (to the language proposed to be stricken by Amendment No. 6776), to change the enactment date.
Page S4885
Thune Amendment No. 6780 (to Amendment No. 6779), of a perfecting nature.
Page S4885
Thune motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, with instructions, Thune Amendment No. 6781, to change the enactment date.
Page S4885
Thune Amendment No. 6782 (to the instructions (Amendment No. 6781) of the motion to recommit), of a perfecting nature.
Page S4885
Thune Amendment No. 6783 (to Amendment No. 6782), of a perfecting nature.
Page S4885
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing for further consideration of Thune (for Cruz) Amendment No. 6776 to the bill, post- cloture, at approximately 10 a.m., on Thursday, September 24, 2026; and that all post-cloture time be expired at 10:45 a.m., and Senate vote on adoption of Thune (for Cruz) Amendment No. 6776 (listed above).
Page S4958
Appointments
Congressional-Executive Commission on the People's Republic of China: The Chair, on behalf of the President of the Senate, pursuant to Public Law 106-286, appointed the following Member to serve on the Congressional-Executive Commission on the People's Republic of China during the 119th Congress: Senator Curtis.
Page S4956
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 50 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. EX. 241), Angela Veronica Colmenero, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas.
Pages S4897-98, S4958
3 Coast Guard nominations in the rank of admiral. A routine list in the Coast Guard.
Pages S4912, S4958
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S4932-52
Record Votes
One record vote was taken today. (Total--241)
Pages S4897-98
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned, as a further mark of respect to the memory of the late Jon Llewellyn Kyl, former Senator for the State of Arizona, at 7:28 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 24, 2026. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Acting Majority Leader in today's Record on page S4958.)
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 43 of 166 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Legislative Session
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of S. 4668, which now the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Mr. President, last year, my Republican colleagues and I enacted the Working Families Tax Cut Act, which prevented the largest tax hike in our Nation's history. Not a single Democratic Senator voted for it.
This bill made permanent tax reforms that were enacted in 2017 and expanded on that 2017 tax bill, allowing taxpayers to keep more of their hard-earned money. This included provisions that reduced tax bills of individuals and families as well as pro-growth tax policies critical to boosting domestic business and employee wages.
Without the 2025 tax bill, we would have had the largest tax increase in the history of the country.
Now, this Working Families Tax Cut Act also fulfilled President Trump's campaign promises to have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and expanded tax relief for our senior citizens. It also increased and indexed the child tax credit, and it allowed for the deduction of interest on car loans. Truly, this is a working family tax bill cut.
But a great new tax exemption was created to encourage savings and particularly to start at an early young age. The law has in it an innovative new savings tool for children under 18 called Trump Accounts.
These new savings accounts opened for contributions on July 5 and, according to the White House, over the next 5 days, families invested $125 million in these new accounts for children. In addition to family contribution, there are over 50 companies committed to offer Trump Account contributions for children of their own employees. Moreover,
The Working Families Tax Cut is lowering tax bills. It is, at the same time, invigorating the economy and at the same time helping a new generation build financial security.
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.
For the information of the Senate, with respect to the passage of H.R. 952, the measure was not discharged from the committee, as it had already been reported and was listed as Calendar No. 491.
Mr. President, there is no doubt that the Democrat Party has moved sharply left in recent years, but this election cycle has seen the Democrat Party take a big step further toward full-blown socialism.
New York City's new Democrat mayor, a self-proclaimed Democrat socialist, might be the most notable example, but he is far from alone. Around the country, socialists have been winning Democrat primaries, and it is no exaggeration to say that socialism is rapidly gaining a prominent new role in the Democrat Party.
So let's talk a little bit about socialism and the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. When you look at the platform, right away, you see some predictable things; namely, government control of almost everything. Healthcare, business, housing, education, energy-- all of these sectors would come under government control in a democratic socialist state. And when I say ``government control,'' I don't just mean they would be hit with a lot of regulations; I mean government control. Government would become the ultimate decisionmaker for American families in most aspects of their life.
Take healthcare, for example. We often talk about the doctor-patient relationship in medicine. Well, under democratic socialism, that would be a lot more like the government-patient relationship. It is the government that would decide what healthcare Americans are eligible for, what medications they can take, and when and where they are able to access care.
Americans place a high value on choice and freedom, but freedom and choice do not last very long when government takes over, and under democratic socialism, government would be truly taking over. I could dedicate a whole speech to what happens when government takes control of the economy and the means of production and of healthcare and education and energy.
But there is more to the Democratic Socialist platform that I want to talk about. I guess I have to hand it to Democratic Socialists. Despite their plan for government takeover of most aspects of American life, they do have a couple of cuts on the table. But the nature of those cuts is a big problem. Democratic Socialists would like to defund the Pentagon; they would like to abolish immigration enforcement; and they would like to eliminate the police. That is right. The official platform--the official platform of the Democratic Socialists states that their goal is to ``demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system.''
Think about that: ``as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system''--the official platform of the Democratic Socialists of America.
I don't think I need to explain to anyone just how unhinged that is. If anyone thinks we can keep our communities safe while fully abolishing the police and prison system, I have some oceanfront property in South Dakota to sell them.
The problem is that Democratic Socialists do believe this. Swept up in their utopian fantasies, they believe that by implementing the right system--socialism--they can somehow do away with human evil and remove the need for police or prisons--or armies, for that matter. But, of course, no system is going to be able to fully eliminate evil. No matter how many social programs you put in place or how much education the government provides, there are always going to be men and women who choose to harm others for their own ends. And the idea that we would eliminate the men and women who protect society from these people-- well, again, I don't think I need to explain to anyone just how quickly the peace and safety that we take for granted would evaporate, on both the local and national scale.
And the Democratic Socialist platform doesn't end there. Everything I have discussed so far would remake our country on a massive scale to the point of its being unrecognizable as the free, secure, and prosperous Nation that we have known over the past 250 years. But Democratic Socialists would take it even further. Their platform calls for officially changing our system of government, for eliminating the Senate and replacing ``the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.''
Those aren't tweaks around the margin; that is a full abolishment of the American system. That is the elimination of the checks and balances that define our government and help prevent any one branch from exceeding its lawful authority, and it is the elimination of real protection for minority rights.
``[W]e know complete victory will require building a new society from the ground up'' the authors of the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America write. And that is exactly what they propose to do: eliminate the American system and build another in its place.
And this is the political organization that is currently finding a home in the Democrat Party. Democrats are giving a home to an organization that is not merely dedicated to the radical expansion of government but to the actual elimination of our system of government.
Why? Well, at its worst, socialism moves into full-blown communism-- the economic system that characterized the Soviet Union and oversaw not merely the exploitation of workers and ordinary people but the complete loss of freedom for millions and the death of millions more.
And just in case you think that has nothing to do with the Democratic Socialists of America, think again.
The Wall Street Journal reports that several members of the Democratic Socialists' National Political Committee are ``dedicated Marxists and communists.'' One of the organization's national cochairs, in fact, is a member of the Democratic Socialists' Red Star Caucus whose goal is not merely socialism but communism. Communism--the hallmark of some of the world's most repressive regimes.
So I ask again, why are Democratic Socialists finding a home in the Democrat Party?
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, let me say a few words about a great leader who has just retired--AFSCME president Lee Saunders. Today, I will pay tribute to a dear friend and a juggernaut for labor who recently began a well-deserved retirement--AFSCME president Lee Saunders. On Monday, there will be a celebration of Lee and all his work for the labor movement over the years. It will be quite a party.
I am grateful to have known Lee for decades and have always been in awe of his steadfastness in defending working people. For nearly 50 years, you could find Lee on the frontlines for every
As Lee steered this mighty union, I have had the privilege of standing shoulder to shoulder with him on issue after issue after issue.
Together, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we fought hard to secure $350 billion for frontline workers and State and local governments, keeping communities afloat with public servants on the payroll. Many, if not most, of these workers would have lost their jobs had it not been for these dollars. We had real opposition from many on the other side of the aisle, but we fought hard and prevailed.
Together, we worked tirelessly to ensure that over 2 million public servants received their hard-earned Social Security benefits.
Together, we continue to fight for the PRO Act so that workers can better organize and bargain for fair wages and benefits, and we have applied that PRO Act in companion legislation for public workers.
I couldn't have asked for a better partner in the trenches, and AFSCME's members couldn't have elected a better president to stand up for their rights in the face of some of the greatest challenges to organized labor for generations.
In my own city of New York, city workers get paid a much better wage than they used to, better benefits, better pensions--all because of the AFSCME and fight Lee Saunders led. It is nice to see that hard-working public servants are actually being paid a decent wage, although obviously many of us think it should be greater.
Lee was always rising to meet the moment, unafraid to take on the hardest fights, and Lee's example will continue to inspire future efforts to support American workers.
Lee, you lit an eternal flame in the heart of the labor movement, and it will long endure no matter how hard corporate interests and union busters try to stamp it out.
I wish this great American the very best in his retirement and congratulate him on such a historic career.
Mr. President, now on the Xi Jinping visit, as Donald Trump hunts for a headline and photo-op with Xi Jinping today, he is at risk of losing sight of what is at stake for the American people. Trump risks giving China a leg up on a variety of issues if he bends the knee to Xi.
As I have been warning not only for weeks but actually for years, Trump cannot let the Chinese Communist Party get its hands on our most advanced AI chips and manufacturing equipment. If Trump truly wants to preserve America's lead in the AI race, the answer is to prohibit the sale of this cutting-edge technology to China, not to let AI develop and continue without guardrails.
We all ought to be concerned by Trump handing over this tech to China, which is why Senator Warren and I, along with Senators Slotkin and Kim, will be holding a press conference today on the urgent need to tighten export controls and cut off the flow of AI technology to the CCP.
AI is just one area where there is a risk of Trump selling out America. We will be closely watching what Trump does across the spectrum of challenges that the United States faces with the PRC.
Trump has already undermined America's competitiveness by gutting Federal R&D and technical training and making it harder for American companies to recruit top talent from abroad. His actions have forced much of our best talent to flee this country and go to Europe and go to China--the best talent who come here to work and prosper, and he cuts off their grants, and they leave. What does that do for America? It certainly makes us weaker in scientific endeavor and makes our rivals-- even friendly rivals--stronger.
It is almost like China is trying to sabotage American industry for decades to come.
He gets these stupid bugs in his head that research is bad, that science is bad, that they are all a big bunch of liberals or something. He is so hurting America--Trump is--and strengthening China. Decades from now, historians will look back and say this may have been a turning point because we had such bad, stupid, ignorant leadership.
Let's not forgot the implications Trump's meetings with Xi could have for American autoworkers. If Trump lets China flood the market with Chinese EVs--an idea he has flirted with before--he will put even more manufacturing workers out of a job than he already has.
China also needs to stem the flow of fentanyl to the United States that is devastating our communities. I met with Xi on this very issue face to face 3 years ago. I told President Xi that he ought to stop the flow of these precursor chemicals to the United States.
Well, Trump must push the PRC to do more to crack down on these synthetic opioid precursors. Our first discussions with Xi got some action but not close to enough. Trump ought to take legal action against those opioid precursors that have already been scheduled to come in here and crack down on illicit financing schemes keeping this deadly trade going.
As I said, after our meeting with Xi, China made some steps in the right direction, but it needs to do more.
Trump also needs to explain why on Earth he continued providing tariff relief to China, our main competitor, while escalating his costly trade war with Canada, one of our closest allies.
Square that circle for us, Donald.
Crucially, there is real risk that Trump could let Xi off the hook for helping Russia and Iran evade sanctions, even helping Iran target American troops in the Middle East.
All of this and Trump has the gall to call Xi Jinping ``a great gentleman.''
Trump, stop fawning over strongmen like Xi, and put your foot down. Put your American foot down, and defend our country and our workers.
Standing up for the American people means standing up to Xi.
(The remarks of Mr. SCHUMER pertaining to the introduction of S. 5461 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, when it comes to foreign policy, the Republican Party's philosophy will always be ``peace through strength.'' Yesterday, at the United Nations, President Trump made that very clear. He made it clear that America continues to lead with peace through strength.
The President of communist China, Xi Jinping, will hear the same message later this week, when he comes to Washington, DC.
Now, I just heard the minority leader of the U.S. Senate come to the floor and say something about the fact that he thought that President Trump was going to sell out our country to China.
Let me set the record straight. President Xi last visited the White House 11 years ago. Today, he is going to arrive to a very different America and a very different President.
A decade ago, Barack Obama was in the White House. The Obama policy with regard to China was appeasement. It was accommodation, and it was apologies. Obama's weakness gave China free rein--free rein to undermine our economy and our national security.
China spied on American businesses. They stole American technology. And China strengthened its grip on global supply chains.
As Democrat climate alarmists forced the closure of our coal-fired powerplants, China built new ones. They continue to build them today in the race for power and the competition over artificial intelligence.
From new technology to global supply chains, China's goal is to be the military, the economic, and the technological superpower of the world. China wants to push America aside. Their vision is not cooperation. It is not even competition. It is complete control.
The American people want safety, prosperity, and freedom. That is what we want at home in America. America can't be free if we are dependent upon China for our medicine, for our materials, and for our minerals. We need to do more. America can't continue to lead the free world if we allow China to steal our best ideas and our newest technologies. We must stand firm.
America needs to stand strong. We must say to China: Never again.
We also must say it to ourselves: Never again will we allow ourselves to be in this position.
President Trump is very clear-eyed. He sees the stakes. He knows the threats. He also understands that American strength is more important today than ever before.
That is why the President is acting decisively to protect American interests. Fair trade, historic tax cuts, aggressive deregulation--they have all made us stronger and more prosperous.
Innovative American companies still give us a great strategic edge. Republican tax cuts are putting more money into people's pockets. A secure border means less fentanyl coming through China, through Mexico and the southern border into the United States.
Investment is coming to American manufacturing in record amounts, trillions of dollars. America is producing more energy than ever before. We are also mining more critical minerals. These minerals are critical for our homes, our factories, and our national defense.
Under President Trump, America is hitting China's ambitions north, south, east, and west. What he has done is hold China accountable. That wasn't done in the previous administration, and President Trump is doing it without apology.
Just yesterday--just yesterday--President Trump signed a historic agreement, and it is regarding Greenland. The agreement prevents our adversaries--including communist China--from building military bases in Greenland or making critical investments there. This was a historic agreement.
The Trump administration has also hindered China by blocking their access to cheap oil. No longer can China buy oil at steep discounts from dictatorships in Venezuela or Iran.
Additionally, we voted, here in the Senate, on our late colleague Lindsey Graham's efforts on China and oil. The President has now signed into legislation the Lindsey Graham bill, putting new penalties on China for importing oil and energy from Russia or from Iran.
The penalties are stiff. The penalties are severe. As the largest buyer of Russian energy, China now faces these tough new penalties.
The United States is systematically blocking the vast ambitions of the so-called axis of aggression--China, Russia, and Iran.
This is the definition of peace through strength. Weakness invites attacks; strength deters them. And Republicans are going to continue to show unmatched strength in defense of our American economy and our Americans' safety.
President Trump is going to do the same this week, when he meets with President Xi.
And so I say to my colleague from New York, the minority leader: That is the straight record. That is setting the record straight about what things were like in the Democrat administration, and what things are like with President Trump in the White House.
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, the people who oversee the post office now want to run college sports. What could go wrong?
The U.S. Congress has been called upon during one of the more important times in our history to make difficult decisions about the future of our country. We have navigated wars, economic downturns, and natural disasters. These are the kinds of nationwide issues the Federal Government should address.
The Founders never intended for the Federal Government, though, to usurp the authority of your local school board or your homeowners association. I don't think it ever occurred to them that Congress would one day be in charge of dictating the rules for college sports. Yet, with gas at over $4 a gallon, a persistent war with Iran, $40 trillion in debt, the Senate has decided that the most urgent thing now is to dictate how college sports are run from Washington.
It came to this decision, of course, after acknowledging that government caused the very problems this bill purports to fix. This is the exact scenario the great Harry Brown described when he said: Government--you know, they know how to break your legs and then hand you a crutch and say, see, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.
I come to the floor today to offer an amendment that would avoid the Federal takeover of college sports. Unlike the underlying bill, my amendment rejects the idea that politicians should run college sports. My amendment would put the trust in the schools, the students, the coaches, and the conferences to run their own sports.
You see, the whole problem originated because the government, through the courts, took the power away from the NCAA.
My amendment accomplishes this goal simply by granting an antitrust exemption so that the NCAA, the conferences, the college students, and the schools can make their own deals without unelected judges or politicians micromanaging every detail of compensation and eligibility.
Jason Russell, a journalist with Reason magazine, perhaps summed up this bill's Federal takeover of college sports best when he wrote:
This is not the job of the Federal Government. These decisions should be made privately by an association. The NCAA always did this until the courts interfered with them, calling them a monopoly and taking away their just power to govern themselves.
Jason Russell goes on to write:
This bill is the culmination of a slow march toward Federal control of college sports that began almost 140 years ago in the courts. In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It is a piece of antitrust legislation, but quite quickly, antitrust became a weapon against businesses of all sizes.
A brief review of the antitrust cases shows you the ridiculous nature of antitrust law. One of the most ridiculous examples of antitrust as a weapon of government came in 1967. In Utah Pie Company v. Continental Baking Company, the Court determined that a bakery violated antitrust laws by selling its pies too cheaply.
Now, you would be forgiven for being confused if you thought monopolies were where someone controlled the market and raised your price. The government sued Utah Pie Company for selling its pies too cheaply.
Not long after that, in 1969, the government sued IBM for dominating the computer market by innovating too quickly.
Now, I thought monopolies were going to prevent competition. There would be no innovation. They would block new innovation because they didn't want someone to get into their territory. Instead, they accused IBM of innovating too frequently.
So antitrust law is full of the government going after people for charging too little and innovating too much. The world is upside down, and antitrust law is a perfect example of the illogic of the government.
The logic of antitrust became so contorted that the FTC accused cereal makers of maintaining a shared monopoly on the theory that the brands blocked competition by being so popular, they flooded the store shelves
They were being accused of being too competitive. They were putting too many products on the store shelves. So you had like six or eight cereal makers making so many cereals that they said: You are blocking competition by introducing too many products.
These are the absurdities of antitrust laws. This is the antitrust law that ended up destroying college sports. When you see the mess that is college sports, don't think it just happened and now government has to come in and fix it. Government created the problem. Government took antitrust law, used it against NCAA, neutered them, and said: You can no longer make your rules.
So when it is the government's fault, maybe we should get rid of the government problem, not add more government to try to solve the problems.
Antitrust laws granted the courts the ability to intrude on private contracts and dictate how people should run their businesses or their associations, like the NCAA, and courts have grown increasingly comfortable using that power, increasing the scope of antitrust law with each case.
For over 100 years, this country has left regulation of sports where it belongs: with the institutions and individuals and voluntary associations that have always run college sports. Until 1984, college athletics were excluded from antitrust law because antitrust law didn't deal with noncommercial amateur pursuits. But in 1984, the Court decided that the NCAA couldn't impose television broadcasting restrictions on college football games. Well, why not? It is a volunteer association. If you don't want to be in the NCAA, don't be in it. Form your own association. Have your own rules. But there is an advantage to being in it because people watch the NCAA, watch the Final Four, and they watch the March Madness. So it is that tradeoff. You get something, but in order to get it, you accepted, voluntarily, the rules--that is, until the Court came in, messed everything up, and neutered the NCAA.
Rather than recognizing that there may have been an underlying reason for the restrictions, the Court threw out the restrictions and began the slippery slope we are on today.
That case in 1984 established college athletics as a commercial enterprise, but it wasn't until 2015 that the courts really sank their fangs into college athletics.
In 2015, the court decided that the NCAA could not require students to maintain their amateur status by refusing payments for the use of their name, image, and likeness. The court decided that eligibility rules for a private association are best decided by the government, not the members of the association.
This is a real tragedy, and the reason I bring it up today is not because college sports is so messed up by the government. When you let antitrust law pervade private associations, you get rid of all of the rules that people voluntarily accept. It is no different than your homeowners association. It has all these rules. You voluntarily accept them if you want to be part of that particular neighborhood. It is the same way with the NCAA. But they can't make the rules anymore because the courts said: You are a monopoly. You are no longer allowed to.
All of the problems in college sports can be laid at the foot of antitrust law. You can say it is the courts, but it is really Congress. Congress passed these ridiculous laws, and for 150 years, they have been used in a ridiculous way. In fact, to this day, antitrust laws protect Big Business against Small Business.
If five doctors get together and they say ``Well, we want to get our annual fee or our exam fee to be $100'' and they are in separate practices that come together, the government will sue them for antitrust even though they are trying to use their leverage to negotiate a higher price with a billion-dollar company.
The insurance companies are protected from doctors organizing or nurses organizing or hospitals organizing even though they are the big player. The big bully is the insurance company, but they are protected by antitrust and the small business people are punished. This is the history of antitrust law.
In 2015, the court finally decided that the NCAA could not require students to maintain their amateur status. This NIL--name, image, and likeness--you can't have rules against it. You are a monopoly. No more rules.
So it is the Wild West, and it is chaos now. Nobody says it is not chaos. But the chaos was created by the antitrust laws. The chaos was created by the government. The court decided that eligibility rules for a private association would be decided by the government, not the members of the association.
Since 2015, a flurry of cases has decided issues as parochial as how much individual athletes are paid out of broadcast revenues and how long student-athletes are eligible to play, when they can transfer, who they can play for, how old they are, what injuries they can play with. It is really not the government's business to be involved.
Government has shirked its real duties--which are paramount, which are of great national importance--to focus on something it knows nothing about. And mark my words, this won't be the end of it. Sports has commissioners--a commissioner of baseball. Who is going to be the commissioner of college sports? Will we be back here in another year with people lobbying us to tweak the eligibility rules, tweak the transfer rules?
As important as college sports are to students and institutions, they aren't something Congress should micromanage. Athletes and institutions should be free to make choices about who they work for, who they play for, and what rules they should be subject to.
This bill manages to interfere with college athletics at nearly every level. It limits the ability of certain employees to freely leave one school and accept a job at another. It decides how students may go about licensing their name, image, and likeness. It even decides when the transfer students are eligible to play.
The bill actually forbids a return to the historic model of amateur sports where athletes are not paid. I am old enough to remember when amateur sports was lauded. You remember when we beat the Russians. We beat them with amateurs. It was commendable. They put all their professionals out there, and we beat them with amateurs.
But people knew what it was to be amateurs. People who remember Bobby Jones remember and respect that Bobby Jones didn't take money. There was something admirable about someone so pure that they didn't. There was always something more admirable--not that money is bad, not that the NFL and NBA are bad. Look, our basketball players go after a year anyway. They are playing 1 year and going to the NBA. Some of them are going directly from high school, and that is their business.
There is always this avenue to make money, but now what we have done with this bill is we have micromanaged this, and in the bill, it actually forbids anybody from preventing amateurs from being paid. You will no longer--it was probably a lost dream anyway, but this bill prevents the NCAA from ever going back to having true amateur sports where they aren't paid.
The bill would also set up a Commission on the future of college athletics. A legislative Commission--this is where we will get to the commissioner of college sports--will recommend new rule changes to Congress in the future.
It seems that we already have an institution that does this; it is called the NCAA.
Congress should not mire itself in another endless cycle of solving problems it caused. We should address the root cause, which is the antitrust law, that got us here.
I have several bills to get rid of some of these old antitrust laws that I think actually favor Big Business over Small Business.
One of the antitrust laws says that if you buy more in bulk from someone--so if you are a hardware store and you buy 5 hammers or you are Walmart that buys 5,000 hammers, there is a law that says you are not allowed to give discounts to big suppliers. Well, that is ridiculous. It goes against all economics.
So what I am offering is an amendment that would actually solve the problem faced by college sports. My
Now, the interesting thing is, in order to pass their bill, they actually do a little bit of exemption from antitrust laws. They do a little, though, and then in place of that, they replace it with congressionally dictated laws.
What I would do is just get rid of antitrust laws. NCAA would have their power back again, and they would be able to make these rules. It might be that NIL probably still continues, but it would be a negotiated settlement and NCAA would do it.
This would ensure conferences, colleges, and athletes are free to negotiate and enter into agreements that benefit everyone without the heavy hand of government dictating what parties could offer or accept.
It would also prevent Congress from imposing rules governing such minutiae as eligibility for transfer students as a threshold for reporting name, image, and likeness income. I love college sports as much as anyone, which is why I think the best way we could protect college sports is to stop sticking our nose in where it doesn't belong.
Now, we have the bill before us, and you would think, in a country like ours that prizes democracy in a republic, we would have debate, we would be able to present my amendment, and it would either pass or fail on its merits.
So what we will do is ask to bring my amendment down for a vote, and it is going to be rejected. And that is disappointing that we are going to do this whole thing where we take over college sports and any dissent will be muted and there will be no attempts to alter the bill.
The bill has been written in private, but there will be no ability for anyone to amend this bill. That is a disappointment.
So what I will be asking for is permission to have a vote on my amendment.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment No. 6758.
College sports are one of the last great institutions in America that still bring people together.
Today, all across our country, fans see the institution falling apart. Rosters are being rebuilt every year through an unrestricted transfer market. Schools are locked in an arms race of ever-increasing NIL spending. Coaches spend as much time recruiting their own players as they are preparing for opponents. Eligibility rules are no longer determined by clear standards but by lawsuits, by court orders, and by last-minute injunctions. It is why the Senate has now overwhelmingly voted three times to advance the bill called the Protect College Sports Act.
We will finish that bill this week and send it to the House and then, hopefully, on to the President for his signature.
Senator Paul has identified one of the critical problems. The antitrust laws applied to the collegiate sports system are currently the reason why sports are governed by court order rather than by fair, enforceable rules for all.
The Protect College Sports Act provides the NCAA with the ability to govern, but any antitrust protection is narrow, and it comes with guardrails.
My understanding is that Senator Cruz and Senator Cantwell are discussing a package of possible amendment votes, and this is one of them. Let's give them the opportunity to work through the process and see if we can get votes on Senator Paul's amendment as well as other amendments. And as they work on it, let's give them a little bit more time for that reason.
Mr. President, for 25 years I have come to the Senate floor with a simple request--for Congress to protect children who know no other home than the United States of America.
I first made this request after I heard from a constituent, a young high school graduate in Chicago and a brilliant, brilliant piano prodigy. She was brought to the United States when she was 2 years old. She didn't know how to fill out her college applications because of her undocumented status.
I couldn't believe, when we looked up the law, that our Nation had no path to citizenship for a young person like her so I introduced a bill to change it.
Shortly afterward, I received a call from my colleague Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. He said that he was working on similar legislation. I asked him if we could join forces, and we did. Together, Senator Hatch and I introduced the DREAM Act.
Now, isn't that how Congress is supposed to work? Two senators of opposing parties, who didn't agree on much, came together to work on legislation to provide a pathway to legal status for these young people brought to the United States as children. These young people came to be known as Dreamers.
Since I first introduced the DREAM Act, I have come to the Senate floor over 150 times to share the stories of these Dreamers, who, today, are doctors, nurses, business owners, educators, parents, and so many other professions. I have pushed for this legislation to make them legal in the eyes of the law, to be included in bipartisan efforts like the 2013 Gang of 8 immigration bill which passed the Senate with 68 votes.
Over the years, the DREAM Act has passed the Senate and it has passed the House, but never at the same time so that we couldn't send it to the President's desk to have it signed into law.
As I near the end of my time in the Senate, Congress continues to fail these young people who are American in every sense of the word, not just to me but to the vast majority of the country.
The American people have heard about the DREAM Act for many years. Eighty-one percent of the American people support citizenship for Dreamers--81 percent--including 56 percent of Republicans.
Despite its overwhelming popularity, the DREAM Act is still stuck in Congress.
And so, instead of celebrating legislation, establishing a legal pathway for these Dreamers, I come to the floor today to highlight my 153rd Dreamer story.
This is Karen Montes Gaga, who arrived in Seattle from Mexico when she was 3 years old. She loves school, dreamed of becoming a teacher one day.
In high school, she was an honor student and a tutor to her peers, but she knew her options beyond high school were limited. Without legal status, she could never get the education she needed to become a teacher. Then DACA was announced by President Obama. Karen jumped at the chance to enroll in the program and go back to school.
So that you understand what DACA is, it says to young undocumented people like Karen that they have to--every 2 years--apply for a work permit and go through a criminal background check and pay what is now a $600 fee every 2 years. So there is no question about people harboring criminals under the DREAM Act or DACA today. There is a criminal background check required every 2 years.
She immediately enrolled in college classes after qualifying for DACA and obtained her bachelor's degree in education. But she didn't stop there. Karen went on to receive her master's in education curriculum and instruction.
Karen has now been a proud elementary school teacher for almost a decade. She serves on her school's leadership team. She has been nominated twice for the Teacher of the Year Award.
As a DACA recipient, Karen, of course, is responsible for renewing that work permit every 2 years. But there is a problem. This year, she filed in a timely manner and expected her most recent renewal to be like every other one for the last 14 years she has been qualified for DACA, but this renewal process was different. The Trump administration failed to process her DACA renewal in time, even though she had filed it months in advance. As a result, Karen's work permit expired, and she was forced to walk out and
In a world of rising costs and inflation, losing a single paycheck could be the difference in keeping a roof over your head and food on the table. But you know what Karen is most worried about? Her 27 students that she had to leave behind.
Let me quote her:
That is whom this administration and Republicans are failing: a teacher--a teacher--who is committed to instilling strong values and work ethic into her students and whose heart was broken when she could not.
To my Republican colleagues, I ask you, if you went out looking for the worst of the worst, would you choose Karen? If you wanted to remove from the United States rapists, murders, terrorists, child predators, would you identify Karen as one of those people? Of course not.
Karen put it best when she said:
There is still time to help Dreamers in the final months of the 119th Congress.
To all my Republican colleagues, please join me and Senator Murkowski in standing up for these young people who epitomize the meaning of the American dream. Stand up for Karen, stand up for her students, and stand up for what is right.
I may be leaving this Senate in a few months, but I am not leaving this fight.
Mr. President, I don't know about your family, but when mine gathers for Thanksgiving every year, regardless of political view, faith, politics, region, what brings us together is college sports. Somewhere between passing the turkey and catching up on each other's lives, we turn on the TV, and, usually, there are a couple of games going on.
This points to something that I think is relevant at this moment: College sports are uniquely American and help bring Americans together. More than 1,000 American colleges and universities have teams of all kinds, playing everything from soccer and rugby to rowing and badminton.
Twenty years ago, a young quarterback named Joe Flacco played for the University of Delaware. He transferred there for the chance to become a starter and become part of a growing and winning team. He led the University of Delaware to the FCS championship. He set 20 school records, and then he went on to be the Super Bowl MVP with the Baltimore Ravens.
Today, that story would not happen. Today, transfers to and from colleges, particularly in football, are happening at an unbelievable pace.
My favorite team Notre Dame has played two other teams in the last 3 weeks wherein a majority of their players had just transferred in. We have heard from coaches and fans and players that this transfer portal being open endlessly without consequence, the cloud of agents hovering over and driving this behavior, the unreliability of coaches and their transferring in the middle of the season, and the lack of clear standards around eligibility--meaning, some as old as 27, 28, 29 go pro or play in Europe and then come back--has changed a lot of the core of the college sports experience.
One of the real positives is that college student-athletes, after years of litigation, have won the right to their fair share of the significant revenue generated by a few college sports, mostly football and basketball; but now that there are endless changes in transfer and eligibility and terms and conditions of play, college sports are in crisis.
It doesn't take a diehard sports fan to see that college sports are currently broken: the collapse, the evaporation, of the Pac-12--one of the major conferences; an arms race to raise money and pay for players, for coaches, for facilities. This year, 70 of the schools in the Power 4 conferences will together generate over $7 billion in revenue from ads, from merchandise, from supporters, but they are all running at a deficit.
In most universities, the model is this: If you have got a nationally prominent football team or basketball team that brings in a lot of revenue, that revenue pays for all of your other sports, the nonrevenue sports. Things like rugby or wrestling, rowing or track get supported in their facilities, in their coaches, in their training from the revenue of the big sports--football and basketball--that draw a lot of eyeballs and a lot of support.
Now it is not working. Schools like the University of Delaware and Delaware State University have reached out to me to say they are spending more than they can sustain to recruit and retain talent, to develop their team, to invest in their facilities, and with student- athletes transferring every year, it is really hard to build a culture and to coach a team.
So, to find the money to chase athletes, coaches, and facilities, universities have begun cutting sports, and they have begun with women's sports and Olympic sports. There are so many examples. Washington State cut most of their track and field program. Georgia Tech eliminated swimming. Cal Poly cut back on swimming. Grand Canyon, a nationally ranked men's volleyball program, has been eliminated. I have a dozen more in front of me.
When we lose these opportunities for college athletes, we lose something that is uniquely American. There are more than 500,000 college student-athletes, but in the rest of the world, this isn't a thing. In Europe and in Asia, the experience of going to college, to a university, doesn't include everybody coming into a huge stadium and cheering on their world-class basketball team or football team. That just doesn't happen.
And what are the advantages of playing college sports?
You learn about resilience, about toughness, about team play, about strategy. In the United States, a majority of the women who are C-suite executives played college sports. I went to a small liberal arts college where a majority of the student body played a varsity sport, and it changed the culture of campus. It engaged all sides of a person to be able to compete athletically and excel academically.
To stem the current crisis in college sports, to stabilize the field, and to give us an opportunity to move forward, Senators Maria Cantwell and Ted Cruz--the chair and the ranking of the Commerce Committee--have worked tirelessly together. One of my main points today is to congratulate them and their staff for their amazing work on this. I have been honored to join with them and with Senator Schmitt in putting together and advancing the Protect College Sports Act.
Last week, it got 77 votes in this Chamber, and you might have noticed it is rare for there to be anything genuinely bipartisan. In the State of Iowa--and I note my colleague has just joined me, and I will conclude in a few minutes here--when there is a game between the Cyclones and the Hawkeyes, that is a big weekend. In many of the States in our country, college football contests are bigger than elections, and in some ways, as I said at the beginning, that is a welcome diversion from the work we do here.
I wanted to briefly explain my focus in working on negotiating this bill and why I strongly support it and think it is a great outcome. I looked at it as if I had a child who was playing college sports. What would I want them to get in terms of protection? compensation? transparency? This bill enshrines the name, image, likeness--or NIL-- compensation in law. The court settlement that college athletes currently have, it makes it statutory, and it adds another fund--so, in total, $43 million--for the biggest programs to recruit and to retain.
There is a dedicated $5 million fund for Olympic and women's sports. This is not public money from the U.S. Congress. This is money that has been raised and administered by State universities and by major colleges.
It protects student-athletes from predatory agents. It requires that they be registered and certified, that there be an accessible database of NIL agreements, and that they charge no more
It guarantees the scholarships. How many times have you heard the story of someone who accepted an offer to play at a leading school because they were going to get to go to college for free? After playing half a season, they get injured, and they lose their scholarship or they decide to leave the sport or they decide to pick a different class or major than the coach wants. This guarantees, for 10 years, the opportunity to learn and study based on the scholarship offer made by a university.
If you are hurt on the field, the decision about return to play has to be made by medical personnel whose professional responsibility is to the player and can't be overruled by coaches.
Lastly--and I thought this was incredible--is wraparound healthcare coverage while in school; 5 years of postgraduate coverage for any sports-related injuries and a lifetime medical trust for any serious injury that develops later in life, like brain trauma or brain injury. These protections are available for all NCAA student-athletes--all, a half a million, not just the few in the highest visibility, highest revenue programs. So there are a few things that aren't in this bill. It keeps the door open for future collective bargaining. It does provide a new private right of action--the opportunity to sue, to protect yourself and enforce your rights that are created under this statute. And there is a new student-athlete ombudsman to make sure that athletes understand their rights and how to pursue their remedies.
This bill will bring stability to a collapsing college sports system. No more conference chaos. No more coaches transferring midseason. And it will make for stronger teams where athletes know each other, and the coaches and the fans know who they are coaching and who they are cheering for.
Look, most of the more than half a million NCAA athletes will never go pro, but they need to get and use their college degree. They will potentially suffer lasting physical consequences of their play, and this protects them and protects their future.
By putting boundaries around transfers and eligibility, this bill stabilizes college sports.
In conclusion, it is rare to find an issue that brings together tens of millions of Americans and that brings together Democrats and Republicans in this body. This isn't about political party or even what team you cheer for. It is about the future of young Americans who will engage and entertain and motivate all of us as we watch them throughout the year compete, but it will also protect. So my hope is that we will pass this bill before we adjourn because it will strengthen the path to college through sports.
When our families gather at Thanksgiving this year, I hope the conversation is about the bright future of American college sports, which have been protected by a strong bipartisan compromise.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Delaware for bringing up our Iowa State Cyclones and our University of Iowa Hawkeyes. We had the Cy-Hawk game just 2 weekends ago. Unfortunately, my Cyclones fell to the Iowa Hawkeyes. But God bless Coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa Hawkeyes. It was another great game for all of Iowa.
Mr. President, I am here today to talk a little bit more about our national and economic security of the United States. This has really been the focus of my career--protecting that national and economic security.
In 1940, the United States became the ``Arsenal of Democracy,'' and our country came together to quickly accelerate production of weapons, vehicles, food, and supplies that enabled the allies to defeat the axis powers.
Americans in factories, farms, small businesses, and across the country did what was necessary to make what was needed.
Instead of internalizing the lesson that our ability to make these critical items in the United States led to great success, we spent much of the last 50 years off-shoring our jobs and our manufacturing capabilities. This is something China, Russia, and other nefarious actors around the world have been all too happy to accommodate and to take on themselves.
Today, we have only one active facility producing cannon barrels. Today, we rely 100 percent on foreign sources for 12 critical minerals essential to our military and our economy.
During COVID, we saw what happened when supply chains are strained. There was a global shortage of microchips, which upended manufacturers' ability to make everything from cars to computers. At the same time, moms in the Midwest had to worry about finding baby formula due to supply chain issues at both the production and shipping levels.
Put simply: We have lost the ability to make what we need right here at home.
In the event of a conflict with one of our near-peer adversaries, supply chains will be challenged, and the United States will have to make what it needs.
Thank goodness President Trump, his administration, and Congress have been taking steps to put us on the right track and bring back the manufacturing capabilities we need here at home.
My bipartisan Critical Infrastructure Manufacturing Feasibility Act builds on these efforts. My bill, which has already passed the Senate unanimously, directs the Secretary of Commerce to identify critical goods that are currently being imported and find ways to help domestic producers manufacture them in the rural areas and shovel-ready industrial sites.
Rural Iowans are ready to roll up their sleeves and build the factories and processing facilities we need to secure our supply chains.
We can and need to make things here. But you can't fix vulnerabilities you can't see, which is why my bill gives Congress and the executive branch the visibility necessary to identify gaps and then close them.
I am grateful to Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks for introducing the House version of this bill, and for the House of Representatives passing the bill unanimously.
Now it is time for the Senate to act and send this bill to the President's desk.
Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1721 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (H.R. 1721) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, American voters deserve to have an election system that they can trust. Fair, safe, secure elections are a key hallmark of any society's ability to be able to claim the status of democratic self-rule.
If you don't have safe, secure, independent, reliable elections, you have a widespread set of problems that will cascade and ultimately constrain liberty. Americans intuitively understand this. But at the moment, our elections
Now, an honor system is great. It works well if you are dealing with a smaller group of people, a closed-loop system in which everyone knows everyone else.
And the honor system works well also if you don't have a real risk of somebody claiming to be someone they are not and if they don't have the ability to inflict harm on those who play by the rules. It is one of many reasons why there are a whole host of activities that, in our common experience, necessarily require someone to prove that they are who they claim to be.
You experience this anytime you go to the bank, when you go to the doctor, to the pharmacy, when you are picking up theater tickets at will call--all kinds of circumstances.
And, you know, one of the more familiar ones for Americans who routinely travel by plane is that when going through TSA, you have to prove who you are as well. If you leave the country, whether by land or by sea or by air or some other means, you are likely going to need a passport when you leave the country and when you come back into the country.
These are all just a few--many circumstances in which it matters whether you are who you claim to be, so much so that it is important that you do more than just say: Trust me. I am who I claim to be.
In the context of voting, sometimes we will refer to this as self- attestation, which is just a fancy way of saying it is the honor system: Trust me. I am who I claim to be.
But, look, with good reason, it is not sufficient, self-attestation. ``Trust me. I am who I claim to be'' isn't enough when you board a commercial flight, when you purchase alcohol, or even when you attend the Democratic National Convention. Those are just a few of the circumstances where they don't allow you to operate on the honor system because they know that it matters whether you are who you claim to be.
Now, even for something as simple and relatively low stakes as obtaining the coveted never-ending pasta pass from the Olive Garden-- even there, they don't allow the honor system. Even there, you have got to produce ID to show that you are who you claim to be. It should not be any easier for someone to get away with voter fraud at a polling location on voting day than it is to cheat the Olive Garden through its never-ending pasta pass--and yet that is exactly where we are today. We allow the honor system.
Even though we have laws that prohibit things like noncitizen voting, those laws have been rendered difficult--essentially impossible--to enforce, as against those who would abuse self-attestation in countless circumstances. Those are being revealed; those are becoming known. That thing that they claim never happens--voter fraud or noncitizen voting-- just keeps happening over and over and over again--especially for something that many like to claim never happens. Well, it does, and we need to take steps to prevent it from happening.
That is why I introduced the SAVE America Act. The SAVE America Act has two fundamental objectives--two very basic unassailable objectives: Let's make it easy to vote and let's make it hard to cheat. We have got to have both of those. The SAVE America Act does that through two different mechanisms: One, it requires, at the time of a new voter registration, for you to establish that you are, in fact, a U.S. citizen. And, second, it requires that on election day, at the time of voting, you show up with a photo ID--with a photo identification--so that you can prove that you are who you claim to be.
Both of these things would make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. You have to have both of them. If you just make it easy to vote and don't make it hard to cheat, you are going to have that much more incentive and opportunity for someone to cheat, and we don't want that in this country.
Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID laws for that reason. We are talking 83 percent of Americans, give or take a percentage point or two, depending on the poll. But Americans, by a margin of more than 4 to 1, favor voter ID laws, and we need one here.
Now, with the SAVE America Act, we have heard some objections; we have heard some arguments. Nearly all of those arguments focus on the first component of the SAVE America Act. And at times when the SAVE America Act has been the pending business before the Senate floor, as it was just a few months ago, the arguments that we heard--probably somewhere between 95 and 99 percent of the arguments--coming from Democrats against the SAVE America Act were focused on the voter registration component: having to establish proof of citizenship beyond self-attestation at the time of a new voter registration.
Now, those arguments were ill-founded. In every single circumstance, they were founded in something that resulted from a mischaracterization of law, a mischaracterization of fact, or, in many circumstances, both. They were not well founded, but they were often and strongly expressed.
It is one of the reasons why my friend and colleague, the Senator from Ohio, Senator Jon Husted and I were talking one day, a few months ago, and decided: Let's try an experiment. Let's see what would happen. Given that nearly every one of their arguments coming from the other side of the aisle against the SAVE America Act is focused not on the voter ID component but, rather, on the voter-registration proof-of- citizenship component, let's run with something. Let's introduce something that would just contain the voter ID component of the SAVE America Act--this, after all, would help us figure out where the weaknesses are, what can pass and what can't pass--given that they almost never have argued against voter ID while opposing the SAVE America Act. And, in fact, many, if not most, of my Democrat colleagues in the U.S. Senate, at one point or another, in the very recent past-- many of them this year, in fact--have said that they support voter ID laws. So let's introduce something that just focuses on the voter ID component of the SAVE America Act.
Now, this bill--and, again, this overall approach--is one that Americans overwhelmingly support. We are talking 83, 84 percent of all Americans--Democrat, Republican, Independent, everybody mixed in. They support this. Why? Well, because it is good common sense. Everybody understands it. There are myriad circumstances in which it matters whether you are who you claim to be, and nowhere is that more important to the proper functioning of our constitutional Republic than it is in the context of voting and having secure elections.
We have also seen that the need for these things has been enhanced dramatically in recent years, not only with the flood of noncitizens entering this country--we have now got, I think, between 30 and 35 million noncitizens residing in this country. It is now easier than ever for them, especially in light of the Supreme Court's botched interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act. Over the strong dissent of Justice Alito, the Supreme Court essentially told the States that absent new Federal legislation--legislation in the form of the SAVE America Act--self-attestation is essentially sufficient in that circumstance.
So Americans overwhelmingly accept this. This is a rare issue. Now, bipartisanship is not itself all that rare, but bipartisanship to this degree--we are talking 83, 84 percent of all Americans agreeing with something like this--is significant. That doesn't happen every day.
What is even more unusual, though, is when you have an issue where 83, 84 percent of all Americans strongly support a position, as they do in the case of voter ID laws, but then that overwhelming support doesn't match what elected Federal lawmakers believe. So it is not 83 or 84 percent that Members of this body support that. No, it is much closer to 50-50, and it breaks down almost perfectly along partisan lines. So there is a real disparity here. Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID, but in this body, it is a different matchup.
But, look, what we have done is we have taken the least controversial part of the SAVE America Act, put it into this legislation sponsored by Senator Jon Husted, drawn from my bill, the SAVE America Act, just the voter ID component, the most popular form of it--the argument that very, very few
It is unthinkable, really, that any lawmaker--Democrat, Republican, or otherwise--would oppose something like this. And you have to wonder why--why oppose it? Why oppose it any more than you would claim that it would be unfair that you can't withdraw money from a bank account without ID or you can't board an aircraft without a photo ID? This approach, the self-attestation approach--the ``trust me, bro'' approach--does not, should not, must not be allowed to work in the context of our sacred elections. It is not good for America to not have these laws in place. It is especially bad for America when, in some States--including and especially the State of California--not only do they not require voter ID, but, as I understand it, they have a law in place that imposes a penalty--I believe it is a criminal penalty--if you even ask someone about an ID on election day at a voting place.
This is crazy. It is upside down. It is backward. So we need a Federal voter ID law, and we can pass one right now. We can pass one right now, and we must.
To that end, Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 547, S. 5271; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me remind us all, colleagues, that we, as of today, are 41 days from the midterm elections; or, as I like to refer to it, it is simply the last day to vote, because a lot of people in States across the country take advantage of their right and opportunity to vote early, in person, like people in Virginia did beginning this last weekend. Many people in States across the country, including in my home State of California, exercised their right and option to vote by mail. I will get back to that in a minute.
The point is, in a growing number of States, the midterm election is already underway. People in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Alabama are already receiving their ballots in the mail. In Virginia, South Dakota, Minnesota, Vermont, and Illinois, voters are already going to the polls to vote in person early. In the next couple of weeks, additional States will begin. Nine more States will have begun their early voting. In my home State of California, ballots will be mailed to every registered voter in the State.
So, again, the bottom line here is the 2026 midterm election has already begun; it is in full swing. So let's not be fooled about this attempt to pass a piece of the SAVE Act.
No. 1, the substance. It is not just a voter ID bill. It is a bill-- and the timing is curious--that seeks to create chaos and confusion over vote-by-mail and absentee voting.
The other part is, indeed, the timing and its implications, trying to change the rules--because this bill, if signed into law, would go immediately into effect, creating chaos in the middle of an election that is already underway.
But don't just take my word for it. Let me quote the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Utah, who says that this is ``violating our constitutional right to a secret ballot.''
Why? Because the requirement to include a copy of your driver's license when you are voting by mail undermines the notion of a secret ballot in America.
Let me quote the Republican Governor of Ohio, who says that a very similar bill that reached his desk in the State of Ohio represented ``a significant burden.''
And, again, it is not just a potential or theoretical significant burden for some election sometime in the future. It would go into effect immediately, causing chaos and confusion and a burden for election administrators, who wouldn't even know how to begin to comply with this for an election that is already underway.
Let me go even further and reference the Supreme Court's recent actions when they blocked President Trump's Executive order on vote-by- mail and what he was trying to do, giving authority and direction to the U.S. Postal Service to determine which voters get their ballots and which don't.
Even Justice Kavanaugh, with whom I disagree on much--but even Justice Kavanaugh--said it was in part because changing the rules so close to an election ``would be arbitrary and capricious.'' That was a couple of weeks ago that this ruling came out. If at that time the Supreme Court deemed it too close to an election, we are even closer now. And so, again, there is not nearly the time to properly, responsibly implement it, even if you agreed with this bad policy.
Let me make a case for what is really going on here, all this talk about changing the rules around elections. This administration, including the President himself, has been trying nonstop to interfere and change the rules on the elections for a long time now, and those efforts have been successfully pushed back. I expect him to continue these threats and attempts--not just between now and election day-- probably on election day and postelection day, if history is any indicator.
Why? First of all, it is a desperate attempt to hold onto power because the writing is on the wall. In poll after poll, approval ratings, et cetera, show that Donald Trump is going to be in for a rough night this November.
But it is also an attempt to distract. You would think that he--or we--could be spending more time on trying to bring down costs for working families. But, no, for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the unauthorized war in Iran, the price on everything is not just not going down; it keeps going up--the price of gas that people put into their passenger cars to get to and from work or wherever they need to go. The cost of diesel is also at record levels and being passed on to consumers in terms of increased costs on everything else-- groceries, clothing, consumer electronics, and more.
The threat to the economy is so bad that the Federal Reserve has not only not lowered interest rates as Donald Trump has practically demanded; they have taken a recent step to increase interest rates for the first time in 3 years to try to rein in inflation.
So nothing is getting cheaper, nothing is getting easier, and a recent report showed that the administration's tariffs--again, the war in Iran; the trade wars that are unnecessary; and bad economic decisions--are taking a toll on American families: $4,200 per household in increased costs because of higher prices.
And now the President has, once again, threatened our Canadian neighbors with endless tariffs.
Look at healthcare. The average cost of employer-provided healthcare is expected to increase by at least 11 percent. What happened to the so-called ``Liberation Day'' of last April?
President Trump promised that these tariffs would bring back manufacturing, make Americans more wealthy, pay down the Nation's debt, create jobs, and lower prices for consumers. That sure sounded good, but it couldn't be further from the truth. None of that has happened. Actually, the exact opposite has come to bear.
But, again, instead of focusing on those issues, we are once again taking precious time on the Senate floor and talking about unnecessary changes to how people should be able to vote or not vote--maybe that is their ultimate objective--for an election that is already underway.
Just because your team is losing at halftime doesn't mean you can call a timeout and change the rules or change the referees, trying to change the outcome.
So let's dispense with this measure and get back to the real work at hand.
Mr. President, I would therefore ask the Senator to modify his request so that instead of S. 5271 and notwithstanding rule XXII, the Committee on Finance be discharged from further
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator so modify his request?
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I appreciate the insight offered by my friend and colleague, the distinguished senior Senator of the State of California. He is someone I enjoy working with on multiple committees. He is a brilliant scholar and statesman, and I appreciate his arguments today.
Now, I want to point out what we didn't hear in his argument. At no point do we have any effort to address the merits of this legislation, the merits of voter ID laws.
Instead, what we have heard from Senate Democrats so far this year on this issue has been: This isn't necessary. We don't need it. It is needless as voter fraud doesn't happen.
That has, of course, been proven very much false in recent months.
Then they moved on to arguments like: Well, requiring voter ID laws would harm rural Americans or urban Americans. And then one day it is: It will harm older Americans. Another day, it is younger Americans. At times, they called them racist or sexist, which is odd because arguing that women are less likely to have and be able to produce a photo ID or that members of this or that race are able to do that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't comport with our common experience, with our common understanding.
People of all races, people of both sexes, people in rural America and urban America and suburban America and everything in between, they have photo IDs because in this day and age, you have to have photo IDs. That is what they have been arguing so far this year.
Now, today, what we did hear, most of what we just heard from my friend and colleague, one of the U.S. Senate's most gifted minds, was: Well, it is too late--too late. You can't change the rules midstream because early voting has already happened.
Well, this is convenient after they have argued over and over and over again: We don't need this and it is wrong and it is racist and it is sexist.
Now, the argument has shifted to: Well, it is too late. Sorry. You lose. So they have secured the delay and gotten us now to the point where we are just weeks before the election. Early voting is already commencing in certain parts of the country. And now the argument is: Sorry. Too late.
So I would love to find out from my colleague from California, does this mean he would be willing to accept this legislation, to pass it, to pass it today, right now, if only we included a delayed implementation clause such that the effective date would occur at some point after this November's midterm election?
I would love to know that, and I am hoping, at the conclusion of my brief remarks now, that he will tell us that.
Then he moves on and asks the question: What is really going on, having never made any argument against the merits of this legislation. He makes it about time, and then he moves on and tries to attribute ill motives to me, to Senator Husted, to Senate Republicans, and to the Trump administration for supporting this; ill motives founded on sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt, creating chaos in the elections, dogs and cats living out in the streets, a scene right out of the Book of Revelation.
This doesn't make any sense, especially given that we could remedy that if only he would agree to just a simple delayed implementation measure. And even if we didn't, what is the worst case scenario if we passed this right now and the House of Representatives passed it tomorrow with an immediate effective date?
The worst thing that can happen is that people show up on election day and they are asked to pull out a document that they produce several times a month; in many cases, several times a week; or, in some cases, several times each day every day. It is not that big of a deal; in fact, our election security depends on it and, frankly, should require it.
Finally, then my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from California tries yet again to distract attention away from this knowing, understanding perhaps, that this is supported by 83-84 percent of all Americans--Democrat, Independent, and everything in between.
And it seems it is almost right out of ``Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure,'' where they are confronting an enemy, and not knowing what else to do, they say: Look, it is the Goodyear Blimp. And while the guy they are arguing with turns to look for the Goodyear Blimp, which is not, in fact, there, they run in the other direction.
He then tries to make it about tariffs and asks that instead of this, we consider and we pass this bill S. 5390, which I saw for the first time only minutes ago, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything addressed by this legislation I am trying to pass here today, nothing to do with election security.
Fine, let's talk about tariffs on another occasion, but that is not what we are talking about here. This is a distraction. It is a distraction away from something that the American people expect and demand us to do something about.
So for these reasons, I cannot, I will not, I must not agree to those terms that we are just going to set this aside and move on to and pass this tariff bill that has nothing to do with election security.
On that basis, I object and hope that my friend and colleague will tell us whether he is willing to agree to this legislation with delayed implementation mechanisms.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the original request?
Mr. President, thanks for letting us come to the floor, and I do appreciate my colleague Senator Bill Cassidy being here with me today as well.
Could you imagine you are in the market and you need a new car, you need a new truck, and you really need it badly--you don't have a way to get to and from work--so you get online and you look at the different models out there and be expected to make a purchase without knowing what the cost of that truck or that car was?
Well, that is the way healthcare is right now. We expect consumers to have all the healthcare delivered to them, and months later they get a bill for it. We think that patients deserve pricetags just like consumers do in every other form of business.
You think about the challenges of America today. Certainly the cost of living is upfront, and it is personal. And one of the big drivers of that cost is healthcare, health insurance. We have seen it go from 13 percent up to 18 percent of GDP. We have seen the cost of healthcare for a family go from maybe $500 a month a decade or two ago and now it is probably over $2,000 a month.
So certainly the cost of healthcare, in so many ways, is driving inflation. This matters. It matters to the patients. It matters to the employers that are paying for the health insurance or a big portion of it. It matters to the Federal Government.
If you are trying to balance the budget, if we could get the cost of healthcare under control, that would help us get toward a balanced budget.
I mean, my goodness, it is a $7 trillion budget. Maybe $2 trillion, two-sevenths of our Federal budget, is on healthcare. So if there were more pricetags, it would help bring the cost of healthcare down; actually, about $1,000 a month. If patients had pricetags, it could bring down the cost of healthcare $1,000 a month.
Our bill, as you may know, came out of committee 22 to 1, good bipartisan support. Our bill has real teeth to it as well. Our belief is just like in all forms of business, transparency helps consumers. And that is what we are asking here.
We are not asking anything different than any other business. We want total transparency so patients can look at the different prices. A healthcare provider would have to give their cost upfront, not an estimate; a real price upfront as well.
And, again, I just can't emphasize enough that this is bipartisan. It is ready to move, and that this is so important to the American consumer.
I will stop there, and I will yield to my colleague from Louisiana.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. President, I rise in support of the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act.
Free markets empower people to live freely. When there is information held by a monopoly which cannot--and I, the consumer, can't figure out what that information is, it takes away my freedom of choice; it takes away my economic freedom because I am going to end up paying a price perhaps far higher than what I should.
Right now, that is happening. People providing healthcare don't have to provide the pricetag to the employer paying for the insurance or the employee who may be accessing that care in their deductible or outside the policy.
It is impacting people. Mortgage and health insurance--the price of being insured can be $29,000 a year for a family of four--$29,000 a year if you include the deductible with the cost of the premium, including the employer's share. So what we are trying to do is do something about that by giving the patient the power, giving her economic freedom by saying: This is how much it costs at this place, and this is how much it costs at that place.
Let's put a point on it. A pediatrician orders an x ray for a child, a chest x ray. If you go down the hall, it may cost $500, and if you go across the street, it may cost $75. Right now, it is incredibly difficult for that mother to know. What we imagine is that with this information being made available, it would be made available not just to those who would pull the information together, but they, in turn, would make it available for the mom with the baby, and she could say: Oh, chest x ray for my child--$500 here and $75 across the street. I am going across the street.
I can promise you, when you do that, the place charging $500 is going to begin lowering the rate.
This is about doing something positive for patients. Senators Marshall and Hickenlooper and the HELP Committee majority and minority staff put together the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, and, again, it gives the patient power. As Roger pointed out, it passed 21 to 1 out of the HELP Committee--bipartisan support to give patients power.
I will give you one more example. Ten years ago, a friend of mine told me--this was 10 years ago--that if he converted atrial fibrillation in his office, it cost $130. If you went to the hospital and had the same procedure done, it was $13,000. Now, shouldn't the patient know? Because even if she is only paying a 20-percent copay, 20 percent of $130 is a lot better than 20 percent of $13,000. This could be the difference between a family able to pay their other bills.
Ultimately, this will lower premiums because obviously if the cost of healthcare goes down, the cost of premiums should go down.
It gives employers access to deidentified health claims data so that if, by the way, the insurance--if the doctor is charging $30,000 but is only paid $3,000 but the insurer bills the business $10,000, the business should know that. They paid a lot more than what the doctor charged. The business owner should know that, and right now, the business owner cannot know that.
The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act is the first step to delivering what Americans asked for: healthcare they can afford, control in their hands, economic freedom.
If Congress is serious about decreasing healthcare costs, we should pass this by unanimous consent today and send it to the President's desk.
Mr. President, I certainly want to echo my gratitude to my colleague Senator Hickenlooper for his help with this bill and his staff and my staff and the HELP Committee staff as well, all of the work they have done on this bill--bill that will bring immediate relief to everybody across the country.
Real examples: An MRI of your knee might be, in one place, $300, and in another one, it might be $3,000. A hip replacement in one facility might be $15,000 but $150,000 in another location. We are not making those numbers up; that is the discrepancy you are going to hear about.
Look, patients deserve pricetags.
Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 522, S. 2355; further, that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Reserving the right to object, this legislation is well- intended but also misguided. It doesn't address the root problem and, in all likelihood, will not lower any healthcare prices.
Congress has spent almost a decade pondering price transparency, regulations, and implementing them to some extent. Even with all this effort, current price transparency tools are only used by less than 20 percent of patients.
Patients in general ignore prices. Why? Because they are disconnected from the price. They don't pay. Someone else pays the bill. Prices are opaque because the patient is separated from the direct payment by a third party. For almost all patients, prices are fixed by a third party--either insurance or government, Medicare, Medicaid. Mandated transparency, when an insurance company is in the middle, has actually no effect on prices.
Imagine it this way: About half of the country has Medicare, the other 10 or 20 percent has Medicaid, and then there is private insurance. There are about 5 percent of Americans who have no insurance.
Now, transparency might make a difference there, but it actually already does. If you have to pay cash, everybody knows the price. Nobody will go in anywhere. If you are paying for something out of pocket, the prices are completely transparent and everywhere.
An example is LASIK surgery. LASIK surgery is done to correct vision so you don't have to wear glasses. The prices are on billboards all around town.
If you call the receptionist or anybody where you have to pay cash for an elective procedure, the receptionist will tell you on the phone what the price is. The one they won't tell you the price on is the gallbladder, if you have your gallbladder removed, because that has been negotiated with a third party, the insurance company. There is a price, and you are not going to, if you know the price, go get a better price. If they tell you at the hospital that the price is $500 but your insurance pays for the gallbladder, that is what it pays at the other hospital. If it pays $600 and you know the price and you go one versus the other--you don't get to negotiate the price. The price is already fixed.
The government sets the prices, too, so if you know what the price is that Medicare is going to pay, it doesn't do anything. Nobody can change the price; it is actually mandated by law.
So the problem really is that prices are fixed almost all the time. It is not lack of transparency; it is that prices are fixed.
Now, there is a part of the market that actually does work. It is called elective, which means not covered by insurance. It also works to a certain extent if you are willing to pay at that time. I go to a local HCA hospital on occasion, and when I pay, they say: If you will pay now, we will give you a 25-percent discount by immediate pay.
So there are parts of the system that do work. But the opaqueness is because you are not paying. The opaqueness is because a third party is paying, and that really is where the system is broken. So there is almost nobody choosing any healthcare based on price other than the 5 percent or those who are in the elective market, the 5 percent who don't have insurance or in the elective market.
Even if you have a high deductible but you still have insurance, all your prices under the deductible have already been negotiated. You may not know what it is going to cost, that it is going to be $500 for the gallbladder or whatever the surgery is going to cost you--you don't know those prices, but they have already been negotiated. If we tell you, if we mandate that they tell you and then they tell you, you aren't going to be able to go to another hospital and get a cheaper price because it has already been negotiated. The insurance company has already negotiated this with the hospitals.
So this is well-intended, but it is just not going to work, and it just adds one more government mandate and is not a good idea.
I would argue that the mandated transparency regulations will actually have limited effect even in the best-case scenario because over 95 percent of the healthcare market involves insurance or government middlemen already. Healthcare prices have continued to rise 5 to 10 percent annually because of the root cause of the problem: insurance and third-party payments.
We also don't seem to have enough leverage as patients to get a better price. There is something that we could do, and it is a bill that I have had out there for years and that I would be happy to get behind a unanimous consent effort, and this is something called association healthcare or health association. The way they would work is this: Instead of an accountant and three employees trying to get insurance for four people, you join a buying group--this would be like Amazon, Sam's Club, Costco--and then a large group would negotiate, not for individual policies but for a group policy.
It takes a change in our labor laws. We change the ERISA law to let you do this. Then you would be able to dial up Amazon, get on Amazon, and if Amazon had 40 million members that wanted to buy insurance, 1 person at Amazon would call up probably the CEO of UnitedHealthcare and negotiate a rate. So what we would do is grant you leverage. It doesn't cost anything, doesn't mandate anything, and lets you do what you want. It gets rid of aspects of our labor law that prevent this. It would let anybody join a buying group or co-op to buy their insurance.
Now, understandably, the insurance companies are opposed to this. We haven't been able to get it out of committee. And one of the reasons is the Democrats largely oppose this because they say: Well, we are kind of for it, but we have to mandate what the insurance is.
This has been the thing going all the way back to ObamaCare. When you mandate what is in insurance, you elevate the cost of it. So if we let the market take care of it, let people come together in co-ops to buy insurance, you could drive prices down.
This window dressing won't work because the prices are already fixed, and knowing what the prices are won't bring the prices down. Employers already do some of this negotiation for you. There are examples. Lowe's Home Improvement has negotiated a $325 MRI at facilities in the highest tier. There are websites that will help you out if you don't have insurance. The only people who really benefit by some of these price transparencies would be people without insurance, but there are some.
For example, there is a website you can go to where you can get an MRI on Sundays. If you live in a big city and you will drive an hour outside the big city and you want to get your MRI and you will spend an hour driving and do it on Sunday afternoon at 3 o'clock when the volume is really low, you can get a discount. There are websites that will direct you there.
But until Congress is serious about reducing the Federal Government's role in healthcare, reducing the subsidization, allowing people to join co-ops--that is when we will actually get the price down. But this bill actually won't do it. I think it adds mandates, and it ultimately actually might increase the price of healthcare as we add one more cost to the insurance companies and those who have to provide healthcare.
Mr. President, certainly I agree on many of the points my colleague made, and certainly I am in favor of expanding association healthcare plans. The goal of that is more competition, and that is all we are trying to create. My colleague says this won't work, but transparency works in every other industry. I think it is well documented that our bill would save $1,000 per month.
Here is the big fallacy in his argument. He is right that the insurance companies have negotiated these rates. So within one community, this insurance company has negotiated one rate with a surgery center, one rate with the hospital, one rate with an imaging center. So all I say is the patient deserves to see what that negotiated rate is, and then they can compare it. So it is like we agree, but he disagrees with the final step here: We want patients to know what that negotiated price is.
A real example: Getting a hip replaced at a surgical hospital might cost $15,000 or $20,000, but at the hospital down the street, it might be $150,000. The same way with an x ray. Going to the hospital, you know, the x ray--the MRI might be $3,000 there but $300 down at the imaging center.
So I agree that those prices have been negotiated, but I want to make sure it is in the hands of the consumers. Could you imagine driving down the street and gas stations--you didn't know how much the gas was going to be? Of course you wouldn't be able to make a good consumer choice.
So that is all we are asking, is full transparency in healthcare just like in every other industry.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines), the Senator from Iowa (Ms. Ernst), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Iowa (Ms. Ernst) would have voted ``yea.''
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 47, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
Mr. President, well, one issue that I hope will be at the top of the agenda when President Trump meets with Xi Jinping on Thursday is China's support for Iran.
Two months ago, Iranian ballistic missiles struck the housing area at the U.S. airbase in Jordan. That attack killed three American soldiers and wounded four more.
United States officials told the Wall Street Journal--and we can see this mockup of that article--that Iran got high-resolution satellite imagery of that base from Chinese entities before the attack. Unfortunately, this wasn't a surprise because senior Trump officials had warned for months that Chinese companies were giving Iran imagery that could be used to target American personnel.
In May, the administration sanctioned several Chinese companies over precisely that activity. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff recently returned from the Middle East, where they saw the damage Iran's attacks have done to United States facilities.
It is not only satellite imagery that Iran relies on to carry out attacks against Americans. China also provides a critical economic lifeline to Iran. According to the Treasury Department, 90 percent of Iran's oil exports go to China. That is billions of dollars in revenue for the Iranian regime, and much of that oil is sold in defiance of United States sanctions, through shadow fleets, front companies, and Chinese refineries. That money supports Iran's military, its weapons programs, and its terrorist proxies.
China is also a source of the parts and materials that Iran needs to build its weapons. The United States Treasury Department has repeatedly sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong companies for supplying components for Iran's ballistic missiles and attack drones. Those are the same types of weapons that Iran is using to attack American forces.
This cannot be treated as a side issue. When President Trump sits across from President Xi at the White House, he should use his leverage to do three things: first, to stop Chinese companies from giving Iran satellite imagery and targeting support; second, stop Chinese networks from supplying parts for Iran's missiles and drones; and third, stop the purchase and trade of sanctioned Iranian oil.
If we want to bring this war to an end, we need to cut off the outside support that allows Iran to keep fighting, and that starts with China. The administration should enforce our sanctions against the Chinese entities helping Iran, and if China doesn't stop, Congress should impose additional consequences.
I hope the President will also think about the weapon that Congress gave him when we passed the Russia sanctions bill because it allows us to tariff the Chinese companies that are purchasing Russian oil and gas. China is the No. 1 purchaser of Russian oil and gas, so they are the top funder of the war in Ukraine as well as being one of the top funders of the war in Iran. So I hope the President will take this opportunity to use the tools that we have given him and to point out to President Xi that China needs to start behaving differently.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I rise today to ask my colleagues to support the passage of my New Mexico Land Grant-Mercedes Historical or Traditional Use Cooperation and Coordination Act.
Land grant communities in New Mexico have cared for our lands, sustained our communities, and preserved our traditions that are deeply rooted in our State's history and culture. But for too long these communities have faced unnecessary barriers when working with the Federal Government.
My legislation is simple. It strengthens cooperation and coordination between land grant-merced communities and the Federal Government. It provides much needed clarity on Federal processes and ensures that historical and traditional uses are considered in Federal planning. This is about making sure the people who have cared for these lands for generations have a voice in the decisions that affect our communities, our livelihoods, and our traditions.
This legislation has been years in the making and has earned bipartisan, bicameral support. It was among the last bills I passed as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives in December of 2020. It then passed the Senate in December 2022. In December of last year, it was reported unanimously out of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have provided testimony in support of this legislation at recent committee hearings, and I am proud to have worked alongside New Mexico's land grant communities and the New Mexico Land Grant Council on this effort.
This legislation recognizes the important role that land grant-merced communities have played in New Mexico for hundreds of years and helps preserve the connection for generations to come.
I urge my colleagues to once again support this legislation so we can finally get this done.
Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 476, S. 1363.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which had been reported from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with an amendment, as follows:
(The part of the bill intended to be stricken is in boldfaced brackets, and the part of the bill intended to be inserted is in italic.)
I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, 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. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment was agreed to.
The bill (S. 1363), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, you know, we are dealing with some tough stuff, aren't we, all over the place. Whether it be the war in Iran or whatever it may be, we deal with tough stuff here every day, every single day.
But just imagine this one. Imagine coming home to one of your children and knowing that today--today--you got the prognosis and they have childhood cancer. It can't get any tougher than that. No matter what any of us say, it can't possibly get any tougher than that.
I would tell you that my bill, S. 2933, with Senator Capito and Congressman Miller, that we have all jumped on to try to support in every way--it deals about something that is so simple, so, so elementary today.
You know, in my State, we have an unbelievable national park in the New River Gorge, and they have a playground there. All we are doing is asking just this: that we rename that playground for all those children--all those children--that absolutely have cancer and are fighting for their lives in every way and all the unbelievable families that are really hurting.
The name we want it to be is ``Hearts of Gold Playground.'' It seems so simple, because hearts of gold--think about this: the little gold ribbon. It
This doesn't have anything to do with swings and slides and everything; it has to do with just absolutely what should touch all of our hearts. Cancer is unthinkable. We have made strides that are off the chart, and every day that goes by, we are a day closer to absolutely curing cancer forever more and eradicating it from our lives. Won't it be an incredible day?
With all that being said, the great part about this is we don't have to have food fights, do we? We don't have to pick sides between Republicans and Democrats. We only absolutely need to move forward on goodness--real, real, live goodness.
When I was a Governor not long ago, I had the opportunity in September--I think it was on September 13, 2023. I had the opportunity to make in West Virginia a proclamation--you know, that was just a followup to what we already had--make in West Virginia a Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in the month of September.
You know, we signed into legislation a thing that absolutely had a new license plate--that had on this license plate ``West Virginia, Cure Childhood Cancer.''
We have done some good things, but today--today--let's get on with unanimous consent to doing something really, really special that maybe a few--that maybe a lot will be there and absolutely feel really good about the moment we stood up for them in every way.
God bless all those that are fighting this dreaded disease, all the great families, and all those incredible children.
Mr. President, with that being said, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 645, S. 2933.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 2933) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:
Mr. President, each year, Americans lose roughly $1.3 billion to online romance scams. The victims are overwhelmingly senior citizens. They go online, thinking they are going to be able to find some companionship. They meet somebody. Often, this is on a dating site. They think that what they have made is a genuine connection because they are chatting online with this individual, but what is actually happening is they are communicating with a fraudster the entire time. Often, these victims--as I said, many of them are older. They are senior citizens. These victims will lose their entire lifesavings before they realize or before their friends and their family realize what has actually happened.
Here is the thing that is so important to realize. These scam artists are not amateurs. In fact, they are often part of a transnational criminal organization that traffics individuals in developing countries with the promise of getting a high-paying job. With their passports stolen, these individuals, who are victims, are often transported to what are called fraud dens, and they are forced to pay back their debt to these transnational criminal organizations by working overtime to defraud our senior citizens here in the United States.
It is really quite amazing. These are scam artists. They are part of transnational criminal organizations. They lure people into being trafficked.
They promise those individuals high-paying jobs in other countries, and then they take their passports and put them to work in these fraud dens. And there, they are defrauding U.S. citizens.
These scams are well financed, they are very sophisticated, and more often than not, they are using AI and other technology to dupe American consumers.
Scams are proliferating in the virtual space. We are seeing much of this in online dating platforms, and we do think these online dating platforms have the ability and the responsibility to notify their users when they are interacting with a bad actor.
By taking this simple step, the Romance Scam Prevention Act would protect our seniors from fraud and strike at the heart of one of the most lucrative financial streams for some of the most heinous criminal networks in the world.
I want to thank Representative Valadao and his staff for their commitment to protecting our seniors and championing this important legislation, and I thank my colleagues here in the Senate who have also supported it.
Notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 438, H.R. 2481.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (H.R. 2481) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, 2 years ago, Baby KJ was born with a rare, often fatal genetic disorder, and today he is walking and talking. How? Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania--funded by the National Institutes of Health--saved his life with the world's first personalized gene-editing therapy.
And, today, CHOP seeks the next miracle--the next miracle cure--at its Morgan Center for Research & Innovation, which I visited last week.
Now, these breakthroughs are possible because NIH funds foundational science that saves lives and lowers the cost of disease. Federal research and private enterprise have made American medicine the envy of the world, and AI
And, yet, at this most exciting moment in medical history, I fear we will surrender our lead to China through underinvestment and mismanagement.
This summer, the White House rightly called for a new golden age of American science. Reaching that critical goal takes more Federal R&D investment and long-overdue reform.
Now, we as Conservatives should recognize that basic research--like national security--is a public good that private capital rarely funds, and government fills the gap with funding long-term, high-risk work.
I know those of us who believe deeply in fiscal discipline may hear a call for more Federal R&D spending and ask: Why--why, especially at a time of enormous deficit and debt? And that is the right question. The Federal Government should not spend more simply for the sake of spending more.
But funding basic research saves lives. It lowers the cost of disease, it creates new industries, and it strengthens America's competitiveness. And if we do this right, this investment will more than pay for itself. And nowhere--nowhere--is that case more clear than in medical science.
The Federal Government spends $7 trillion a year. Yet, less than 1 percent of that goes to NIH research, and that sliver delivers outsized returns. NIH's Diabetes Prevention Program, for example, cut type 2 diabetes by 58 percent. NIH-supported eye disease research halved legal blindness from wet macular degeneration, saving roughly $28.5 billion. And CAR T-cell therapy, pioneered at Penn with NIH support, reengineered patients' T cells to attack cancer-producing, decade-long remissions and replacing years and years of costly treatments. The list goes on and on.
And, nationally, every NIH dollar also generates $2.50 in economic activity. In Pennsylvania, for example, NIH research sustains over 21,000 jobs and generates more than $5 billion annually.
Now, earlier this year, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and I saw how researchers in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are using artificial intelligence to detect cancer, to speed drug recovery, and to make surgery far more precise--amazing--amazing to see what is happening.
And, yet, America's global leadership is slipping. China is closing the gap. They have increased R&D spending from 36 percent of what we spend in the United States to parity in 2024.
And, meanwhile, we are underinvesting in discovery. Federal R&D fell from 1.9 percent of GDP in 1964 to 0.6 percent of GDP in 2024. And since 2003, the NIH budget has shrunk by more than 10 percent, adjusted for inflation.
Sadly, we have also let politics intrude on science. The Biden administration NIH, for example, gave CHOP--the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia--$155,000 to develop training on ``structural racism'' and ``intersectional microaggressions.'' Such initiatives abuse taxpayer money, and they undermine the public trust.
Finally, NIH has become opaque and bureaucratic. Nearly 1 in 3 grant dollars goes to overhead. Taxpayers can't easily see researchers' financial ties to industry, and young scientists--young scientists with some of the biggest, boldest ideas--they often have to wait until the age of 42 to receive major funding from NIH.
Each of these failures has a fix. First, rather than cut NIH by 40 percent, as OMB proposed last year, we should double the $48 billion budget within 5 years.
Now, I understand these are big numbers, but if these dollars yield discoveries that trim our $5.3 trillion health bill by just 1 percent, they will more than pay for themselves. And, more importantly, they will demonstrate that this AI revolution, it truly helps everyone.
Second, we must prioritize merit-based science. This administration rightly reassessed grants lacking merit, and it canceled nearly 1,400 midstream--many over diversity, equity, and inclusion language that was in their proposals.
Now, while some of these grants deserve to be canceled, some were legitimate research with buzzwords that were inserted to get approval from the Biden administration. On half of those grants alone, taxpayers had already spent $1.3 billion for work that will never be finished.
So rather than waste that investment, we should let those researchers revise their applications for legitimate research and keep working. And that is why last week, I led five Senate Republican colleagues in a letter, urging the administration to do just that.
Third, we must demand accountability. We must replace NIH's costly overhead with one that rewards efficiency, makes institutions compete for infrastructure dollars, and gives the smaller research centers a fair shot at receiving those grants.
I will soon introduce the Sunshine for Researchers Act to require federally funded researchers to disclose their industry ties. And my bipartisan NIH Mentorship Modernization Act, introduced with Senator Coons, would help retain these amazing great, young scientists.
At this critical--critical--moment, incrementalism is our greatest enemy. America was built by pilgrims and pioneers who dared to push beyond the known. We must summon that spirit again by investing boldly, by prioritizing science, and by reforming relentlessly.
And if we dare--if we dare--KJ's story can be the beginning of a new golden age of American science that burns bright for decades to come.
Mr. President, when the people building AI warn us about the potential for their models to cause serious harm, we must take them seriously.
And this is not a question of whether you like progress or even how likely you think the worst-case scenario is. This is a question of who is in charge of this technology, whether we are going to ensure that people remain in control or if--for some inexplicable reason--we are going to allow machines to rapidly and continuously get more powerful than us, knowing full well the risks. The good news is that nothing is inevitable at this stage. What we do or don't do right now will decide what happens next with this technology.
And so Congress must not leave town without taking action to reduce catastrophic risk. We can argue about everything else later--what to do about AI's energy use, what to do about the future of work, what to do about intellectual property, and all of that. But, first--first--we need to address the risk that is right in front of us.
I know my colleagues have proposals in this space, and I am also working on legislation with Senator Warner. But the bottom line is this: We have to act now.
And I want to be clear, if there is no movement in the coming days to seriously address this issue, Senator Warner and I will be back on here on the floor, attempting to pass bills to get this done. People are counting on us to protect them, and there is no excuse for inaction.
Mr. President, in recent weeks, Hawaii experienced two separate hurricanes, which destroyed homes and roads, closed schools and offices, and left thousands of people in the dark.
Ninety percent of the island of Kauai lost power during Hurricane Lala earlier this month--that is how extensive the damage was--and crews are still working to restore people. People on Hawaii Island, meanwhile, are still picking up the pieces from Hurricane Lala last month, which damaged 267 homes; washed out roads, bridges, and even a cemetery; and left people without power and water.
And, now, the State is bracing for yet another storm. According to the National Hurricane Center, this one could bring life-threatening, catastrophic flooding and mudslides across parts of Hawaii Island and Maui. It has been one storm after another this year.
We grieve those who died in the storms, and, as always, we are so grateful to the neighbors, the first responders, the linemen, the State and local officials who have been working together to help people in need.
In the hours after the storm--in the hours after the storm--people brought over shovels to clear debris from streets and driveways and checked in
And as response gives way to recovery, we will do everything we can to make sure Federal support is available for as long as it is needed.
But, today, I want to talk about something that I have been reluctant to raise in my 14 years in the U.S. Senate, and that is that there is a reason these destructive disasters are piling up, one after another, leaving communities exhausted and governments depleted. It is the warming planet.
Now, look, when someone is sitting in the dark without power for days or worse, and they have lost a loved one or their home, they don't want to hear about how dryer fields and warmer oceans are the culprit of their pain. And they are right. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, our collective obligation--but especially the government's obligation--is to set politics aside and to help, not to make a point that you always wanted to make or to say, ``I told you so,'' but to help.
And so I have always hesitated to talk about disasters in this context. But the reason for the change, the reason I feel so strongly that it is time that we name the problem, as uncomfortable as it is, is that we can't go on like this. Disasters used to be an unfortunate reality you had to deal with from time to time, and now we're getting back-to-back hurricanes on top of historic floods that dumped more than 2 trillion gallons on the State earlier this year and catastrophic fires that leveled Lahaina 3 years ago. This is not normal.
Now, it is true that we are in an El Nino year--and particularly a bad one at that--but this is not isolated to just this year nor is it limited to the great State of Hawaii. For 3 years in a row, now, we have had more than 20 disasters nationwide, each costing over a billion dollars in damages. And the world's eight hottest months ever on record have all been in the last 3 years.
You can chalk that all up to being a terrible coincidence or maybe it is the weather fairy acting up; or you can trust your own eyes because we all see it and feel it.
You feel it when you go to the park and your kids can't breathe because of the smoke from a wildfire that is burning hundreds of miles away. You feel it when you have to board up your windows and gather up supplies, as yet another storm approaches. You feel it when you move to a new State and find out that you can't get home insurance anymore.
You do not need a fancy science degree to understand what is happening nor do you even need to love the outdoors to want to do something about it, because we are all paying the price for our inaction.
And so what do we do about it? The most obvious answer is to scale up clean energy and reduce pollution as aggressively as we possibly can. But let's be clear: That will not happen overnight, and that will not stop the warming planet overnight.
And so we need a plan to help communities to prepare for and respond to disasters in the here and now. We have to improve evacuation routes. We have to harden powerlines. We have to pre-position equipment and supplies. We have to make sure that people have access to air conditioning and heating. Clearing underbrush to slow or stop the fires, building infrastructure to reduce the risk of flooding--these are the kinds of steps that we need to be taking right now to protect people.
Most of my colleagues here know that disasters are not a partisan issue. Hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and fires do not pick and choose their targets based on how the last election went. This week, it is Hawaii. It was Texas and Indiana earlier this summer. It will be somewhere else next. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
And so we need to step up here. States and localities are lurching from one disaster to the next, and they need help. And every day Congress pretends like we don't know what is happening, more and more people get hurt.
Mr. President, as you well know, we are debating the Protect College Sports Act--legislation about the future of college sports--but I wouldn't be doing my job as a U.S. Senator from Indiana if I didn't point out that the Hoosier State happens to be the capital of the college football world right now.
In one of the greatest seasons in the history of all college sports, the Indiana Hoosiers went undefeated last year and won the national championship. IU is back with a top-five team again this year and has a chance for another deep playoff run. And joining IU in the top five is the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, who also look really good this season.
Whether it be in Bloomington or South Bend, we are hoping the championship trophy stays in the great State of Indiana this year.
This support for these two teams shows that Hoosiers love college sports, and we want to continue rooting for our favorite schools and athletes for generations to come, but the future of college sports is at a crossroads right now.
Congressional action is necessary to ensure that the NIL landscape is built on clear and fair rules and that it provides protections for both student-athletes and universities and ensures the longevity of not only college football and men's basketball but Olympic and women's sports as well. Without a Federal framework, the legal and operational uncertainty around this space will only cause our academic institutions and student-athletes to suffer. However, as with any legislation Congress contemplates, we have to do our due diligence to ensure it will work as intended.
In addition to the many Hoosiers that are or will become student- athletes, I have a diverse group of engaged stakeholders on this issue based in Indiana, including the NCAA, USA Track & Field, USA Gymnastics, USA Diving, and, of course, top-tier universities.
Throughout this process, I have stayed in close contact with these schools and organizations to make sure the legislation will work for them. I have also pushed reforms to this bill as it has gone through the process to ensure the interests of all Indiana colleges and universities, including our two Big Ten schools, are well represented.
I am pleased that this final bill is supported by Indiana, Purdue, Ball State, Indiana State, and numerous other colleges and universities across Indiana.
Getting to the finish line on a major piece of legislation like this isn't easy, and it requires a lot of work. I am particularly grateful to Chairman Cruz and Ranking Member Cantwell for their collaborative approach and willingness to make changes to the bill to address concerns raised by the Big Ten.
I know the Presiding Officer and so many other colleagues lent their voice and their labors to this effort, and I am most appreciative for all the breakthroughs for which they are responsible.
I am supporting this legislation because I believe it is the right approach to protect the future of college sports. I believe it is the right approach. So I urge my colleagues to support the Protect College Sports Act and strengthen this uniquely American institution.
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, $43.6 billion and counting--that is the Pentagon's estimate for how much it has spent on this illegal war in Iran. Now, that is a lot of money. In fact, it is so much money that if every American family gave $500, you still wouldn't have enough to pay for this war--the missiles, the munitions, the warships. Over $43 billion of taxpayer money with no discernible benefit--wasted.
But I don't want to talk about what $43 billion includes. Today, I want to talk about what that number doesn't include. Wars aren't measured just in dollars and cents; they are measured in
Take the 19 brave servicemembers whose deaths have been disclosed by the Pentagon. That is 19 families who have lost someone irreplaceable. In just a few weeks, children are going to trick-or-treat without their parent. A few weeks later, parents and families will gather for Thanksgiving with an empty seat at the table.
``I will never recover from this,'' one widow wrote on social media.
What is even more heartbreaking is that we don't know exactly how many servicemembers have died in the Middle East amid this war. Reports say that the Pentagon is not being transparent with Congress or the American people. What we know is that every one of those lives lost deserves our gratitude, and every one of those families deserves an accurate accounting of this war's human cost.
Since February, more than 800 servicemembers have been wounded in the Middle East. Some went days without receiving adequate hospital care. Many face life-altering injuries. Tens of thousands of their fellow servicemembers are still deployed, fighting a war that this administration still refuses to call a war. Back at home, their loved ones are left worrying and wondering whether their loved ones will get home for the holidays. You are not going to find any of those costs in the $43 billion pricetag.
There has also been a staggering cost in America's loss to national security. Since June, the war has consumed between one-half and two- thirds of our key missile defense interceptors. Even with increased production rates, it will take at least 5 years to rebuild those stockpiles. Every interceptor we fire in Iran is one that we don't have protecting this country in the future.
Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures on U.S. bases, along with our relationships with the allies and partners who agreed to host them as a bulwark against the aggressions of Iran. That premise has been turned on its head.
At the same time, we have shown Iran that it can seize control of one of the world's most critical waterways and literally bring global trade to a stop, bring it to its knees. A quarter of the world's oil and a third of the world's fertilizer trade used to flow through the Strait of Hormuz. No longer. We have given our adversaries a roadmap and even a test drive for holding the global economy hostage, which the Houthis have already exploited in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
America's adversaries are celebrating our distraction, this futility, and the mounting costs. Every dollar we spend on Iran is a dollar we are not spending modernizing our military to protect against the threat of an ascendant China. Every warship that is deployed to the Arabian Sea is one fewer warship that is available to protect the South China Sea. But you are not going to find those costs in the $43 billion pricetag either.
And then there is the cost, well, to you, the American people. You are paying for this war every day when you fill up your tank, when you buy groceries, when you pay your rent. Before the war, the national average for diesel was $3.72 per gallon. This week, it is over $6.50 per gallon for diesel. That is nearly a 75-percent increase. That means that a small farmer using 1,000 gallons of diesel during a harvest is paying roughly $2,800 more just to do the same work as before the war. Even Republicans have said it: This is ``killing farmers' income''-- that that is what this war is doing: ``killing farmers' income.''
The war is also impacting Americans' grocery bills. Between July of 2025 and July of 2026, fresh vegetable prices increased over 6 percent, beef rose over 9 percent, and tomatoes are up over 13 percent. You shouldn't have to be a millionaire to drive to the grocery store and feed your family.
Few have felt the financial cost of this war more than prospective home buyers. Before the Iran war, the average 30-year mortgage rate was hovering right around 6 percent--still too high for many families. Today, it is above 7 percent. For the average Colorado home buyer, that difference adds up fast. That is a mortgage that is $280 more every month, almost $4,000 a year, and over $100,000 over the course of a 30- year mortgage. That is real money that could go to childcare, to a child's college savings, or just their lifetime savings. For many, it means buying a home just doesn't make financial sense right now, even if you have been saving up for years. You won't see those tradeoffs reflected in the Pentagon's $43 billion pricetag for this war.
Let me ask, finally, what is the cost of this war on our democracy? James Madison once wrote to his friend Thomas Jefferson that ``the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.'' That is why the Founders gave Congress the power to declare war--not the President, not the Supreme Court; Congress. Yet, so far, not a single Senator has introduced a legislative measure to formally declare war on Iran.
The Presiding Officer may have noticed that up until now, I haven't mentioned President Trump. That is not because the President bears no responsibility for this war. He certainly does. President Trump unilaterally made the decision to enter this costly--for most people, unwarranted--war. But the decision about whether it continues does rest with Congress.
To my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, who are wrestling with this issue, just ask yourself, is this war making the lives of your constituents any better? That isn't a partisan question; it is a question every Senator has an obligation to ask and a responsibility to get the response for. Because whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat, Congress cannot surrender its constitutional power simply because the President belongs to our party.
We all, each and every Senator--we all took an oath to defend the Constitution, not a President. We all took an oath to serve the American people, not a party.
President Trump made the decision to enter this war, but whether this war continues is now a decision for all of us.
What is the true cost of this war and the cost of allowing it to continue? Well, this week, the Senate is going to get another chance to decide.
I urge, as I have been--I urge all of my colleagues to join me in voting to end this war now and for good.
Mr. President, in a moment, I am going to ask this body on a unanimous consent basis to pass an important piece of legislation that has already passed in an overwhelming fashion out of the Republican-controlled House.
And this legislation is to make sure that we protect our Federal workers and realize that our Federal workers do remarkable things. They inspect our food, support our troops, respond to national disasters, frankly, protect our safety. They deserve basic workforce protections that prevents retaliation, discrimination, and wrongful termination.
Unfortunately, this current Trump administration has taken to heart the notion that OMB Director Vought said he wanted to traumatize the Federal workforce. Well, he has, and I cut this back because I have got a couple of my colleagues joining me. President Trump signed two Executive orders, one that ripped away collective bargaining rights from more than a million public servants and the other that unilaterally canceled hundreds of thousands of existing union contracts under, frankly, what I think are false national security pretense, to make it easier, frankly, to fire experienced nonpartisan civil servants and, candidly, to replace them with political loyalists. That is why we started the civil service back many, many years ago.
I am joined by three of the four of us from the greater Capital area, so with that, I would like to yield my time to the Senator from Maryland Senator Alsobrooks.
Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from Virginia for his leadership on this critical bill. Both Maryland and Virginia have uniquely felt the pain from this administration's effort to attack Federal workers. They are our constituents, patriots who serve this country
This administration has spent all of this time driving up the cost of everything from gas to groceries, starting wars that we are paying for at home, making healthcare unaffordable and making our lives worse.
But what is the real threat in their eyes? Our patriot civil servants, patriotic civil servants. It is a cruel lie meant to cause division and distract the American people from the awful things the Republicans are doing.
The fact is, President Trump and Russell Vought are afraid of the collective power of these workers. They are afraid that Federal workers' ability to fight back through collective bargaining will keep them from bending the government to their will.
President Trump stripped Federal workers of their hard-won collective bargaining rights, one of the most significant acts of union busting in our Nation's history, all in the name of national security.
Since then, he started a war in Iran with no exit strategy, bombed eight countries, and awarded billions of dollars in defense contracts to his sons and cronies.
The real threat to our national security is not our dedicated civil servants; it is this corrupt President and his reckless administration. Together my colleagues and I are instead laser-focused on protecting these patriotic Federal workers on fighting back against efforts to erode their rights in the workplace. And this is personal for me and for the 460,000 Marylanders who serve the Federal Government.
We will not stop fighting until the Protect America's Workforce Act is passed and our rights are restored.
Mr. President, it is good to be together with my colleagues, and I needn't repeat, but what I will say is I view this effort by President Trump and the administration to go after collective bargaining rights as a larger attack on the idea of public service because we have seen Federal employees laid off in record numbers through the DOGE actions at the beginning of the administration, through buyouts that were somewhat involuntary. One of the things the administration did early was they sort of indiscriminately laid off probationary employees because those employees don't have the ability to easily challenge their layoffs.
Those probationary employees included massive numbers of veterans who because they had left Active Duty service and then joined the Federal civil service were probationary for the first 2 years, even though they were midcareer professionals who had patriotically served their country for decades.
So you have stripping away collective bargaining rights. You have laying off probationary employees. You have other DOGE cuts. You have forced purchases trying to buy people out, trading civil servant for political so that they can be more easily fired.
Announcing that you are going to move Agencies out of the DC area with the hopes that when you do, a lot of Federal employees may not move with it. This is all an effort to just dramatically shrink those who were serving the American public.
And so what do you see? My colleagues and I know, tax season is a season where a lot of people are calling Agencies to try to get help. We had done a good job in reducing waiting times on the phone so that people could actually get their questions answered. They ballooned again this year because of all these layoffs.
Of all the things that demonstrate the attack on public service that this stripping of collective bargaining is a piece of, the one that I think that just speaks most obviously was the one that came out about a week ago, that the administration put on administrative leave thousands of Federal employees and paid them anyway, but locked them out of their jobs so that they could not serve their fellow Americans.
How is this effective to pay billions of dollars--billions of dollars to people--but force them to stay home and not let them serve their fellow Americans answering their tax questions, inspecting for food safety, being part of the national security apparatus? It is just an overall effort to attack Federal employees, even if you are going to waste money to do it.
Our Federal employees want to serve their fellow Americans. We should allow them to do it free of intimidation or reprisal, and that is why I am so strong to stand with my colleague from Virginia to support the Protect America's Workforce Act.
Mr. President, the way the President has formed these Executive orders under national security reasons--and I understand narrowly tailored national security exemptions might make sense, but the Trump administration is not doing this in good faith. Matter of fact, the President has inappropriately classified literally two-thirds of the Federal workforce as having national security missions without any explanation whatsoever.
So the Executive orders reclassify the entire Departments and Agencies, for example, the whole Department of Treasury, the whole Food and Drug Administration, the FCC, stripping these employees of their rights.
So I urge my colleagues to join us in passing the Protect America's Workforce Act. As I mentioned to my colleague, this has already passed by a large margin bipartisan in the Republican-controlled House. So let's stand up for these vital, dedicated workers, protect longstanding labor protections and the integrity of the civil service.
Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2550, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, I am here with another unanimous consent request, and I appreciate the Senator from Florida, Senator Scott, for being here to participate in this exchange.
I keep coming here to try to reinforce the obvious, scientifically clear point that climate change is real, that that is a simple scientific fact.
The way this has gone is that I came to the floor earlier this year and asked my colleagues to agree on that simple scientific fact: Climate change is real and, frankly, our fossil fuel emissions are causing it.
Well, I guess it is no surprise, but my Republican colleagues would not agree to that fact. So I have returned to the floor, time and again, in hopes that my Republican colleagues could agree to some of the simpler truths contained within that truth. Each time faced with well-documented truths about sea level rise or wide-ranging climate economic fallout, Republicans have objected.
Well, climate change isn't stopping or slowing down, and I won't either. So today's simple truth is that climate change is making wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more destructive. My question is, can we not all agree on that?
Here is some background. This chart from the National Interagency Fire Center shows that average U.S. acreage burned annually by wildfires has almost tripled in the last three decades, and the upward drift of the chart is pretty obvious.
The science proving that climate change makes wildfires worse is both clear and straightforward, and it has been well-known for decades. It is not new.
In fact, wildfires are part of a climate upheaval that Big Oil itself predicted. Shell, for instance, in a 1989 confidential planning document, warned that if fossil fuels were not brought under control, ``there would be more violent weather--more storms, more droughts, more deluges. Mean sea level would rise at least 30 cm. Agricultural patterns would be most dramatically
That is what Big Oil said about climate change effects from their product back in 1989: ``Civilization could prove a fragile thing.''
This is the underlying temperature increase that is driving the droughts that Shell predicted nearly 40 years ago. So, first, we know that fossil fuel emissions--climate change--is increasing global temperatures. You can't read it. This goes back to 1860. This is a pretty longtime chart in this instance. This is now.
So how does it work? What does that heat do to drive wildfires? Well, warmer air draws more moisture out of the soil, out of plants, out of bodies of water. There is a scientific name for this. NOAA calls the phenomenon evaporative demand or sometimes atmospheric thirst.
But you don't have to use scientific language to understand it. You just watch a puddle dry up on a hot day. That is what you are seeing. NASA, NOAA, and the Forest Service call drought conditions like these fire weather--fire weather.
According to NASA's website on wildfires and climate change, ``human- caused climate change [is] the main cause for increasing fire weather in the American West.''
Now, it is about a quarter of 6 this evening when I read that quote from NASA's website. You might want to start the shot clock on how long it takes for the fossil fuel goons to get in there and change the website.
Climate change makes droughts last longer. The Forest Service reports that what was once a 4-month fire season now lasts 6 to 8 months. So there are more opportunities for any spark to start a dangerous blaze.
And climate changes make drought conditions worse; that is, drier; that is, with more flammable material. So those fires that do start in that longer season are more likely to become severe.
In January of 2025, a collection of wildfires in the Los Angeles metro area burned through over 15,000 homes and businesses, killed more than two dozen people, and poisoned the air with toxic pollution.
Mr. President, 2026 is already on track for one of the worst wildfire seasons on record. August wildfires in Spokane, WA, caused over $1 billion in damage and destroyed over 800 people's homes. In July, wildfire smoke blanketed much of the country and degraded air quality for tens of millions of people.
Researchers have found that the number of people in the United States who experience at least one extreme smoke day per year is up 27 times in the last decade. So if you used to have one extreme smoke day in your life, now you have 27 in the same period of time.
Every county in the continental United States experiences degraded air quality from wildfire smoke at least 16 times every year, and the cost of that is real. Air pollution from wildfire smoke makes people sicker and causes deaths.
Scientists have known for decades--decades--that climate change is making wildfires worse. More recently, the data has gotten more precise. We can now connect climate change to specific individual events.
In the case of the L.A. fires, scientists from the World Weather Attribution and Imperial College London found that climate change made the weather conditions that drove these fires 35 percent more likely.
This kind of analysis is called climate attribution. The National Academies recently released a comprehensive report on the current capabilities of climate attribution, including on wildfires. To no one's surprise, the fossil fuel industry and its allies are already out to discredit this work.
In the face of tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes to wildfires, millions more facing skyrocketing insurance premiums as wildfire risk becomes either unavailable or unaffordable, and the risk of crashing home values--because when you can't insure your home, guess what. You can't get a mortgage on your home.
And if you are the kind of person who bought your home with a mortgage and needs somebody with a mortgage to buy it from you when it is time to sell, that crashes the value of your home. It destroys its worth.
Well, in the face of those facts, the traditional response of the fossil fuel industry is to try and hide the truth, but there is truth, and the truth is climate change is making wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more destructive. And I really hope that we are able to agree on that.
Mr. President, so notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 559; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, first off, I want to say that I respect my colleague's concern about the environment.
Since I have been in the Senate, he has been very consistent about his concern about what we all should be doing for the environment, and I think we ought to take it very seriously--whatever we can do to protect our environment. But, today, I rise to object, to oppose this resolution.
I have been to the Palisades. I have walked through the destruction. I saw the homes that were destroyed. I met with the people who lost everything. I talked to victims--including Spencer Pratt--and heard firsthand what they experienced and what they are still going through.
We are talking about families who lost their homes, their possessions, their communities--in some cases, their loved ones. Today, those victims are still looking for answers.
Mr. President, 12 people lost their lives in the Palisades fire, including vulnerable seniors. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, I felt a duty to make sure those families got some answers. I held a hearing to hear directly from survivors and understand what happened to seniors and other vulnerable Americans who were trying to prepare, evacuate, and recover.
I have also been working with Senator Ron Johnson to get to the bottom of what happened through our work on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Senator Johnson and I launched an investigation--a congressional investigation--because the victims deserve answers and accountability.
We are looking at what happened before, during, and after the fire. We are looking at wildfire prevention and mitigation. We are looking at water and infrastructure. We are looking at staffing and preparedness. We are looking at evacuation plans and communications. We are looking at the decisions made by State and local officials. One thing is clear to everyone: California had serious leadership failures.
Here is what we do know. In the months leading up to the fire, Mayor Karen Bass cut the Los Angeles Fire Department budget by $17.6 million. One month before the fire, the L.A. fire chief wrote in a memo that the budget cuts had ``severely limited the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.''
Mayor Bass tried to deflect blame by terminating that fire chief. Three days before the fire, Mayor Bass traveled to Ghana, despite warnings of an imminent, life-threatening wind event in Los Angeles.
We know that Gavin Newsom has done nothing. He has done everything he can, though, to escape responsibility for the fire. Yet court documents and testimony show that Governor Newsom could and should have closed the Topanga State Park after the Lachman fire in accordance with his own State guidelines.
People were still out there hiking while there were underground embers burning. Fire crews were turned away by park officials. None of the State's predeployed fire crews or trucks in southern California were sent to the Pacific Palisades, even despite the fire just days earlier.
The bottom line: Karen Bass and Governor Newsom were responsible for leading their governments through this crisis. They were responsible for preparing for it, and they failed.
The people in the Palisades deserve to know what went wrong and why their communities were not better protected. Senator Johnson and I are going to keep asking those questions.
Our staff has sent request after request for documents and information. We have gotten delay after delay from California and Los Angeles agencies in providing the information we need.
Let me be clear, we are not going to give up. We are not going to let bureaucratic delays prevent us from getting the answers for these families. We are going to keep requesting the documents. We are going to keep asking the questions. We are going to keep following the facts, wherever they lead.
So here is my problem: I don't think it is appropriate for a resolution that comes to the Senate and basically, essentially, tries to tell those victims that all of those failures--failure after failure--can be covered up with the vague excuse of climate change. And, clearly, we all know that we have got to take our own advice, take care of our environment, and deal with anything that our environment might be doing.
The correct response is not to spend more money when we already are $43 trillion in debt. It is an insult to the victims who are still waiting for accountability. It is an insult to the intelligence of every American who can plainly see that Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom failed. They failed these people.
Now, in Florida, we know what responsible wildlife management looks like because I led these efforts as Governor of Florida. We know you just can't wait for a wildfire to start and then hope you can put it out.
We made prescribed burning an important part of wildfire management strategy. You have to manage forests. You have to use prescribed fire responsibly. You have to make sure firefighters have the resources and infrastructure they need before disaster strikes. And you have to hold leaders accountable when they fail. That is real wilderness prevention.
We can't write it off as climate change. That doesn't address any of these issues. It just lets the politicians in California pass the buck and escape responsibility.
The victims of the Palisades fire don't need Washington passing another resolution telling them what caused their suffering. They know. They need answers. They need to know what will be done to make sure this never happens again.
Senator Johnson and I will continue our investigation because the victims deserve nothing less. We owe it to the 12 people who lost their lives. We owe it to everyone who lost their homes. We owe it to every American who expects their government to be prepared when disaster strikes.
So we are going to keep fighting for the truth. We are going to keep demanding records. We are going to keep demanding accountability. We are not going to give up until we get all the answers. We are not going to let the California officials responsible for these wildfires say climate change caused this as an excuse.
So, again, I appreciate my colleague's concern about the environment. I agree with him that we have got to be very focused on how we can protect our environment, but, unfortunately, I object to this resolution.
Mr. President, I am looking forward to the day when the Senator from Florida and I can be working together on these issues.
As he knows very well, the University of Florida teaches the science of climate change. They have courses like Managing for a Changing Climate, Climate Change and Health, Climate Change Science and Solutions, Oceans and Global Climate Change, and many, many others.
And it would be great if the science that the University of Florida teaches were also respected and reflected here on the Senate floor. It is more than just the University of Florida getting it right.
This also lands in Florida in big ways because while wildfire may not be an issue in the good Senator's State, flooding sure is. And that same cascade of risk that I talked about--starting with climate risk, hitting insurance security, moving into mortgage availability, clobbering property values, and then leading to recession--is well underway in Florida.
Some have called it the great climate insurance collapse, and in that very difficult situation, Florida is first and worst into that danger. Climate risk first; insurance collapse, second; mortgage market suffering, third--all of those things are happening.
Indeed, the chief economist from Freddie Mac, who is not a green guy--he is a finance and mortgage guy--warned there was a coastal property values crash coming.
And as we go through those different stages from climate risk to insurance to mortgages to property values, unfortunately, Florida led the country last year in lost property values, which is at least, in part, I think a function of this risk and how it is hammering Florida homeowners.
So you don't really get away from this kind of a general risk. The insurance industry is not lying to everybody. They are not leaving customers who pay their premiums because they don't like the customer. They are leaving customers who pay their premiums because the property is no longer insurable.
And what we are seeing here across the United States is massive predictions in insurance rate increase, and Florida is really at the epicenter of that. This dark band is a 200-percent to 300-percent increase, and you see it all along the Florida coast. They are running at about $14,000 already in insurance costs for homes in Florida. Double that--not double it, add 200 percent and add 300 percent. That is actually tripling and quadrupling. You can see how that begins to hammer the home's value.
And here, you see a similar problem. This isn't just a cost problem; this is a nonrenewal problem. It is going to end up costing you more money once you are nonrenewed--absolutely. But you also have to go through the immediate hassle and worry and anxiety of finding out how the heck you are going to insure your home once your insurance company has nonrenewed you.
And you can see the focus of nonrenewal is along these coastal areas, very heavily in Florida, and then in some of these wildfire areas that we talked about out in California.
So this continues to come at us. It is focused on certain geographic areas more than others, but no place more than Florida.
So I look forward to working with the good Senator from Florida on finding solutions before the bottom falls out of his insurance, mortgage, and real estate markets.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Madam President, I rise today to pass my legislation, the Bycatch Reduction Act, which is the most comprehensive trawl bycatch reduction legislation ever to come before the U.S. Senate, ever to come before the Congress.
And we have made good progress on this bill. We have been working on it for, heck, in some ways many years. I am going to talk about this.
We had a great vote in the Commerce Committee last week, and I see my good friend Senator Markey from Massachusetts, whom I have worked on a number of fisheries issues with--being a Massachusetts Senator and an Alaska Senator--is on the floor today. So I am hoping he is going to actually speak in support of this bill and pass it with me.
This bill has already passed all the Republicans in the Senate, who have approved it.
So this is really important for my constituents. For generations, Alaskans have depended on our oceans, our rivers, and our abundant fish resources that sustain all of us, especially salmon. From subsistence harvesters in our
For Alaska Native communities, our fish, especially salmon, are deeply connected to culture, tradition, heritage, and a way of life that reaches back thousands of years. Our salmon provide food, food security, jobs, culture. They support families and entire communities, and they are a source of deep spiritual connection.
My wife Julie's family had a fish camp on the Yukon River for generations--generations. My daughters have all been raised in the summers on that river--every summer, my wife, my family, my in-laws, my daughters, a deep spiritual connection.
Yet Alaska's salmon runs, in particular, are facing enormous challenges. Our fisheries, in general, are facing enormous challenges. We have seen and continue to see huge fluctuations in salmon, crab, halibut, and other species that Alaskans depend on.
We know the ocean is changing. It is an issue Senator Markey has raised a lot. We have ocean acidification issues. We know these conditions will continue to change.
We also know that fishing activity, particularly bycatch, and contact between fishing gear, trawl gear, and sensitive sea floor habitats affect the health and productivity of marine ecosystem.
So what are we going to do about this?
For years, Alaskans across our State, everywhere--coastal communities, interior communities, villages--have been asking for action. Fishery managers have asked for more data to make informed decisions. Subsistence harvesters have asked for greater transparency. Communities have asked for greater accountability. And fishermen have asked for the tools and technology they need to reduce trawl bycatch. It is a huge issue in my State.
I have talked about this bill on the Senate floor a lot. This was an issue--a bill inspired by my wife Julie, as I have already mentioned her--it was part of my Alaska Salmon Task Force Act.
What does this focus on? It is focused on bringing the best minds together--a bill that I got over the goal line, passed into law in 2022--to say: What is going on with our salmon runs? Why do we have really strong salmon runs in places like Bristol Bay, with their sockeye runs, and very weak king salmon runs on the Yukon River and the Kuskokwim River?
So what we did in this bill is we brought the best minds in Alaska-- State, Federal, Tribal, indigenous, university, fishermen, community members--to come together and say: What is happening? Why is it happening? And what is the pathway to get to what every Alaskan wants: stronger healthy salmon runs on all our rivers, across all species?
So we did this. Alaskans coming together--this body coming together-- produced this very important report, the Alaska Salmon Task Force Act. NOAA Fisheries helped. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game helped. But, most importantly, we set up task forces with regard to Tribal members on the Yukon, on the Kuskokwim to make sure we had their input. This was Alaskans coming together. It is not easy to get consensus--not easy to get consensus on issues such as fisheries and salmon--but we did that. And this laid out several different recommendations on moving forward to get to the goal we all want--a roadmap back to strong, healthy salmon runs.
This is an issue I have been working on for years, and one of the recommendations was to reduce trawl bycatch. There are other recommendations that we are working on--ocean acidification and many others--but this was a big one. So we worked on this bill, again, with dozens and dozens of Alaskans. This legislation honors the call for action that so many Alaskans have made and our Alaska Salmon Task Force Act has as well.
The Bycatch Reduction Act is designed to do that, and it has a robust toolkit with several clear objectives.
First, it establishes for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council standards and monitoring requirements and action and timelines to take action to reduce trawl gear contact with the sea floor and protect important marine habitats. Essentially, it requires proven tools, such as mandating certain technologies like salmon excluders on trawl vessels, to, again, reduce salmon bycatch.
It invests in science and technology to continue to work on better understanding ocean conditions.
It creates new gear testing facilities.
It reauthorizes NOAA's Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program that I have been focused on during my whole time here in the Senate.
It reconstitutes the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force, with Alaskans and our indigenous experts with Tribal and traditional knowledge, as a bycatch task force overseeing NOAA's activities as they relate to trawl bycatch. Alaskans overseeing NOAA is very important for our stakeholders.
This legislation also strengthens transparency and accountability for trawling on the North Pacific Fishery Council.
It requires NOAA to make observer coverage requirements and bycatch information more accessible to the public and easier to understand.
It expands opportunities for Alaskans, fishermen, and other stakeholders to participate in the council process.
It raises the issue and starts looking again at the issue of conflicts of interest on the council.
These provisions are not ideas that came out of a Washington, DC, office; they came from Alaskans.
As I mentioned, this bill--the most comprehensive bycatch-reduction bill ever--builds on the work that hundreds of Alaskans did on our salmon task force to get to the goal we all want: stronger, healthier salmon runs across our State, across rivers, across species, especially given that we are seeing the devastating declines in salmon on the Yukon River and across the western interior of Alaska that have led to fishery closures, subsistence shortages, and families not being able to fish.
As I mentioned, my wife's family keeps a fish camp on the Yukon River. We have watched those smokehouses, including ours, sit idle for years. It is heartbreaking. It is really heartbreaking to witness these families, their culture, the people who live along our great rivers not being able to put up fish every year, and they have been doing so for thousands of years.
So this is an important first step. It is because of the task force and hundreds of conversations with Alaskans for years now that we need to take action.
The Bycatch Reduction Act puts the recommendations here into action. Again, we had a very strong vote last week in the Commerce Committee. I think every Senator but four voted for my bill. I explained it, and we saw how important it was because the bill uses science, technology, innovation, accountability, and action to help support reducing trawl bycatch and strengthen subsistence traditions, sport fishing in Alaska.
It is about giving fishermen the tools to reduce bycatch, and it protects fisheries and fish stocks that depend on them. It is about making sure Alaskans have access to the data and transparency they need to participate meaningfully in the management of our fisheries, and it safeguards the long-term sustainability, particularly of our salmon, that so many Alaskans depend on.
I want to thank the countless Alaskans who have been working with me and my team for years now on these issues. We have sought and fought to reduce bycatch in many, many other ways, but this bill is a really, really important step. So I am hopeful that my colleagues are going to now pass it with me, and we will move it over to the House and get it passed and signed into law.
Madam President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 4938 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the Sullivan substitute, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Madam President, reserving the right to object, though this bill is primarily focused on addressing bycatch in the Northern Pacific fisheries, Alaska, we still have questions in Massachusetts about how this bill will affect fisheries that expand beyond the Northern Pacific.
Again, people sometimes don't follow fishing issues that closely. They might be amazed to know that the largest two fishing areas in the United States are Alaska and Massachusetts--New Bedford, Gloucester. You have seen the movies. You saw ``The Perfect Storm.'' You saw all of these incredible stories about Massachusetts and its fishing industry. The same thing is true for Alaska. So we share that designation, and we kind of debate over which one is the No. 1 fishing State in the Union. It is not a debate in Senator Sullivan's mind, I know, but it is important to us.
Reducing bycatch is an important issue in Alaska and in Massachusetts as well, and it is very much worth pursuing, so I hope to continue to work on this topic with my colleague. It is a very important subject.
When you are trying to catch one fish and now you start catching other fish as well, that is what we call bycatch, and you want to minimize that. You want to just focus on the primary fishing objective. So it is a very important subject, and it is something that all of the people in the Alaska delegation understand better than anyone else. It is a fishery issue that is essential in Alaska, but it affects other States, including Massachusetts, as well.
But since this bill includes language that would direct new regulations across fisheries, I owe it to my constituents in Massachusetts to talk directly with the fishermen and fishing organizations in Massachusetts that could be affected by any changes, and they will need the time just to make sure any modifications that are needed would be included in the legislation.
Unfortunately, this bill is moving rapidly. We haven't had enough time to tackle these questions and talk to those folks in Massachusetts, many of whom are out on their boats right now or are on the docks as we speak. We just need to give them the time to be able to fully consider the implications of this legislation just to make sure there is not an implication in the law of unintended consequences.
We have areas of agreement, though--no question about it--to build upon. I support the establishment of a fund for bycatch mitigation and habitat protection, as well as for the reauthorization of the Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program. All of that, I think, we can agree on. I think increased transparency and accountability in fisheries management is a critical goal, and I fundamentally believe in the aim of protecting our fisheries and habitats from unnecessary damage and harm.
I want to continue to work with my colleague on that effort in the weeks ahead. We are still going to be in session for another couple of months. I have to respect, however, the ongoing questions posed by my constituents in Massachusetts regarding what this bill would mean to them.
My staff is here with me--Jeremy D'Aloisio, Hannah Vogel, and Colleen Brown. They are here. They are willing to start talking right now, to work on this issue with Senator Sullivan's staff in ensuring that we hear all of the concerns that come from the fishing communities in Massachusetts but then to come to the table to try to resolve any differences and to ultimately produce legislation.
So that is the reason I come out here, and I do so having reserved my right to object. But having made my statement, I must at this point object to the motion of the Senator from Alaska.
Madam President, I am disappointed in my good friend Senator Markey of Massachusetts. He and I have worked on, actually, a lot of fisheries issues together. He is right; Massachusetts and the State of Alaska have important fisheries interests. This one, fortunately, doesn't impact Massachusetts at all; it is solely confined to the North Pacific area. So I am a little disappointed that he is not moving forward.
I want to thank all of my Republican colleagues who cleared my Bycatch Reduction Act, and we are going to keep working on it. I certainly will continue working on it with Senator Markey. Like I said, we have worked together on a number of fisheries issues over the years, and we are going to continue to work on hitting the bycatch issue with a multifaceted approach, as we have already done.
One of the things we have gotten done here in the Senate, in both the Biden and Trump administrations, is to dramatically ban the importation of all Russian trawl-caught fish and now Chinese trawl-caught fish. That really helps with regard to the bycatch issue. We have been very focused on increasing the annual appropriations for the Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program that I have led on a number of times. I have even defended in court our Alaska halibut fishermen against Seattle-based Amendment 80 trawlers in a lawsuit and won that case with them.
We are going to continue this work, building on the work from the legislation we passed for the roadmap to get back stronger salmon runs in Alaska and stronger fisheries with regard to salmon runs across species, across rivers, across the States, but this bill is a really important part of that, so I will continue to work this.
If the Senator from Massachusetts and his staff have edits and amendments, I don't think it is going to impact Massachusetts at all, to be honest, but we will work with them because we are very focused. My constituents are very focused to finally see action on trawl-bycatch reduction, and this bill is the bill with action and timelines, and we are going to get it over the goal line. We are going to get it over the goal line.
Madam President, over the past few weeks, familiar scenes have been playing out in Colorado and all across the country. Families are buying new books and backpacks, picking up school supplies, and taking their children to the pediatrician for their annual checkup.
For decades, back-to-school season did not prompt anxiety or confusion--except for maybe the kids like me that didn't do their summer reading. Parents could rely on the recommendations from their pediatricians, and the questions they did have were answered by professionals.
But that peace of mind is being undermined by the current administration--including by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who have worked tirelessly to undermine decades of settled science around routine vaccinations that have kept kids safe in this country and around the world for years.
The consequences of that broken trust are showing up in our emergency rooms and in our classrooms. Parents are increasingly concerned that their kids will go to school and come back with a serious disease.
Right now, our Nation is living through the most severe measles outbreak in over 35 years. Measles is not a mild childhood inconvenience; it is one of the most contagious viruses on Earth, capable of causing high fevers, brain swelling, long-term disability, and death.
In Colorado, we have already confirmed 25 cases this year, including 7 hospitalizations. Of these cases, 22 people were unvaccinated. Of the 25 who have measles in Colorado today, 22 were unvaccinated. That is the most we have had in over 30 years. You have to go back to 1995 to find an outbreak in my State that is even close to what we are seeing today. We are going backward when it comes to public health in the richest country in the world, and families in Colorado and all across this country are suffering the consequences.
But what is taking place in Colorado is especially tragic because Colorado's experience is one of the reasons that the United States has a two-dose vaccine recommendation today.
Back in 1988, an outbreak of 84 measles cases swept through Fort Lewis College in Durango. It caught public health officials completely by surprise because nearly every student on that campus had already received a measles shot. Under the guidance at that time,
That campus in Durango became the proving ground for today's recommendation on measles. Based directly on what they saw at Fort Lewis and similar outbreaks at that time, the CDC updated its guidelines in 1989 to establish the two-dose MMR schedule recommended for every schoolchild in America today.
This updated recommendation paved the way for measles to be officially eliminated across the United States in the year 2000. That was a quarter of a century ago, when, following the science, this country eliminated measles; and for 30 years after that, routine vaccine recommendations have kept children safe and in the classroom.
Back then, faced with a public health emergency, we did what you would expect: We followed the evidence, updated our practices, and successfully prevented another outbreak of that scale or severity going forward. We learned from each other.
Today, we are taking the opposite approach. Instead of defending the settled science that saved millions of lives, President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have spent months waging a campaign to promote skepticism, stoke fear, and amplify outright lies.
Look at what has happened in just the last few weeks. In August, President Trump signed an Executive order on childhood vaccines that overrides decades of settled scientific consensus. It encourages States to abandon school entry requirements. It recommends reducing the number of routine vaccines protecting our kids. And it calls for breaking up longstanding combination shots like the measles, mumps, and rubella-- MMR--vaccine into separate single-disease doses spread over multiple doctor visits. That recommendation ignores the basic, undeniable fact, which is that separate single-disease shots for measles, mumps, and rubella do not even exist in the U.S. market today. They are so obsolete, and we were following the science, such that those single shots that the President and the HHS Secretary are calling for don't even exist today.
And it ignores the evidence that we have from countries that have already tried to separate the dose and then reverted back because it didn't work. In the 1990s, Japan moved away from the combination MMR shot and attempted to separate the vaccines. The result was predictable. It was immediate and disastrous. They saw vaccination rates plummet and measles outbreaks surged. And, earlier this year, Japan officially abandoned the experiment--as we will, undoubtedly--and returned to the combined MMR vaccine.
We don't need to repeat another nation's mistake when the safety and lives of American children are on the line. And telling parents to ask for shots that don't exist today only plunges families into further chaos. It forces parents to schedule endless appointments, take time off work, and pay multiple copays for vaccines that used to be delivered safely in a single visit.
As everybody in this place knows, before I came to the Senate, I was the superintendent of schools in Denver. This was such a happy time every year, when people were coming back, bringing their kids back to school. And the last thing that they wanted to worry about was getting a free vaccine for their children or whether they should have that vaccine at all.
In those days, not that long ago, there was nobody worrying about a President or an HHS Secretary peddling misinformation that would lead to the biggest outbreak in measles that we have had in 30 years.
Things are hard enough as it is for families in Colorado and all across this country right now. We don't need to make matters worse by intentionally misleading them about what is safe and making it harder for them to get a free vaccine at the pharmacy down the street.
And, by the way, I know my colleagues here well enough to understand something that I don't think the administration understands. It is not good enough just to get your kid vaccinated. The other kids in the school need to be vaccinated. The other kids in the classroom need to be vaccinated for vaccines to work. And, until this administration, that wasn't controversial because we could see what the science told us.
And for families in rural Colorado, where healthcare access is already stretched thin and local hospitals are already in danger of going bankrupt because of the razor-thin margins, this burden that they are creating is almost unbearable.
And to make matters worse, the other week, the President told the American people that the MMR vaccine--a safe, lifesaving shot given to hundreds of millions of children over four decades--the President called it ``quite lethal''--``quite lethal.'' They had to send out Dr. Oz to clean up the record after that--the Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. They had to send him out on live television to contradict the President of the United States, who said that this routine vaccine that we have relied upon to save millions of lives was ``quite lethal.''
Meanwhile, Secretary Kennedy spent last week serving as the keynote speaker for an anti-vax convention. In the middle of the worst measles surge our country has seen in 35 years, the Nation's top health official stood in front of a crowd of anti-science activists and reassured them that they have ``a strong and steadfast friend in the White House.''
I wish I could tell families trying to get their kids back to school that they have a steadfast friend in the White House, that they have somebody who is trying to make their life easier, not harder; to make it easier to bring up a kid, not harder.
When the leadership of HHS spends its time amplifying conspiracy theories, they are not making communities safer; they are driving down immunization rates, leaving our schools vulnerable, and putting the lives of Colorado's children directly in harm's way.
Today, Colorado has the sixth lowest measles vaccination rate in the nation for kindergartners. Only 87.7 percent of Colorado kindergartners have received both doses of their MMR vaccine, and that is well below the 95 percent threshold for herd immunity. In fact, 57 out of Colorado's 64 counties now fail to meet that basic safety line.
My message to Colorado parents from this floor tonight is simple: Vaccines are safe, they are effective, and they remain our strongest defense against diseases like measles.
And when we allow misinformation to drive down vaccination rates, we aren't just failing to meet an important public health indicator; we are failing moms in Aurora and in Pueblo and in Durango. We are failing pediatricians like Dr. Stinar in Grand Junction, who are fighting on the frontlines of this disease; and we are failing vulnerable children across Colorado who have no choice in the matter.
Parents, pediatricians, and families across Colorado should be able to expect more from their government. They deserve certainty. They deserve clear communication. They deserve to know that their public health system is designed to keep them safe, rather than to pursue another political agenda that has nothing to do with their education or their health.
I think we should be having a debate in this country about the state of healthcare in the United States of America and about the ways in which we failed this generation and the next generation in providing a system that actually delivers better healthcare at a reasonable price and mental health care at a reasonable price, instead of plunging people into further misery or into bankruptcy.
I wish we were having that debate on the Senate floor, but we can't begin to have that until the basic facts about science and medicine are taken seriously by this administration. The President should start by rescinding his Executive order today on childhood vaccines. He should fire Secretary Kennedy, as I have long called for. But until that happens--and I don't think it is going to happen in the foreseeable future. Until that happens, we are
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.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar No. 918 and Calendar No. 919 and only PN769-2 Wade E. Arnold on the Secretary's desk in the Coast Guard; that the nominations be confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The nominations considered and confirmed are as follows:
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Madam President, in the midst of all the chaos and cruelty inflicted by the White House on the American people and around the world, I suspect not many Americans are aware that we are also carrying out an illegal blockade against Cuba, a country the size of Tennessee that poses no threat to the United States, but whose government we have tried to depose by one means or another for more than 60 years.
There is plenty to not like about the Cuban Government, which has defended a failed economic model and repressive political system for decades. The Cuban people deserve freedom and opportunity. But that does not justify the United States imposing a naval and financial blockade against an impoverished country that has neither attacked us nor threatened to attack us.
The consequences for the Cuban people have been devastating. Today, they are suffering from daily electrical blackouts that have made everyday life a virtual nightmare. Schools, hospitals, public transportation, food production, trash collection, and many other life necessities have been brought to a practical standstill. Ironically, even our own embassy has been impacted to the point that they are unable, or unwilling, to provide the necessary support for Members of Congress who have a legitimate interest in observing firsthand the consequences of the policy of collective punishment against the Cuban people being carried out by our government. According to an article in the New York Times on September 17, 2026:
Secretary of State Rubio claims that ``if Cuba is a humanitarian disaster, it is because their regime is a disaster, because the economic model they follow doesn't work.'' That heartless statement ignores the fact that no such humanitarian crisis existed before the Trump administration launched what amounts to a unilateral policy of economic warfare against Cuba.
This is unconscionable, it is immoral, and it is a clear violation of international law. If any country were to engage in such aggression against the United States, we would condemn it as an act of war.
During the past year, Cuba's authorities have announced wide-ranging and long overdue economic reforms. While they are aspirational goals, they represent the kind of transformational reforms the United States has been calling for as long as I can remember. But has it made any difference to the Trump administration? To the contrary. The administration has only increased sanctions on Cuba, making it even harder to implement structural changes to the economy. It is apparent that nothing will satisfy the White House short of regime change--or regime collapse, with the consequent risk of social upheaval and mass migration. President Trump confirmed as much in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly earlier today, when he said that Cuba ``will fall.''
Earlier this year, I spelled out steps that I and many others believe both governments can and should take to address the legitimate concerns of the other. Among other things, on the U.S. side, those steps include ending the failed economic embargo and removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which has no factual or legal basis. On the Cuban side, it includes economic reforms to increase foreign investment and unshackle the private sector, and releasing prisoners whose only offense is criticizing Cuba's repressive one-party system. Back then, neither government showed interest in taking the initiative, and conditions for the Cuban people, and for Americans whose own government has prevented them from freely traveling to Cuba, have only gotten worse.
But the Cuban Government has finally recognized that its antiquated centralized economic system needs to change, and they are trying to move in that direction. They have also released some political prisoners, including celebrated artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, although he was forced into exile in the U.S. Others, including Maykel ``Osorbo'' Castillo Perez, must be released.
The Trump administration, which routinely insists that its policy is to support the Cuban people, should match its rhetoric with action. It should support economic reforms that have the potential to significantly improve life on the island. Ending the illegal blockade would be an obvious and necessary step. No legitimate U.S. interest is served by compounding the misery of the Cuban people by preventing other countries and companies from sending lifesaving fuel and supplies to Cuba.
Madam President, 50 years ago yesterday, on September 21, 1976, Chile's former ambassador to the United States Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt were murdered by a car bomb placed by agents of the Chilean secret police.
Every year on the anniversary of that horrendous crime, people gather to pay tribute to Ambassador Letelier and Ronni Moffitt at Sheridan Circle, just 3 miles from the Capitol Building, where a small monument marks the spot where their lives were violently cut short. That monument is inscribed with the words ``Justice--Peace--Dignity''-- ideals they embraced in their professional and personal lives.
For years, justice eluded Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt and much has been written about the decades-long effort to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice. I want to acknowledge and credit the Institute for Policy Studies where Letelier and Moffitt both worked, along with Peter Kornbluh and the National Security Archive for their unending efforts to obtain the declassification of documents that record that long arc of justice, and to keep the memory of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt and the ideals they stood for in the public consciousness for the past 50 years.
Eventually, the FBI identified two DINA operatives, American-born Michael Townley and Maj. Armando Fernandez Larios, as leading suspects. The U.S. then sought the extradition of DINA's top two officers, Manuel Contreras and his deputy Pedro Espinoza, which Chile's dictator General Pinochet blocked. A CIA review of its own intelligence on the car bombing concluded that there was ``convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder'' and that Pinochet ``decided to stonewall on the case to hide his involvement and, ultimately, to protect his hold on the presidency.''
When Chile returned to democracy in 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration agreed to drop sanctions against the Pinochet government for protecting the DINA officers if the new government prosecuted Contreras and Espinoza. They were both found guilty of conspiring to assassinate Letelier and given short prison sentences of 7 and 6 years respectively. But Pinochet, still the head of the Chilean Army, remained immune from prosecution, as did all the other torturers and executioners from his cruel dictatorship.
It was not until Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998 under the European Anti-Terrorism Convention that his immunity was lifted. Although the British released him after more than a year of house arrest, just days after his return to Santiago a courageous judge, Juan Guzman, filed papers in court to strip Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution. At the time he died in 2006 at the age of 91, he faced indictments and investigations for corruption and human rights atrocities.
In 2012, a Chilean court finally ordered that Ronni Moffitt's case be officially investigated. Fourteen years later, on June 15, 2026, Chile's magistrate for human rights, Judge Paola Plaza, ruled that three former DINA officials were guilty of killing Moffitt. Brig. Gen. Pedro Espinoza, DINA's former deputy director for operations, was sentenced to 15 years. Gen. Raul Iturriaga, a high-ranking officer in DINA's ``Exterior'' department, was also sentenced to 15 years, as was retired Brig. Gen. Jose Zara Holger, also a director in DINA's international operations division.
Fifty years after the assassination, the Moffitt ruling is part of the final chapter in the effort to hold General Pinochet and his DINA accomplices accountable for an act of international terrorism in Washington, DC. This past July, The New York Times reported on ICE's detention--and then release--of one of those accomplices, Armando Fernandez Larios, who defected to the U.S. in 1987 and served just 5 months in prison for his role in the assassination plot. Last October, in its quest to find immigrants with real criminal backgrounds, ICE detained Fernandez Larios and the Department of Homeland Security rightly labeled him ``the worst of the worst'' for his past crimes of homicide. But while hundreds of migrants who have no criminal history are summarily arrested and deported from this country every day, Fernandez Larios was quietly freed from the Krome Detention Center in Miami on March 19--a glaring example of the Trump administration's double standard in the administration of justice.
Fernandez Larios should be deported for his part in the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt and the egregious human rights crimes he committed before coming to this country. The United States must not be a haven for foreigners who violate human rights or commit acts of terrorism.
The Fernandez Larios case and the recent ruling in the case of Ronni Moffitt have refocused attention on the September 21 bombing a half- century ago. I join those who honor the memory of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt and reaffirm that no matter how long it takes for the wheels of justice to turn, no one is above the law, especially those who abuse their positions of power to commit heinous crimes.
Madam President, I rise today to congratulate Rear Admiral Jennifer S. Courture on her retirement from the U.S. Navy and to honor her for more than 31 years of distinguished service to our Nation.
Throughout her extraordinary career, Rear Admiral Couture has exemplified the highest ideals of leadership, professionalism, and public service. A native of Vineland, NJ, who spent much of her naval career in Virginia, she was commissioned through the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps program at George Washington University in 1995 and went on to serve with distinction across multiple sea, shore, and flag assignments.
At sea, Rear Admiral Couture served aboard USS Wasp, USS Saipan, USS Elrod, USS Leyte Gulf, and USS Porter. She commanded USS Kauffman and Destroyer Squadron 28, deploying twice as Sea Combat Commander with the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, one of the few women to command a carrier strike group in Navy history, highlighting her role as a trailblazer for women in the armed forces.
Her leadership style has focused on empowering sailors and fostering a culture of excellence within her command. Her operational service included support for Operations Joint Endeavor, Active Endeavor, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and Inherent Resolve.
Ashore, she held key leadership and policy roles that strengthened the Navy's people, readiness, and operational effectiveness, including service with Commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Naval Surface Force Atlantic; U.S. Joint Forces Command; the Center for a New American Security; and the Office of the Chief of Naval Personnel. Furthermore, Rear Admiral Couture completed studies at the U.S. Naval War College and the Joint Forces Staff College and earned a master of arts degree from Old Dominion University and a doctor of education in Organizational leadership from Northeastern University.
As a flag officer, Rear Admiral Couture continued to lead at the highest levels, serving as Commander, Naval Service Training Command; Commander, Carrier Strike Group Eleven; and Director, Military Personnel Plans and Policy, OPNAV N13. In each role, she advanced the development, readiness, and success of sailors and naval forces entrusted to her leadership.
Rear Admiral Couture's career reflects a sustained commitment to mission, mentorship, innovation, and the people who make the U.S. Navy strong. Her accomplishments--including numerous personal, unit, and service awards, among them the Legion of Merit--stand as a testament to her devotion to country and to the sailors she has led and inspired.
As she concludes more than three decades of honorable service, I congratulate her on an exceptional naval career and wish her and her family fair winds and following seas in retirement.
Madam President, I rise today to honor Mr. Ganesan N. Annamalai and recognize his contributions to our country as an exceptional public servant in the Department of the Air Force.
As an Air Force Senate Liaison Officer from October 2023 to August 2026, Ganesan performed his duties with distinction, supporting the 118th and 119th
In his role as Air Force liaison officer to the Senate, Ganesan advised Department of the Air Force senior leaders and helped develop strategic engagement opportunities to advance U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force priorities. He facilitated seamless collaboration on behalf of the Department of the Air Force across 62 congressional offices, serving as the principal Air Force liaison to 34 Senators and their respective staff. Ganesan supported delegations for Members of Congress and staffers to showcase Air Force equities in the United States and abroad, including to the Reagan National Defense Forum and the Paris Air Show. Through these interactions, he strengthened international collaboration and cultivated relationships crucial for advancing shared defense priorities. Most notably, Ganesan's strategic support was vital to the successful execution of more than 280 engagements for senior Department of the Air Force leadership. This included coordinating 43 posture hearings and managing the critical confirmation activities for the 27th Secretary of the Air Force, the 24th Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the 3rd Chief of Space Operations. Ganesan's direct involvement and stewardship enabled Members of Congress to make informed decisions about Air Force oversight, funding and resources.
Ganesan's leadership and composure were instrumental during his detail to the White House Situation Room as a duty officer from September 2024 through August 2025. He meticulously documented developments during the initial hours of emerging crises, providing real-time analysis directly to the President and other senior government officials. He led his team in convening urgent calls and providing robust intelligence to the Nation's most senior officials, exhibiting remarkable poise under extreme pressure. His efforts were central to supporting the National Security Council across two administrations, directly enabling the execution of 496 high-level phone calls, 23 official trips, and 29 critical policy meetings.
I ask my colleagues and all Americans to join me in recognizing my fellow Granite Stater Ganesan Annamalai for his many contributions to the safety and security of our great country. We wish him all the best in the next chapter of his life.
Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to Cindy Rosenwald and recognize her decades of public service. Cindy is currently wrapping up her final term in public office, bringing to a close a remarkable 22-year career in the New Hampshire Legislature. After 14 years in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and 8 years in the New Hampshire Senate, she leaves a legacy of resilience, creative problem-solving, and genuine care for her constituents.
Cindy spent her early years in Rye, NY, before earning a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's degree from Rivier University. Following her education, she pursued a varied career in communications, healthcare, and teaching. She has held positions in hospital marketing and public relations and was formerly a vice president at Ted Bates Advertising, where she continued to work with healthcare and packaged food clients. Before entering the political arena, Cindy also worked in education, holding positions at multiple local universities. In addition to working as a writing instructor at her alma mater Rivier College, Cindy held positions at New Hampshire College--now Southern New Hampshire University--and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she eventually served as an adjunct professor.
Fueled by her experience in the realm of social services, Cindy's transition into politics began in 2004 when she was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, representing the Hillsborough 30th district. During her tenure in the House, she became known as an active participant in legislative matters and a fierce advocate for affordable housing, childcare, healthcare, and policies to help working families. She was notably a key voice in the fight to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, championing relief for Granite Staters who had gone without health insurance and put off needed care.
In 2018, Cindy continued this work after winning election to represent New Hampshire's 13th district in the State senate, which encompasses six wards in Nashua, NH. As one of the legislature's most tireless advocates for mental health care, she was the prime sponsor of legislation to raise reimbursement rates for Medicaid providers for mental health and substance use disorder treatment. With a keen focus on the future, Cindy also turned her attention to growing New Hampshire's economy, leading the successful effort to bring municipal cash reserve investments back to the State. She truly embodies what it means to be a public servant, and her advocacy for the well-being of Granite Staters is both unwavering and unmatched.
Over more than two decades of public service, Cindy has fostered genuine relationships built on trust, courage, and partnership. She will soon conclude her fourth term in the New Hampshire Senate, but her persistent advocacy will leave an unforgettable mark on us all. Many of Cindy's colleagues, past and present, regard her as a visionary leader who fought long and hard to make New Hampshire a healthier and more compassionate State. She sought meaningful change through legislation, and she strove to ensure that no Granite Staters fell through the cracks. Cindy's enduring commitment to public service is an inspiration to us all. On behalf of the people of New Hampshire, I ask my colleagues and all Americans to join me in thanking Cindy Rosenwald for her many years of service to New Hampshire and her fellow Granite Staters. We wish her all the best in the next chapter of her life.
Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and recognize its 125 years of dedicated service to land conservation and sustainable forestry.
The Forest Society began with eight Granite Staters back in 1901. Concerned that New Hampshire's White Mountains were being rapidly clear-cut, they formed the Forest Society with a clear mission: to perpetuate the forests of New Hampshire through their wise use and their complete reservation in places of special scenic beauty. Inspired by great conservationists like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, they formed the Forest Society at a time when Americans across the country had begun to appreciate mountains for their unparalleled beauty and opportunities for outdoor recreation. As Americans increasingly recognized the need to protect the Nation's natural landscapes, the Forest Society set its sights on the White Mountains and promptly got to work.
With former New Hampshire Gov. Frank W. Rollins serving as the Forest Society's first president and Philip W. Ayres serving as its first forester, the group's earliest efforts focused on land conservation projects in the northern reaches of the State. It first lobbied for the State of New Hampshire to buy Crawford Notch, and the purchase was finalized in 1911 after 3 years of hard work. Later that same year, the Forest Society famously advocated for the passage of the Weeks Act alongside the Appalachian Mountain Club, AMC. Known as one of the most important conservation laws in American history, the Weeks Act authorized the Federal Government to purchase private land to restore and protect forests and watersheds. It led directly to the establishment of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, and thanks in large part to the public support the Forest Society generated for its passage, Granite Staters will continue to enjoy the many environmental, economic, and recreational benefits of this land for generations to come.
The Weeks Act was a defining public policy achievement for the Forest Society, but its work was just getting started. Also in 1911, the group began to acquire land of its own, purchasing hundreds of acres on Mount Sunapee to protect it from clear-cutting. In the years that followed, the Forest Society acquired or helped protect some of New Hampshire's most treasured natural and recreational spaces, including Lost River Gorge, Mount Monadnock, the Old Man of the Mountain, and the Flume. By 1994, Forest Society reservations encompassed 24,584 acres across the State, a testament to its commitment to protecting New Hampshire's wilderness. Today, the Forest Society owns more than 68,000 acres in over 200 reservations and protects tens of thousands more through conservation easements and other arrangements. Over its 125-year history, the Forest Society has worked alongside landowners, municipalities, government agencies, and other conservation organizations to help protect more than 1 million acres of open space across New Hampshire.
In recent years, the Forest Society has continued to advocate tirelessly for the wise use of our forests. It has remained a key supporter of the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program LCHIP, a program that provides competitive grants for land conservation and preservation projects that permanently protect landscapes in the Granite State. After a 2019 fire left two historic buildings at The Rocks Estate destroyed, the organization pivoted and used the loss as an opportunity to reimagine the historic estate. In 2020, the Forest Society launched its Forest Society North at The Rocks campaign, beginning a multi-year effort to renovate the site and expand its conservation, education and forestry work in the North Country. Another recent accomplishment is the Forest Society's work to preserve Mount Major and the surrounding land. As one of New Hampshire's most beloved hiking destinations, Mount Major's immense popularity has heightened the risk of trail erosion and damage to vegetation. The Forest Society has led numerous volunteer efforts to preserve this special place for Granite Staters and visitors to enjoy. With these projects and more, the Forest Society continues to embody its original objective of promoting the wise use of land through conservation and advocacy.
The 125th anniversary of the Forest Society is worthy of celebration. It is an opportunity to reflect on more than a century of advocacy and hard work that have supported the longstanding mission of the Forest Society: to promote the protection and wise use of land through education and by example. I ask all Americans to join me in honoring this milestone, recognizing the generations of members, volunteers, landowners, and partners who have contributed to its story and saluting the next generation of Forest Society staff, volunteers, and supporters who will carry this legacy into the future.
Mr. President, for the Committee on Armed Services I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the RECORDS on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
*Nomination was reported with recommendation that it be confirmed subject to the nominee's commitment to respond to
(Nominations without an asterisk were reported with the recommendation that they be confirmed.)
Mr. President, on the fertilizing bill, Trump's terrible economy has been anything but fertile ground for American farmers.
Today, along with Senator Klobuchar, I am announcing the Strategic Fertilizer Reserve Act to ensure farmers have access to the resources they
Our farmers are getting crushed from all sides by this administration. Trump's blunder in Iran has jacked up the price of fertilizer and diesel to record highs, making it harder for farmers to do their jobs, from planting to harvest.
Meanwhile, Trump's costly trade wars and tariffs have raised the cost of farm equipment and, worst of all, closed off markets for our farmers to sell their products. Farm bankruptcies are increasing because of the tariffs and the markets that Trump closed off.
Many farmers were already struggling to get by, and now 70 percent of them say they haven't been able to afford the fertilizer they need, all because of Trump's Iran war. Our bill directs the USDA to explore creating a strategic fertilizer reserve to help American farmers weather supply chain shocks by Trump's Iran war.
Farmers already have to deal with enough uncertainty as it is: unpredictable weather, inconsistent crop yields, unforeseen blights. They shouldn't have to factor in the chaos coming out of Trump's White House, on top of it all.
Soaring fertilizer costs squeeze farmers first, but it doesn't take long for that pain to hit American families at the grocery store.
Every Senator who cares about lowering costs, every Senator who cares about helping farmers in rural communities, every Senator, period, ought to get behind this legislation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 5480. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow rehabilitation expenditures for public school buildings to qualify for rehabilitation credit; to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. President, today I want to discuss legislation I am introducing, the School Infrastructure Modernization Act, with my colleague Senator Warner.
The Federal tax credit for historic preservation is a critical source of funding for renovating historic and aging buildings across the country. While the credit can often be used for turning an aging school building into a commercial building, such as an office or retail location, it is difficult to use the credit to rehabilitate a school while continuing to use it as a school postrenovations. The intent of this bill is to make it easier for schools to benefit from this funding while continuing to serve as a school.
As a Richmond city council member and later mayor, I faced challenges familiar to many municipalities--overcrowded schools, aging buildings, and limited dollars in the budget. But in one particular case, I and a group of local stakeholders identified a creative solution. On one hand, we had an overcrowded Thomas Jefferson High School with in-zone and magnet students. On the other hand, we had a closed Maggie Walker High School that needed renovations. We put together a financing package that made use of Federal and State historic tax credits to renovate Maggie Walker High School and satisfied the prior use rule by consolidating the magnet program from Thomas Jefferson into a new Maggie Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies. Today, over 20 years later, this is one of America's highest performing public high schools. Without the Federal historic tax credit, this would have been too expensive to make happen.
This bill will make it easier to do similar projects around the country. More modern school buildings will bolster the quality of public education, and carrying out these projects will generate private sector infrastructure investment and jobs. In Virginia alone, according to a 2021 study, more than 1,000 K through 12 schools are at least 50 years old, representing more than half of all the K through 12 schools in the Commonwealth.
I encourage my colleagues to support this commonsense incentive that is good for education, good for infrastructure, and good for jobs.
Mr. President, on the fertilizing bill, Trump's terrible economy has been anything but fertile ground for American farmers.
Today, along with Senator Klobuchar, I am announcing the Strategic Fertilizer Reserve Act to ensure farmers have access to the resources they
Our farmers are getting crushed from all sides by this administration. Trump's blunder in Iran has jacked up the price of fertilizer and diesel to record highs, making it harder for farmers to do their jobs, from planting to harvest.
Meanwhile, Trump's costly trade wars and tariffs have raised the cost of farm equipment and, worst of all, closed off markets for our farmers to sell their products. Farm bankruptcies are increasing because of the tariffs and the markets that Trump closed off.
Many farmers were already struggling to get by, and now 70 percent of them say they haven't been able to afford the fertilizer they need, all because of Trump's Iran war. Our bill directs the USDA to explore creating a strategic fertilizer reserve to help American farmers weather supply chain shocks by Trump's Iran war.
Farmers already have to deal with enough uncertainty as it is: unpredictable weather, inconsistent crop yields, unforeseen blights. They shouldn't have to factor in the chaos coming out of Trump's White House, on top of it all.
Soaring fertilizer costs squeeze farmers first, but it doesn't take long for that pain to hit American families at the grocery store.
Every Senator who cares about lowering costs, every Senator who cares about helping farmers in rural communities, every Senator, period, ought to get behind this legislation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, today I want to discuss legislation I am introducing, the School Infrastructure Modernization Act, with my colleague Senator Warner.
The Federal tax credit for historic preservation is a critical source of funding for renovating historic and aging buildings across the country. While the credit can often be used for turning an aging school building into a commercial building, such as an office or retail location, it is difficult to use the credit to rehabilitate a school while continuing to use it as a school postrenovations. The intent of this bill is to make it easier for schools to benefit from this funding while continuing to serve as a school.
As a Richmond city council member and later mayor, I faced challenges familiar to many municipalities--overcrowded schools, aging buildings, and limited dollars in the budget. But in one particular case, I and a group of local stakeholders identified a creative solution. On one hand, we had an overcrowded Thomas Jefferson High School with in-zone and magnet students. On the other hand, we had a closed Maggie Walker High School that needed renovations. We put together a financing package that made use of Federal and State historic tax credits to renovate Maggie Walker High School and satisfied the prior use rule by consolidating the magnet program from Thomas Jefferson into a new Maggie Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies. Today, over 20 years later, this is one of America's highest performing public high schools. Without the Federal historic tax credit, this would have been too expensive to make happen.
This bill will make it easier to do similar projects around the country. More modern school buildings will bolster the quality of public education, and carrying out these projects will generate private sector infrastructure investment and jobs. In Virginia alone, according to a 2021 study, more than 1,000 K through 12 schools are at least 50 years old, representing more than half of all the K through 12 schools in the Commonwealth.
I encourage my colleagues to support this commonsense incentive that is good for education, good for infrastructure, and good for jobs.
Mr. President, I have 11 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet in closed session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 9:30 a.m.
The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a briefing.
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 4 p.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 3:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet in closed session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 2:30 p.m.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 557, S. 1962.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which was reported from the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert the part printed in italic, as follows:
I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; that the committee-reported title amendment be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment, in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
The bill (S. 1962), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
The committee-reported title amendment was agreed to as follows:
I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, 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. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment, in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
The bill (S. 3404), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 863.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged and the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 863) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in the Record of September 17, 2026, under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions which are at the desk: S. Res. 888, S. Res. 892, S. Res. 893, S. Res. 894, S. Res. 895, S. Res. 896.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolutions were agreed to.
The preambles were agreed to.
(The resolutions, with their preambles, are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 897) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 24; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of the substitute amendment No. 6776 to S. 4668 postcloture; further, that postcloture time be expired at 10:45 a.m. and the Senate vote on adoption of amendment No. 6776.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 897.
There being no objection, as a further mark of respect to the late Jon Llewellyn Kyl, former Senator from Arizona, the Senate, at 7:28 p.m., adjourned until Thursday, September 24, 2026, at 10 a.m.
