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23Senate Resolution 917: Expressing Support for the Designation of September as "Dystonia Awareness Month" to Promote Public Awareness and Understanding of Dystonia
25Senate Resolution 919: Honoring the Leadership of Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Recognizing His Career as a Public Servant and the Enduring Value of The...
26Senate Resolution 920: Expressing Concern About the Growing Problem of Book Banning, and the Proliferation of Threats to Freedom of Expression in the United States
27Senate Resolution 921: Expressing the Sense of the Senate That the Advertisements Promoting President Donald Trump That Aired in September 2026, Which Included the Direct Language "Paid for by The...
30Senate Resolution 924: Designating October 7, 2026, as "Energy Efficiency Day" in Celebration of the Economic and Environmental Benefits That Have Been Driven by Private Sector Innovation And...
34Senate Resolution 928: To Authorize Testimony, Document Production, and Representation by the Senate Legal Counsel in the Case of United States V. Terry
Thirty-one bills and thirteen resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 5573-5603, S.J. Res. 218, and S. Res. 917- 928.
Pages S5168-70
Measures Passed
Dystonia Awareness Month: Senate agreed to S. Res. 917, expressing support for the designation of September as ``Dystonia Awareness Month'' to promote public awareness and understanding of dystonia.
Page S5138
America's National Churchill Museum National Historic Landmark Act
Senate passed H.R. 1945, to designate the America's National Churchill Museum National Historic Landmark.
Page S5140
Strengthening America's Turning Point Act
Senate passed H.R. 1550, to redesignate Saratoga National Historical Park as Saratoga National Battlefield Park.
Pages S5140-44
Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act
Senate passed H.R. 3620, to provide for the conveyance of certain property to the Southcentral Foundation located in Anchorage, Alaska.
Page S5144
Unlocking Native Lands and Opportunities for Commerce and Key Economic Developments Act
Senate passed S. 3383, to amend the Act of August 9, 1955, to make improvements to that Act, after agreeing to the following amendment proposed thereto:
Pages S5144-45
Murkowski (for Schatz/Murkowski) Amendment No. 6839, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S5144
Albuquerque Indian School Act
Senate passed S. 3219, to transfer certain Federal land into trust for certain Indian Pueblos in the State of New Mexico, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5144, S5145-46
Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act
Senate passed S. 5045, to amend the Clean Air Act to modify the handling of air quality monitoring with respect to prescribed fires.
Pages S5148-50
Glri Act
Committee on Environment and Public Works was discharged from further consideration of S. 528, to reauthorize the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and the bill was then passed, after agreeing to the following amendment proposed thereto:
Page S5184
Thune (for Peters) Amendment No. 6843, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S5184
Tribal Access to Electronic Evidence Act
Committee on the Judiciary was discharged from further consideration of S. 1574, to amend the Stored Communications Act to include Tribal courts as courts of competent jurisdiction, and the bill was then passed, after agreeing to the following amendment proposed thereto:
Page S5184
Thune (for Cortez Masto) Amendment No. 6844, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S5184
Claiming Age Clarity Act
Committee on Finance was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5284, to require the Social Security Administration to make changes to the social security terminology used in the rules, regulation, guidance, or other materials of the Administration, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5184
Expanding Access to Capital for Rural Job Creators Act
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1190, to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to expand access to capital for rural-area small businesses, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5185
Dennis John Benigno Traumatic Brain Injury Program Reauthorization Act
Senate passed S. 5600, to reauthorize the Traumatic Brain Injury program.
Pages S5185-86
Day of the Deployed
Senate agreed to S. Res. 922, designating October 26, 2026, as the ``Day of the Deployed''.
Page S5186
National 4-H Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 923, expressing support for the designation of October 4 through October 10, 2026, as ``National 4-H Week''.
Page S5186
Energy Efficiency Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 924, designating October 7, 2026, as ``Energy Efficiency Day'' in celebration of the economic and environmental benefits that have been driven by private sector innovation and Federal energy efficiency policies.
Page S5186
National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 925, designating September 2026 as ``National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month''.
Page S5186
National Literacy Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 926, designating September 2026 as ``National Literacy Month''.
Page S5186
National Character Counts Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 927, designating the week beginning October 18, 2026, as ``National Character Counts Week''.
Page S5186
Authorize Testimony, Document Production, and Representation
Senate agreed to S. Res. 928, to authorize testimony, document production, and representation by the Senate Legal Counsel in the case of United States v. Terry.
Page S5186
Honoring the Life of United States Marine Corps Veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets
Committee on the Judiciary was discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 662, honoring the life and service of United States Marine Corps veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets, expressing condolences to his family, and condemning cartel violence, and the resolution was then agreed to.
Page S5186
=========================== NOTE =========================== On page D948, September 29, 2026, the following language appears
National Literacy Month: Senate agreed to S. Res. 926, designating September 2026 as ``National Literacy Month''.
Page S5186
Honoring the Life of United States Marine Corps Veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets
Committee on the Judiciary was discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 662, honoring the life and service of United States Marine Corps veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets, expressing condolences to his family, and condemning cartel violence, and the resolution was then agreed to.Page S5186 The online Record has been corrected to read: National Literacy Month: Senate agreed to S. Res. 926, designating September 2026 as ``National Literacy Month''.
Page S5186
National Character Counts Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 927, designating the week beginning October 18, 2026, as ``National Character Counts Week''.
Page S5186
Authorize Testimony, Document Production, and Representation
Senate agreed to S. Res. 928, to authorize testimony, document production, and representation by the Senate Legal Counsel in the case of United States v. Terry.
Page S5186
Honoring the Life of United States Marine Corps Veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets
Committee on the Judiciary was discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 662, honoring the life and service of United States Marine Corps veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets, expressing condolences to his family, and condemning cartelviolence, and the resolution was then agreed to.
Page S5186
========================= END NOTE ========================= United States Commission on International Religious Freedom Reauthorization Act
Committee on Foreign Relations was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1744, to extend and authorize annual appropriations for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom through December 31, 2028, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5186
North Carolina Veterans' State Home
Committee on Armed Services was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 10159, to authorize the Secretary of the Army to convey to the State of North Carolina a certain parcel of real property located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on which the State shall construct a veterans' State home, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5186
Measures Considered
Ratepayer Protection Act--Agreement: Senate continued consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of H.R. 9340, to amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to establish a Federal standard relating to the recovery of the full, incremental costs of upgrades that serve large-load customers.
Pages S5132-38
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that notwithstanding Rule XXII, the cloture motions filed on Monday, September 28, 2026, ripen at 11:30 a.m., on Wednesday, September 30, 2026.
Page S5186
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, HHS Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2027; and Basic Health Program
By 48 yeas to 51 nays (Vote No. 251), Senate did not agree to the motion to proceed to consideration of S.J. Res. 197, providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of the Department of Health and Human Services relating to ``Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, HHS Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2027; and Basic Health Program''.
Pages S5139-40
Israel's Human Rights Practices
By 47 yeas to 51 nays (Vote No. 252), Senate did not agree to the motion to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S. Res. 852, requesting information on Israel's human rights practices pursuant to section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2304(c) and in accordance with section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
Pages S5158-59
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: 3 Navy nominations in the rank of admiral. 1 Space Force nomination in the rank of general.
Pages S5186-87
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S5172-78
Record Votes
Two record votes were taken today. (Total--252)
Pages S5140, S5158-59
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 8:16 p.m., until 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S5186.)
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: 64 of 170 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Mr. President, we are coming to the end of the first year of the Rural Health Transformation Program. This multiyear initiative created in Republicans' Working Families Tax Cut legislation will invest $50 billion in all 50 States to put rural healthcare providers on a more sustainable footing for the future.
Beyond helping to ensure that Americans in rural areas can access healthcare, it will also ensure that providers are able to leverage technology and innovation to address the challenges unique to rural States.
One year in, this program is off to a promising start, and that is certainly the case in my home State of South Dakota. Just last week, CMS announced a $13 million investment in behavioral and mental health care in South Dakota. This funding will help expand crisis services and build out our State's workforce in behavioral healthcare, and it comes after another announcement in August of funding to modernize technology and strengthen cyber security at rural healthcare providers in South Dakota, an initiative that will not only modernize care in my State but also support future innovation to address the unique needs of rural South Dakota.
When Republicans created the Rural Health Transformation Program, last summer, we didn't take a top-down, Washington-Senate approach. Instead, we designed it to give States the resources and freedom to find solutions to their particular challenges, and I am proud to see South Dakota taking the same approach when it comes to distributing the funding that it will receive.
In the words of South Dakota Secretary of Health Melissa Magstadt, ``the initiatives that we've developed came strictly from the assessments we had, the expert input we garnered, and what citizens themselves said they needed in the community.''
That is exactly how the Rural Health Transformation Program is supposed to work, and it is not just working in South Dakota. As I mentioned, all 50 States are taking advantage of this transformative program.
Ohio is putting $3 million toward expanding offerings at pharmacies in rural communities.
A nearly $5 million award will help a hospital in central Maine update its electric medical records system to integrate it with the wider health system it is part of.
Providers in Kansas will benefit from nearly $17 billion this year to support new technologies and improve transportation options for specialty healthcare.
And Missouri will use $35 million to support 20 rural hospital projects and another $4 million to train its rural EMS workforce.
A hospital in South Carolina will use funding to add an additional operating room and upgrade its technology.
And a nonprofit in Alaska received $16 million to improve primary care offerings and bring in more providers and staff.
This is just some of the funding States are receiving for the first year of this program. As this list suggests, the Rural Health Transformation Program will make an impact in every corner of this country. All 50 States are receiving funding from this program, red States and blue States alike, which makes Senate Democrats' opposition to this program particularly baffling.
Our Democrat colleagues have made their opposition to the Rural Health Transformation Program very clear, with the Democrat leader going so far as to say this last year:
Let me repeat that.
That is from the Democrat leader.
Well, perhaps the Democrat leader should check in with his State's Governor, who said of a recent $76 million investment from this program:
That is from New York's Governor.
Let me repeat that:
Well, that doesn't sound like fraud to me. But whether this would help the people in rural parts of their States didn't seem to matter to Washington Democrats. In fact, Senate Democrats voted more than half a dozen times, last year, to repeal--repeal--the Rural Health Transformation Program.
That is right.
Around this time last year, during Democrats' record-long government shutdown, Senate Democrats were working to end this program. I am curious if the Democrat leader would like to claw back the $212 million that rural healthcare providers in New York are going to receive from this program this year.
Should already-strapped rural hospitals not spend this money because Democrats are going to take it back the next time they have the power to do so? Let's hope it never comes to that.
The Rural Health Transformation Program is helping Americans in rural areas across this country. It is helping South Dakota, Ohio, Idaho, Kansas, Rhode Island, Alaska, and everywhere in between. And I am proud that Republicans are delivering for rural Americans.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I want to talk today about action, action Republicans are taking to lower the costs for American people.
Let's start with the cost of energy. We need to be able to build, to build things faster, better, cheaper, smarter. That is what we need in America today.
We need to do it for pipelines, for energy projects, and we need to do it all across the country. There are critical energy projects right now that have been spending years trapped in regulatory purgatory. They have been in the penalty box.
Lawsuits by environmental extremists keep these projects tied up even further than that. Republicans are committed to permitting reform, and the Presiding Officer has been one leading the charge. Senators Capito and Lee who chair the appropriate committees have spent months and months working on this critical topic.
Democrats here in the Senate, led by Senator Schumer, continue to block our efforts. Democrats are objecting to solutions that actually would work to lower the cost of energy, to keep more money in people's pockets. Democrats seem to embrace higher energy costs, and they have a long history of doing that.
It is one of the features of the Democrat Green New Deal, their agenda, to keep the energy, American energy, in the ground. Last week, Senate Democrats blocked a bill from Senator Jon Husted of Ohio, a bill called the Ratepayer Protection Act, again, designed to keep more money in people's pockets. It relates to energy.
Senator Husted's bill protects American workers; that is why it is called the Ratepayer Protection Act. Senator Husted's bill guarantees that large users of energy, of electricity such as data centers, that they would end up paying the full cost of their electricity use, not the consumers.
It also holds them responsible for upgrades to the grid, and we need upgrades to the grid. They are responsible
Now, Senator Husted's bill has actually been to the House of Representatives already. It passed the House of Representatives 417 to 3. That doesn't happen all that often. That is overwhelming support. And 206 Democrats actually voted for it. You would expect there would be similar numbers here. The American people support it. Democrats in the House support it. All the Republicans support it, but yet Democrats here in the Senate following Senator Schumer stand in the way of relief for folks at home.
We need to pass it. We need to pass Senator Husted's Ratepayer Protection Act. Republicans are going to continue to fight to get it done, in spite of the delays by the Democrats. Tomorrow we are going to vote on this again, on Senator Husted's bill.
So Democrats tomorrow will have a choice: They can join Republicans in helping to lower costs for American families, or they can explain to American families why their party continues to stand in the way of relief.
Republicans are never going to stop fighting to ensure Americans keep more of their hard-earned money. When Americans keep more of what they earn, the economy grows. And I have always said people at home with money in their pocket have a much better time figuring out how to spend it or save it or invest it than does the government.
Across the country, more people are working. Take-home pay is rising. These are good signs. The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out ``it is one of the best job markets in decades'' for young adults without college degrees.
That is where the country stands today. Last year, the American people faced the largest tax increase in America's history. Had Democrats gotten their way, there would have been an increase of taxes of $4 trillion. Democrats would have snatched hard-earned money away and right out of the pockets of our firefighters, police officers, nurses, and waiters.
Republicans stopped that largest tax increase in history. We got rid of the tax on tips. We got rid of the tax on overtime. We eliminated tax on Social Security. More money in people's pockets. And then on top of that, we expanded the child tax credit. It is now $2,200 per child. We delivered permanent relief--you know about this as do I, in my home State, from the dreaded death tax.
Millions--farmers, ranchers, small business owners--have benefited. We permanently raised the standard deduction; that helps people keep more of what they earn. As a result of the Working Families Tax Cuts law, 97 percent of Americans received a tax cut when they filed their tax return last year.
Refunds that they got this year were bigger than they were in the last years. People who benefited the most: people who earn less than $200,000 a year. Also, one of the unique aspects of the Republicans' tax cuts bill are called the Trump Accounts. They are brand new. They are tax-advantaged investment accounts. Every American child can have one. Every child born between 2025 and 2028 starts with $1,000 in this account coming directly from the U.S. Treasury.
Trump Accounts follow a very American idea: When families are free to invest their own money, their children can build wealth for the future. Millions of children in families all across America are using these Trump Accounts. Parents, family members, churches, community groups, and even employers are contributing as well. I am seeing it in my home State.
Recently, Delta Airlines--the international company--Delta Airlines committed to invest $1,000 into Trump Accounts for each of their employees' children--every one of them. Other businesses are doing the same. They are following the example.
But yet every single Democrat in this House voted against these valuable accounts--every one of them--and that includes the two Senators from Georgia where Delta Airlines is headquartered.
Democrats refuse to even put children's financial interests first. As Republicans fight to put more money into people's pockets, we continue to crack down on waste and fraud and abuse and corruption. And people watching the news have seen it.
Last week, the Trump administration took another big step to root out fraud in our healthcare system. It identified three-quarters of a million names--not necessarily people but names--that were fraudulent, improper, and ineligible for ObamaCare.
Many of these names didn't even have a Social Security number associated with it. Many of the names were signed up without actually an individual knowing about it. It was insurance brokers gaming the system, and they earned a commission for each one of these new accounts. We are putting an end to this.
There is no verification of identity, no notice of whatever the people made--if they were people or not--no identification of identity, income, or immigration status. Red warning lights were flashing, signaling fraud and corruption.
And the crackdown on this fraud is helping taxpayers save $2.2 billion. That ensures that more money and services go to the people who actually have earned it, need it, and deserve it.
Democrats want to keep the money flowing out of the Federal Treasury. It is astonishing. I remember Joe Biden and the Democrats--they enabled this fraud. They seemed to welcome it. Enrollment doubled under ObamaCare on their watch without justification and often falsehoods.
It was juiced by generous bonus subsidies, by bonuses for people signing up, putting names on the roll, big checks that went directly from the taxpayers to the Federal Treasury, into the pockets of healthcare companies. Perverse incentives encouraged liberal Governors to spend money from Medicaid without any oversight. We have seen it all.
I mean, people were shocked when they saw what happened in Minnesota--money going to phony treatment centers. In California, it went to phantom hospice providers--made up but the money kept flowing. Republicans are committed to stopping this abuse and to making sure that criminals pay the price.
When it comes to the sort of things we have been talking about this morning--cutting energy costs, cutting taxes, fighting fraud and corruption--this is a core difference between commonsense Republicans and the craziness that has taken over the Democratic Party.
Republicans want every American to keep more of their hard-earned money, more of what they earn. Democrats seem to want more money going to the Federal Government so that they can turn around and spend it. That is why Democrats are determined to repeal the Working Family Tax Cut law--because it means a direct tax increase on every American.
They want to raise taxes on waitresses, on nurses working overtime, on firefighters, on police officers, and on our seniors. What do they want to use the money for? They have said it. A number of their candidates have said it around the country. They said so they can provide healthcare for illegal immigrants with taxpayers paying for it. That is the new Democratic Party.
They are radical, they are extreme, they are dangerous, they are scary, and yet they proudly march off saying that is their new mantra. Actually, they don't even call it a mantra. They call it a manifesto.
We know what they want to do, and it will be very detrimental to the country. You read through it: Shut down the military. Shut down the police. Defund this. Open the prisons. Put the dangerous criminals into our communities.
It is astonishing. They want to do that while Americans are struggling to pay their bills. Americans shouldn't be paying the bills for millions of illegal immigrants. Joe Biden let 10 million of them into the country. We shouldn't be paying the bills for these fraud centers that they are allowing in Minnesota and what we see happening in California. The American people shouldn't have to be forced to be paying for that.
Republicans are going to continue to fight to put more money in the pockets of the American people. The American people earned it, and they rightly deserve it.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, well, Donald Trump is asleep at the wheel when it comes to reining in unchecked AI. Right after news came out over the weekend about rogue AI agents infiltrating government websites in the United States, Australia, and at the U.N., do you know what Trump told FOX News? ``I don't worry about it.'' Well, he is about the only one.
Trump doesn't worry about rogue AI, but the American people certainly do, so do cyber security experts and even many of the people who are building this technology. Everybody who knows anything about it worries about rogue AI--not Donald Trump. He keeps his head in the sand like an ostrich. He doesn't pay any attention to the facts and just says whatever pops into his head, no matter how harmful it is.
When Trump meets with various AI industry leaders at the White House today, he ought to stop resisting the growing consensus that we need real guardrails to mitigate AI's risk.
Trump's meeting at the White House will be a flop, a failure, an utter failure if they don't propose and start talking about and start to come to an agreement about some real guardrails that need to be done. And, of course, he should consult with those of us in Congress who believe we need stronger guardrails.
Dismissing the potential dangers of AI as a hoax, as Trump has done over and over and over again, won't protect the American people. The Senate GOP's response to AI risk has been almost as meek as Trump's.
Americans are demanding real guardrails on AI and data centers, but all the Republicans offer is a toothless messaging bill. The bill is a fraud.
I can sum up the shortcomings of the Republican data center bill with one word: optional. The bill is optional. America, do you hear that? Here, we need some real action on data centers. And what does the Republican Senator from Ohio come up with? Something that is optional. It is up to the companies to decide.
Well, they are the ones that need the guardrails: optional--optional requirements in his bill on data center development, optional standards for safety against catastrophic risks, optional enforcement to protect the American people. A guardrail that is optional isn't a guardrail at all.
At a time when Americans are calling out for real guardrails on AI, Senate Republicans are trying to secure an ineffectual participation trophy before they skip town. Instead of trying to score cheap political points with hollow proposals, Senate Republicans need to work with us to take meaningful action that will actually contain these existential risks. They are not doing that, and the American people are in real danger because of their failure to act.
Mr. President, on stock trading and voter ID, Senate Republicans continue to show the country they care more about playing partisan political games than stopping corruption. The Senate GOP has bucked a longstanding bipartisan effort to ban stock trading in Congress, which is what Congress should do.
Last July--July--the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced a strong, commonsense, bipartisan bill to ban congressional stock trading, but Senate Republicans abandoned this effort. Too many of their Members didn't want to do it.
If Senate Republicans truly cared about banning stock trading in Congress, they wouldn't have let the House Republicans water down the ban. The bill Republicans are offering today is Swiss cheese legislating, creating loophole after loophole after loophole, and it is a step backward to solving this critical problem.
The bill even lets Members continue to own and sell stocks. The Republican bill even lets Members continue to own and sell stocks. This is the Republican MO. The public is mad about a problem. The public wants something done. And what they do is put in a bill that does virtually nothing because they want to try to assuage the public but not solve the problem because it affects them.
The Republican bill also explicitly allows Members to trade stocks in privately held companies to profit off their insider knowledge. So the bill makes things worse than present law because it would simply hide insider trading. It would not stop it.
And if Senate Republicans cared about reining in stock trading, they would advance a bill that prohibits the President from trading stocks. We know that Trump has traded more stocks than all of Congress combined, but this bill does no such thing.
The worst part of this bill is that Republicans know it will never pass. They designed it that way. They don't want this bill to become law. So they put a poison pill in that they knew would tank it. It is really trickery. It is skulduggery.
If Republican Senators really cared about stopping stock trading by Members, they wouldn't have loaded it up with a poison pill voter ID bill, which Senate Democrats have defeated already twice.
Republicans know that no one in their right mind would ever go along with the draconian voting restrictions that they attach to their stock trading bill. The voting restriction provisions in this bill are more severe than any law in any State--do you hear that?--more severe than any law in any State. They are designed to kill the bill.
So this bill is just another desperate Republican attempt to pretend they are fighting corruption, when all they really want is to score political points before they head home to campaign.
Mr. President, on Trump propaganda, Donald Trump continues to cram his taxpayer-funded propaganda down the throats of the American people. In less than a single week, Trump has aired three campaign ads, costing at least $1.5 million, all paid for by--guess who--the American taxpayer.
Trump is getting you, American taxpayer, to use your dollars to pay for his political ads. Have you ever heard anything so egregious in terms of how our system is supposed to work?
I am calling on the White House to explain this great, blatantly corrupt, and egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars immediately. The Trump administration has a lot of questions it needs to answer: Who is responsible for these ads? Which Agency? Where were the funds diverted to pay for Trump's propaganda? Was Trump involved personally?
There has already been some reporting from anonymous sources that Trump was personally involved in pushing these campaign ads on the taxpayers' dime.
Let's be clear, these ads were anything but public service announcements. They were pure propaganda. After fawning over foreign authoritarians like Putin and Kim Jong Un for so long, Trump must have gotten jealous of their control over state TV.
Trump needs to answer for this corruption and for all of his other efforts to rob the American people to fund his extravagant vanity projects. It is time for Republicans to either call the President out for this corruption or to call it quits in November.
Mr. President, finally, on the Affordable Care Act CRA, well, today Senate Democrats will force consideration of a resolution to stop Trump from further sabotaging the ACA.
Trump's recent rule terminates coverage for 2 million Americans. It jacks up healthcare costs for millions more and gives big insurers carte blanche to force the American people to pay more for less.
As if Americans weren't drowning enough in Trump's failed economy, this callous rule comes on the heels of Trump and Republicans ransacking over $1 trillion--$1 trillion--from the healthcare system, all to bankroll tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations.
Now rural hospitals are shuttering, millions are losing lifesaving coverage, and tens of millions of working Americans are watching their premiums double, triple, even quadruple.
For years, Trump has tried to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with no idea of what replacement will look like whatsoever.
As Trump's economy bleeds the American people dry, Trump isn't trying to lower costs but, rather, kill the Affordable Care Act with a death by a thousand cuts.
So my Republican colleagues ought to join us on this resolution to protect the care their constituents rely on or they will continue to own every lost healthcare policy, every closed hospital, and every skyrocketing premium that follows.
Madam President, I think most of us in this Chamber realize that we are literally living through one of the most consequential technology moments in our lifetime, and that is why I am here with several of my colleagues--Senator Schatz from Hawaii and Senator Kim from New Jersey--to say that we can't, frankly, have regular business at this moment.
You know, before I got into politics, I was in the technology field. I was lucky enough to be on the ground floor of the wireless industry and then became a venture capitalist and was involved in iterations around the internet and cloud computing. I can say without reservation that as big as wireless was, as big as the internet is, as big as cloud computing is, they will pale in comparison to the innovation that will come about through artificial intelligence.
In many ways, the reason I chose to ask the people of Virginia to hire me one last time was because, having spent an enormous amount of time on this subject, I am enormously concerned that we get AI right, that it is safe and it is fair, that America leads in AI innovation.
Over the last year and a half or so, 2 years, I have spoken on this subject repeatedly. I have laid out my ideas on how we ought to have a comprehensive approach--legislation on data centers that would actually, if they don't meet minimum Federal standards, would impose their inability to get a bonus tax depreciation.
I have plans in terms of how we ought to be dealing with child safety. If you think social media messed up your kids, wait until your teenage daughter or son thinks they have an affinity or a relationship with a chatbot. How ironic that China has already prohibited that.
We are seeing increasingly the use of AI agents. Well, who bears the liability? I have some ideas there.
National security. When Mythos came out from Anthropic, our head of NSA and Cyber Command said that this tool will change warfare as much as drones.
Finally, I continue to be enormously concerned that while AI may create jobs long term, in the short run, in the next 2 to 5 years, I think we will have an enormous disruption in our workforce. I will make a wager with anyone that I hope I will lose that we could see up to 30 percent of recent college grad unemployment as companies try to integrate the productivity gains from AI, and they are simply not going to hire as many folks going forward.
So I remain an AI optimist. I am not an AI doomer. But we are at a moment in time, looking over the last few weeks, where I think the whole world has recognized that we have to do something.
When AI companies, one after another, come out and say ``We have to elevate safety and put that first and foremost,'' when OpenAI just yesterday said they are slowing the model on Astra, when Anthropic has said they are trying to build in more safety protocols--I think that is good, but are we really going to trust the industry to self-police on something that, if it goes beyond what is happening--and we have already seen not tens but literally thousands of examples where these models go beyond what humans want them to do, the most famous being the OpenAI Hugging example, where 3,000 bots jumped the sandbox fence, attacked another company, and then came back and attacked OpenAI. Literally, during that period, they communicated with each other, hid their intent from human beings, would sacrifice some of the bots for the greater cause, and we are doing nothing? That was July. In August, they had 10,000 bots collaborate.
So we three--and there are a lot of Senators on both sides of the aisle who I think are enormously concerned who said that we will all have time to debate all of our--I don't want to use the term my friend from Hawaii will use, but pet rocks--I hope he will use it again--and say that we all have great ideas here, but we should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.
As we leave, if the Congress goes out and, God forbid, we have an incident--AI is already suspect by most Americans--we could actually see the stop of innovation if an AI tool took over a hospital or a water system. I am not an AI doomer, but the ability to have these AI agents take over and shut down part of the financial system is real. We should heed the call from the experts.
I think you will also see shortly--the finance world has said we need mandatory controls. I think you will see other large businesses say so as well. We need to make sure whatever safety board we put in place doesn't ensconce the already largest frontier labs.
Our request is really simple. It has been as pared down as possible. Before these models are released, they should be pretested to make sure, secondly, that the sandboxes where they do the testing have appropriate cyber protocols, that even before you start testing, there is at least a basic safety policy. And these companies welcome this. And God forbid we have an incident, we have to have an incident reporting mechanism. No more, no less.
We would house this at NIST. The safety board would have to include, obviously, where the expertise is--the frontier models. I actually think it would be good to have an international validator--somebody like the British--on it as well. They have an AI safety institute. We could actually guarantee to the rest of the world that our models are safe.
So let's not get involved--this is not a partisan issue. I think the chairman of the Commerce Committee is coming down. We have worked with him. We look forward to working with him further. But let's go ahead and put a statement in place that we in the U.S. Senate recognize the enormous upside of much AI, but there is also a downside.
With that, Madam President, I would like to yield to my colleague, the Senator from Hawaii.
Madam President, you know, this is about a couple of very simple questions. The first question is, Humans in control of technology or not? That is the first question.
Even the mechanisms that we are accustomed to, for instance, in aviation, where you say ``Before this plane can take off, we have to certify to its safety,'' don't really get at the fundamental problem because what we have is technology that is equivalent to a plane being able to take off on its own while it is still being built. So the question is first, Humans in control or not?
The second question is, If we agree that humans should be in control, should this be voluntary or not? Do we trust--not any individual CEO or board of directors, but do we trust that companies that are rolling toward the biggest IPOs in human history will voluntarily regulate themselves as opposed to maximize the value of that IPO, maximize shareholder profit?
We have traditionally tried to strike the right balance, and Democrats and Republicans don't always see the sort of level of regulation necessary on an eye-to-eye basis, but I think at some level, there are 100 of us who believe that when it comes to serious risk to public safety, that those should not be voluntary safety regimes. They should be mandatory. They should be Federal. It shouldn't be every legislature. It shouldn't be some announcement from a bunch of tech CEOs. It has to be in Federal statutory law.
Now, the third question is, Should we do this comprehensively or not?
The answer, in my view, is not--not right now. Here is why. We don't have the capacity to pass a very complicated law to deal with all of the societal and economic and human impacts of the AI revolution. We are not going to do that
We could have an argument about ``Is it a 10-percent chance of a terrible thing happening or a 1-percent chance of a terrible thing happening? How much time do we have?'' but I think nobody is disagreeing that the risk is nonzero of something terrible happening if we don't have a basic architecture of these labs having to not just test before they commercially upload something but to have a safety regime from the very beginning because, as we now have learned, this is a unique kind of product that could become dangerous even before it is released to the public.
So the question is, Comprehensive versus not--and as much as Senator Warner and I talk about our pet rocks--I have a bunch of bills in the AI space that are important. Of course, I think mine are the best. I am sure Senator Kim and Senator Warner think theirs are the best. But the point is, we are not going to come to a resolution on this. This bill is trying to thread that needle of being nonpartisan, on the level, not a setup, not designed as an electoral bludgeon but simply to try to take down the acute risk that is right in front of us.
So that is why we are trying to be modest enough to actually be able to look the Commerce Committee chairman in the eye and say: There are no tricks or traps here. This is what we have come to conclude is the safest way forward in the very short run. It also doesn't preclude Senator Cruz and Leader Thune and Senator Klobuchar and others from legislating in this space because there is lots more to do, but right now, we are facing something rather precipitous.
The other question is, Are we going to do something after something terrible happens or not?
I think that we have an opportunity to tee up legislation that takes down--that doesn't reduce to zero--but that takes down the risk of something really horrifying happening to people in the United States of America. So this is about humans in control, this is about keeping politics out of it, and this is about taking down the short-term risk of something really terrible happening.
To the extent that it is possible in this polarized time and in this election season, we tried like heck to display enough discipline on our own to not introduce a bunch of stuff that was going to freak a bunch of other people out. I actually haven't heard of any substantive disagreements with what we are proposing--I am sure they exist--but in terms of Member interaction, in terms of the expert community, in terms of my Republican colleagues, people aren't saying: I hate this bill. I have an ideological objection to it. It won't work.
They are not saying that.
They are just saying: We are doing another process and give that time.
And my judgment is that we don't have the luxury of time.
You know, the Senate is supposed to be the cooling saucer that allows the hot liquid from the House to cool off, and then we can deliberate, right? Well, the House is out of town, and they did not send us anything to drink. So that is a lovely way to understand this body, but we are all that is left, and we have to work on a nonpartisan--forget bipartisan--on a nonpartisan basis to make sure that humans remain in control of the technology.
With that and with the permission of the Senator from Virginia, I yield to my friend the junior Senator from New Jersey who knows more about national security and who is, I think, appropriately alarmed at the potential impacts of inaction in the U.S. Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Madam President, I thank my colleagues Senator Warner and Senator Schatz.
This is really an invitation to all of our colleagues to be able to join us in this moment because this is a call from the American people to address their worries, to avoid disaster, and to give them a sense of stability and predictability.
Yes, this effort we are putting forward today is not going to fix all of the problems; it is not going to avoid all of the pitfalls, but it is a start, and that is what the American people are looking for. They are looking for a start. They are looking for action that we are taking not just in words but in recognizing, yes, innovation without control just leads to chaos and leads to unpredictability. That is something that we need to make sure we are meeting at this moment to ensure that the American people have control over the incredible strides that we are seeing on AI.
Now, control can't be built on faith and half measures. Just yesterday, we saw again OpenAI saying that they are not going to release their newest model Astra because of security concerns. We have seen other major labs take some steps to mitigate. That is progress, but the stakes are too high for this to be just voluntary that big corporations take the right action just because it is the right thing to do.
When I was working in national security, the starting point of every conversation was, ``What is the magnitude of the problem that we are facing?'' and then to be able to work backward from there to understand what the magnitude is of the solution needed to actually address that problem.
Well, when I did a townhall 2 weeks ago, I had a constituent come up and ask me--because I was talking about the Hugging Face incident or some of the other news that we had seen of rogue AI agents breaking out. This one constituent asked me, he said: Well, how many times has this happened? How many times? Are we documenting it? How many times have we actually seen this?
Look, the answer that I had to give, truthfully, was that we didn't know.
Even still, today, we are standing here on the floor of the Senate, and we don't know how many of these types of instances have happened. I will be honest with you, I don't think the top AI companies fully know the total number of incidents and other challenges that they have faced.
So when they have the question: What is the magnitude of the problem we are trying to solve, the answer right now is that we don't know. That is scary, that is worrisome, and that is something we should work incredibly hard to be able to address.
Do we know just how much the move toward full recursive self- improvement is going to magnify these problems? We don't know yet, which is why we are trying to set out, with the effort today, to recognize that the stakes are too high and that control comes from creating efforts like an AI safety board or in establishing more secure sandboxes for testing and other types of standards. Control is necessary because we need to ensure that the technology does not outpace safety and common sense.
I am grateful, again, to be working with my colleagues here and, again, to be, hopefully, working with all of our colleagues together on this shared agenda. That is what the American people are not just asking of us but are demanding of us to be able to do so that this bill can be part of a comprehensive approach that will help us maintain control and avoid the chaos that no American wants to see.
Madam President, in a moment, I am going to ask for a UC.
I appreciate that the chairman of the Commerce Committee is here as it is in his jurisdiction, and he has been working on this issue. Congratulations on his legislative success last night.
To address, kind of, a little bit of what Senator Kim just mentioned, we don't know. What we do know is that the ChatGPT model that has already been released and is out in service has literally had thousands of times where it has gone beyond what the model was supposed to have done.
I completely don't think we can solve this State by State. Yesterday, Florida sued ChatGPT in kind of a very red State with a very Republican attorney general's taking, you know, an almost the-sky-is-falling approach.
We are trying to say--you know, I am pro-AI here, but if we lose this moment--I have never seen an innovation that could be so positive but be viewed so negatively by the public at this point, particularly by young people. So we are just saying: Let's put a safety board in place. We have to recognize things where we don't empower the existing incumbents, but I think we can do that. We are saying: Release testing. Make sure the sandboxes are safe on cyber protocols. Make sure there is a safety protocol that goes back even before testing, and make sure, after--God forbid--an incident, that there is an incident report.
Again, I would echo what my colleagues have said. You know, I have not talked to a single Member on either side of the aisle who doesn't think we need to move. I don't think the option of simply relying on the good will of these companies will be enough.
If we are not able to move forward today, I commit to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle because I think there is, frankly, no issue more important. If we don't get safety rights and all of the things about workforce or agent liability or national security, which has to be dealt with, we may miss. That would be the worst. If Americans turn against this innovation and say: We are going to stop it across the board, nothing would be better for China, and we don't want that to happen.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Madam President, in reserving the right to object, there is no doubt that AI will have profound effects on America's economy, national security, and culture. It is already having an enormous beneficial impact on economic growth and productivity. Millions of Americans are using AI for everyday tasks like handling home repairs, teaching their children math, conducting legal research, or using it to work to draft memos. It is incredibly useful, and it will only become more so.
So Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner. Robust AI legislation needs to involve both sides, and I trust that my Democratic friends who are on the floor today genuinely want to work together on this. I would note that with all three of the Democrat Senators on the floor, I have worked productively on other legislative matters, and I look forward to continuing to work productively on this matter as well which, I agree, is of exceptional importance.
As the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, I have also been having extensive and constructive conversations with Majority Leader Thune and Senator Klobuchar to give the government new authorities to protect against the potential catastrophic risks from AI. I think that is important.
Now, I agree with Senators Warner, Schatz, and Kim that our artificial intelligence presents new challenges. Some of the warnings we have had are as scary as hell. I commend my colleagues for wanting to tackle the issue, but I retain real reservations about this specific proposal. This bill would let the executive branch handpick a new AI safety board to unilaterally draft standards for AI developers on whatever it believes is related to ``national security, national economic security, or public health and safety.''
The Secretary of Commerce, in turn, would need to mandate by rule that AI developers then follow those standards. The Secretary would also exercise unilateral authority to change those standards based on national security. These terms are not bound by existing statutes or traditional legal doctrines or are even further defined. That concerns me because it is difficult to imagine what an ambitious bureaucrat couldn't shoehorn under this broad authority.
I would be more than happy to work with the sponsors on approaches that do not offer such unbounded discretion to the Federal Government and that are not an invitation for abuse, approaches like involving independent judges, which preserves debate and transparency through the adversarial process of litigation. Federal standards on advanced AI must also address the burgeoning patchwork of State laws.
I would be glad to address my concerns with the sponsors and to work together. We need a bipartisan solution. AI offers enormous potential, and the question of who wins the race for AI, whether it is the United States or China, I believe is the single most important economic question facing America. The answer is that one or the other will win, and to whichever country wins, trillions of dollars of investment will follow as will millions of new jobs. I want those millions of new jobs to be here in America. I don't want them in China.
More fundamentally, as to whichever nation wins that race, the values of that nation will suffuse AI. I do not want the world using an AI that is governed by the values of communist China, that is, governed by surveillance and espionage and propaganda and coercion and control. The Chinese communist Government wants to use AI to control its citizenry and to control everyone else. I am not interested in the American people being captive to that degree of power by the Chinese communist Government. I would far rather American values suffuse AI: free speech, individual liberty, free enterprise, individual rights. So winning the race for AI matters enormously.
Are there risks from AI? Of course. Any new tool has risks. I think we need guardrails particularly to protect against risks in the nuclear space with biohazards and critical infrastructure. Those are some of the most fundamental risks that we face.
We need to, as with any technology, have rules, but those rules should be bipartisan, and they should be measured and prudent. I don't believe we are there yet, although I am very happy to work with my colleagues constructively to get there and to get there in a bipartisan manner.
Madam President, I thank the Senator, and I look forward to working with him.
In terms of the composition of the safety board, that is where the rubber hits the road. You have to acknowledge that the frontier model has got most of the expertise. I think we all share a deep commitment, and as the chair and vice chair of the Intelligence Committee for the last decade, I have been calling out the CCP and their approach to technology that is just not in AI but across the board.
But I still--and I defer to my colleagues--feel like, my gosh, we are going to look pretty darned silly if something happens, and the American people turn dramatically against this technology because we didn't put safety first. Literally, the commercial ChatGPT model out there has created thousands--and this is not my word; it is the ChatGPT management's--of incidences where it has gone beyond what it was supposed to do. Literally, almost all of the members of the Anthropic company have said this something we need to address.
We have to do this with urgency. I look forward to working with the chairman. We have got to make it mandatory. We have got to make it safe.
And, clearly, how that Board is constructed--and it has to be able to move very, very quickly. I am not sure that the traditional judicial process could move that way, but I thank the chairman.
I don't know if my colleagues wanted to have a closing note as well.
Madam President, I am mildly encouraged. I, obviously, would rather he not object, but I am encouraged by the potential for common ground here.
Composition of Boards, what the mechanism is for ensuring safety is something that I personally don't have religion on. The question at hand is: Should we have some sort of mandatory safety and cyber security regime, and how do we stand up something that is quick enough to deal with the hastening pace of this technology and the
Look, I am always ready to modify something. If the Secretary of the Commerce Department shouldn't be the person in charge of determining the AI safety standards, that this should take 2 weeks rather than 6 months, you know, I am very openminded. But the threshold question is: Should this be voluntary or mandatory? And if you are saying you are open to some sort of mandatory regime with the caveats that you have expressed, I think that is progress.
I will make one final point. I think we get a little hung up on anthropomorphizing the tech itself, including this idea that the values are going to be imbued in the AI.
The AI gets given a task. It doesn't have ideas of its own. It doesn't have thoughts of its own. It doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't have feelings. And so this idea that we are going to have American, patriotic, liberty-loving AI and they are going to have the other kind I think is a misunderstanding of what we are actually talking about right now, which is we actually just want normal cyber security controls for this incredibly powerful tech. And the cyber security controls are going to have to be more robust than ever, but, like, that does not seem at all inconsistent with American values.
And if you want us to win the AI race--the quickest way to lose it is to allow a terrible incident to happen without any Federal guardrails, and then I think, figuratively speaking, the pitchforks will be coming.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Madam President, I will be quick here. I just want to say I hope we can be able to take this step and continue to move on. And as someone who is on the Commerce Committee, wanted to find ways to be able to engage.
I agree on the importance of America leading the innovation of the future, but I don't think that that competition, especially vis-a-vis China, is mutually exclusive with the need to be able to engage with safety and security.
We have pieces of the legislation, things that I have been pushing, like the MATCH Act, that are about us being able to further strengthen our innovative lead, and I hope that this body does take those measures up, as we have them before us in this very Congress. Within the end of the year, we can move forward on those types of steps.
But as we are engaged in this, it is not just about the United States. It is not just about China. It is about our ability to proliferate this technology all over the world. And whether or not all of these other countries are going to be choosing our technology or someone else's is going to depend on its performance and whether or not it carries risk.
So us being able to do this isn't just about showing the American people that we have something safe and secure, it is about a product that we hope the rest of the world will very much engage on and be using and driving American innovation as well as American prosperity going forward. So that is something that, again, I hope we can work on together.
Madam President, in a few moments, I am going to ask for unanimous consent for my resolution to designate the month of September as Dystonia Awareness Month.
But before I do, I want to speak a little bit about dystonia, what it is, and how personal the disease is for me and my family. Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder that affects nearly 250,000 Americans. It causes involuntary muscle contractions and repetitive movements. These contractions can affect any part of the body, and they can be very painful. Dystonia affects people of almost any age, and it may develop without any clear cause.
My mom has suffered from dystonia for nearly 40 years, and I have seen firsthand how difficult the disease can be on anyone who has it. But my mom, with the help of good friends and family and some really good doctors, has never let dystonia hold her back from being a great mom, a great grandma, and from someone who goes out and lives her everyday life in the way that she has.
Dystonia is often misdiagnosed, and there is no cure for it yet. That is why it is so important to raise awareness about dystonia, what it is, and what it causes. Greater awareness leads to better research and eventually better treatments and hopefully even a cure.
I urge all of my colleagues to support this simple resolution and draw attention to this painful disease that affects so many.
Madam President, and, with that, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 917, which was submitted earlier today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, 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 with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 917) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the order from September 28 to allow 10 minutes of debate, equally divided, at 2:15 p.m., prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, the President of the United States--acting, in my view, without any legal authority--is imposing unilateral tariffs on Canada. Those tariffs are now being reciprocated by Canada on us.
They are doing enormous damage today to Vermonters and to Americans. They are doing enormous damage to our Canadian neighbors and their businesses. They are doing nothing beneficial for our long-term relationship with our major trading partner.
Canada is Vermont's major trading partner, but we are not unique. Thirty-four States, and, I think, including Idaho--I may be wrong-- count Canada as their major trading partner.
Canada and the United States have been operating very well under a trade agreement, the USMCA. That was a trade agreement that President Trump bragged about--and, by the way, rightly bragged about--as the best trade deal ever. And that is being ripped up by the President, without any committee hearings in the Finance Committee, without any discussion with Republicans or Democrats, but with undeniable harm to everyday people in this country.
Senator Gillibrand and I have introduced the BAD DEAL Act, and it is to repeal these extraordinarily damaging, unjustified tariffs, give relief to commerce on both sides of the United States-Canadian border, and begin the process of healing our relationship with our closest ally.
I am going to just give a couple of examples of what has happened in Vermont. We have an extraordinary cheese-making company called Jasper Hill in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. It was started by two college graduates a number of years ago. They are now worldwide renowned and win cheese-making awards internationally.
They have been a source of sustaining agriculture in Vermont, which is very tough. They have created hundreds of jobs. They have a piece of equipment that costs a million dollars. It is on the Canadian side of the border.
We have a manufacturing company with a facility in Wisconsin and also, again, in the Northeast Kingdom. They make snow-moving equipment on tracks. They have a number of pending sales to Canada. This is a $500,000 piece of equipment. They are losing the sales because the buyer will have to pay an extra $250,000. For what?
This is just bone crushing, business crushing, job crushing, and there is no rationale for it. And then, when you add onto that the rhetoric--the 51st State, the Governor of Canada--our tourism industry, very close with Canada, is down with Canadian visitors by about 47 percent.
We have Jay Peak, which is an extraordinarily wonderful ski area for families. Canadians generally come down and have close relationships with the Vermonters up there in Burke, VT. They are not coming. And, by the way, it is an emotional blow, as well, because our business is like the Presiding Officer's. The folks really care about who their customers are. And some of these are bed and breakfasts with families that come back every single year.
And for what? Nothing--nothing good is coming of this.
The other point that I think is absolutely essential for every single one of us in the U.S. Senate to acknowledge is that the taxing power of this country is vested in the U.S. Congress, not in the President of the United States. And when the President is claiming emergency authority to justify these tariffs, when there is no emergency, and where even the grant of emergency authority, in a bipartisan way in years past, was based on the premise that there would be restraint on the part of the Executive and would only use it in the moment of a real emergency, that authority is just rampantly being abused by the Executive. And we, with our responsibility, under the Constitution, Republican or Democrat, must insist that it is this body that decides yes or no on taxes that are imposed on the American people. And make no mistake, a tariff is a tax.
Our bill--Senator Gillibrand and I--on these tariffs that are invoked under section 338, a never-before applied section of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, that notorious act that was an accelerant of driving this country into the Great Depression, would repeal that authority. It is called the Banning Antiquated Duties and Delivering Equitable American Levies, or BAD DEAL, Act. It would also repeal President Trump's import ban on various Canadian products.
In Vermont, the average household is going to be paying $4,500 more for goods and services due to rising costs, due in large part to the President's trade war. In Vermont, these section 338 tariffs, according to our agency of commerce, will cost Vermont businesses an additional $193 million.
For what? We are not going to build a road. We are not going to repair a bridge. We are not going to help farmers through a tough season. We are not going to be able to put that money into our schools.
It really hurts. One in four businesses in Vermont relies on trade with Canada, and Vermont buys more goods from Canada than the next nine largest foreign markets combined.
So it is time for us to accept our responsibility for taxing authority and not capitulate to an Executive who is reaching into the powers of this Congress. And we have the opportunity now, by acting, to end these punitive tariffs, these punitive taxes, that are leading to higher costs everywhere, including fertilizer costs in my State and in Idaho.
I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 5397 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; 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.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, first, with regard to Canada. Canada is a great ally and trading partner of the United States. That is true.
It is also true, however, that Canada has for years engaged in nontariff trade barriers against the United States that are unjustified. Think lumber, think dairy, and others. President Trump is trying to stop Canada from these nontariff barriers that are hurting Americans and have hurt Americans for years, and he is doing so by enforcing tariffs.
This is not the first time--nor is it likely the last--that a colleague of ours on the Senate floor has tried to pass unvetted legislation on the floor to address a disagreement with President Trump.
But as the chairman of the Finance Committee, which is the appropriate forum for legislation, I object to the unanimous consent request for S. 5397.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The objection is heard.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of the Department of Health and Human...
Madam President, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in stopping President Trump from terminating healthcare for up to 2 million Americans on the Affordable Care Act.
Let's back up for a second. President Trump has made it clear that he does not like the Affordable Care Act. He has vowed and tried to repeal it for over a decade with absolutely no plan to replace it. That would leave 23 million Americans without insurance.
We are talking about hourly employees and contractors in the gig economy. We are talking about small business owners on our Main Streets. And we are talking about the one in four farmers who are already being pummeled from every side by higher costs brought on by President Trump.
Americans banded together and, so far, we have stopped President Trump and congressional Republicans from completely repealing the Affordable Care Act. But that hasn't stopped the President from doing everything he can to chip away at, and hollow out, marketplace coverage.
Republicans and President Trump refuse to keep tax credits that help working families afford their coverage. This alone is causing premiums to double for 22 million Americans and has pushed more than 2\1/2\ million Americans off their care because they simply could not afford it.
They have slashed the funding by 90 percent for navigators, the very experts who help people find affordable health insurance.
Just last week the Trump administration kicked hundreds of thousands
That brings us to this rule that undermines Americans' healthcare, jacks up cost, terminates coverage for millions more Americans. President Trump's policy will promote catastrophic health plans with extremely high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, luring Americans into selecting plans that cover next to nothing when they get sick or injured. We call these junk plans.
The effort will also loosen physician network requirements, leaving Americans with fewer providers who will take their insurance. And it will allow insurers to offer nonnetwork plans to make it easier for insurers to raise out-of-pocket costs, sell new kinds of junk insurance coverage, increase deductibles, cover fewer services, and kick more providers out of network.
The result will be more Americans buying worse care that does not cover necessary services, from routine checkups to life-threatening emergencies. It will leave working families holding the bag for medical expenses.
The Trump administration itself says that this will kick 2 million Americans off their Affordable Care Act coverage while jacking up costs on millions more. Benefits could be reduced for tens of millions of Americans, meaning folks could lose access to coverage for addiction treatment, hearing aids, or other critical services. Plus, the rule would pile on redtape, increasing the paperwork burden of nearly 5 million Americans.
Americans understand what a lifeline this program is for a cancer patient, Americans with disabilities, working families, and entrepreneurs. On behalf of the 23 million Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act for their health insurance, we cannot allow this administration to continue the attack, raise their costs, and undermine their ability to access quality care.
Right now, Americans are unequivocal: they cannot bear the high costs of life. The war in Iran is causing gas and grocery prices to skyrocket, our farmers are struggling from needless trade wars, and now the President is raising the costs of healthcare for millions of Americans.
I urge my colleagues to stand with the vast majority of Americans who support the Affordable Care Act and stop this misguided rule that would jeopardize care for millions of Americans.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc: H.R. 1945, which is at the desk, and Calendar No. 492, H.R. 1550.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bills en bloc.
I ask unanimous consent that the bills be considered read a third time and passed, en bloc, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bills considered and passed en bloc are as follows:
Mr. President, on October 3, 1945, a Mr. Franc L. McCluer of a liberal arts college in Fulton, MO, set pen to paper to write to then former-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was enjoying his retirement, having recently lost an election in the midst or just after the Second World War. Mr. McCluer--President McClure of the college, which was named Westminster--invited the former Prime Minister to come to Missouri, to Fulton, to deliver a series of lectures.
And I suspect that the invitation might there have met its final end, had not another American and, indeed, another Missourian appended a few words to the bottom.
Here is what President Harry S. Truman wrote in his own hand on that invitation to Winston Churchill. He says:
So, lo and behold, the invitation made its way to former-Prime Minister Churchill, who accepted on the spot; and he and Harry Truman traveled together overland by train to Westminster College in Fulton, MO, to deliver, on Churchill's part, what became one of the most famous speeches of the 20th century, known as the Iron Curtain speech.
It was such a significant speech and such a significant moment in the history not just of Westminster College and Fulton, MO, but such a significant moment in American history that the trustees of the college and the leaders of the town decided thereafter it would be well worth commemorating. And so after that speech was concluded, they tried to decide on an appropriate form of commemoration.
They settled on a symbol that I think is altogether fitting: a church--a church called St. Mary Aldermanbury--actually, from London, which the trustees of Westminster and the town leaders of Fulton had brought from London brick by brick and rebuilt on the college campus at Westminster.
Here is a picture of it right there, with a statue of Churchill delivering his famous Iron Curtain speech that stands on the site to this today.
The thing about the church is, its own story retells the grit and determination of the American people through depression and war and also of the long alliance between the people of the United States and the people of the United Kingdom, because the church was first built in the 12th century as a parish church in London, but then it was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect, redesigned it and had it rebuilt in 1679, only for it to be gutted and destroyed once again by the London Blitz in 1940.
And there the church sat in ruins until the people of Westminster in Fulton, MO, brought it to the United States--to Fulton, to the campus-- and rebuilt it as a commemoration of the speech, yes, but I would suggest even something more: as a commemoration and mark of what we hold dearest together, what we most cherish as Americans, because that church symbolizes, really, the cradle of our civilization; the values that underlie who we are as a people; the sanctity of the individual; the rights of individual conscience; the right to worship; the liberties that flow to us not from a government, not from a bureaucrat, but from almighty God, as our own Declaration of Independence, 250 years old this year, so eloquently declares.
And there the church stands today, continuing as a symbol of what it means to be an American, continuing as a symbol of what we hold most dear, most valuable, most cherished as a people.
And today, the measure that we just adopted on this floor makes, for the first time, this landmark into a National Historic Landmark, there on the campus of Westminster in Fulton, MO, that will forever preserve this historic place and this historic site for posterity but will also, I think, communicate the significance of this moment and the significance of the church and what it represents for the American story.
And in this time of trial and difficulty we face in our own country, when so many question the value of our historical heritage, when so many question the fundamentals of our culture and suggest that this country is fundamentally evil, fundamentally racist, fundamentally bigoted, fundamentally ill-founded, I think this church and this landmark speak to the great and enduring goodness of our country, the powerful and enduring significance of the values on which this country is founded.
And I hope now, for decades and indeed, Lord willing, for centuries to come, this church will stand on the campus of Westminster in Fulton, MO, blessed as a National Historic Landmark, to speak to the principles that are at the heart of the American experiment and which we reaffirm in this 250th year and which continue to shine brightly in the State of Missouri.
Mr. President, lowering costs for Americans has been a key focus of this Republican Congress. The 2025 Working Families Tax Cut Act prevented the largest tax increase in the history of our country. If that bill had not passed, taxes would have gone up by about $3,500 per family.
The tax cuts have put more money into working families' and seniors' pocketbooks by establishing no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and expanding tax relief for seniors to the tune, for seniors, of a $6,000 tax credit.
It also increased the child tax credit, and it also has a deductibility of interest on car loans. So you see, when we call it the Working Families Tax Cut Act, you can see the important provisions that back up that title. Those taxpayers earning between $50,000 to $200,000 that took advantage of at least one of these new deductions received an average tax cut of between $815 and $1,250.
Moreover, the rest of the law made pro-growth policies that incentivized business investment permanently. This has enabled Iowa companies such as Sukup Manufacturing in Sheffield and Vermeer Corporation in Pella to fund multimillion-dollar expansions and add hundreds of good-paying jobs.
This Senator has worked to lower costs of healthcare by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the healthcare system. I am also working hard to hold pharmaceutical companies and powerful drug middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers accountable.
In February, Congress passed key PBM reforms to lower drug costs for seniors and Americans with private health insurance. Of course, everybody agrees more needs to be done to stop anticompetitive practices of Big Pharma and these pharmacy benefit managers.
I will continue to push to fix a broken system and lower drug costs. I have also worked to lower food costs by supporting American agriculture and passing the farm bill. Lowering high input costs for farmers is key, a very key way to help American agriculture and, at the same time, all American families at the dinner table.
The Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee-passed farm bill includes my transparency tools to help bring down fertilizer costs. It also includes year-round E15 that will deliver a $14 billion boost in corn demand and lower the price at the pump of up to 40 cents per gallon.
Here in the Senate, we have expanded and protected the Trump administration's effort to remove redtape and put more money back into the pockets of working families and small business owners. So far, the administration's efforts have resulted in over $1 trillion in total regulatory cost reductions.
Reducing redtape spurs innovation and lowers production costs, putting downward pressure on the price of household goods.
Last here, but not least, affordability requires fiscal sanity, something the Biden administration didn't have because fiscal recklessness by the previous administration spurred 9 percent inflation, costing Iowa households an extra $7,000 in just his first 20 months in office.
Now, we hear all this talk about inflation since Trump took over. Is the memory of Americans so short that they don't remember 9 percent inflation in the previous administration and how now it is dramatically down?
Now, self-proclaimed democrat socialists are running for office, promising a pile of budget-busting policies rather than delivering affordability. Such policies would exacerbate inflation and push up interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and consumer credits.
In contrast, Republicans, by focusing on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government, are working to snuff out inflation and contain interest costs. This includes trimming $1 trillion in mandatory spending as part of the Working Families Tax Cut Act. This work and more are making life more affordable for America.
Mr. President, now another short comment I want to make on another subject about cancer screening. Last week, I introduced a bipartisan cancer screening bill titled the ``Standardizing Cancer Recommendations for Early Evaluation and Navigation of Screening Act''; SCREENS, as an acronym for that legislation and that long name of the legislation.
The bill will improve access to cancer screening guidelines so they are more accessible, transparent, and user-friendly.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. We know that access to cancer screenings increases the chance of early treatment and reduces mortality. This is especially important for rural Americans and with the rising rates of cancer in young people.
To ensure patients have access to the best information at their fingertips or in the doctor's office, the Federal Government, through the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, can help ensure cancer screening recommendations are in a data-friendly format for apps, for tools, and for interoperable technology development.
Cancer screening guidelines still sit in lengthy documents that are not easy to navigate for patients or even for providers. These guidelines are routinely updated and refined, but it is difficult to track every change.
Patients want to know: Are they at risk for cancer and when should they get screened? Patients expect doctors to have the latest information, and they often have sticky notes on the recommendations taped to their computer, but it might not be the latest information or applicable to a particular patient.
There are some leading examples that are working to address this problem, including the Cancer Screen Iowa tool and Decision Precision+. My legislation will enable more technology development for patients and providers by streamlining access to cancer screening guidelines.
Making sure cancer screening recommendations are more patient- centered is common sense. Improving cancer research, access to early detection and screening, and cancer care are critical in defeating cancer.
I am proud to say that Iowa is taking this same comprehensive approach. This includes the cutting-edge research at the University of Iowa's Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center and Iowa's use of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund that was in the tax bill of last year that is investing in rural cancer care at rural hospitals and clinics across the State. I will keep fighting to prevent cancer and improve cancer care.
Mr. President, I am going to say something that might shock people here: Zohran Mamdani is right. Yes, the socialist mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani is absolutely right about something that is facing every American right now: Our political system has totally failed the American people and is set to fail the next generation too.
Now socialism is not the solution to this problem, but I am not shocked that affordability is the No. 1 issue for Americans right now. Overall inflation is up 500 percent over the last 50 years.
A college education used to be an affordable investment toward getting a good-paying job. Thanks to government--your government--it is now too often a 4-year runway to a lifetime of debt.
The cost of a college degree has gone up 1,500 percent in the last 50 years without the wages to match it. Average student debt is just under $40,000, according to the Education Data Initiative. Why? Government; your government.
Then there is the cost of a home. A first home used to be a monumental stepping stone for a young family. I can remember when we bought our first home. Now, it is out of reach to almost everyone. Home prices have gone up 800 percent over the last 50 years.
Fifty years ago, the median age of a first-time home buyer was 29 years old; today, it is 40. Why? Government; your government.
How are people supposed to afford to start a family if they can't even afford a house until they are 40?
Then there are other costs to worry about. When I finished my enlistment in the U.S. Navy, healthcare costs for a family were about $700 a year for a family of four--$700. Now, thanks to government interference, especially ObamaCare, costs continue to go up and options are getting more and more limited for the average family.
The cost of healthcare is up over 1,000 percent over the last 50 years. Why? Government. All of these costs have outpaced inflation, and all of these industries have seen the government get more involved over the last 50 years.
The answer is not more government. More government is simply not working, and it never did. For example, the Federal Government budgeted more than $1.2 trillion--$1.2 trillion--for low-income assistance programs last year. According to the Washington Post, ``Using the Census Bureau's official poverty count, that anti-poverty spending comes out to $35,000 in annual expenditures for every person in poverty''--$35,000 in annual expenditures for every person in poverty-- ``or $181,000 per family in poverty.''
If we are spending that much, why isn't it working? The fact of the matter is that we have been trying to spend our way to fixing poverty with our current approach for over 60 years. We are now $40 trillion in debt.
To those who want to claim it is all defense spending, that is not true. We spent about 3 percent of our GDP on defense spending last fiscal year. It makes up 13 percent of the Federal budget. Never mind that handling the military is one of the few things the U.S. Constitution actually tells Congress to do.
But we spend about $3 billion per day on interest payments on our debt while we run $2 trillion deficits for programs that clearly aren't working--$2 trillion each year.
Now, we can't tax our way out of this. The U.S. Federal Government collected a record $5.3 trillion in gross taxes during fiscal year 2025. I don't need people that say: Oh, their taxes are too low. If you confiscated every asset from every billionaire in the United States, you would only be able to run the Federal Government for just over a year.
Democrats say: Oh, just tax the rich. So we will take all the money from the billionaires, you can barely fund the government for a year.
Now, those who think--you know, then who do you think democrat socialists are coming for? Who do you think they are going to come for when they bleed the millionaires and billionaires? They are going to come for you and your family and everything you worked hard for.
The socialists are correctly identifying the problem, which is the cost of living. People understand that it is the fault of Congress giving them the short end of the deal year after year. It is not a surprise that people see hope in an alternative like socialism when it is clear that politicians maintaining the status quo aren't interested, and they are not doing anything to help them.
But socialism only leads to ruin in the end. If this country turns toward socialism, my grandkids won't have an America to inherit. The rise of socialism in America is terrifying to anyone who has read a history book, but it shouldn't shock anyone who watches Washington fail to lead with policies that work for American people.
Every 2 years, the DC swamp politicians beg for votes with the same empty promises: to hold government accountable. Oh, yes, they are going to hold government accountable; they are going to lower prices; they are going to fight for the American dream.
We have watched this cycle repeat decade after decade, and both parties are complicit. And every American knows that things have only gotten worse. Instead of holding government accountable, politicians in Washington have armed a $40 trillion debt bomb by massively expanding the Federal Government year after year.
We are only one economic crisis away from exploding. While promising lower prices, Congress keeps approving massive government spending bills, causing prices and interest rates to skyrocket for the same voters we promised to lower prices for.
In the name of protecting the American people, Big Government has crept into every part of our lives and crushed opportunity and put the American dream on life support. Let's look at the facts. Americans have seen this play out and are furious about it--especially young people. They were robbed, and the culprits are the ones in this building from both parties.
President Trump and his administration are doing everything they can--everything they constitutionally can--to fix this. The poverty rate reached the lowest point in American history last year, and child poverty also reached a record low. Since President Trump took office, more than 1.5 million Americans have been lifted out of poverty. More than 1 million new private sector jobs have been created during the Trump administration. Wages are rising, but inflation--inflation caused by government spending approved by Congress--is cutting into what those wage gains can do for families.
The simple fact is that Congress has the power of the purse, not the President. Congress has been abusing that power for decades, and Congress is responsible here.
Who can blame the American people for being angry? The American dream that existed for their parents and grandparents is out of reach for a lot of them. Where is the outrage on their behalf in this Chamber? Washington's failures have left them feeling cheated and disillusioned with our political system and way of life, stuck in a world where they can't afford to buy a house, have decent healthcare, or start a family. How can the American dream survive like that?
Their anger is real and it is justified, but the answer from today's Democrat Party--the embrace of socialism--will not solve any of their problems. Socialists promise steady wages, good healthcare, and plenty of benefits. It sounds really nice, and also, it is all free, but let's look at what happens when you choose socialism. You hand over all the control of your life to the government in exchange for a promise, but you get no leverage. The government gets to make all the choices. All the decisions are made by government to ``level the playing field.'' So what does government do? It controls where you work, how much money you make, where you can live, and where you can
The government becomes the one that can decide if you live in a house or a one-bedroom apartment. The government decides how much food your children need or whether your elderly mother can have surgery.
Karl Marx summed it up well when he described a communist society that all socialists want. Remember, socialism is really just a gateway drug to communism. Marx said that perfection in government was creating a society that was ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.''
Under socialism, the government, not you, determines what your needs are. They decide what you need. You don't need that new shirt. You don't need a bigger home. You don't need more money for your family. You don't need more diapers for your baby. You don't need cataract surgery; your other eye is fine. Under socialism, people dream, but achieving dreams is not allowed. Everyone gets the same crappy deal. There is no hope. The government tells you what you are entitled to, and it always is less and less and less. The only dream under socialism is survival and escape.
Ronald Reagan talked about this 60 years ago in his ``A Time For Choosing'' speech. There is nowhere for Americans to escape to. If our way of life fails, there is nowhere else to go. Where would you go?
If you think I am exaggerating, there are plenty of Cuban and Venezuelan socialism survivors in my great State of Florida who could share their stories.
Socialism isn't the answer, and I think a lot of Americans would say they don't want it. So where do we go? If more young people feel like the American dream doesn't exist for them, how do we prove them wrong? The answer is simple: Listen to the American people. They are smart. Make government work for the things that are most important to them. We need to blow up the status quo in Washington to lower prices--we need lower prices; fuel private sector job creation--we need more private sector jobs; and return to American freedom. American freedom is what gave me and the generations before me the chance to succeed.
We have to do three things. We have to dramatically reduce government spending to balance the Federal budget, shred the massive regulatory regime that has grown out of control in Washington, and third, we have to make job creation the No. 1 priority through tax cuts, smart investment, and good economic policy.
Does it work? It absolutely works. I did it when I was Governor of Florida. When I ran for Governor, I said: We are going to create 700,000 private sector jobs in 7 years. By the end, we created 1.7 million new private sector jobs in 8 years. We brought in countless new businesses, and we helped Florida businesses expand.
So I have good news for the people worried about the American dream and the Democrats' turn to socialism: It is never too late to turn things around. The choice in front of us isn't complicated. It is incredibly simple, but it won't be easy. We don't need any new laws, actually. We need self-control. We need self-control on spending.
Eventually, we will have to do what every American family does and prioritize where we spend money. We know how much money we make, we know we cannot spend more than that, and we prioritize our spending. We have to do the exact same thing in DC.
We need to be willing to stay here to debate with each other about how we reduce our government spending and how we prioritize spending. Working 2\1/2\ days a week is not going to cut it. No business does that. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
When I came in as Governor, the budget hadn't been balanced in Florida in decades. How did we balance it? I told them that we are not going to spend more than we take in. That is what every family does, and that is what happened.
But until we as a body decide enough is enough, we only have ourselves to blame for the high prices our constituents are facing now.
Washington's obsession with spending, spending, spending has become so reckless that we are now running multitrillion-dollar annual deficits. These deficits are fueling a $40 trillion debt that costs more than $1 trillion in interest annually. That is $1 trillion at today's interest rates. What happens if those interest rates double? That is $1 trillion that provides zero return for American families. What do we get out of it? It is not going to build a better military, Social Security, roads, Medicare. To save the programs Americans depend on, we must reduce government spending in all the places it doesn't provide a real return for taxpayers and finally balance the Federal budget.
When I was Governor of Florida, we went through all the lines of the budget, 4,000 lines of the budget. We had a written purpose for every line. We should be doing that here. And if it doesn't meet the purpose, we don't do it anymore. That is what you do with your own money.
The beautiful thing about solving this problem is it doesn't need more legislation. We don't need another law. We don't need more laws. We need to use all the serious brain power in Congress that we already have and use the appropriations process to stop funding stupid programs that don't work.
To make sure that workers keep more of their paychecks and can afford loans for cars, homes, and businesses, we must balance the budget. When we balance the budget, interest rates will come down.
Next, Congress must take an absolute sledgehammer to Federal Government regulations. Why do we need more regulations and people telling us how to lead our lives?
As Governor of Florida, I slashed 5,000 burdensome regulations, taking permitting times from months to days, eliminating stupid regulatory hurdles that had no impact on safety, and cutting costs to start and grow a business. That is what we did. I cut taxes and fees a hundred times, and we still balanced the budget and paid down debt. So it clearly can be done. It can be done in any city, any State, and it clearly can be done here. We should be doing it.
Jobs should be our mantra. We should be focused on jobs every day. That should be the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government--how to create more good-paying jobs.
The American dream we all believe in is on life support for young people, but it is not dead yet. I have launched a Rescue America project to reignite the American dream. It starts by pointing out all the ways that Big Government and bad policy have completely betrayed the average American, and it is plotting a roadmap back to sanity. From there, we will map the way back to the kind of country that made it possible for a poor kid like me who grew up in public housing, born to a single mom, to become a CEO, a Governor, and a Senator.
If we want to spare the next generation the misery, the absolute misery of socialism, despair, and hopelessness, we need to show them the opportunities freedom always offers when Washington actually works for them and they have the opportunity to live the American dream.
For every socialist, shame on you. You are absolutely lying to the American people. Your ideas result in despair, death, and hopelessness.
To every young person watching the cost of starting a family rise while Washington refuses to act, this speech is for you.
For every blue-collar worker--like my dad--who sees his taxes funding wasteful programs while his family does without, I feel your pain.
For every aspiring business owner with a great idea drowning in regulations and redtape, preventing you from getting started unless you are rich, I am working for you.
The solution is simple, but it won't be easy. We can balance the budget tomorrow. Families do it every day. We just need to have the courage to sit down with each other and figure out how and not leave town until we do it.
Today, we could cut the number of regulations in half, if we wanted to, the exact same way--just sit down and do it. We just need to be willing to put in the hours and get the job done.
This is all doable. We have to do it for the benefit of every young person in this country. Every child should have the same opportunity to live the American dream that each one of us believed when we were growing up.
Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to seek unanimous consent to pass a bill. This is called the Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act.
I know that oftentimes, Members come the floor and say: Oh, it is not controversial at all.
Let me tell you, this one is pretty straightforward, and it is truly a noncontroversial provision.
Senator Sullivan and I have introduced this in the Senate. Congressman Begich is leading the companion legislation in the House. We are seeking to send this bill to the President's desk before recess because it has become time-sensitive.
It is pretty simple. It would convey approximately 3.5 acres--3.5 acres--of Federal land in Anchorage. This is land that is currently owned by the Indian Health Service, and it would be conveyed from IHS to the Southcentral Foundation.
The Southcentral Foundation is an Alaskan Native Tribal health organization that provides healthcare services to IHS beneficiaries under a self-governance compact. The Southcentral Foundation has built something pretty special on this property. They call it the Quyana Clubhouse. This is where Alaska Native people can find support, find connection and a path forward when they are dealing with mental health challenges.
The program serves adults that are over 21 who are experiencing severe and persistent mental health issues through case management, therapy sessions, health education, tobacco cessation, life skills training--all while integrating Alaska Native culture.
Given its success, Southcentral Foundation plans to expand the building as well as the services they provide as they work to support intensive levels of outpatient programming. Right now, Southcentral Foundation is providing these services in one of the oldest buildings in the IHS inventory in Alaska. They were really never intended to provide this kind of patient care. In fact, one of the rooms that is now still being used was once a morgue. So it has been around for a while.
As I noted, we are here because this straightforward land transfer has become time-sensitive. Without ownership of the parcel, Southcentral Foundation cannot finance and construct capital improvements and permanent facilities and, in turn, do more to address mental health in Alaska. So this legislation will give Southcentral Foundation the certainty it needs to keep investing in places like Quyana and continue providing these services for the long term.
This is a House-passed bill. It can go directly to the President and be signed into law. I would hope that we would agree to do that today because there are no substantive objections to it. Both the House and Senate have had hearings on their prospective versions. Both have been marked up and reported favorably by unanimous consent on the Committee on Indian Affairs.
So, really, there is no reason to hold the bill up. We can add to our record of bipartisan legislating at scale. We can address an issue that is important to Alaska Native health and uphold the Federal trust responsibility by passing the Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc: Calendar No. 535, H.R. 3620, the Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act of 2025; Calendar No. 459, S. 3383; and Calendar No. 682, S. 3219.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bills en bloc, which had been reported from the Committee on Indian Affairs.
I ask unanimous consent that amendments, where applicable, be agreed to; that the bills, as amended, if amended, be considered read a third time and passed en bloc; 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 bills considered and passed en bloc are as follows:
It is good to be able to not only get the Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act accomplished but several other measures that the Indian Affairs Committee has been working on for some time.
Mr. President, since I am here on the floor and since I have my friend and partner who has worked with me on other matters of great import and impact, I want to take this opportunity to celebrate something that happened last evening when we here in the Senate passed the reauthorization of the ACT for ALS bill. This bill has passed the House, it has now passed the Senate, and it can head to the President for his signature.
The path on this one, again, should have been easy. It should have been easy, but it just hasn't been. It has taken years of work here in the Congress and even more years of work and effort and heartfelt effort from the ALS community, who are amazing men and women--the people who live with ALS and their families, their caregivers, the researchers, the advocates who share their stories and kept pushing us to keep moving this forward.
We passed the ACT for ALS in 2021. That was an enormous milestone, and, again, I appreciate my colleague here. But what it meant for those who have been diagnosed with ALS to know that for the first time, there would be this pathway for individuals who have an ALS diagnosis who are not eligible for clinical trials to be able to access these investigational treatments.
So we have made good progress. We pushed funding to NIH and to FDA so that we can accelerate the research and we can help move more of these promising treatments from the laboratory to the people who need them.
So we have been working with our partners in the House, Senator Coons and I along with Representatives Calvert and Quigley, on this reauthorization--good, strong bipartisan progress in both the House and the Senate. We thought we were cooking. We are going to make this thing happen. We are going to get it across before the September 30 deadline. And then we were literally running out of time.
I think my colleague and I would both agree we respect the legislative process. There are times when slowing things down makes good sense, but when it comes to ALS, a slowdown, a lapse in authorization--this is not just a procedural issue; this is disruptive. It causes uncertainty. It causes so much anxiety for those who are already navigating such an unpredictable and such an uncertain disease.
Families should simply not have to wonder about whether or not the research infrastructure and the treatment access pathways they are relying on are now going to disappear because a Federal authorization has expired. That is what this reauthorization does. It continues that continuity so that the work that has been built continues and it doesn't have to stop and restart, because ALS is progressive and not in a positive way. Every day, it is harder and harder. People living with ALS and their families cannot put their lives on hold while they are waiting for the next breakthrough because every single day matters.
So what this is about is to see the momentum that has been built over these past 5 years. The ALS community has helped build this momentum, and it is through the research networks, it is through the collaborations, the new pathways.
But this reauthorization is about protecting the momentum that has been built. So it is not just about preserving a program; it is preserving the momentum, preserving the options, and preserving the hope because that is what these families are clinging to every day, is that when you are facing a disease that does not wait, that maybe today is going to be the day for that breakthrough.
I am so honored to work alongside my colleague Senator Coons. He could not be a better advocate. I am so honored to work with so many ALS advocates and the broader ALS community. We have more work to do. We still have to get the Justice for ALS Act and the ALS Better Care Act. We are going to do that. But I am so enormously grateful for the persistence we have shown, the heart that has been here, and, again, the success that was achieved here in the Congress, and now, moving forward, the hope that will continue with the families and those who live with ALS.
With that, I yield to my colleague and partner in all of this, Senator Coons.
Mr. President, thank you to my dear friend the Senator from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, and to all the ALS advocates out there who have reached out to both of us--to us, to our families, to our staff, to our friends.
ALS is the cruelest disease I know. It slowly and steadily and relentlessly robs someone of their ability to control their muscles, to be themselves, to live their lives, to engage with their families, to carry out their careers, and to share their blessings with others around them. While they remain fully conscious and present, they lose their capacity to button their buttons, to drive a car, to speak, to do the things they were born and meant to do. It is an awful, terrible disease. It is colloquially known as Lou Gehrig's disease. We know people whose lives have been touched directly by it.
I think all of us remember the Ice Bucket Challenge--one of the first YouTube or TikTok sensations that seemed to me to be purely good in that it challenged people to douse themselves with ice water in order to raise the visibility of the urgency of investing in ALS research.
I know Senator Murkowski and I are grateful for Brian Wallach and his wife Sandra, who founded I AM ALS after Brian was diagnosed in 2017-- someone who was a skilled and talented advocate and lobbyist and leader here in Washington who made purpose out of pain.
And, as have so many others with ALS, refusing to go quietly into the night, he began coming to the Hill, documenting in a daily way his struggles, his courage, his success in the face of ALS, and engaged both of us and got us to help launch the ALS Caucus here in the Senate.
Dear friends of mine--Dan Tate, who went to Amherst College, as did I; Craig and Kristen Colby from Delaware, who have visited me year after year; my younger brother Steven's best friend; the father of Alex Snyder-Mackler, a talented lawyer I knew from Delaware; and, of course, my chief
When Senator Murkowski and I first got engaged in this, it was before it affected us personally or deeply. But since we passed ACT for ALS, back in 2021, it has come closer to home.
I recently went to my high school reunion, and my very best friend was absent, because Dr. Jack Flynn is living with ALS. Yesterday, his grandson Liam was born. And it is a wonderful reminder that, even in the midst of struggle and tragedy, life goes on; that the blessing of birth and creation continues.
And I just have to say, of all the people who have witnessed to me about what faith can mean in the face of adversity, Jack has shown better than anyone I have known what it means to be a good husband and father. So forgive me.
When we first began, advocates were asking us if we could find appropriations for $10 million--$10 million--for ALS research, to bring the hope that Senator Murkowski is talking about. This year, we got $115 million appropriated for ALS research.
Now, we often ask ourselves--at least I ask myself: What are we doing here? What are we getting done in the late night votes, in the endless partisan swirl, in the bickering and the fighting, outside and inside.
We, frankly, get a lot of good done here, and often that good goes unremarked. But I cannot thank enough my friend and colleague Senator Murkowski for her tireless dedication to moving ACT for ALS for its reauthorization, as she just detailed.
Our partners, Congressman Calvert and Congressman Quigley, got it done in the House and sent it to us. But there were small but important differences between the version in the Senate and version in the House.
Our challenge here is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And we locked arms and said, after lots of calls for support and help, that we were determined to get this passed and sent to the President's desk for his signature before we left for the next month, before it expired tomorrow, because at the end of the day, the urgency, the necessity of hope in the face of this dread disease, is the single biggest gift we can give to families living with ALS.
This year, 700 people have gained access to experimental NIH treatments, 1,200 people are enrolled in a landmark genetic study of the origins and causes of ALS, thousands of lives have been changed and made better, and tens of thousands of families have been given hope where previously there was none.
So, today, we can say that we have done it again because of you: $100 million a year is authorized for ALS research for the next 5 years.
And as senior appropriators, I suspect we can commit that we will do everything in our power to ensure those funds are actually delivered.
This is a small but real bipartisan miracle of partnership, of effort, and of investment in hope.
At the end of the day, I struggle with understanding how a just God can impose on good people the suffering of this disease, but I know that our calling is to offer hope in the face of that suffering, and to celebrate those who continue to live bravely with purpose and with love, even in the face of this dreaded disease.
I cannot thank you enough--all the advocates who reached out to us; the chair and ranking member of the HELP Committee, who helped make this possible; the staff who have supported Senator Murkowski and me in this work; and my dear friend Senator Murkowski from Alaska--for this day that is worthy of celebration.
Mr. President, I am so honored to work alongside colleagues like my friend from Delaware, who has so much heart and so much passion. But it is a reminder to me of how much we have to do on behalf of those who do feel that they do not have a path forward, and they look to us in Congress as they go through some of the most difficult and dark moments as families together.
Like Senator Coons, I have been touched by ALS, and my family has. And, in fact, it was through my family that I came to this cause, and it is through my family that I will remain committed to this cause, until such time as we have a full treatment and a cure for this awful and dreaded disease.
It was my cousin's sister, as I call her--it was her husband Pat, who lived with ALS for 8 years. And for 8 years, as a family, we came to understand the impact of the disease, but more than the impact, what it meant to live day by day, hoping--just hoping--that tomorrow was going to bring something that was more positive.
And so after Pat left us, my cousin Jenny stayed in the fight. It is pretty hard after you have fought alongside your spouse, and pretty hard when you have come to hate a disease so passionately, and you want to never utter those words, those letters, again.
But when ACT for ALS reauthorization passed last night by voice vote, I sent a text to Jenny. And I said:
And she sent a note back, late, late last night. And I am just going to share this as my final comments.
She said:
So, Mr. President, thank you. Thank you for helping us realize this today on behalf of all those who live with ALS and their families.
Mr. President, I rise today ahead of the ninth anniversary of one of the darkest days Las Vegas has ever seen: the shocking tragedy of October 1, 2017, the largest mass shooting in American history.
Like many Las Vegas evenings, tens of thousands of visitors came to the Las Vegas Strip for a concert, the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. It was a beautiful night out. I was home in Las Vegas.
And in the midst of the music, the dancing, and the fun, a deranged gunman opened fire on the festival, killing innocent concert goers and leaving so many injured and traumatized.
It only took 10 minutes for him to carry out this brutal attack, but the consequences of his actions remain with us for a lifetime. Fifty- eight innocent lives were taken on the night of October 1, and in the years since, we have lost two more individuals as a result of this horrific tragedy--families left without their loved ones, parents without children, children without parents.
We owe an endless debt of gratitude to those brave police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and others who selflessly ran into the chaos and confusion of that night just to help. On this dark day, we saw our city come together like never before to support the victims.
In the wake of the shooting, President Trump instituted a ban on bump stocks, which the 1 October gunman used to kill so many in just 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has since overturned this commonsense ban, and the epidemic of gun violence in this country continues to persist to this very day. This year alone, the United States has seen more than 350--350--mass shootings.
We are not powerless here in Congress. We can do something about the relentless gun violence plaguing our communities. We can do something. As we honor the memories of the innocent individuals who were brutally murdered 9 years ago, we must also recommit ourselves to that action to ensure that no other community ever experiences a tragedy like this again. The cost is forever, and it is too deep. We must come together and pass the bipartisan bill I helped to introduce to ban bump stocks before another community lives through a day like 1 October.
Las Vegas has shown that we can survive the darkest days by coming together as a community and supporting one another. This is why we will always be Las Vegas strong. I am proud of our community. I am proud of our resilience. We will continue to fight against gun violence.
Mr. President, when Utah's pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they had almost nothing. They had no reservoirs, no pipelines, no pumps, no Federal grants, and no municipal bonds. Their most sophisticated earth-moving equipment ate hay. What they did have was a problem. There was not enough water where they needed it, so they moved it.
Even before Brigham Young entered the valley in July of 1847, members of the advance company diverted City Creek to soften the dry ground and irrigate crops. Within a year, thousands of acres were under irrigation. As settlements grew, Utahns did not simply accept the limits of the streams flowing conveniently past them. They built ditches and canals. They diverted mountain streams. They constructed the Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal that stretched, roughly, 28 miles across the valley. Eventually, they developed water exchanges, providing farmers with water from Utah Lake and the Jordan River in exchange for higher quality canyon water that could serve a growing community.
There is something important in that history lesson for us today. These were people with picks, shovels, horses, and oxen. They had almost no capital; yet they were willing to undertake enormous projects because they understood that the limited water available to them at that moment did not have to define the territory's future. The pioneers were bold. They thought big.
We need some of that thinking again. Utah is growing. The West is getting more crowded. We are in a pattern of drought. The Colorado River is under extraordinary pressure, and the Great Salt Lake reminds us that every gallon has competing demands. Conservation has to be part of the answer. Agriculture needs to become increasingly efficient. Cities should reuse water and eliminate unnecessary consumption. We need to be better stewards of the water we already have. But I don't believe conservation alone is a long-term water strategy for a rapidly growing State.
We should also be asking: Where is the next water, and how do we get it?
I recently met with a group of experts who were working on water in the Great Salt Lake, and I challenged them to think like pioneers. What are the big ideas? What are the ideas that sound a little crazy today but that might not sound so crazy 50 years from now?
For purposes of the discussion, I asked them to temporarily take money and even engineering implementations off the table. Before telling me why something couldn't be done, I wanted to hear what might be possible. The list quickly became long. What about desalination plants? What about bringing water from wetter parts of the country? What about ground water beneath the Great Salt Lake? Can we recover water that is currently stranded from the lake? Can we reduce evaporation? Can we develop crops that produce more with less water? Can better forest management help more winter snow actually reach the ground? Some of these ideas may not work. Some will be too expensive. Others may fail because of engineering, environmental, or legal problems. That is fine, but we should know they don't work because we took them seriously enough to find out.
Utah has done big things before. The Central Utah Project moves Colorado River Basin water across the Wasatch Mountains through a remarkable system of reservoirs, tunnels, aqueducts, and pipelines. It took generations to conceive, finance, and build. Before that came the canals, and before the canals came a ditch from City Creek.
We have a tendency to look back at what the pioneers did and accomplished and romanticize it. We celebrate their courage, put their pictures in museums, and tell their stories every July. I wonder if one of the best ways to honor them is to simply think and act more like they did. Imagine telling a Utah pioneer that constructing a 28-mile canal with picks, shovels, and horse-drawn equipment was too ambitious. Imagine telling them the valley could support only as many people as the existing water streams happened to accommodate.
They looked at what Utah had and started building the Utah they wanted their children to inherit. Our challenge is different, but I think our responsibility is much the same. None of this means we should build every project someone can draw on a map. We need good engineering, honest accounting, environmental responsibility, and respect for our neighboring States. We should conserve aggressively before spending enormous amounts of money to create or transport additional water, but we should not assume that today's water supply is all Utah will ever have.
The answer probably isn't one enormous project but, more likely, a combination of conservation, agricultural efficiency, reuse, watershed restoration, desalination, better storage, new technology, and perhaps, someday, bringing additional water into the Colorado River system. And there are probably good ideas we haven't thought of yet.
Utah has an extraordinary collection of engineers, entrepreneurs, capital providers, universities, lawmakers, and technology companies. I would like to see more of us working on this problem. We need our best minds to help us figure out water. Most importantly, we need to think beyond the next legislative session or election cycle. Water projects can take decades. We ought to be thinking 50 and even 100 years ahead.
The pioneers who diverted City Creek in 1847 could not have imagined millions of people living along the Wasatch Front or a modern Utah economy built around technology, manufacturing, and innovation. Fortunately, they built more for Utah than they could see, and we should too.
Our ancestors came to one of the driest places in America and built thriving communities because they were willing to move water where it was needed. Nearly two centuries later, we have resources and technology they could not have even imagined. We could use a little more of their ambition and dreaming. When Utahns look back at us 100 years from now, I hope they will say that we didn't just manage the water problems we inherited but that we started building the solutions they need.
Mr. President, they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that is certainly true when it comes to wildfires and smoke. And as climate chaos makes the fire season longer and hotter and more dangerous, wildfires are ravaging States across our country, certainly including my home State of Oregon.
This year, at the beginning of fire season, the risk maps showed that the State of Oregon was the epicenter of the highest risk for the most time anticipated. Unfortunately, that crystal ball prepared by the experts turned out to be right. We had a record 2.5 million acres burn this summer. Well, we broke the 2 million acres last summer and the 2.5 million acres this summer. It wasn't that long ago when 1 million acres would have been an extraordinarily horrific fire year. Forests burning, grasslands burning, more lightning strikes, more wind, more drought, more dryness, hotter temperatures--all of it combined to create that extraordinarily destructive summer we have just gone through.
I will never forget 6 years ago the Labor Day fires, at the beginning of September, when we had a combination of lightning strikes and wind that brought, basically, a force up from the east, wind over the top of the Cascade Mountains and down every valley, and every valley was burning. We had six cities burn to the ground, and we had another six that were badly scorched. When you saw those cities, it looked like a bomb had gone off. I mean, everything was reduced to ashes, with maybe a cast-iron tub over here, with maybe a metal staircase or a pipe dangling over here, then on the ground a pool of metal when the wheels on cars would melt and run across the ground. It was just devastating to go to the fairgrounds--where thousands of refugees were headed--and hear of their harrowing escapes. Sometimes their cars were starting to melt and smoke as they drove through the fire. Others were seeking refuge in the streams.
These fires? They are terrible, and they fill the air with toxins-- toxins
This bill prepares our communities in two different ways.
First, it makes it easier for communities to do prescribed burns. Now, if I turned the clock back about 16 years, communities would say to me: We don't want those prescribed burns. We don't want that day or two of smoke.
But after the 2020 Labor Day fires, communities are like: We want to do the prescribed burns. We want them carefully monitored so that they do not escape and cause a larger fire, which has happened on rare occasions. We want to make sure they are done on days when there is enough humidity and so little wind and so little risk of wind that they can't possibly become something other than the prescribed burns.
They have to be meticulously planned, carefully controlled, and then they reduce so much fuel on the ground and provide a lot of protection thereafter. So prescribed burns are--along with thinning and mowing-- significant ways to reduce the fuel load and reduce the devastation when there is a fire.
But here is the thing: a prescribed burn produces smoke, and that smoke may become a penalty under the Clean Air Act for our communities. So this bill solves that problem so that smoke from a prescribed fire does not create a penalty under the Clean Air Act.
Second, this bill helps communities prepare for smoke, to have locations that are safe for people, particularly people with lung problems, with asthma or emphysema or so forth or people who are particularly allergic to the content of the smoke to be able to get to places that have clean air through filtering. So that is essential.
And this bill incorporates the Smoke-Ready Communities Program based on the Smoke and Heat Ready Communities Act that I introduced before. It gives communities the tools and the resources to prepare for wildfire smoke and unhealthy air.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is a pretty good foundation for a bill--a bill, the Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act, that will give our communities the tools they need to prepare for wildfires and smoke pollution, and I would encourage that we adopt this bill today.
I yield to one of my colleagues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, colleagues, I am proud to join our colleagues from Utah and Oregon in bringing up this bill. I can't overstate both the importance and the urgency of the Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act, which is a result of more than a year of bipartisan negotiations and a measure that recently passed unanimously out of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
As my colleague from Oregon has begun to paint the picture, Western States--including Oregon, California, and others--are confronting a crisis of wildfires that aren't just growing larger and larger every year but more destructive every year and emitting massive amounts of toxic smoke.
Now, there is no silver bullet for solving the wildfire crisis, but we know that prescribed fires--experience tells us and the data tells us that prescribed fires are the most effective tools in reducing hazardous fuels and preventing catastrophic wildfires.
Will they continue to happen--fires? Yes, but if we can prevent them, that is ideal or at least let's mitigate their size, their scope, and the damage that they cause however we can.
But the problem that brings us to this measure is that while the EPA regulations have allowed prescribed fires to qualify as exceptional events since 2016, the Agency has never actually approved one, leaving States worried that using this critical tool--this provenly effective tool--to protect communities could jeopardize their air quality goals. By trying to do good and prevent fires or mitigate fires from a public safety standpoint, you are penalized on the air quality side of things.
So this bill creates a narrow, targeted pathway specifically for prescribed fires while preserving existing air quality standards for other exceptional events.
I want to thank my colleagues from Utah and Oregon for their partnership in this important bill, and kudos to Chairwoman Capito and Ranking Member Whitehouse on the committee who helped craft this measure as well.
Mr. President, I, too, would like to give my colleagues a shout-out. Senator Padilla and Senator Merkley, thank you for being down here on the floor with me for this first UC of my Senate career. More importantly, thank you for your work on this bill.
And a shout-out to our colleagues. We share this commonality of Western State, and it is no secret that just as I speak today, Utah is in the midst of one of our worst fire seasons--over 1,200 fires over half a million acres in our State. And with these fires come devastating floods and other consequences. And every day the threat to our communities and our lands grows substantially more severe.
That is why it makes sense to not leave a critical tool like these controlled burns off the table. You both have described how well these prescribed burns help us channel and focus these forest fires. The data, as presented to me by the Forest Service, is clear: Wildfire prevention and containment are more successful in areas where prescribed burns took place. Yet States that proactively use prescribed burns can face regulatory consequences for the temporary emissions created by the very work that prevents far greater emissions in our environment.
Our bill, the Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act, provides States with greater certainty by ensuring that prescribed fires and other wildfire mitigation activities can be treated as exceptional events under the Clean Air Act.
The people of Utah are not looking for an emissions loophole. They are looking to protect their families, communities, and land. This is about recognizing that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
We have alluded to it today, all of us have. This bill passed through our Environment and Public Works Committee 19 to 0. This is exactly what people back home want us to do, to work up these bipartisan solutions. This reflects something I think we can all agree on: States should not be punished for taking responsible action to prevent catastrophic wildfires.
I appreciate our chairman and ranking member--once again, Senators Merkley, Padilla, also Senators Boozman, Kelly. Thank you for your work on this legislation.
I also urge my House colleagues to support WEPA and help us get this commonsense legislation across the finish line.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 620, S. 5045.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill which was reported from the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
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 with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 5045) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if Senator Van Hollen or his designee makes a motion to discharge S. Res. 852 from the Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate vote on the motion to discharge at 7 p.m. today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, President Trump, who has failed to lower people's costs, last week launched a nationwide television advertisement campaign promoting himself. On televisions across the country right now, people are being inundated with all kinds of political ads. But the ending of these ads is unlike any other. If someone is watching this ad, right at the end, on the bottom of the screen, you find out that this publicity stunt isn't paid for by President Trump or one of his PACs or even one of his billionaire friends--no. This ad is paid for by you, the American taxpayer.
Estimates show that this ad already costs more than $2.5 million. New reports today reveal that the source of this Federal funding is U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security should be working to tackle the enormous national security threats we face, like stopping fentanyl, not bankrolling a vanity project for the President.
I am glad that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have come out and said that these political ads should not be paid for with taxpayer dollars. Sadly, it takes strong bipartisan pushback as well as the loud and clear voice of the American people to get this administration to reverse course when it is breaking the law or doing something wrong.
Today we have an opportunity to start that process by sending such a message to the President. I have introduced a resolution that is quite simple. It just tells the President that he is wrong, that these ads need to be pulled down, and that they should not be paid for with taxpayer dollars.
The American people want their tax dollars to go toward helping them and keeping them safe, not propaganda campaigns for a President. He is welcome to run whatever ads he wants
At minimum, people deserve to know where their Member of Congress stands on this issue.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, therefore, that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 921; further, that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the message at the heart of these PSAs is a simple one: American values are worth defending against the failed ideologies of communism and socialism. If that is what has the Senator from New Hampshire concerned, I would suggest the concern says more about her side of the aisle than it does about the PSA.
Presidents of both parties have used public service announcements to speak directly to the American people for decades. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt did it in World War I and World War II. Bill Clinton launched a national anti-drug campaign. George W. Bush bought Super Bowl air time. Barack Obama promoted ObamaCare. Joe Biden ran PSAs on vaccinations. I don't recall a single Democrat rushing to the floor to object to any of them. The only difference I can find is the message.
When a Democratic President tells Americans what to do, it is a public service. When this President tells Americans that liberty is worth defending, it is suddenly a problem. A reminder that freedom beats communism and socialism is patriotic, and no Member of this body should be offended by it.
If Senators want to debate how the government communicates with the public, let's do it the right way: through regular order, in committee, with hearings, and with one standard applied to every administration-- not by unanimous consent aimed at a single President's message.
Mr. President, it is really disappointing that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have blocked a resolution that simply says these plainly political television ads should not be paid for with taxpayer dollars.
One of the ads is literally one of the President's campaign ads from 2024. It is clearly a campaign message, but he is making all of us pay for it at a time when he has sent grocery costs, rent costs, and gas costs soaring.
Any American who watches this ad can see that it is not a PSA like the White House claims. What is the public service message here? People know the difference between a PSA and a political ad.
Moreover, if we are going to talk about which side of the aisle is supporting communism and socialism, it is this President, who had the U.S. Government take a share--an interest--in a privately held company; it is this President, who welcomed the leader of the largest Communist Party in the world to the White House, fawning over him, having the military on their hands and knees straightening out a red carpet for him, while banning the free press from the White House and welcoming the communist press in.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle should stand together in opposing this clearly unlawful and wrong use of taxpayer money. This is an incredibly wealthy President with a huge war chest that can afford to fund whatever political messages he wants. It should not come at the cost of hard-earned American tax dollars.
So, despite the fact that we can't pass this resolution today, I hope that the administration listens to the bipartisan pushback on these ads and reverses course immediately.
Mr. President, I have spent the last couple of years trying to learn as much as I can about artificial intelligence and its upside, and still long AI in terms of innovational brain. I think there are some real challenges.
I have to acknowledge, I did witness this afternoon something that was a little bit surreal. The President had brought together some of the leading leaders in the AI industry. And in a closed, quiet room, I guess they reached some level of moral agreement--whatever that means-- that they are going to try to make sure things are safe.
As a matter a fact, they even went so far as to say all of the President's critique about concerns about AI being a hoax or about data centers not a problem are suddenly being solved because the President has renamed AI, ``SI''--superintelligence.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry to think that the greatest innovation in my lifetime--I was in the tech business before I came to politics--it will be bigger than my old industry, wireless, bigger than the internet, bigger than cloud computing is--and with all upsides, there are downsides--they are suddenly going to be solved by the name change. But that is kind of the status of our political debate.
Earlier today, I came down with two of my Democratic colleagues and said: As we get all these warnings from industry, from businesses that use AI tools, from national security, wouldn't it be a good idea to put some basic safety precautions in place?
We stripped away all of the others and said let's just have a safety board hearing. I know the Presiding Officer has interest in this topic. I think I have yet to talk to a Member that doesn't think some level of safety with this enormous innovation is appropriate.
Well, that is not going take place before we finish before the elections. So I am back again this afternoon to talk about another piece of the AI debate that certainly needs congressional action, and that is the whole question about how we build out and ensure consumers don't get stuck with the build-out of data centers.
Now, this is something I know a little bit about. Virginia is the capital of data centers in our country, and there is enormous concern from neighbors and communities. Many of the worst examples of data centers were built 15, 20 years ago, but the industry has moved forward. I give credit there.
But the angst about data centers--what I think is also reflective of the angst, generally, about AI--is not going away, no matter what the President wants to say. I would urge him to travel anywhere across Virginia, for that matter, anywhere across Kansas or Texas or anywhere else these data centers are being proposed because communities actually want to have a say in what happens in their backyard, what happens with their utility rates, what happens with their water usage, what happens with local communities signing nondisclosure agreements so the community doesn't even know what they are getting until after the deal is cut.
So I guess tomorrow, the Senate will turn their focus on the so- called Ratepayer Protection Act, which is supposed to answer all of these concerns about cost, about computing.
The challenge is--and it could be a starting point. But here is what the bill does. It says: States can consider adopting a Federal standard that would hold data centers responsible for rising electricity bills, and then they get 2 years to consider that.
Candidly, they could do that today. We have already taken some action in Virginia.
And what happens if nobody takes up that offer? Anything happen to these data centers? Anything happen to those communities? Well, nothing.
So I think we need real legislation on this. We need legislation that actually has some boundaries. This should not be optional. We have seen communities hit by skyrocketing electrical costs. We have seen communities where a lot of their water usage has gone up dramatically, and they are concerned about the water table.
We have seen these data centers sometimes literally intrude right into neighborhoods. And I have heard the pushback from communities all across our Commonwealth. As a matter a fact, even the community that has got the most, that has received the most economic benefits, they recently--Loudoun County--they recently put a pause.
I don't think we can pause. I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle. But I would urge the Senate not to take this flimflam, do-nothing bill but actually take a look at my Data Center Tax Accountability and Disclosure Act, which I didn't dream up in the last couple of days but put forward much earlier this summer on an issue that I have been working on for a couple of years.
What we can't rely on is simply the good will of these hyperscalers and these companies. Some are well-intentioned; some are not. So we need to make sure we have got accurate information about power usage, water usage, setbacks, backup power, get rid of nondisclosure agreements.
My legislation will require--not invite--but require that information to come forward and put a penalty in place at a relatively small amount if they don't submit that.
But the real bite and the only thing that is really going to change this behavior--and, frankly, earn back some of the communities' trust-- is if there is a tool. And, frankly, I have had ongoing discussions with most of the hyperscalers who are building out these data centers who, frankly, think my piece of legislation makes some sense.
So the second half of my legislation would say: If you don't meet Gold LEED or Platinum LEED standards, which are already established--if you don't show how you are bringing your own clean power or power, if you don't have criteria on water usage--and that has gotten better because more of these data centers now have circulatory systems, if you don't have setbacks from neighborhoods, if you use nondisclosure agreements, what it would say is: Well, if you are going to do all that and not meet those standards, then you shouldn't get bonus depreciation.
I am not going to raise anybody's taxes, but we have given these hyperscalers, we have given these data center builders enormous tax benefits and bonus depreciation where they can write off the cost of these very expensive centers all in the first year.
I don't want to take that away. I am not raising anybody's taxes, but I am saying you shouldn't get all the benefits upfront if you don't provide to the community some guarantees about water, power, setbacks, community involvement.
If the community then wants to go over--a hyperscaler wants to come in and say: We will help provide--I think in Louisiana--some additional benefits to your schools, have at it. But you have got to set a Federal baseline so that communities don't feel they are getting suckered, and the ability to make sure we don't give away these tax benefits without that minimum guarantee, I think, has a lot of benefit.
Just today, we learned that Microsoft saved about $10 billion in taxes on using accelerated depreciation, a bonus depreciation; Meta saved about $16 billion, $15.9 billion from using bonus depreciation.
I have reached out to these companies. They understand that the game has changed. They have to be more engaged. I think many of the hyperscalers would meet these new standards, but unless we put some consequences, I think we are going to completely miss the boat.
It is kind of like saying, even though the AI companies themselves are saying: Gosh, we are really worried about safety, none of the responsible ones realize they can simply say: Just trust us.
The idea that these largest companies in the world--and I know the CEOs and many of them are good people. But the idea, after we all have experienced some of the ups and downs of social media, we are going to turn the same power over to the same group of CEOs and say: We are going to trust you to figure this all out on your own without any public input.
I keep thinking back, would I ever climb on an airplane that hadn't had a safety inspection? That is what we are thinking about on overall AI safety and these models being released.
But at least tomorrow, if the Senate takes up this Ratepayer Reduction Act, I hope and I would--I am not sure what I am going to do on the vote tomorrow. But I would say the Ratepayer Production Act is a figleaf.
I know people will say, my colleagues might say: Well, why don't you take half a loaf? You know, I am pretty involved in every bipartisan action. You know, take half a loaf means you can keep working on it. But the underlying bill isn't half a loaf; it is the promise of maybe one slice of that bread 2 years down from now.
The anger in my State and in every State across the country on this issue is not going to wait 2 years to have some kind of optional-- optional, no penalty, but optional review where frankly the pitchforks are out already.
So I hope that I can encourage my colleagues to join me in passing the Data Center Tax Accountability and Disclosure Act, one that I have already socialized within industry, one that would put some mandatory requirements but also put some real teeth in this very important issue.
I know my colleagues coming want to raise other issues. I will yield the floor, but these issues are not going to disappear. And simply punting or saying to industry: Trust us--and I come from the tech industry--is not going to satisfy the concerns of the American people.
The sooner we get to work on serious business, the sooner we can make sure that we benefit from all of this AI innovation that I do think lies in wait--because if we have a mistake or we have a challenge and something happens, all of this innovation could go away because the American people are already enormously suspect about AI. They are already enormously concerned at a 90-10 ratio about data centers. It is time for us to act and not simply punt.
Mr. President, 86 percent--86 percent. I am here today to reiterate my support for the Stop Insider Trading Act and urge my colleagues to support this important bill.
Recent polling suggests that 86 percent of the American people support this bill.
You see, in order to make the best possible policy decisions, Members of Congress are provided access to information that most Americans are not. We receive briefings. We write legislation. We serve on committees of jurisdiction over major sections of our economy. But serving as a Member of Congress comes with a responsibility to put public interests ahead of personal gain. We have an obligation to put the interests of the people we represent ahead of our own interests.
No Member of Congress should profit from insider information. There is a reason that can be difficult: Members who write the rules are also subject to them. Allowing Members to actively trade individual stocks creates an obvious conflict of interest. Even when no law is broken, the appearance of a conflict is damaging. It is damaging to this institution. It is damaging to public trust. It is damaging to our Republic. You know, it is leadership 101: Avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Without a doubt, some serving in Congress today benefit financially from the current system, but that should not prevent Congress from supporting a change that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe is needed and necessary.
It bears repeating: Recent polling shows that 86 percent of Americans favor banning Members of Congress from trading stocks. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats, and 81 percent of Independents support banning Members of Congress from trading stocks. Republicans and Democrats disagree on so many issues these days, but Americans across the political spectrum agree that their elected representatives should not be able to use the privileges of public office for personal financial gain. This sentiment is echoed across Indiana, I know. I regularly hear from Hoosiers who are troubled about those serving in Congress profiting from their positions.
Here is the bottom line: The American people should not have to wonder whether votes in Congress are influenced by what is best for the country or by what is best for the investment portfolios of those serving in Congress.
The Stop Insider Trading Act will help ensure that Congress plays by the same rules as everyone else. It would prevent Members of Congress, their
This legislation is a step in the right direction, and it is what the people we represent want us to do. Trust in Congress remains at an alltime low. Passing this bill supported by 86 percent of the American people will help restore some level of trust in Congress and those who serve.
Let's do the right thing. Let's support this 86 percent solution, and let's put an end to swamp trading today.
Mr. President, I am here to address the resolution put forward by Senator Van Hollen. This is a misguided resolution. The Democrats are trying to distort reality for political gain.
Make no mistake, the sole objective here is not justice or accountability for Americans, it is to cut off security aid to our ally Israel in its time of need.
Of course, any loss, all loss of American life is a tragedy, and Ambassador Huckabee has called for an investigation into these deaths, and I am very confident this administration will get to the bottom of this issue. But this one-sided resolution shames one of our strongest allies and minimizes the Palestinian Authority's role in inciting terrorist violence, including against Americans, through their horrific ``pay for slay'' program, which unbelievably rewards terrorists with up to $200 million a year.
Rather than any serious attempt at accountability or justice, this is sadly another cynical ploy by Democrats to isolate our closest ally in the region and to turn Israel's righteous war of self-defense into a domestic political issue as we are now just a little over 30 days from election.
For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution so we can stand with our ally Israel as they beat back the scourge of Iranian-backed terrorism.
Mr. President, I rise to speak on the human rights reporting resolution that will be before the body within about 90 minutes. I am a cosponsor of the bill. Because this resolution is a little bit unusual, I thought I would describe sort of the procedural context and the reason for the statute and then describe why I strongly support a resolution to direct the Department of State to give us a human rights report about Israeli activities on the West Bank, violence against folks on the West Bank and in particular violence against Americans on the West Bank, for which there has been as of yet little or no accountability.
This is a provision that is called a 502B resolution. Like some other resolutions that I brought to the floor in the last year, it is a privileged resolution, and the ``privilege'' means that a single Senator can file it seeking a human rights report on any nation. The resolution cannot be locked up in committee. Within a certain number of days, it ripens, and it is guaranteed a floor vote with a simple- majority passage threshold.
The theme that seems to unify these privileged resolutions is it is an effort of a Senator--even a single Senator--to shine a spotlight on and demand accountability from the Executive. Whether that is on the declaration of an emergency or the transfer of arms or the initiation of war or, in this case, the provision of U.S. aid, a Senator has the right to force a vote on the Senate to explore in this case the human rights record of any nation receiving U.S. aid.
This is not the first such resolution I have brought to the floor. I brought one to the floor 6 or 8 months ago to seek a human rights report on El Salvador because El Salvador was receiving all these deported individuals from America--not Salvadorans--and imprisoning them in a notorious prison. In that case, I sought information about the conditions of imprisonment. What was the deal between the United States and El Salvador? What is the human rights record of that prison? Can someone in the prison from the United States demonstrate that they are the wrong person, that they picked up the wrong person?
So this is the second such resolution I have helped bring to the floor, and I have about two dozen others that I have filed and that are pending--all the nations into which the President is sending folks pursuant to these third-country deportations. I believe it would be important for Congress to get the information about the transfers, about the cost, about the agreements, and about the human rights records.
So this is part of a larger strategy that was put into statute to enable Congress to test the human rights record of nations that are receiving U.S. aid.
In this instance, this resolution, which was initially cosponsored by Senators Van Hollen, Sanders, and I but now has a number of cosponsors, is specifically to seek a State Department report on the Israel human rights record about the treatment of folks on the West Bank. It lists a number of circumstances in which U.S. citizens--mostly Palestinian American but U.S. citizens--have been killed or injured on the West Bank, and there has been no accountability for that by the Israeli Government.
The circumstances on the West Bank are pretty dire. If you just go based upon Israeli media or Israeli human rights organizations, there have been significant public instances of attacks on Palestinian communities on the West Bank for which there has been no accountability. But the notice of these particular attacks has not just been limited to Israeli press or Israeli human rights organizations; international organizations have raised the same issue, but also, importantly, so have U.S. officials serving in Israel during multiple Democratic and Republican administrations.
For example, I have attended briefings where U.S. military officials posted in Israel have described instances of violence on the West Bank committed by Israelis and in some instances even Israeli security forces or Israeli IDF reservists. So the violence is not just private- on-private violence, but some of it is being facilitated and even encouraged or participated in by members of the Israeli Government, and that is reporting from the U.S. military.
Recently, President Trump's Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, whom I knew as Governor Huckabee because we served as Governors together 20 years ago, has similarly complained about violence against folks on the West Bank perpetrated by Israelis--in this case, Israeli settlers--and the lack of any accountability for that violence. Obviously, that should raise serious, serious concerns, but when the violence is also perpetrated against Americans who are there on the West Bank to study, there on the West Bank to visit their families, there on the West Bank to be human rights observers or journalists--when the violence is committed against Americans, we need to take specific steps to make sure we understand that there will be accountability.
That is what this resolution would do. It would require the Department of State, within a set period of time, to issue a human rights report that specifically addresses the questions that are listed in the resolution and particularly those questions that bear upon violence committed against Americans and what Israel can or will do about it.
Anything dealing with United States-Israel relations or the Middle East, frankly, is controversial because it is such a challenging area. And let's be clear, Israel is a friend. Israel is an ally. That friendship is between the American people and the Israeli people. It is between the American Nation and the State of Israel. That friendship is a friendship that is really important regardless of which leaders are in place.
This is a relationship that goes back to the United States' decision under President Truman to immediately recognize the nation of Israel once the U.N. decided in 1947 that there would be an Israel for the Jewish people and a Palestine for Palestinian people. President Truman immediately recognized the nation of Israel, and that is one of the reasons why Truman is one of my favorite Presidents.
However, ``friendship and partnership'' are not the same as ``complete agreement.'' In fact, if you are not candid with your friends and if you can't have a friendship that can survive being candid with one another, it is not
As I conclude, I would say that the reason this resolution is on the floor is because of a deep perception by many of us in this body that despite that friendship, we are not being listened to. We are not being listened to.
Many of us in both parties and administrations of both parties have raised this issue of violence against Palestinians on the West Bank over and over and over again with those in the Israeli Government that we have interacted with.
I know I have, in my visits to Israel over the years as mayor and Governor and Senator, in sessions we have had with Israeli leaders on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and in discussions we have had with Knesset members and others--I have specifically raised in person and by letter and now in joining in this resolution this issue of violence against people living on the West Bank and what needs to be done about it.
I will be blunt. Despite raising this issue privately in the way that you would maybe first want a dialogue with a friend--raising the issue and seeking assistance--and raising it multiple times, I have come to the conclusion that I am not being listened to. I have come to the conclusion that even though this is a friendship that matters and even though the United States is Israel's most important security partner, they are completely ignoring us when we raise important human rights issues such as this one.
So when a friend is speaking to you as a friend and urging you to do better--that is what friends do for one another--and the friend is being ignored, you end up making resolutions like the one we will vote on later a necessity.
So it is my hope that we will get a robust vote on the need for the State Department to fully lay out the human rights record and particularly what will be done to stop violence against all on the West Bank but especially what will be done to stop violence against Americans on the West Bank.
For that reason, I am very happy to join my colleague Senator Van Hollen and others, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on the resolution when it comes up later.
Mr. President, it should not be controversial to say that Congress should know the circumstances of the deaths of our own citizens abroad in any country. It should be equally uncontroversial to say, in the spirit of transparency and oversight, that Congress must also be aware of human rights abuses anywhere abroad where billions of taxpayer dollars have been sent over the years.
Since 1993, the United States has provided $7.8 billion in bilateral assistance to the West Bank and Gaza. As Washington throws money every which way, Congress must at least ensure that those taxpayer dollars advance our core interests, let alone not reward those who seek to harm us or our allies.
Yet, despite American generosity, human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza, committed by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and other groups, have been well documented over the years.
In 2024, the State Department reported that Palestinian Authority officials engaged in unlawful or arbitrary killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, severe restrictions on the freedom of expression, persecution of journalists, and the recruitment or use of children in armed conflict and much more.
Of course, we can never forget the brutal attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 innocent men, women, and children--among them, 46 citizens. A further 254 people were taken hostage, including 12 Americans, who endured unimaginable conditions.
One U.S.-Israeli citizen, Edan Alexander, survived 584 days in captivity and upon his release vowed to return to Israel to continue his service in the IDF, saying:
Such acts of courage should inspire Congress to ensure that not one more taxpayer dime ever again goes to Palestinian governing entities that engage in human rights abuses and that directly threaten support or turn a blind eye to groups that target American citizens.
My bill is simple. It requires Palestinian governing entities to meet certain commonsense conditions before they receive any additional American assistance. Under my bill, U.S. foreign assistance to any Palestinian Government entity or international organization operating in the West Bank or Gaza which is funded by taxpayer dollars would be frozen unless said government entity meets some commonsense conditions. Namely, they must recognize the State of Israel, renounce terrorism and the October 7 attacks, remove individuals with terrorist ties from their security services, terminate all funding for anti-American and anti-Israel incitement, and honor previously agreed diplomatic agreements.
My bill would also strengthen congressional oversight by requiring that the State Department provide to Congress a report on human rights practices in the West Bank and Gaza and examine whether the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or any other Palestinian governing entity continues to commit human rights abuses.
Funding Palestinian entities that do not recognize Israel's right to exist and fund anti-American and anti-Israel activities makes no sense.
At its core, this legislation establishes a principle of accountability. American taxpayers should know where their money is going, Congress should be able to oversee how it is being used, and foreign entities receiving the benefits of American assistance should be expected to meet clearly articulated standards.
I therefore ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, if the Senator from Kentucky wants to bring a bill to the floor to condemn the horrendous terror attacks perpetrated by Hamas on Israel of October 7, we will make common cause. We have done that as a body. Every single Senator in this body has made clear that Hamas committed despicable acts.
Like many others in this body, I have met with Israelis and Americans who lost loved ones on that horrible day. I have met with American citizens and Israeli citizens who whose loved ones were taken hostage that terrible day.
And that is why this body has condemned Hamas. Our government recognizes that they are a terrorist organization.
I think the Senator knows that not one penny of U.S. taxpayer dollars goes to Hamas, obviously. In fact, what the U.S. Government does is use all its powers to sanction Hamas.
One of the reasons some of us on the Democratic side were concerned about some of the cryptocurrency bills is because the method that Hamas uses to evade sanctions is cryptocurrency, and the bill that was brought to this floor did not close that loophole used by Hamas.
But make no mistake, the U.S. Government--Members of both sides-- recognize that Hamas is a terrible organization. And, of course, not only do we not provide any U.S. assistance, we go after them with every sanction in the book. So let's be clear about that.
Let's be clear about what government entity has allowed some funds to flow to Hamas, and it was the Netanyahu government. It has been well documented. I have raised this issue within the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Senator from Kentucky is part of.
It is Netanyahu who allowed moneys to flow from Hamas to the Qatari Government, and the Qatari Government only provided those payments with the approval of the Netanyahu government.
So I would be happy to join the Senator from Kentucky not only in condemning Hamas but also in condemning any country that allows funding to go to Hamas.
Now let's talk about the Palestinian Authority. Now, obviously, there are some in the rightwing in Israel that want to suggest the PA and Hamas are the same. I think most Members of this body recognize the PA, recognizes Israel's right to exist, that it has pursued and wanted to pursue a two-state solution for self-determination for Palestinians as well as for Israelis.
But I would be happy again to join the Senator in requiring a human rights report on the conduct of the Palestinian Authority. They have also engaged in abuses against their own people, the Palestinian people. And, in fact, we do do that, and the Senator from Kentucky just quoted from the State Department's human rights report with respect to the Palestinian Authority.
But what his resolution would also do is cut off all U.S. assistance in any form to the Palestinian Authority. And again, the Congress has already taken action to cut off economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority through the Taylor Force Act.
There is one area where we actually do have cooperation with the PA and that is through counterterrorism efforts. Counterterrorism efforts where the U.S. Security Coordinator for the West Bank actually works with the Palestinian Authority security forces to prevent terrorism in the West Bank. I don't know if the Senator is proposing that we cut off that assistance.
Just a few years ago, there was a bipartisan resolution to actually raise the level of the military rank of the U.S. Security Coordinator. It used to be General Fenzel, who did a really good job coordinating antiterrorism activities with the PA to prevent terrorist attacks on Israel.
But what the Senator is saying is, he wants to do a human rights report on PA conduct. Fine. Bring it up. I will support him on that. But that is not all this bill does. His bill essentially would cut off U.S. cooperation--antiterrorism cooperation--with the PA, something that would actually endanger Israelis and others on the West Bank. So it really makes no sense.
I agree that we should follow where every U.S. taxpayer dollar goes, and I can assure folks that not one penny goes to Hamas, and yet we sanction them. And as I said, there are already big restrictions on the flow of U.S. taxpayer assistance to the PA. There is a carve-out for antiterrorism cooperation.
So if the Senator from Kentucky wants to come back with a resolution condemning Hamas for maybe the second or third time, I am all in. If the Senator wants to require a more in-depth report on the conduct of the Palestinian Authority, I am all in.
But this resolution is written in a way that conflates Hamas with the Palestinian Authority. I think every Member of this body--even recognizing the shortcomings of the PA--recognizes that they are not a designated U.S. terror organization so I object.
Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on an important resolution introduced by Senator Van Hollen--and I thank him for his work on this--introduced by myself and more than 20 of our colleagues.
In January 2024, I introduced the first 502B resolution on Israel that received 11 votes. I have a feeling that we are going to get a lot more votes tonight.
And the reason for that is that as the American people observe what is going on in Gaza, what is going on in the West Bank, they are becoming more and more disgusted and are demanding that the U.S. Congress act. My own view? No more military aid to the genocidal government of Netanyahu.
The resolution that we are debating tonight concerns the escalating violence in the occupied West Bank and the killing of American citizens there with zero repercussions. But we cannot talk about the West Bank without talking about what has gone on in Gaza.
For nearly 3 years, the world has watched the Netanyahu government wage a genocide in Gaza. It has now killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children. It has wounded over 170,000 Palestinians. In other words, more than 10 percent of the population of Gaza has either been killed or wounded in less than 3 years.
But it is not just the massive attack on human life that we have observed. In this 3-year period, Israel has laid waste to the territory of Gaza and has almost completely destroyed the infrastructure there. It has destroyed homes, hospitals, schools, and water systems, and it has used starvation as a weapon of war. Cities like Rafah have been reduced to rubble.
Leading human rights organizations--including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli group B'Tselem--have concluded that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
Senior members of the Israeli Government have said openly that they want Palestinians out of Gaza. And even under a so-called cease-fire, the killing has not stopped; well over a thousand more people have been killed.
Much of this has been done with American bombs and American taxpayer dollars, which is why Congress must end all taxpayer support and aid for this genocidal government.
And while the world's attention has been on Gaza, this same government has been carrying out a slower but no less brutal campaign in the West Bank. As of last month, the U.N.--the United Nations--has documented more than 1,400 incidents of settler violence this year alone, affecting some 260 Palestinian communities. The U.N. says this violence has reached unprecedented levels.
Settlers cut villagers off from their wells and their orchards. They burn homes and cars. They beat people who cannot defend themselves. And too often, Israeli security forces stand by or even join in. Families who have farmed the same land for generations are being driven out. Former Israeli generals have called it what it is: ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government keeps expanding illegal settlements, including the E1 project designed to cut the West Bank in two. And the Trump administration, rather than confronting this violence, has lifted sanctions on violent settlers.
This violence does not even spare American citizens. Since January of 2022, nine Americans have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers or security forces. Not one of those killings has led to real accountability.
This resolution is also about Palestinian children in Israeli military detention. Last year, Save the Children surveyed 165 children who had been held by Israeli authorities: 99 percent reported physical assault; 94 percent reported being denied medical care. These are children. For some 50 years, the Foreign Assistance Act has said that U.S. military assistance cannot go to a government that engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights. Section 502B(c) of that law gives Congress the right to ask the State Department for information on the human rights record of any country receiving our aid.
Enough is enough. The United States cannot continue to bankroll this violence and look the other way, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank. It is time to end our complicity. I urge a ``yes'' vote and thank Senator Van Hollen for his leadership.
Mr. President, I rise today to call up S. Res. 852, a resolution to require the State Department to provide Congress with information on the growing violence and human rights abuses taking place in the West Bank, including against American citizens.
I want to thank Senator Sanders, Senator Kaine, and 23 of our fellow Senators who are cosponsoring this effort; and I want to thank Senator Sanders for bringing that 502B resolution to the floor of the Senate back in January of 2024.
In just over 4 years, nine American citizens have been killed in the West Bank by violent Israeli settlers or members of the Israeli security forces, and there has been zero--zero--accountability, with no justice for their families and no one held accountable. The U.S. Government has repeatedly said that our No. 1 priority overseas is to protect American citizens. Yet, as violent Israeli settlers continue to terrorize civilians in the West Bank, American citizens have been killed time and again--in many cases with the complicity of the Government of Israel, the Netanyahu government.
It is long past time that we shined a light on these killings and all of the human rights abuses taking place in the West Bank to get answers. We need to get answers because we need accountability, and we need accountability to make sure that these killings end. They will continue so long as nobody is held to account.
I want to take a few minutes to tell my colleagues about these nine American citizens who have been killed by Israeli settlers or Israeli security forces in just over the last 4 years.
In January 2022, 70-year-old American citizen Omar, who ran a grocery store in Milwaukee for 40 years, was stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank when Israeli soldiers dragged him from his car. They bound his hands behind his back, they gagged him, they blindfolded him, and they left him lying on the ground outside. He died of a stress-induced heart attack. No one has been held accountable.
In May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who lived in New Jersey as a child, was reporting near the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot in the head and killed by Israeli security forces. Shireen was known to millions as the ``voice of a generation.'' When she was killed, she was wearing a bright blue vest, clearly identifying her as a journalist. No one has been held accountable.
In January 2024, a 17-year-old American citizen named Tawfic, who was born and raised in Louisiana, was shot in the head and killed while driving east of Ramallah. Reports indicate that an Israeli settler, an off-duty Israeli police officer, and an Israeli soldier were involved in the shooting. Nobody has been held accountable.
Just weeks later, another 17-year-old American boy, Mohammed, who was born in Florida, was shot twice in the head while driving near the town of Biddu. Israeli forces were reportedly responsible for his killing. No one has been held accountable.
In September 2024, 26-year-old American citizen Aysenur Eygi, who was raised in Seattle, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier from approximately 200 meters. No one has been held accountable.
In April 2025, 14-year-old Amer from New Jersey was shot and killed by Israeli security forces at the entrance to the village of Turmus Ayya. Reports indicate that, when he was shot, he was shot 11 times by two different weapons. No one has been held accountable.
In July 2025, 20-year-old American citizen Saif, who was born and raised in Florida, was visiting family in the West Bank when he was beaten to death by violent Israeli settlers during an attack on the town. Eyewitnesses reported that settlers and Israeli security forces blocked an ambulance from reaching him for more than 2 hours.
Ambassador Huckabee called Saif's killing a ``criminal and terrorist act.'' He even said: ``There must be accountability.''
So why has there been no accountability?
In August 2025, Khamis, who was a 40-year-old American citizen who lived in Chicago with his five children, died of smoke inhalation after violent Israeli settlers set fire to homes and cars during an attack in Silwad. No one has been held accountable.
And, in February of this year, Nasrallah, who was a 19-year-old American boy born in Philadelphia, was shot and killed by violent Israeli settlers during an attack on Palestinian farmers near Ramallah. No one has been held accountable.
Omar, Shireen, Tawfic, Mohammed, Aysenur, Amer, Saif, Khamis, and Nasrallah--nine American citizens dead and no accountability. Their families have waited months and years for answers. Many of us have been calling for action from the executive branch and for accountability from the Netanyahu government, year after year, with no results.
In March of this year, 30 Senators and I wrote to Secretary Rubio following some of the killings I just talked about. That was the second letter we had sent to this administration in 7 months regarding the killing of an American citizen in the West Bank.
In response to our earlier letter, the State Department told us:
``To help prevent future tragedies,'' we call for accountability--no accountability in any of these nine cases.
It is clear that these calls for accountability are empty promises because what we are seeing is a consistent pattern in which Americans are being killed by violent Israeli settlers or Israeli security forces, with no justice and no accountability from any party, despite promises to take action by American officials.
This failure is not limited to the current administration. Many of us called upon the Biden administration for answers, just as we have pushed the Trump administration for answers and action. Back then, as now, we were met with statements of concern and told that the United States supports accountability. It just never insists on it, because concern is not enough when nine Americans are dead and not one person-- not one--has been held accountable.
How many more Americans must die in the West Bank before this administration takes serious, credible steps to secure accountability? before the U.S. Government does its job and follows through when it says its top priority is to protect American citizens overseas?
Last year, Senator Merkley and I traveled to the region, where we met with families of American citizens--most of them under 18--who had been killed by violent settlers or the Israeli military. We sat across from parents and family members who had lost their children and loved ones. None of them--not one--had received any meaningful answers about what had happened to their loved ones who had been killed.
We also met the father of Mohammed, who was the 16-year-old American boy from Florida who had been jailed without charges for more than 6 months at the time of our meeting. Mohammed was ultimately held in pretrial detention for 9 months, where he was beaten, tortured, and denied contact with his family. He was finally released on Thanksgiving Day last year, but the mistreatment and detention of American citizens continue to this moment.
In June, 20-year-old Palestinian-American student Sama, whose family lives in Florida and Massachusetts, was detained during a series of raids targeting students at Birzeit University. She remains in an Israeli military prison.
In July, Adam, a 16-year-old Palestinian American whose family lives in Chicago, was arrested. His family paid his bail, and he was moments away from being released when Israeli authorities decided to hold him under an entirely new case. He remains in an Israeli military prison.
There are other cases of American citizens being held in Israeli military prisons as we speak. Reports from these prisons have revealed abusive and traumatic conditions for those detained, including children and teenagers. In fact, under the Israeli military court system, 16- and 17-year-olds are sentenced under provisions written for adults, while Israeli citizens and children living in those same territories are tried in Israeli civilian courts and under Israeli juvenile law.
Beyond those detained, many Americans continue to face violence and destruction throughout the West Bank, as Israeli settlers and soldiers act with impunity.
Just in August, 82-year-old Palestinian-American Khamis was hospitalized after Israeli soldiers attacked him. After the attack, the soldiers then confiscated bystander footage of the incident to cover up their violent actions. You can see the video for yourself.
Just this week, Israeli settlers attacked the home and destroyed the vehicles of a 78-year-old Palestinian American, Mustafa, and his wife.
Even those who have not been attacked or detained are living in fear, like Loui, a 46-year-old Palestinian-American businessman who traveled from Ohio to visit his family members in the West Bank after their home was surrounded and besieged by Israeli settlers.
The American Government has absolutely failed in its duty to secure any kind of accountability for the killings of and the arbitrary detention of and ongoing violence against these American citizens. If nothing changes, more American citizens will die. After all, the administration told us that one reason for accountability is to make
If American citizens can be killed, harmed, or locked up with impunity, imagine what the conditions are for Palestinians in the West Bank who don't hold an American passport, including Palestinian children. Hundreds of Palestinian children are detained and prosecuted through the Israeli military court system every year. Those imprisoned can be as young as 12 years old, which is the age of criminal responsibility in the Israeli military legal system, but children as young as 5 years old have been temporarily detained, and a child as young as 3 years old was once arrested.
As of December 2025, the Israel Prison Service reported that it was holding 351 Palestinian children. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli authorities have continued to bar the Red Cross from visiting Palestinian detainees in Israeli detention facilities, despite the fact that international humanitarian law requires--requires--that the ICRC have access to Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody.
Human rights organizations have documented widespread reports of physical beatings, sexual violence, harassment, threats, and other cruel and degrading actions toward these children.
We have seen violent Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian civilians with impunity. They are pushing Palestinians off their land, burning cars and buildings and mosques, destroying crops and water systems, and assaulting residents in their own communities. Many members of the extremist Netanyahu government have encouraged this activity.
When Senator Merkley and I visited the West Bank last year, it was clear that the situation had worsened considerably, just since our previous trip in 2023. We saw more trailers and illegal settler outposts springing up across the West Bank. We saw more checkpoints and gates and walls imprisoning Palestinian communities.
In the mostly Christian town of Taybeh, we heard directly from residents about settler attacks and harassment, including an attack that happened on the day of our visit. We visited the historic church that settlers had attempted to damage.
These are not isolated incidents. According to the United Nations, last year alone, there were 1,828 settler attacks against Palestinian residents resulting in bodily injury or property damage.
In 2025, the Netanyahu government approved a record high 54 new official settlements, established 86 new outposts, and advanced plans for nearly 28,000 illegal settlement housing units.
The question is: When will the U.S. Government--whether the previous White House or the current White House--stop giving Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government a blank check to let this continue?
Secretary Rubio has said the United States is ``concerned'' about escalating settler violence in the West Bank.
Concern is not enough when nine American citizens have been killed. Concerns are not enough when we have American citizens in military detention. Concern is not enough when violent settlers are attacking Palestinian communities with impunity.
Just last night, violent settlers attacked a village of Palestinians, setting their homes on fire and destroying their property.
The State Department's response today?
Babble. Meaningless, empty statements when they are not accompanied by any demand for real accountability. They continue to call for accountability, but we never see it.
And that brings us to the resolution today because this resolution requires the Secretary of State to provide a report with all credible information available to the State Department concerning the killing of nine American citizens, who are named in the resolution and whose stories I share today.
It also requires an accounting of American citizens currently held in Israeli military prisons, including why they are being held, whether the American Embassy officials have visited them, the conditions of their detention, and whether there are credible reports that they have been mistreated.
Basic information, that is what we are demanding in this resolution.
The resolution requires they examine the detention of Palestinian children, including how many are held, the charges against them, whether they have access to legal counsel, whether they have experienced torture or other mistreatment, and how the standards governing their detention compare with American juvenile detention standards.
And above all, the resolution requires that the State Department tell Congress what the United States has actually done to protect U.S. citizens, to prevent further violence, to promote respect for human rights, and hold the perpetrators of these abuses accountable.
These are basic questions that Congress has both the right and the responsibility to ask of the executive branch.
The United States provides billions of American taxpayer dollars to the government of Israel every year. We have a duty to make sure that those funds are being used in accordance with our laws and our values.
Some of my colleagues may disagree with my assessment of the Netanyahu government's policies, although the record is clear regarding the fact that they have engaged in complicity in what is happening in the West Bank. And some may disagree about other aspects of what is happening here. But what this vote is about--what this vote is about there should be no disagreement about because it just requires the State Department to provide facts. That is what this administration does. And if the State Department believes that everything is just OK, that their investigations that are being conducted by the Government of Israel and that their expressions of concern are actually being acted upon, the administration should have no problem answering those basic facts and demanding the kind of accountability they say that we should call for.
So if the killing of nine Americans does not justify a report from our own State Department, I would ask my colleagues: What would? How many more Americans must be killed before the executive branch does its job?
These families deserve answers. The American people deserve answers. And the Palestinians who face these attacks every single day deserve an end to the violence and impunity once and for all.
Mr. President, I rise in support of this resolution. I want to thank my colleagues Senator Sanders and Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Senator Van Hollen, for your leadership on this particular resolution.
The situation in the Middle East, in Gaza and the West Bank, is deplorable. And before I start about what is occurring here in the West Bank, I just want to remind the American people that the dire situation in Gaza is getting worse. Mr. President, 92 percent of the people in Gaza, their shelter is a tent or a plastic cover. They still lack water. They still lack access to regular food, and the kids are not going to school.
And this is a Palestinian community that was very proud of one of the highest literacy rates and education rates in the world, despite the very difficult circumstances they face. That is really unacceptable.
But today we are here on this resolution that is about protecting Americans, 17 Americans who have been the victims of violence in the West Bank. And, today, this resolution is about the obligation that our State Department has--our government has--to protect American citizens abroad by demanding a report, by getting information, and by insisting on accountability.
So whatever one's position may be with respect to the hostilities in the Middle East, what this resolution is requiring is that the State Department do the job with respect to American deaths in the West Bank--the same request that we would make if this were
That is what this is profoundly about. The failure for the State Department and our government to do the basic responsibility of citizen protection and accountability has to be wired up into the policy of this administration to look the other way when these things are happening.
It has been the policy of the United States to support a two-state solution. It is the policy of the Netanyahu government to occupy and ultimately annex the West Bank. And the result of that, there is, in many cases, settler violence towards citizens in the West Bank, in some cases Americans who are there. It also is the reason why, in many cases where this violence is occurring is very much in front of the eyes of the Israeli military, they are looking the other way and doing nothing to protect the victims.
This is not an argument that is made by folks like Senator Van Hollen and Senator Sanders and me, who are concerned about that violence. It is something that was recognized by our own Ambassador Mike Huckabee.
In July of 2025, Mr. Saifullah Kamel Musallet, a 20-year-old American from Florida--an American from Florida--who was visiting his family in the West Bank was beaten to death by violent Israeli settlers during a settler attack on the town of Sinjil. Eyewitness accounts report that settlers and Israeli forces impeded ambulance access for more than 2 hours.
And to his credit, Ambassador Huckabee called the killing of Mr. Musallet a ``criminal and terrorist act,'' and stated ``there must be accountability.''
We agree.
I want to mention a couple of other cases. Shireen Abu Akleh, she was a journalist, a prominent reporter, a well-known reporter. She was shot. It was not a combat situation, but was shot by a sniper from nearly 200 meters away. She was standing calmly with other reporters wearing a press helmet and a press vest. She was shot in the head.
Another reporter Dylan Collins, a constituent from Vermont, a very accomplished photojournalist. He was not in the West Bank, but he was reporting from the Israeli-Lebanese border. He was also in a group of journalists, prominently stationed on an open hillside. They had the usual identification of ``press'' vest, blue helmets, in a vehicle clearly marked ``press,'' where they were clearly visible. They were fired on by an Israeli tank and heavy machinegun fire.
There has been no significant investigation on the part of the Israeli Government to get to the bottom of how that happened.
Also, as we know, the Israeli Government now is detaining without charges dozens of Americans, as well as thousands of Palestinians--some of these include minors.
One of those was a 17-year-old young man, American, Abdalkareem, who is pictured here. He has been held under ``administrative detention,'' and that means that under Israeli law authorities can hold him indefinitely without charge or without trial--without any intention of bringing him to trial.
We have been in touch with his father, who tells us that Abdalkareem was 17 when he was detained around 3 a.m. on June 29. He was in the process of completing high school exams.
He has since turned 18. This is a young man who had never been detained or arrested before. He is now being held in the Ofer prison, which has a terrible reputation for attending to the well-being of those who are imprisoned there. His detention is also based on undisclosed ``secret'' information that has not been shared with his lawyers or his family.
Embassy officials, who were finally allowed on July 23 to visit, and Abdalkareem reported being beaten during interrogation, and prison authorities would not even let the U.S. Embassy give this young man vitamins, scabies medication, or his schoolbooks. And he has not been allowed family contact.
The real question here is not what Israel is doing, but what the United States Government is not doing on behalf of its own citizens, some of whom have been killed, others of whom have been detained. So this resolution is asserting the will of Congress that our government do its job to protect American citizens. When they have been injured or they have been killed, to demand accountability and an investigation.
And it is certainly within the power of this government to use its influence so that Israel does comply with our law.
I urge all of our colleagues to stand up for the rights of all of our citizens to have the full protection of the U.S. Government.
Mr. President, pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 2304(c) and in accordance with section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S. Res. 852.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant executive clerk read as follows:
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Vermont Senator Welch, thank Senator Sanders, who was here earlier, Senator Kaine, and all of our colleagues who have cosponsored a very important resolution demanding accountability--demanding accountability in the killings of nine American citizens on the West Bank in just the last 4 years. And as both the Biden administration and the Trump administration have said, if we don't get accountability, then these killings will continue with impunity.
So this is about saving American citizens' lives. It is also a recognition that if we can't get accountability for American citizens, imagine how hard it is for a Palestinian to get accountability for human rights abuses committed against them--and about the Americans being currently detained in Israeli military prisons and the hundreds of Palestinian kids being detained as we speak.
So this is a resolution that simply requires a report--a report on what the U.S. Government is doing to protect its own citizens. I would hope that every Member of this body would support a resolution that does that and calls for a review of the human rights situation and conditions on the West Bank.
So with that, Mr. President, I would ask that the previously scheduled vote begin immediately.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to discharge.
The yeas and nays were previously ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk called the roll.
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, for over a year, the Department of Defense has stopped signing wind energy mitigation agreements through its Siting Clearinghouse, which is negatively impacting energy projects in Iowa. The reason the Pentagon Office of Energy, Installations, and Environment has provided for halting mitigation agreements is that the Department is reevaluating its process, analyzing threats to national security.
I agree that the Department of Defense must ensure projects do not put national security at risk. That said, the Department has been ``reevaluating the process'' for over a year. We have the most capable military and intelligence in the world. The Pentagon has the ability to identify and mitigate risks in a timelier fashion--especially given that wind energy projects are nothing new, nor are these agreements. Given the current administration's hostility to wind energy, it makes me wonder if this reevaluation is being used as an excuse to hamstring these projects.
In addition to the capabilities the Pentagon has, not all wind energy projects pose the same concerns to national security based on the location of the project. For example, Iowa is a landlocked State. The projects underway in Iowa are not going to have the same level of national security concern as, say, a project where there are several major Active-Duty military installations, global shipping ports, and international border access points.
I have raised concerns with the Pentagon and administration officials and have spoken directly with Secretary Hegseth about the importance of these projects for Iowa. I stressed that the mitigation agreement process must restart in a timely manner. Unfortunately, I have not been given an answer from the Pentagon on June, July, and September 2026 inquiries. This is unacceptable.
Congress established the Siting Clearinghouse through the fiscal year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, to evaluate and explore impacts and mitigation options related to alternative energy production to preserve military missions. Since its establishment, energy projects have been able to work with the Siting Clearinghouse to mitigate any concerns raised and agree on the most appropriate path forward.
Wind energy is extremely important in Iowa. Iowa is a top leader in wind power capacity and share of total electricity generation. Delays in new wind energy projects mean holdups in energy generation and independence, which can lower energy prices for consumers. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense does not seem to recognize the importance of timely action.
I am supportive of provisions in the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would put tighter timelines on the Pentagon for completing these agreements. It is important that wind energy projects can continue and that the bureaucratic redtape blocking Iowa wind projects is disposed of soon.
Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Building Readiness and Integration for Dependents Going to Civilian Environments Act of 2026 or the BRIDGE Act of 2026. This legislation seeks to ensure that servicemembers and military families have the support they need to successfully transition from military service to civilian life.
Each year, thousands of servicemembers leave the Armed Forces and face significant challenges navigating employment, healthcare, education, benefits, and community reintegration. While the Department of Defense's Transition Assistance Program provides important preseparation services, many military families still struggle to access personalized and coordinated support during this major life transistion.
The BRIDGE Act of 2026 would establish a 3-year pilot program at four geographically diverse military installations to provide nonclinical, community-based transition support for servicemembers and their families. This legislation recognizes that transition is not just an individual experience but a whole-family process that requires tailored support and long-term stability.
Under this act, eligible servicemembers within 1 year of separation and their families would receive individualized transition assistance, including peer-led support groups, resilience workshops, spouse employment assistance, skills training and credentialing, benefits navigation, and reintegration support. Participants would also be paired with dedicated transition coordinators to help develop personalized transition plans and connect families with existing Federal, State, nonprofit, and community resources.
This bill would further prioritize servicemembers facing accelerated or involuntary separations and require participating organizations to track outcomes related to employment, financial stability, resilience, and family well-being. In addition, the legislation would direct the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs to coordinate services to ensure a seamless postseparation transition for servicemembers and their families.
The BRIDGE Act of 2026 is an important step toward strengthening military family readiness and improving long-term outcomes for veterans and their loved ones. Servicemembers and military families sacrifice greatly in service to our Nation, and they deserve support that reflects the full scope of the transition challenges they face.
I would like to thank Senator Scott of South Carolina for coleading this bill with me. I hope our colleagues will join us in supporting this effort to strengthen transition support for servicemembers and military families.
I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass the BRIDGE Act of 2026 as swiftly as possible.
Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Building Readiness and Integration for Dependents Going to Civilian Environments Act of 2026 or the BRIDGE Act of 2026. This legislation seeks to ensure that servicemembers and military families have the support they need to successfully transition from military service to civilian life.
Each year, thousands of servicemembers leave the Armed Forces and face significant challenges navigating employment, healthcare, education, benefits, and community reintegration. While the Department of Defense's Transition Assistance Program provides important preseparation services, many military families still struggle to access personalized and coordinated support during this major life transistion.
The BRIDGE Act of 2026 would establish a 3-year pilot program at four geographically diverse military installations to provide nonclinical, community-based transition support for servicemembers and their families. This legislation recognizes that transition is not just an individual experience but a whole-family process that requires tailored support and long-term stability.
Under this act, eligible servicemembers within 1 year of separation and their families would receive individualized transition assistance, including peer-led support groups, resilience workshops, spouse employment assistance, skills training and credentialing, benefits navigation, and reintegration support. Participants would also be paired with dedicated transition coordinators to help develop personalized transition plans and connect families with existing Federal, State, nonprofit, and community resources.
This bill would further prioritize servicemembers facing accelerated or involuntary separations and require participating organizations to track outcomes related to employment, financial stability, resilience, and family well-being. In addition, the legislation would direct the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs to coordinate services to ensure a seamless postseparation transition for servicemembers and their families.
The BRIDGE Act of 2026 is an important step toward strengthening military family readiness and improving long-term outcomes for veterans and their loved ones. Servicemembers and military families sacrifice greatly in service to our Nation, and they deserve support that reflects the full scope of the transition challenges they face.
I would like to thank Senator Scott of South Carolina for coleading this bill with me. I hope our colleagues will join us in supporting this effort to strengthen transition support for servicemembers and military families.
I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass the BRIDGE Act of 2026 as swiftly as possible.
Mr. President, I have four requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 9 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet durihg the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
The Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 4 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration of S. 528 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Peters substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be 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 amendment (No. 6843), in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to as follows:
The bill (S. 528), 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 the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 1574 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Cortez Masto substitute amendment at the desk be considered and 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 amendment (No. 6844), in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to as follows:
The bill (S. 1574), 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 Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5284 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Madam 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. 5284) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1190 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and 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. 1190) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions, which are at the desk: S. Res. 922, S. Res. 923, S. Res. 924, S. Res. 925, S. Res. 926, S. Res. 927, and S. Res. 928.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc.
Madam President, 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.'')
Honoring the Life and Service of United States Marine Corps Veteran Nicholas Douglas Quets, Expressing Condolences to His Family, and Condemning Cartel Violence
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 662.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
Madam President, 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. 662) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in the Record of March 26, 2026, under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1744 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Madam 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. 1744) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Authorizing the Secretary of the Army to Convey to the State of North Carolina a Certain Parcel of Real Property Located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Which the State Shall Construct a Veterans...
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 10159 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and 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. 10159) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, September 30; 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, and the Senate be in a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed during Monday's session of the Senate ripen at 11:30 a.m.; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Wednesday's session of the Senate, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
