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32Senate Resolution 930: Expressing Support for the Recognition of October 2026, as "World Menopause Awareness Month" and for Global Awareness and Access to Care During Menopausal Transition And...
33Senate Resolution 931: Recognizing the Month of October 2026 as Filipino American History Month and Celebrating the History and Culture of Filipino Americans and Their Immense Contributions to The...
34Senate Resolution 932: Requesting Information on Venezuela's Human Rights Practices Pursuant to Section 502b(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
39Senate Resolution 937: Recognizing the Seriousness of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (Pcos) and Expressing Support for the Designation of September 2026 as "Pcos Awareness Month"
40Senate Resolution 938: To Honor the Americans Killed by Hamas Terrorists and Their Affiliates on and After October 7, 2023, to Reaffirm the Commitment of the United States to Seek Legal Justice On...
41Senate Resolution 939: Expressing the Sense of the Senate That It Values the Active Participation of the Republic of Kosovo as the State Partner of the Iowa National Guard Over the Past 15 Years
42Senate Resolution 940: Expressing Support for the Designation of September 2026 as "Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month" in Order to Educate Communities Across the United States About Sickle Cell...
Seventy-eight bills and twenty-three resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 5604-5681, S.J. Res. 219-220, and S. Res. 929-949.
Pages S5259-62
Measures Passed
National Park System: Senate passed S. 2498, to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to extend certain leases within units of the National Park System without opening the lease to bidding, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5201-03
Crystal Reservoir Conveyance Act
Senate passed S. 2754, to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to convey to the City of Ouray, Colorado, certain land managed by the Forest Service, together with a reservoir, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5201-03
Safe Access to Cash Act
Senate passed S. 3798, to amend title 18, United States Code, to establish criminal offenses with respect to violations involving ATMs, regardless of whether the ATM is located on the physical premises of a financial institution, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Page S5207
Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act
Committee on Finance was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5349, to improve services provided to taxpayers by the Internal Revenue Service, and the bill was then passed, after agreeing to the following amendments proposed thereto:
Pages S5207-08
Crapo/Wyden Amendment No. 6847, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S5208
Crapo/Wyden Amendment No. 6848, to amend the title.
Page S5208
Chiricahua National Park
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 6380, to redesignate the Chiricahua National Monument in the State of Arizona as Chiricahua National Park, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5226
Pleasant Valley Ranger District Administrative Site
Senate passed H.R. 837, to require the Secretary of Agriculture to convey the Pleasant Valley Ranger District Administrative Site to Gila County, Arizona.
Page S5226
License to Drill Act
Senate passed H.R. 7831, to amend the Mineral Leasing Act to extend the period of time during which the Secretary of the Interior is required to collect a fee for each new application for a permit to drill.
Pages S5226-31
Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act
Senate passed S. 3315, to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to coordinate to improve cybersecurity in the health care and public health sectors, after withdrawing the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute, and agreeing to the following amendment proposed thereto:
Pages S5231-36
Cassidy Amendment No. 5819, in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5234-36
Mystic Alerts Act
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 7022, to provide for the transmission of emergency alerts by satellite, and the bill was then passed.
Pages S5237-38
End Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act
Committee on Finance was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 9496, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to postpone tax deadlines and reimburse paid late fees for United States nationals who are unlawfully or wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, and the bill was then passed.
Pages S5238-39
Wyoming Education Trust Modernization Act
Senate passed S. 2273, to amend the Act of July 10, 1890, to modify certain provisions relating to the disposal of public land in the State of Wyoming for educational purposes.
Page S5295
Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act
Senate passed H.R. 5235, to amend title 41, United States Code, to prohibit minimum educational requirements for proposed contractor personnel in certain contract solicitations.
Page S5295
MORE American Fuel Act of 2026
Senate passed S. 5249, to amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to align the licensing of uranium enrichment facilities with other fuel cycle facilities under that Act, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5295-96
Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program Reauthorization Act
Senate passed S. 2437, to amend the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program Authorization Act to reauthorize the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5296-97
Quinault Indian Nation Land Transfer Act
Senate passed S. 1514, to take certain land in the State of Washington into trust for the benefit of the Quinault Indian Nation, after agreeing to the committee amendments.
Page S5297
Pit River Land Transfer Act
Senate passed H.R. 2400, to take certain Federal land in the State of California into trust for the benefit of the Pit River Tribe, after agreeing to the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Pages S5297-98
Indian Health Service Emergency Claims Parity Act
Senate passed S. 1055, to amend the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to modify the notification requirement for emergency contract health services for certain beneficiaries.
Page S5298
Floodplain Enhancement and Recovery Act
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was discharged from further consideration of S. 1564, to amend the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 to address ecosystem restoration projects, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5298
Clergy Act
Committee on Finance was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 227, to allow a period in which members of the clergy may revoke their exemption from Social Security coverage, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5298
Choices for Increased Mobility Act
Committee on Finance was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1703, to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to clarify payment rules for manual wheelchairs under part B of the Medicare program, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5299
Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act
Senate passed H.R. 4307, to direct the Secretary of Labor to train certain employees of Department of Labor how to effectively detect and assist law enforcement in preventing human trafficking during the course of their official duties.
Page S5299
Criminal History Access Act
Committee on the Judiciary was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 8352, to authorize peace officer standards and training agencies to access criminal history records, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5299
National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 936, designating October 8, 2026, as ``National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day''.
Page S5299
PCOS Awareness Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 937, recognizing the seriousness of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and expressing support for the designation of September 2026 as ``PCOS Awareness Month''.
Page S5299
October 7
Senate agreed to S. Res. 938, to honor the Americans killed by Hamas terrorists and their affiliates on and after October 7, 2023, to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to seek legal justice on behalf of their families.
Page S5299
Iowa National Guard
Senate agreed to S. Res. 939, expressing the sense of the Senate that it values the active participation of the Republic of Kosovo as the state partner of the Iowa National Guard over the past 15 years.
Page S5299
Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 940, expressing support for the designation of September 2026 as ``Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month'' in order to educate communities across the United States about sickle cell disease and the need for research, early detection methods, effective treatments, and preventative care programs with respect to complications from sickle cell disease and conditions related to sickle cell disease.
Page S5299
Bat Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 941, expressing support for the designation of the week of October 24, 2026, to October 31, 2026, as ``Bat Week''.
Page S5299
National Forensic Science Week
Senate agreed to S. Res. 942, recognizing and supporting the goals and ideals of National Forensic Science Week.
Page S5299
National Move Over Law Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 943, supporting the goals and ideals of a National Move Over Law Day.
Page S5299
School Bus Safety Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 944, designating September 2026 as ``School Bus Safety Month''.
Page S5299
National Bison Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 945, designating November 7, 2026, as ``National Bison Day''.
Page S5299
National Veterans Suicide Prevention Day
Senate agreed to S. Res. 946, designating September 30, 2026, as ``National Veterans Suicide Prevention Day''.
Page S5299
National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 947, designating September 2026 as ``National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month''.
Page S5299
Congratulating Texas A&M University
Senate agreed to S. Res. 948, commending and congratulating Texas A&M University for 150 years of service to the State of Texas and the United States.
Page S5299
Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions was discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 866, supporting the designation of October 2026 as ``Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month'' to raise awareness of substance use and misuse in the United States, and the resolution was then agreed to.
Page S5299
Ratepayer Protection Act: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that 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, be withdrawn.
Page S5199
Prior to the consideration of this measure, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Legislative Session.
Page S5199
Survivor Justice Tax Prevention Act: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of H.R. 2347, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to exclude from gross income any damages, other than punitive damages, received on account of any sexual acts or sexual contact.
Page S5241
A motion was entered to close further debate on the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, and pursuant to the unanimous-consent agreement of Wednesday, September 30, 2026, a vote on cloture will occur at 5:30 p.m., on Monday, November 9, 2026.
Page S5241
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill at approximately 3 p.m., on Monday, November 9, 2026; and that notwithstanding Rule XXII, at 5:30 p.m., the cloture motion filed on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, ripen.
Page S5299
Signing Authority: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that all members of the Republican conference be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or joint resolutions from October 1, 2026, through November 9, 2026.
Page S5295
Authority for Committees: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that, notwithstanding the adjournment of the Senate, reports of committees and introduction of measures be authorized, on Thursday, October 15, from 10 a.m. until 12 noon.
Page S5295
Authorizing Leadership to Make Appointments: Agreement
A unanimous- consent agreement was reached providing that, notwithstanding the upcoming adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President Pro Tempore, and the Majority and Minority Leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences, or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent action of the two Houses, or by order of the Senate.
Page S5295
Pro Forma Sessions: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that the Senate convene for pro forma sessions, with no business being conducted on the following dates and times: Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 10:30 a.m.; Monday, October 5, 2026, at 4 p.m.; Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 1:30 p.m.; Friday, October 9, 2026, at 1:30 p.m.; Tuesday, October 13, 2026, at 3:30 p.m.; Thursday, October 15, 2026, at 9:30 a.m.; Monday, October 19, 2026, at 9 a.m.; Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 9 a.m.; Monday, October 26, 2026, at 5:30 p.m.; Thursday, October 29, 2026, at 2 p.m.; Monday, November 2, 2026, at 4:30 p.m.; and Thursday, November 5, 2026, at 10:30 a.m.; and that when the Senate adjourns on Thursday, November 5, 2026, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m., on Monday, November 9, 2026.
Page S5299
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 47 yeas to 41 nays (Vote No. EX. 256), Keith Sonderling, of Florida, to be Secretary of Labor.
Pages S5199-S5201, S5241
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 53 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. 255), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Pages S5199-S5200
Daniel Travis, of California, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Sierra Leone. Henry Wooster, of Virginia, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Kenya. Joshua Harris, of Maryland, to be Ambassador to Malaysia. Natasha Franceschi, of California, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Nicaragua. Steven Gillen, of Virginia, to be Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic. Charles Goodman III, of Florida, to be Ambassador to the Togolese Republic. Keith Heffern, of Virginia, to be Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic. Peter Lord, of Florida, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Benin. John McIntyre, of Texas, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Malawi. Nutan Patel, of California, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Cabo Verde. 1 Air Force nomination in the rank of general.
Pages S5241, S5311
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: Routine lists in the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.
Pages S5301-11
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S5264-74
Record Votes
Four record votes were taken today. (Total--256)
Pages S5199-S5200, S5241
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10:15 a.m. and adjourned at 11:25 p.m., until 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S5299.)
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: 158 of 356 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum calls with respect to the cloture motions for H.R. 7008, H.R. 9340, and the Sonderling nomination.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, the theme of the Senate this week is common sense. Today, we will be voting on two eminently commonsense pieces of legislation: the Stop Insider Trading Act and the Ratepayer Protection Act.
The Stop Insider Trading Act actually pairs two commonsense measures: a stock purchase ban for Members of Congress and a voter ID measure. Neither requires much explanation.
To ensure that Members of Congress and their families are not benefiting financially from insider knowledge of the market, the stock purchase ban would prohibit Members of Congress, their spouses, or their dependent children from purchasing stocks issued by public companies while the Member is in office. It would also ensure transparency when it comes to stock sales by requiring Members of Congress and their immediate family to provide advance, public notice of any stock sale. And these rules are enforced with real penalties.
It is a pretty simple measure but an important way to ensure that Members of Congress are held to the standards that Americans should be able to expect of their representatives.
The other half of the Stop Insider Trading Act is also pretty simple. It would do nothing more than require that Americans present a photo ID when they go to vote. That is it. Very simple and something that has the overwhelming--overwhelming--support of the American people. And when I say ``the American people,'' I mean the American people-- Republicans, Democrats, Independents, everyone.
While this vote should be a no-brainer, I do have some concerns, because while the American people overwhelmingly support a photo ID requirement, for some bizarre reason, congressional Democrats have decided that photo ID for voting is a step too far. I say ``bizarre'' because I haven't seen Democrats crusading against showing ID in any of the other situations where Americans are required to present their photo identification. My Democrat colleagues don't seem to have a problem with showing photo ID to board an airplane, to rent a car, to start a new job. They don't seem to have a problem with showing photo ID at the doctor's office or when buying alcohol or when opening a bank account. They don't seem to have a problem--if the Presiding Officer can believe this, they don't seem to have a problem with having a requirement to show a photo ID at their own political events. Think about that. It is only when it comes to voting that congressional Democrats suddenly, inexplicably see photo ID as a terrible problem, even though not only the majority of Americans but the majority of Democrats support photo identification.
It is pretty hard to explain the Democrats' position, but I suspect one of two things is going on here. Either Democrats are just reflexively opposing this proposal because it came from Republicans or Democrats believe that there are, in fact, people out there voting illegally and that it is benefiting Democrats and they would like to keep that going.
I will say that 13 House Democrats found voter ID and the stock purchase ban to be so common sense that they broke with their party and supported the Stop Insider Trading Act when it moved through the House. I would love to see Senate Democrats follow their example. I guess we will see soon enough.
In addition to the Stop Insider Trading Act, the Senate will be voting on the Ratepayer Protection Act this week as well. I know I have used the words ``common sense'' a lot lately, but as I said, it is the theme of this week's legislation. And the Ratepayer Protection Act is as common sense as it gets. It would simply promote the adoption of a standard that would require data centers to shoulder the electricity costs associated with their operation and construction. That is it--a simple piece of legislation designed to protect hard-working Americans from the increased energy costs associated with data centers.
The Ratepayer Protection Act passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, with almost every Democrat--almost every Democrat--as well as Republicans supporting it. So you would think it would have had a pretty easy passage through this Chamber as well, but when we brought this legislation up here in the Senate a couple of weeks ago, Democrats objected. For what reason, I don't know--presumably a political one.
Given the overwhelming support for this measure in the House, it is difficult to conclude that Democrats blocked this bill for any reason other than the desire to deny Republicans another win in an election year, which is a pretty poor reason for opposing a measure to protect Americans from higher energy costs.
But they have another chance this week, and I guess we will see.
Will Democrats support commonsense measures like a stock purchase ban, photo ID to vote, and protection from higher energy costs? Or will they continue to play politics?
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, for 2 years, Democrats fought fiercely to protect the interests of the American people while Senate Republicans fought tooth and nail to shield Donald Trump. We all knew how disastrous this President would be. We set out to expose how Trump and his party were hurting the American people, and we would do everything we could to stop them.
We fought to lower the skyrocketing costs of Trump's economy: the cost of food, the cost of housing, the cost of energy, the cost of groceries, the cost of gasoline. Republicans pushed policies to drive those costs up.
We exposed Trump for his unprecedented corruption; Republicans aided and abetted his grifts every step of the way.
We worked relentlessly to control Trump's chaos that we see every day; Republicans encouraged him as he spiraled out of control.
Later today, I will talk more about how Senate Democrats have worked together to block the worst Trump's GOP had to throw at the American people.
Now, of course, there is still a lot of work remaining to see America through the storm this administration has unleashed. But Senate Democrats are well positioned to stand up for the American people with the same devotion, cooperation, and discipline we showed these past 2 years.
Mr. President, now on the weak data center bill, the only thing that came out of Trump's big AI summit yesterday was a photo op; no Federal guardrails to protect against catastrophic risk, no signal from Trump that he plans to act.
All Trump had to say was ``there should be tremendous self- regulation.''
Relying on self-regulation is how we got into this mess. Americans are calling for real solutions, real guardrails, real solutions on AI.
Republicans' toothless data center bill completely misses the mark. Senate Republicans would do nothing to require data center companies to pay for their rising costs in the surrounding communities; Senate Democrats want to make it mandatory for data centers to cover their own costs by law, not by suggestion or hope or whim.
This bill doesn't do anything to mandate safety standards for AI. Democrats would require safety standards to protect the American people. A guardrail without teeth isn't a guardrail.
The Republicans' legislation doesn't even apply to all data centers. This shoddy bill couldn't get any flimsier. That is because the Republicans really don't want to do it; they don't want to oppose some of the big interests that don't want any regulation.
To put it simply: Republicans' data center bill follows Trump's lead in ignoring Americans' pressing concerns about AI while our legislation would actually address them with guardrails that have real teeth.
Americans don't want another hollow messaging bill. They don't want to watch Senate Republicans give themselves a pat on their back when they have accomplished nothing.
Americans want to see this Republican majority put the country first once and for all. Senate Republicans think even listening to the American people ought to be optional too.
I urge my colleagues to join us in taking real action on AI. I urge Republicans to put aside their feeble bill and put Americans over party.
Mr. President, on stock trading, only Senate Republicans would dare call a bill that permits Members of Congress to continue to own, sell, and in some instances buy stocks a stock trading ban.
They can't be serious.
The Republican bill is a permission slip for corruption, not a stock trading ban. There has been a real bipartisan effort to ban Members of Congress from trading stocks and profiting off their insider information. I have supported those efforts for years.
Last year, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs advanced a strong bipartisan bill that would actually ban stocks, not pretend to do so.
Senate Republicans didn't want it. The Senate GOP let their counterparts in the House take out all of the ban's teeth and fill it with poison pills so it could never pass. This bill has no reform, no accountability, no substance.
Republicans want to explicitly allow Members to continue trading stocks in privately held companies, including in companies the Members oversee; a formula for disaster and corruption.
That is as clear a conflict of interest as one can imagine. Under the Republican bill, Members would still get to own and sell stocks, and most importantly, this bill doesn't do anything--anything--to stop Donald Trump from trading stocks.
I guess Republicans forgot that Trump has made nearly 30,000 stock trades in the past year and raked in billions--more than all of Congress combined.
Democrats have offered multiple bills that would close all these loopholes. Republicans have done nothing to stop corruption; not in the White House, not in Congress, nowhere.
The Republican toothless stock trading bill is as ineffective as a screen door on a submarine. Let's be clear: They don't even want it to pass. They designed the bill to fail. They loaded their legislation with poison pills that they knew would make this bill dead on arrival. They are even afraid of this wet noodle, weak milquetoast bill.
The voting restrictions in this bill and the voting restrictions that they added as a poison pill are more extreme than any law in any State. It would make voting more difficult in every State than it is now.
They are some of the most twisted, radical schemes Trump has ever dreamed up to rig our election. Republicans know no one wants these provisions, so they included them to kill their own bill. This hollow bill isn't a stock trading ban; it is Republicans' last-ditch effort to save face.
If Republicans' closing pitch is a bill that would let them continue to profit off their office and allow Trump to rig the election, that is their problem. Americans don't buy it.
Mr. President, and finally, on a much happier note. Nearly a decade ago, I made one of the greatest decisions anyone in this line of work can make: I hired a top-notch, first-rate person who was so talented in every way. I hired Cietta Kiandoli.
That was a time with a lot of change. Our party was still finding its footing after a stinging election loss. I had just become Democratic leader. My staff was expanding.
We were determined to rally our coalition and make it bigger and stronger than ever before. Everyone my team and I talked to, we said we needed someone to create that coalition, help glue it together-- mentioned the same person. They said: Hire Cietta.
Cietta joined my leadership staff as director of external affairs, but the title doesn't adequately capture all that Cietta has done and does for this country. I am not sure any title could.
Cietta has always had the same star to connect people, policy, and politics, and to do it in such an exquisite and effective way. That is what she did before joining my team, that is what she did for the past decade on my team, and that is what she will continue to do as she starts her next chapter.
Name any group in our big tent--any labor union, advocacy organization, caucus--the chances are they have not only met Cietta but have known her for years, and they most likely adore her.
Cietta's job isn't easy. She gets a lot of telephone calls from various members of our coalition. Sometimes, they call her about a hard vote. Sometimes they call her about a fire that needs to be put out. Sometimes--actually, many times--they call her begging for her to get me to switch up the jokes that I repeat at the events, year after year after year.
She has had moderate, marginal success in that regard. If they only knew how many times she has heard my jokes. And I see her eyes roll when I laugh at my own joke that I have told for the hundredth time.
I am sure she will miss hearing me talk about the can of peas, the barber bookie, and all of my other greatest hits.
On a more serious note, there are plenty of people who know how to command respect, but there are fewer who can match Cietta's ability to command the trust of any room she walks into.
She is a truth-teller, and she tells the truth all the time. So they know, when she says something, it is the real deal. I have seen that hundreds--hundreds--of times to the benefit of all of us, myself, and the coalitions that we bring together.
It doesn't matter who she is meeting. They can tell from the jump that her heart is in the right place. They can see how much she cares about serving New Yorkers and Americans from one end of the country to the other.
So just as others have come to trust Cietta, so have I. She is among the people I trust most. She is a truth-teller.
My staff knows that I move a mile a minute. When I get riled up, Cietta knows how to get me to slow down, to think about the bigger picture. Just having her in the room during a meeting or on the line during an important call helps put me at ease.
I imagine Cietta won't miss the long days and late-night calls from yours truly, but I hope she knows how much we are going to miss her, her good humor, her calm, her willingness to share her wisdom with whoever happens to need it.
Cietta, I look forward to seeing what you will do next, but I know what it will be. It will keep bringing people together for the good of the country. You will continue making everyone around you better--and she will always fight. You will always fight to connect people, policy, and politics.
Cietta, thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your dedication. Thank you for your loyalty. Thank you for caring so much about this country and the people you have fought so hard for.
You will always be a member of the Schumer family, and we wish you Godspeed.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, here we are, 34 days before election day--or as I like to suggest, 34 days before the final day to vote, because we are encouraging people to cast their ballot early, if they can, or vote by mail, if and where they can.
But instead of talking about the issues that are most on the minds of American families, Republicans are here again trying to distract from those issues and to, frankly, create confusion amongst voters in order to protect the President and the party from their failed policies.
Now, Senate Democrats agree that something real needs to happen to rein in the ability of elected officials, especially Members of Congress, from making decisions that impact the companies that are in their stock portfolios. That is true. The American people deserve to have confidence that their elected representatives are making decisions in the best interests of the American people and not in your bank account or your stock investments.
But that is not what this bill will do. This bill does not ban Members of Congress from holding stocks or trading stocks, and it exempts the most powerful elected official of all--the President of the United States--from a stock trading ban.
Now, let's be clear, colleagues, because we have seen this time and again. When the President makes announcements or posts on Truth Social, he has the potential to move markets, shift the economy. That is truly an awesome power, one that nobody should be able to exploit for their own profit. But that is exactly what Donald Trump has done and has done over and over again.
That is why, since returning to office last year, his net worth has grown some $4 to $5 billion--billion with a ``b.''
Now, ABC News service said, just last year, that he made over 21,000 stock trades across 8 accounts in a matter of--the average was about 85 trades per day--85 trades per day.
Does that sound like something that is singularly focused on improving the quality of life of the American people? I don't think so.
Bloomberg News found that President Trump has traded stocks more than every Member of Congress combined.
Think about that for a minute. One person, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, the ``Trader in Chief,'' made more stock trades in 1 year than all 535 Members of Congress.
Now, NBC News found that 327 of these trades were made exactly 1 day before he rolled back his ``Liberation Day'' tariffs. Was that a coincidence? I think not.
How much grift from his own decision making? The American people deserve to know.
But the President's corruption goes even further. His social media company is literally selling access to hedge funds and Wall Street brokers--early access--to his major market-shaping announcements.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Trump has been making more stock trades than all of Congress combined while backing a ban that excludes him. That is what the bill before us does. Is anyone surprised the President would support a bill that does nothing to rein him in? How can we possibly go home and tell the American people with a straight face that we are stopping the corruption in Washington when the biggest exploiter is the President and he is immune from this bill? The author of this bill refused to put any guardrails on the biggest, most corrupt stock trader of them all.
Now, don't take that to mean that Democrats don't want to do anything in this space. We do. In fact, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, last year, put out a bipartisan bill that would actually address this issue.
But folks watching at home should recognize that that bipartisan bill with teeth is not what Republicans have chosen to put on the floor today, 34 days before election. Instead, it is a sham bill that doesn't have the teeth and doesn't rein in the ``Trader in Chief.''
I have tried to bring up that bill, by the way, repeatedly in the Senate, and Senate Republicans have blocked it on multiple occasions.
So today is not a serious attempt to address the kind of corruption here in Washington that the American people may care about.
And to add further proof to that point, this isn't just a sham attempt to ban Members of Congress who trade in stocks, because it includes a voter ID poison pill in it. This so-called voter ID bill would impose a far stricter and more burdensome Federal standard in all 50 States.
Now, some States have voter ID; some States don't. Those that do have laws, at the State level, that require an ID allow Tribal IDs or student IDs issued by the State government or State entity to count. But the Federal provisions in this bill do not.
And it goes even worse for the one-third of American voters that prefer to vote by mail, if they have that option in their State--and 80 percent of Californians, by the way. This requirement that you have to have a copy of your ID in the envelope with your ballot for it to count eviscerates the secret ballot that we value so much.
Here is what the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Utah had to say-- and in Utah the Lieutenant Governor is also the State election official--when it was included in the SAVE Act. And now it is in the measure before us.
So don't just take my word for it. This is the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Utah. And she is not the only Republican opposed to this kind of legislation.
The Republican Governor of Ohio, with a similar State bill, said:
All for what? In pursuit of the Big Lie that the President has been claiming for, what, a decade now about massive voter fraud? While every expert and every study have found the same thing. Despite the conspiracy theories, voter fraud is already illegal. Let's establish that. It is already on the books as illegal. But it is also extremely, extremely rare.
So what is this bill truly about anyway? It is not about cracking down on corruption, as Republicans claim it is. It is not going to, you know, address the massive voter fraud that does not exist. Again, it is misdirection. It is a distraction, and it threatens to suppress the vote 34 days before the election.
And all Senate Republicans realize that the only thing they have to show for their control of government for the last 2 years--right?--you are the majority in the Senate. You are the majority in the House. Your party occupies the White House. When families are struggling with rising inflation, the rising cost of healthcare and housing, groceries, mortgages, gas prices, an unauthorized war in Iran, instead of actually addressing those issues with real proposals, they are seeking to distract and confuse.
The American people deserve better than this, and I urge all of my colleagues to vote no on this cynical measure.
Mr. President, I rise today to speak about making life more affordable by lowering electricity prices through my bill, the Ratepayer Protection Act.
Americans are increasingly realigned on the computing power of data centers in nearly every part of their daily lives--from medicine and manufacturing to agriculture, education, national defense, and the delivery of basic services.
As our reliance on this technology grows, so does the demand for data centers across the country. But more computing power requires more electricity, and when larger data centers come online, the cost of providing that power cannot be pushed onto everyone else. We have got to protect the American ratepayer, the American customer.
We have to make sure that the growth of these data centers does not mean higher electric bills for working families, for senior citizens, or for small businesses.
The companies driving this growth should be held responsible for the power they need to operate, not the American ratepayer. That is what we are talking about today: making the data centers accountable, not the American ratepayer.
We need to win the global race for artificial intelligence--I don't think that anyone is disputing that fact--and we should not do it, though, by forcing American families and businesses to subsidize Big Tech.
That is why I have introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act. My bill ensures that large data centers pay their fair share of electricity costs, infrastructure costs that they require, requiring them to own the responsibility for those costs, rather than shifting them to other ratepayers.
I have been focused on this issue for a long time, since my work in State government, where I pushed Big Tech companies to enter into fair agreements with communities where they were building.
In March, I went to the White House to watch the President sign the Ratepayer Protection Pledge. This summer, I took it a step further by introducing S. 5028, which we are talking about today, to turn that commitment into law.
We can support American innovation. America is an innovative country. We must remain an innovative country and lead the world in superintelligence and build the infrastructure we need for the future without asking families, seniors, and small businesses to pick up the tab.
So, today, we are considering the House-passed version of my bill before this Chamber. It passed the House 417 to 3. That is why we are here--to focus on this bill--because no other bill exists, other than this one, that can allow us to get this job done today.
The Ratepayer Protection Act outlines a standard for data centers to pay their own way for electricity and the grid and the infrastructure, and it requires State utility regulators to consider this standard to ensure that large-load customers pay the full incremental costs of the infrastructure needed to serve them--pay for it all. The States can't avoid this. They are going to have to confront the issue. Our bill will require them to do that.
Those standards could also require financial assurances so that families, communities, and small businesses are not left paying for stranded infrastructure costs from a project that they say they are going to build, but it gets delayed or abandoned.
A lot of times, they pass that cost along to everyone else. No, this legislation would help make sure that that doesn't happen.
Last week, I brought the Ratepayer Protection Act to this very Senate floor and asked for unanimous passage. Why? Because it passed the House 417 to 3. Why delay? Why not get this done immediately?
Well, I can't answer that. You will have to ask those who blocked it because it is ready to go. It could be law today if we just decide that we are going to look out for the American ratepayer, and we are going to take action to do so.
As I mentioned, it passed the House 417 to 3. That is almost unprecedented in this era of politics and governing here in Congress. That means that over 99 percent of the Representatives agreed my bill was worth passing. Let that sink in. Ninety-nine percent of the House of Representatives cast a vote in favor of the Ratepayer Protection Act becoming law.
Among those who voted yes on the Democratic side were Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and every single Member of the House Democratic leadership. They all supported the bill in the House.
This bill had unanimous support from House Republicans, from Speaker Johnson to the Freedom Caucus. All of them supported my bill.
You can't get any broader support than that, folks, in Washington, DC, in this day and age.
The Ratepayer Protection Act is such a no-brainer that the most conservative and the most liberal Representatives all agreed it was good policy. They all agreed. The House of Representatives passed it. It is here. It is ready to go. All we have to do is take yes for an answer, and we will begin today at lowering electricity rates for American ratepayers.
The American people have spoken loud and clear about this issue. They want the data centers to be held accountable. We have a chance to do that, to lower their electric rates. Let's take advantage of this wonderful opportunity we have to build bipartisan support around this bill.
It is clear that Big Tech should be paying their own way, not passing the cost onto local communities and States. This bill does that. It does that.
In a few moments, my colleagues and I will vote on the Ratepayer Protection Act. Together, we can send this bill to the President's desk for his signature today and prove to the American people we heard them; that we are doing something to actually help lower their prices--the prices that they pay for electricity.
The Ratepayer Protection Act represents the most meaningful bipartisan step Congress can take to protect the American people from paying higher prices for electricity. It demonstrates that in Washington, it is still possible to work in a bipartisan way to address the problems most pressing to the American people.
And I am proud to have led this effort in the Senate. Let's rise above the politics that often drag this place down and deliver for the American people and do our jobs.
But I want to be clear about something, this bill--this bill--is the only path that we can take today that will lower electricity prices. No other options remain. This is it. This is the bill that can get it done. It is ready to go.
All we have to do in this Chamber is say yes and it will be on the President's desk and we can prove to the American people we actually care about what they are asking us to do to lower their electricity prices. Any obstruction to that is to say no to them, that you don't want to do it.
I listened to the Democratic leader talk about this bill a few moments ago, and I implore him: Stop blocking this bill. Stop blocking this bill. Let it go. Give us a chance, on a bipartisan basis, to prove that we care about what the American people are asking us to do: lowering their prices; making life more affordable; in this case, lowering their electricity prices. Give the American people what they want: lower energy prices and holding data centers accountable.
I will conclude with this because I would like to get this done on a bipartisan basis, and I would like to be able for everybody in this Chamber to take credit for lowering electricity prices and holding data centers accountable. But if Democrats block this bill, they will prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they do not care about affordability and that they will not do anything to take action to help. That is what blocking this bill will prove to the American people.
Let's listen. Let's get this done. Let's lower electricity prices. Let's hold data centers accountable. And let's stop blocking a path to affordability.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, I rise in support of my esteemed colleague from Ohio, and I want to join him and applaud his leadership on this critical legislation. Why? Because America is undergoing technological advancement at unprecedented speed.
As we push new frontiers in this new era of superintelligence, innovation can have a tremendously positive impact on our society and on our Nation's competitiveness.
At the same time, we find ourselves neck and neck with adversaries racing to harness this technology for their own purposes. It is crucial that we keep up the pace, particularly regarding the development of large language models and computing power heretofore at levels unseen.
Our objective is clear: The United States must remain at the leading edge. To do so, we need more energy. Conversations are taking place across the United States right now about how we will meet this increased energy demand in order to power superintelligence. The overarching concern is that we do so responsibly and with local community needs in mind.
Companies at the frontier of this emerging technology have the resources to pay for the infrastructure and the costs associated to run these facilities. Importantly, these costs should not be borne by American families nor by American businesses.
My colleague from Ohio has worked incredibly hard to get this bill across the finish line and deliver basic protections for the American people.
The public is overwhelmingly in favor of the protections it would provide. Many States have already embraced it, including my home State of Tennessee. Tennessee adopted President Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge while preserving the ability of local communities to make decisions about data center development.
The communities that have chosen to welcome innovation have seen incredibly positive impacts: more jobs, new investment, and an increase in their tax base that can allow for a full range of options from lower property taxes to greater investment in local public resources.
Importantly, we are doing so while ensuring that the cost for addressing the energy demands of data centers aren't passed along to Tennessee families nor Tennessee businesses.
What is the only thing standing in the way of enacting these protections? What is standing in the way? It is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
In the House, the Ratepayer Protection Pledge passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis with a vote of 417 to 3. You almost never see that level of consensus in Washington, and yet, last week, Senate Democrats blocked it from passing right here on the Senate floor. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
Instead of comprehensive measures that put the decision-making power in the hands of State and local communities, my colleagues across the aisle want Washington to decide, making sweeping decisions for our Nation without input from the towns and the cities it would directly impact.
I can't stress this enough: Removing local choice and imposing blanket data center moratoriums are not the answer to responsible innovation. In fact, it is precisely what will kill innovation and put America underwater in the technological race against our adversaries.
When it comes to investing in this new future, communities should be in the driver's seat. Localities should be able to decide when, where, and whether they should permit these facilities, especially when they have so much to gain from the investment.
Sadly, we have seen a massive amount of misinformation circulating about data centers: their costs, their energy consumption, their wastewater usage, their noise levels.
The truth is, we can find solutions to the concerns of Tennesseans and Americans, while putting the United States in the best possible position to succeed.
We need to speak out against these false claims, put a stop to the fearmongering that is jeopardizing America's opportunity to lead in this critical area for our economy and for our national security, and we must clearly communicate the advantages that communities can have when they embrace American energy and American technological ingenuity--all the while protecting, and even bettering, the lives of Americans. It is time to pass the Ratepayer Protection Act.
But here we are in an election season. Fearmongering is taking precedence over responsible and thoughtful action. False claims abound while America's technology leadership hangs in the balance. We should move responsibly, protect American communities, and support our Nation's economic and national security.
The House of Representatives has seized this opportunity. It is time for the Senate to set partisan politics aside and pass the Ratepayer Protection Act.
Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote for the Stop Insider Trading Act that will be voted on a little bit later today.
Eighty percent of Americans believe that we do a poor job of separating the inside information that we get from our financial situation, and Congress' approval rating is only 15 percent.
Why do Americans have such a lack of faith in our institutions? Well, in part, because of what has happened with trading in Congress.
A former Democrat Speaker of the House was publishing her trades and people were using that as a trading strategy and they were making money off of it.
Just the appearance of impropriety leads people to a lack of faith in our institutions. My Stop Insider Trading Act would help address that. It would prevent anybody who comes into the House or Senate from owning any stock--or rather from buying any stock. You would not be allowed to buy any stock once you come into the House or the Senate.
And for the stock you already own, if you are going to sell it, you have to give 7 to 14 days' notice so the market would know that ahead of time and be able to take action, if they thought that that Member had inside information.
This bill also has penalties to make it stick: a minimum of a $2,000 fine, but 10 percent of the proceeds--or 10 percent of the transaction. So, for example, say somebody sold a million dollars' worth of stock without giving the proper notice, that would be a $100,000 fine. On top of that, they would have to give up all of the profits.
We need to restore the faith of the American people in the House and in the Senate. My Stop Insider Trading Act will help to be able to do this, by letting Americans know that their elected representatives are not using this position for profit but for public service.
I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation, and especially my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have blocked this in the past. Let's work together to restore Americans' faith, which is to vote for the Stop Insider Trading Act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Members be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote: Budd and Markey for up to 10 minutes total; Sullivan and Heinrich for up to 20 minutes total.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, the most basic responsibility of Congress is to identify problems and deliver policy solutions that better serve the American people. That means cutting unnecessary redtape, eliminating confusion, and fixing gaps in the Federal Government that prevent it from doing its job effectively.
And that responsibility is often put to the test when disaster strikes. In Western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene did more than devastate our communities--it exposed weaknesses in our Federal disaster response that we, here in Congress, have a responsibility to fix.
Any Senator who has served their State in the wake of a natural disaster knows that bureaucratic failures are not just problems on paper--they have real consequences for real people. Every unnecessary delay, outdated process, or a gap in our response can stand between a devastated community and the Federal assistance that it needs to recover and to rebuild.
I understand that reality all too well, having walked the road to recovery with the people of Western North Carolina who lost everything in a once-in-a-century--hopefully, more than a century--storm.
In this rural part of our State, small businesses drive local economies, and many were destroyed and shuttered after Helene. For many, their only hope of getting back on their feet was by accessing disaster loan assistance through the SBA, or the Small Business Administration.
But in 2024, when these small businesses were trying to secure a fighting chance, the Biden administration--they dropped the ball by gravely mismanaging the SBA's Disaster Loan Program.
By issuing irresponsible rules, drastically increasing the costs of making and administering these disaster loans, and failing to notify Congress that funding to administer these loans was running low, the Biden administration allowed for a 66-day shortfall that impacted 97 percent of North Carolina residents. We can't allow this to happen again.
So I am bringing a commonsense solution to the table that has received bipartisan support in the Small Business Committee. My Disaster Loan Accountability and Reform Act will create more safeguards against a future shortfall by requiring annual appropriations to the SBA's Disaster Loan Program and informing Congress when these funds are running low.
The bill has one clear goal, and that is to make sure our Nation's small businesses are never left without the disaster assistance that they were promised.
The next major disaster should not expose the same failures as the last. It is our responsibility to mend broken systems and to coordinate the Federal Government and its agencies so that we are ready to manage the aftermath of the next major disaster.
So I ask my colleagues to join me in taking a necessary step forward in improving our Federal disaster response by voting to pass this bill.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 448, H.R. 4238; further, I 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.
Let me just begin by saying I agree with Senator Budd about the importance of transparency and of accountability in our disaster programs.
But I cannot support this legislation while the Trump administration politicizes and withholds aid from disaster victims in blue States, including my own home State of Massachusetts.
Recent reporting revealed that Trump overrode the recommendation of his own Agency and prevented four Democratic States--including Massachusetts--from receiving disaster assistance related to blizzards earlier this year. So parts of my own home State got nearly 41 inches of snow in 24 hours, costing our State over $45 million in blizzard- related expenses.
And according to this report, the States easily met FEMA's internal qualifications for disaster aid. But for Trump, the only qualification is blind loyalty.
And this is not an isolated incident. While red States' FEMA disaster applications have been approved 89 percent of the time, those from blue States receive signoff from the Trump administration only 23 percent of the time.
But don't think you are safe just because you are in a State that voted for the President. Earlier this month, at a rally in North Carolina for Michael Whatley--Trump's hand-picked MAGA Senate candidate--President Trump told a community devastated by Hurricane Helene--here's what the President said this month in North Carolina: You know you're waiting for some additional funding. Now, if Michael loses, I'm not sending it to North Carolina.
What? The people of North Carolina should get the help. It shouldn't depend upon whether the Senator is a Democrat or Republican, whether it is blue or red. It is about Americans who have suffered a disaster.
And the numbers are incredible. This is the history, since Ronald Reagan, of disaster relief in the United States. And you can see that it tracks pretty much red and blue the whole way--Reagan, George Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, Trump 1--stayed the same. Money went out in equal amounts to red and blue States, Democrat and Republican States.
But then Trump won again, and you can see what is happening. In the blue States, it looks like the 1929 stock market crash. We go from being equal with Republican States to falling off the table, and you can't really treat disasters that way. They are Americans. It could be a flood; it could be a hurricane, a tornado. It doesn't make any difference. They are all our American neighbors. They deserve the Federal assistance.
The President, again as recently as this month, is saying in North Carolina: If you elect a Democratic Senator, you won't get the help.
That is just not right, and we all know that is not right. So that has to get rectified because that is really not cooperation; that is just corruption, right? That is just saying: We're going to take this Federal program and turn it into something where he gets arbitrarily to determine whether or not he dishes out the money.
And it doesn't really make any difference to me if it is Oklahoma or North Carolina or Massachusetts or California; everyone who suffers a disaster should get the Federal help they need.
The President just cannot be allowed to use essential disaster aid as a tool for political extortion. Yet there he is, he is making it plain as day that if you don't vote for a Republican Senator, you don't get any money in your State for a disaster which has devastated your people.
We just have to make sure that we stand up and, if we are serious about transparency and accountability in the disaster recovery process, we should hold hearings, demand answers from this administration about why blue States are denied help at such a disproportionate rate.
And if the Trump administration insists on putting MAGA before the many, Congress must force the administration to treat disaster victims fairly, regardless of the State where they live or who they voted for.
I want to work with the Senator from North Carolina to address the administration's unacceptable treatment of disaster victims in Massachusetts and other blue States. We just have to get it back to the historic norm. The Senator has identified a problem, and I have worked with him in the committee to help to move that legislation.
But this is in many ways an even bigger problem. We cannot have this disparate treatment to continue any longer. So because of that, but with my request that I work with the gentleman as we head into the lameduck session, that we can work to talk to the Trump administration about rectifying this historic injustice.
So, at this time, as a result, I must object to the Senator's request.
Mr. President, I understand my colleague is having an issue with disaster relief reaching his State. On that, I can certainly relate.
And by the way, this is a colleague who has worked to pass this unanimously, I believe, out of committee--so much appreciated there-- but now seeks to block the bill.
But I worked with the Trump administration to cut through the bureaucratic hurdles that had slowed down aid. I held a number of the administration's nominees to put a stop to them, put a pause on them, to ensure that my message was heard.
But what I did not do was hold my fellow Senator's legislation from potential passage or hinder efforts to make our disaster program run more smoothly.
I hope my colleague can now see how this bill would positively impact both my State and his State and do what is right for the American people by passing this bill in which he voted for, again, out of committee.
Mr. President, today, I urge my colleagues to vote for Alaska's Right to Produce Act 2.0, which would provide greater certainty for responsible resource development on the North Slope of Alaska. It would benefit Alaskans, and it would benefit our great working Alaskans, but it would benefit America.
As a little bit of background here--and you have heard me talk about this--for years, Alaska, as a resource development powerhouse for America, has been recognized by Congress to be so important for our country because of our extraordinary abundance of natural resources that we have legislated many times about our State's getting
However, time and time again, when my Democratic colleagues get control of the Senate, of the House, of the White House, they have a core principle. One of their core principles is to come up to the great State of Alaska and try to shut it down. They kill thousands of jobs and try to turn this great State--my State--into a national park, with no ability to develop our economy and resources.
This is just the latest example of what I call the Last Frontier lockup.
During the Biden 4 years and the Senator Schumer 4 years, when he was the majority leader, the far-left Democrats--heck, all of the Democrats--came after Alaska in a huge way: the Last Frontier lockup. In every part of the State--southeast Alaska, the North Slope of Alaska--everywhere--on resource development, they came after us. How did they do that? What was the Last Frontier lockup? It is pretty hard to imagine.
It was 70 Executive orders and Executive actions--70--exclusively and singularly focused on crushing Alaska--seven, zero. As a matter of fact, on day one of the Biden administration, they issued 12. They were ready to go. The Senate Democrats got power, and the Democrats got power in the executive branch, and they were, like: Let's go. Let's do what we always do. Let's crush Alaska. Let's kill thousands of jobs in Alaska.
When this was at, like, 50, I actually met with President Biden and his team.
I said: Mr. President, what are you doing? What are you doing? You are sanctioning my State more than you sanction Iran's and Venezuela's oil and gas sectors. We are Americans, and they are terrorists, and you are putting thousands of hard-working Alaskans out of jobs. Why are you doing this, sir?
Three years ago, I did that with President Biden. Don't even get me going on his answer, but he was clueless. As we all know, he was clueless on a lot of stuff, but he was clueless on that--70. The White House--the executive branch--I don't think, in the history of America, has ever used its power to so forcefully single out one State to try to damage it and crush it. That is what we went through with the senior Senator from New York as the majority leader, who was all in on it, by the way.
We are going to see one of the top guys who is always against Alaska here in a minute, because I know he is going to object to my bill. So it is pretty crazy that they would do that. Imagine any other State-- New Mexico--if the Federal Government said: Well, we are just going to go crush New Mexico.
But they did it to Alaska.
And it wasn't just the 70 Executive orders. There is LNG. Remember John Kerry, the climate czar guy and former Senator? He went over to Asia--Korea, Japan--and told them: Don't buy Alaskan LNG. Don't buy American LNG.
I mean, this is almost treasonous, but that is what they did. For 4 years, with Schumer and Biden, that is what my State got. But we have taken action. When Republicans gained control of the Senate and gained control of the House and gained control of the White House, we said: We are going to put Alaska back on top.
So what did we do? We attacked the Democrats' attacks on my State, which, again, hurt workers and hurt Alaska but hurt America in a couple of different ways.
First, last year, in the Working Families Tax Cut Act, we got mandatory lease sales for the next 10 years for NPR-A, the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska; for ANWR; for Cook Inlet. These are all Federal oil and gas basins.
We said--Congress said--hey, regardless of who is President in the coming 10 years, they have to do lease sales in Alaska.
It is good for the country. It is good for Alaska. It is good for our workers. It is good for our families. It is good in terms of reducing energy costs, for goodness sakes.
So we got that in the bill. That is in the law. If you have a President like Biden, who is anti-Alaska, and they come into office 2 years from now, they are not going to be able to lock it up like Joe Biden did.
Secondly, we passed Congressional Review Act resolutions. I led the effort on some of them. The Biden NPR-A rule locked down this entire area, the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, set aside by Congress-- for what?--for oil and gas development. That is why it is the National Petroleum Reserve. We ripped that Biden rule out by the roots with a CRA here in the Senate, and we did the same with the Biden lockup of ANWR, and those got passed into law.
So it is a two-pronged strategy to prevent, unfortunately, my colleagues, which they always do--my Democrat colleagues in the Senate, in the House, and in the White House, if they gain power, which they will eventually--from coming back and trying to shut my State down, which they always do.
Today, the Alaska's Right to Produce Act 2.0 is the third prong of this strategy. First, we got mandatory lease sales from the Working Families Tax Cut Act. Then we got these Congressional Review Act resolutions passed and signed into law to prevent more lockups of Alaska. This is the third prong.
Now, this bill has some history. In 2024, the House passed the Alaska's Right to Produce Act 1.0. The bill was sponsored by my good friend from Minnesota in the House, Representative Stauber, who has done so much to help my State. Five Democrat House Members voted for it, despite the original cosponsor of that bill--who represented Alaska at the time--changing her mind and urging her Democratic colleagues to vote against her own bill to help Alaska.
Wow, you can't make that up. But this is nothing new, as I have said, for Democrats in DC.
A lot of Democrats in Alaska don't agree with shutting down Alaska, but it is here in the Senate where they have written over 16 letters to administration officials--Democrats and Republicans--opposing ANWR development and NPR-A development. They wrote six separate letters to insurers and financial institutions--believe it or not--using the power of the Senate to write the CEOs of banks and insurance companies: Don't invest in Alaska.
It is an abusive use of power. My colleague from New Mexico usually leads those efforts, by the way. They have tried to shut down our State not just legislatively but by pressuring the private sector to not invest in Alaska. Still, five House Democratic colleagues understood how important Alaska was, and they voted for the Alaska's Right to Produce Act and bucked the pressure from far-left Democrats in the House, including from the original cosponsor of the bill.
To them, I say thank you. Alaska says thank you. Our workers say thank you, and the country applauds your bravery.
So what does this bill do?
It is simple. For the coastal plain of ANWR, it protects oil and gas development in the nonwilderness portion of the coastal plain from being shut down or being reversed by a future administration. In the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, it similarly protects oil and gas development in NPR-A from a shutdown by a future administration. The bill is designed to give companies greater certainty in terms of the leases that they already have in these areas in that they can't be canceled.
The bottom line is that this is the third prong of our ability to get Alaska to be developed again, and it does something pretty simple: It protects Alaska's existing oil and gas development opportunities from being shut down by a future administration.
Now, it is a little ironic and maybe fitting that the Senator from New Mexico is going to object to my bill. I am pretty sure he is not here to support it. He has been a leader in shutting down Alaska. He has led these efforts. He has led these letters.
Can you imagine if every U.S. Senator said, ``I am going to go after New Mexico. I am going to go after their workers. I am going to go try and hurt the Native people of their State. I am going to write all of the insurance companies and the banks and say, `Don't invest in New Mexico' ''? Can you imagine what a disaster this place would be?
I wouldn't do that, but he does it. He does it all the time.
And there is a little irony here. When the Biden administration and Senator Schumer were locking up my State for 4 years, it was ``drill, baby, drill'' in New Mexico. They were shutting down my State, led by the Senator from New Mexico, and New Mexico, on Federal lands, went from 1 million barrels of oil a day to 2 million barrels a day. If that is not hypocrisy, I don't know what is. But that is what we are up against.
By the way, if the Senate changes hands and the Senator from New Mexico is going to be chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--holy cow--my State will be crushed because that is what he does. So I am pretty sure he is going to object to this.
But, you know, I get a little hot about this issue because I think it is unfair. And I think, when people treat their State way differently than my State--imagine what they were doing: Hey, Joe Biden, shut down Alaska, but, by the way, make sure you approve all of these Federal leases in New Mexico so we can ``drill, baby, drill.''
That is exactly what the Senator from New Mexico did.
But here is why I get really hot about this. It goes beyond resource development. It goes beyond jobs. It goes to this chart. I have brought this chart out many times. This is a chart that depicts the life expectancy in America from 1980 to 2014 and the parts of America where people live longer. Now, you will see here that it is a little complicated of a chart. The blue and the purple are where people are living longer. In the green here, that is 13 years over a 25-year period. Red is where we have actually lost life expectancy really, really bad.
But look at this map from 1980 to 2014. Unfortunately, we had a couple of places in America where people weren't living very long or were losing life expectancy. That was kind of the opioid epidemic and other things. But the place where people lived longer for that 25-year period in more than any other State was in Alaska--Alaska. Right here in the North Slope, in the Aleutian Islands chain, in the southeast, and in the Northwest Arctic Borough, people were living 13 years longer.
I have asked my colleagues many times to give me a policy indicator more important of success than that of the people you are representing living longer. I don't think there is one.
So there is huge success up here in my State.
Now, why did that happen? Why are the people of Alaska living longer?
Well, in part, a sad story is that a lot of Native Alaskans, primarily the Inupiat people--great people, by the way, incredible patriots--have a very low life expectancy, some of the lowest life expectancy in the country by far.
But when we started developing our resources--oil and gas on the North Slope--people got jobs; people got hospitals; people got flush toilets; people got health clinics and hospitals--things that the rest of the country assumes that you have but we didn't have here.
So this issue, for me, is about the life and death of my constituents. So when I have colleagues come and they block all this stuff, and yet they do it for their own State, which is really problematic, it riles me up because I am talking about life and death of my constituents.
By the way, the greater Inupiat people here, during the Biden administration, the head of the Tribe, the head of the Alaska Native Corporation, the head of the borough--all the leaders, all Native Alaskans--came down to Washington, DC, eight times to try to meet with the Secretary of the Interior to say: Don't lock up our land. You will hurt us.
Do you know how many times she met with them? Zero. Zero. And then they locked up their land anyway, canceling Native voices.
So I am really hopeful, because of life expectancy, because of jobs, because of lowering healthcare costs, because of lowering costs of energy, because of our national security, that my colleagues will do the right thing and pass my legislation, the Alaska's Right to Produce Act 2.0, right now.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 678, S. 5438; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, nestled in the far northeast corner of Alaska is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--not ANWR, which sounds like some country in the Middle East, but the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the wildest and most untouched places in all of America. It is our land. It belongs to every single American. It is public land set aside by President Eisenhower to protect our amazing native wildlife.
I have been blessed to see this refuge with my own eyes. I have seen the critical habitat on the coastal plain where caribou drop their calves. I have met with Alaskans whose way of life is sustained by those same caribou. The Arctic Refuge is also home to hundreds of iconic wildlife species, including 200 species of birds that have called this landscape home since long before humans even stepped on the continent. But that is only part of the story. It is also deeply connected to the traditions and daily life of people who have depended on that wildlife for thousands of years.
Now, that said, the Arctic Refuge's future is increasingly at risk. In the past year, we have seen relentless attacks on the Arctic Refuge from both the Trump administration and my Republican colleagues here in the Congress.
Today, the Senator from Alaska is trying to force through another bill that would once again prioritize oil and gas over literally everything else, and he is doing so by using a procedural tactic to bypass the legislative process.
Now, let me be clear. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee has not held a single hearing on this legislation despite being chaired by the Republicans; nor have we reported it out of the committee.
But here is what I can tell you already. This bill is deeply unpopular. Even the oil and gas majors themselves don't want to drill in the Arctic Refuge. And that is because development in the refuge is complicated, it is expensive, and it carries enormous reputational risk for these corporations. So to incentivize drilling there, this bill waives revenue requirements, meaning that the oil and gas industry pays less and the taxpayer gets less.
I have been around long enough to remember a time when this same Republican Party promised the American people that they would get $1 billion--billion with a ``b''--from these lease sales in the Arctic Refuge. Right now, those lease sales have secured $9 million. They seem to be missing a few zeroes--especially when it is sacrificing priceless public lands.
I came to the Senate floor back in December when Republicans first overturned the management plan for the Arctic Refuge to warn that in order for drilling in the Arctic to be economical, oil prices would have to be at least $75 a barrel, just to break even on oil from the refuge.
Well, with full control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, my colleagues have managed to make that math finally work. Thanks to the war in Iran, today, oil prices are hovering near $100 a barrel. We all feel that at the pump. I guess the President finally got his energy emergency, and it is one of his own creation.
The reality is that oil from the Arctic Refuge won't solve the global instability that was caused by waging an illegal war in Iran. What it will cause is devastating impacts on that landscape, forever changing this landscape and the wildlife that depend on it, which is why his bill also waives all the environmental laws and deems environmental studies complete.
So there won't be an accounting of the impacts this development would have on the caribou, whose 1,500-mile migration ends there, or the hundreds of species that live there, like the polar bear and musk ox, or the people who rely on the area for subsistence, which is why this bill also prohibits future litigation on oil and gas authorization.
The bill does not stop with the Arctic Refuge. It would also ensure that subsistence rights and conservation on some of the most unique and special public lands in the western Arctic could never be evaluated again. It paves the way for a management framework where automatic approvals
We could be discussing ways to lower electricity costs, how to bring down the price of diesel, but, instead, here we are again trying to drill in a national wildlife refuge.
I know there are some corners of the universe that believe this is part of a secret plan to promote New Mexico energy at the expense of Alaska energy. I want to be clear. I support oil and gas development in the right places. As the Senator from Alaska has stated many times, New Mexico does its part. But I don't support drilling everywhere. I asked the Biden administration to set aside Chaco Canyon for that very reason, and I especially do not support drilling in the crown jewel of America's National Wildlife System. Therefore, I do object.
Mr. President, there has been no place that has been studied more than the ANWR 1002 plain in terms of environmental laws and environmental impacts, probably in the entire United States. This is something strongly supported by the people I represent, including the people that actually live there, which is something the Senator from New Mexico constantly forgets. The people I represent actually support this and the other opportunities to develop our resources.
One of the reasons there was very little lease activity when we passed the ANWR bill recently is because the Biden administration didn't execute on it. They canceled the leases. A Federal judge held that against the law, so it was lawless action once we passed the bill.
But, again, one of the things my colleague never talks about is that during the 4 years of the Biden administration and the 4 years of the majority being led by Senator Schumer, the attacks on Alaska were constant from all of them. The Last Frontier lockup: 70 Executive orders--a lot led by the Senator from New Mexico. But it was ``drill, baby, drill'' in New Mexico. Over 50 percent of all Federal leases on all Federal lands during the Biden administration were to drill for oil and gas in New Mexico, and the Senator from New Mexico was fine with that. They go from 1 million barrels to 2 million barrels a day. But he comes and wants to shut down my State. If that is not the definition of a hypocrisy, I don't know what is.
So I am disappointed, but I am not surprised. We will continue to do what Alaskans want but what Americans want, and that is responsibly develop the resources of my great State to help the people of the North Slope who want it.
When the Senator from New Mexico talks about--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. SULLIVAN.--what the Alaska Native people want, I think he should stay in his own lane because he has no idea what he is talking about.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the motion to proceed to H.R. 9340.
Electricity demand, as we all know, is growing, driven in large part by hyperscalers and data centers. Tech companies have promised to pay their fair share and not make American households pay the extra costs, but it is not enough to take their word for it, and it is not enough to merely tell States to consider--consider--making utilities charge data centers for all of the costs associated with the generation, additional transmission, and distribution upgrades necessary to serve them.
States are already taking action. According to the Smart Electric Power Alliance, more than 30 States have adopted specific retail rate structures for large loads like data centers.
H.R. 9340 simply does not protect Americans from high utility bills. Let me be clear. This bill has no--zero--requirement that data centers actually pay for their own grid upgrades. H.R. 9340 might make some Members of the Senate feel good about voting on a bill that sounds like it does something about data centers. Let me be clear. This is nothing more than a messaging bill on the eve of an election.
Rather than voluntary pledges or vague suggestions to States, Congress needs to pass a law with real teeth. If voluntary pledges and suggestions worked, families and small businesses wouldn't already be staring down rate hikes right now.
So let's require data centers to pay for their incremental costs and prohibit by law passing those costs on to consumers.
Mr. President, I want to be clear: We should ban congressional stock trading. But H.R. 7008, the so-called Stop Insider Trading Act, is a political scam. It is a disingenuous attempt to use figleaf new ethics rules to pass a sweeping, unrelated voter suppression law, while not even adequately addressing congressional stock trading. Americans are rightly concerned that lawmakers' stock portfolios can create conflicts of interest and opportunities to cash in on inside information. But instead of resolving those issues, this bill creates superficial changes to ethics standards while undermining the right to vote. Americans will not be fooled by this charade.
It is long past time that we gave Americans confidence that lawmakers are not profiting from positions of public trust. That is why we should impose a real and effective ban on congressional stock trading. This bill, however, fails to clean up these ethics issues. For example, it would allow Members of Congress to sell stock during their term in office, transactions that could appear to be based on nonpublic information, like a heads up that a company would face regulatory action. It also would permit members to own stock in industries they oversee through their committee assignments. Loopholes like these create too many opportunities for corruption and self-dealing.
And under the pretext of cleaning up Congress, this legislation would enact photo voter ID requirements like those in the so-called SAVE America Act, making it harder for Americans to exercise their right to vote. Specifically, the bill would require voters to present one form of ID from an overly restrictive list of identification documents in order to vote, excluding other reliable forms of ID such as a student ID, which would disproportionately harm eligible young voters and communities of color. It also imposes onerous new requirements on vote by mail. Congress should not be creating more unnecessary barriers for eligible voters to exercise their foundational right to have their voices heard and votes counted in our elections.
The Senate should be passing a genuine ban on stock trading by lawmakers. But I cannot support this bill, which is clearly just another attempt by Republicans in Congress to pick their voters--which have repeatedly failed--under the guise of ethics reform. I remain committed to working with my colleagues on real legislation to clean up these ethics concerns.
Mr. President, I cannot vote for a bill that promises protection but lacks the enforcement mechanisms needed to deliver on lowering Americans' electric bills. To add insult to injury, Republicans pushed for a vote on this without even taking the opportunity to consider real solutions, like my Power for the People Act.
The Ratepayer Protection Act relies solely on a process that would ask States to consider implementing data center-specific rate classes, without any guarantee that these rate classes would be implemented and without any
Americans are facing an affordability crisis from the grocery store to the gas pump, and they deserve real solutions, which is why I filed my bill, the Power for the People Act, as an amendment to this bill. The Power for the People Act includes meaningful reforms that would actually hold data centers accountable for driving up energy prices, something that the Ratepayer Protection Act purports to do but cannot achieve on its own. Unfortunately, Republicans have provided no guarantees that we would consider amendments to the Ratepayer Protection Act.
This body has repeatedly failed to address the real concerns of Americans struggling to make ends meet, with Republicans prioritizing tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations and Trump's golden age for billionaires. Now the majority is claiming to address a real problem with the bill before us, with a solution that falls far short.
The energy demand of data centers is unlike anything we have dealt with in recent history and our solutions need to meet the moment. My Power for the People Act protects consumers, creates good-paying jobs, and mitigates harm to the environment, but we have no assurance that it could be considered. Without the opportunity to provide amendments, the bill before us today is an empty gesture, leaving Americans shouldering Big Tech's costs with no relief.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 548, H.R. 7008, a bill to amend chapter 131 of title 5 to require certain restrictions on stocks for Members of Congress and their spouses and dependents, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 47, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, and the nays are 47.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 684, H.R. 9340, a bill 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, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk called the roll.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 57, nays 43, as follows:
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. On this vote, the yeas are 57, the nays are 43.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Keith Sonderling, of Florida, to be Secretary of Labor, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 47, as follows:
(Mr. BANKS assumed the Chair.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 53, the nays are 47.
Mr. President, there is a great divide right now--a pretty significant divide right now--between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of the way that ICE is enforcing our immigration laws in the interior. Democrats believe that what is happening today is both illegal and immoral, and that is why, right now, these operations are being funded through reconciliation--because we believe that it is our constitutional obligation to refuse to fund an Agency that is out of control and not in compliance with the law. Republicans broadly have supported the actions of this administration as they target both immigrants without documentation and legal immigrants for arrest and detention.
I am going to offer a request to pass a bill by unanimous consent that does not seek to repair that divide. Instead, it seeks to try to bring us together on a very narrow question, a question that arises from a set of incidents that have happened in my State of Connecticut over the course of the last month and a half.
On the morning of August 26, the second day of school for most school districts in Connecticut, in Danbury, CT, busdrivers began reporting to the school district that they had noticed the presence of ICE agents in and around schoolbus stops. At one of them, a constituent of mine, a father, was waiting at the schoolbus stop with his 6-year-old son and, just moments after saying goodbye to his son for the second day of school and even before the schoolbus had fully driven away, ICE arrested and detained him.
This practice was reported all around the State: ICE gathering at schoolbus stops, waiting until a young child had boarded the schoolbus, and then detaining and arresting the parent.
For parents in this body, you know how anxious that first day of school is, how kids are just brimming with nervous anxiety about that first day, and you know what that feels like to watch your kid walk onto that schoolbus.
Well, what do you think it does to those kids on that first and second day of school to see ICE officers at the schoolbus stop? Imagine that 6-year-old who boarded the schoolbus, when he got back from school that day, got off, and his parent wasn't there--a 6-year-old, feeling like he had been abandoned. In this case, he may or may not have seen the arrest because it happened almost immediately after he got on.
To me, it is pretty obvious that the intent here with this new practice of ICE showing up at schoolbus stops is to traumatize the children. But you don't have to agree with me that the intent is to traumatize the children to just come to the conclusion that ICE does not need to be at schoolbus stops in order to enforce the law. There are a myriad of other settings in which ICE can operate to carry out arrests while staying clear of schoolbus stops, where the intent or at least the result of those operations is to leave little kids in trauma.
Now, I have introduced three pieces of simple legislation to say that ICE should not operate at daycare centers, they shouldn't operate at children's playgrounds, and that they shouldn't operate at schoolbus stops. I am asking unanimous consent today for only one of those pieces of legislation that I think is the most urgent. And while I don't expect the result to be agreement, I had hoped that we could find agreement on this narrow question: that ICE should just stay away from schoolbus stops; ICE shouldn't be traumatizing children at schoolbus stops, taking parents in the middle of the schoolday--because there are so many other ways that ICE could operate so as to detain the people that they feel that they need to detain without it being done in this deeply traumatic way.
In fact, we came close to getting an agreement on a similar proposal before negotiations broke down over DHS funding. Senator Blumenthal, my colleague, has a piece of legislation that is even broader than the three bills I am proposing. The idea is that there should just be a ban on the operation of ICE at sensitive locations, which would include places where children gather but also would include other sensitive locations like churches. And I know my Republican colleagues were close to agreeing to that before these negotiations broke down.
And so, today, I am taking a small slice of that broader proposal and just asking my colleagues: Can we come to an agreement that schoolbus stops should be off limits? Can we decide to have compassion for that 6-year-old child who got on the bus for a second day of school and, when he got back off the bus, was abandoned?
The last point I will make is this: While that practice is bad enough, it is important to note that ICE tried to cover up the practice. When they were presented with these stories from Danbury, DHS doubled down and said: Any claim that ICE targeted parents at a schoolbus stop is false. But then, just days afterward, we had the video evidence.
This often happens: ICE says something didn't happen, and then we have the video proving that it did. In Danbury's case, we have two separate videos taken from the schoolbus showing ICE operating at the schoolbus stop and detaining this parent.
So my hope is that we can come together and just make a decision that, while we have big differences over the broader issue of ICE enforcement, ICE should stop preying upon our kids at sensitive locations; in particular, schoolbus stops.
Mr. President, and so, my motion is this: notwithstanding rule XXII, and as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5435; I further ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this is just another attempt after many other attempts by Democrats to stop ICE from doing their job and enforcing our immigration laws.
As you are seeing today, Democrats will do anything that they can to stop
In my State of Indiana just over this last weekend, an illegal with an ICE detainer, drunk and behind the wheel of a vehicle, killed an innocent 33-year-old woman, Tamara Thomas, who was walking near a gas station in downtown Indianapolis. Tamara, unfortunately, is not the first Hoosier who lost her life because of an illegal immigration crisis in this country.
In February, an illegal ran a red light and killed 64-year-old Terry Schultz in Avon, IN, and in the same month, an illegal semitruck driver who entered our country using Joe Biden's CBP One app swerved into oncoming traffic and killed four Amish men near my hometown in Jay County in Northern Indiana.
A couple of months ago, Indianapolis police arrested an illegal from Mexico who now faces 30 separate charges, including rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping; and this illegal came into our country under the Biden administration.
Last year, a 35-year-old illegal who was living in Indianapolis was sentenced to 35 years in prison after he sexually exploited and abused a 15-year-old girl.
Hoosiers are going to keep getting killed and harmed by illegals unless we let ICE officers do their job. The madness has to end, and it needs to end right now. We need to support our ICE officers.
ICE needs to be allowed to do their job without Democrats getting in their way. I have been in the Senate for 2 years, and over and over again, the Democrats have tried to obstruct ICE from doing their job.
This bill that I am about to object to today will prohibit ICE from operating near schoolbus stops, but we know that illegal aliens are often at or near bus stops.
So here is the deal, in Virginia last year, ICE arrested a 36-year- old illegal alien from Mexico, a convicted pedophile who exposed himself to a child at a schoolbus stop.
How can anyone hear a story like that and think that the answer is to block ICE officers from doing their job at a schoolbus stop?
If we prohibit ICE from operating at schoolbus stops, you know what will happen; we will just create sanctuary schoolbus stops. All the illegals, the criminals, the pedophiles will end up at schoolbus stops because they know they will be protected there.
All those illegals in this country--they will hide out at bus stops. And knowing that ICE won't be allowed to touch them, you will see more stories like what you saw happened in Virginia last year.
It is just crazy to me to think that we would prevent ICE officers from going wherever they need to go to do their job, even if that means at a bus stop, in those rare--very rare--circumstances and occasions.
ICE needs to be allowed to operate wherever the job takes them, especially at places where illegal aliens can harm our children.
Look, ICE is not the enemy. Democrats are trying to make our ICE officers out to be the enemy, and they are not. Just a couple of weeks ago, ICE conducted a 5-day operation in my home State, which resulted in the arrest of 426 illegals. These criminals included people who were charged with robberies, drug trafficking, sex crimes, and more.
ICE also arrested an illegal from Guatemala who illegally voted in national elections in Indiana. The Democrats all say that never happens, but they arrested an illegal just a few weeks ago in Indiana who did that.
So here we go again with another attempt by Democrats to obstruct our Federal law enforcement. Instead of giving ICE more resources to do the job that they need to do--not less--instead of doing anything that we can to deport illegals from our country, Democrats are here asking for unanimous consent to tie ICE's hands behind their backs and prevent them from doing their job.
I won't let that happen. That is why I came to the floor today. ICE needs to be allowed to enforce the law and do their job, and for that reason, I object.
Mr. President, just three final points. I think Senator Banks articulates the Republican position, which is that immigrants are by definition a safety threat to the United States of America, and that is just not true.
I don't draw an issue with the fact that there are immigrants who commit crimes, but there are natural-born citizens that commit crimes at higher rates than immigrants do.
The fact of the matter is that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than people who were born here in the United States. We should just keep people safe in this country no matter the country of origin or birth of the perpetrator.
Second, I think you can make the decision that ICE should be able to operate in the interior while keeping certain sites off limits. In fact, this was the Trump administration policy in the first term.
So Republican administrations in the past have come to the decision that certain sites should be off limits for ICE. In fact, when I talk to Trump supporters in Connecticut, who broadly do support the President's immigration policy, they also believe that they went too far in Connecticut. There were a lot of Republicans who showed up at our big rally the day after this incident happened.
So it is not true that you can only support robust enforcement operations in the interior if you support ICE being even at schoolbus stops.
And then finally, I will be honest with you, I did not anticipate that one of the arguments against this bill would be that it would lead to the development of sanctuary bus stops.
What do we imagine here? People are going to live at bus stops? We are going to have encampments around bus stops of people who are here without documentation?
I just think it is an example of how this whole debate has gone way off the rails. It is just fundamentally detached from the reality. You want to support Trump's immigration policy--you can do that while still saying that we shouldn't have ICE officers patrolling schoolbus stops with the purpose of traumatizing little children. That could be a consensus position, and we could choose to still disagree over the broader Trump immigration policy.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc: Calendar No. 638, S. 2498, the National Park System Long-Term Lease Investment Act; and Calendar No. 641, S. 2754, the Crystal Reservoir Conveyance Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bills by title en bloc.
The senior legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which had been reported from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert in lieu thereof the following:
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which had been reported from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert in lieu thereof the following:
Mr. President, I further ask that the committee-reported substitute amendments be agreed to; that the bills, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, all en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendments, in the nature of a substitute, were agreed to en bloc.
The bill (S. 2498), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
The bill (S. 2754), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, today I rise to speak up about Donald Trump's reckless trade war against Canada and the impact it is having on my State of Nevada.
Because of Trump's childish fight with our neighbors, tourism is down, prices are up, and Canada is suddenly rethinking its relationship with our country. Let me tell you why this matters to my State.
Canada is the No. 1 source of international visitors to Las Vegas. In 2024, nearly 1.5 million Canadians visited Nevada. It helped boost our tourism economy and the small businesses that depend on it. And Canada is also one of Nevada's top trading partners.
In fact, Nevada exports approximately $1.6 billion worth of goods to Canada. So think about this: $1.6 billion of revenue coming to businesses in my State of Nevada to further contribute to our economy. And this is exactly why a good, healthy relationship between Canada and the United States is important for Nevada and Nevada's economy, Nevada's families.
Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to harm our relationship with Canada. He is hurting Nevada families. He is hurting Nevada businesses along the way.
And one of the first actions that Trump took since returning to the White House was beginning a reckless and erratic trade war that has resulted in higher prices for American businesses, American families, for all of us, every single one of us.
And to date, he has imposed tariffs on many items we buy from Canada with higher rates on products like building materials, brand-name prescription drugs, alcohol, and paper products.
I have heard from restaurant owners paying more for paper towels and home builders paying more for materials. These costs not only make it impossible for our business owners to plan ahead, but then they get passed on to families.
Most recently, Trump utilized a never--never-before-used trade authority. I want to emphasize this: never-before-used trade authority to target Canada, applying 50-percent tariffs on a wide array of Canadian goods.
In retaliation, Canada recently imposed their own tariffs on goods they import from the United States, including from my State of Nevada.
Remember the $1.6 billion in Nevada goods that we export to Canada? Well, that number is going to be reduced because of these retaliatory tariffs.
Just yesterday, Trump's ban on the import of many Canadian goods has gone into effect, restricting Americans' freedom--restricting our freedom--to buy what we want to buy and making all of our prices go up.
The back-and-forth tariffs, they are a disaster, but they only tell one side of the story of Trump's hostilities toward Canada. Trump's childish attacks on Canada included threats to annex it as the United States' 51 State; its references to the Canadian Prime Minister as ``Governor''; Trump has tried to rename Lake Ontario to ``Lake America.'' Trump even canceled trade negotiations because a Canadian television ad hurt his feelings.
After a year and a half of this nonsense, where has Trump gotten us? Well, I can tell you where, because last year, Canadian tourism to Las Vegas declined by 17 percent--you got that right, 17 percent. This contributed to an overall decline in tourism that made 2025 the worst nonpandemic drop in visitation for Las Vegas since we began tracking data.
When we see a decline like this, it isn't just a data point for us. Hospitality employs nearly a third of all workers in Nevada. So this means fewer guests in our hotel rooms, which leads to fewer shifts for housekeepers. It means fewer visits to our restaurants and less tip money for our servers and bartenders. It trickles down to less money for all of the hospitality workers and when they go home to the neighborhoods they live in, less money they can spend there.
It is not only Nevada that is feeling this. According to the Canadian Government's own data, total spending by Canadians in the United States declined by over $3 billion. Canadians themselves are pointing to Trump's hostility as a reason for this decline. They are still traveling and spending money--Canadians are; they are just not coming to the United States. And this situation was 100 percent avoidable. None of this had to happen.
So no one can argue with the facts. Tourism is down because of Trump's trade war with Canada. Less money is being invested in our economy, and our small businesses are struggling to navigate expensive and constantly--constantly--changing conditions.
That is why I am here today to pass a simple resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that Trump's trade war against Canada must end. It must end to get our economy and the relationship with our northern neighbor back on track. I hope my colleagues look at the facts and agree.
So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 898 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Mr. President, this is not the first time, nor do I believe it will be the last. There have been multiple--and I mean multiple--efforts by my colleagues on the Democrat side to bypass regular order in the Senate and pass legislation without it being vetted as it properly should.
It is true that we have some disagreements with Canada, although Canada is
But the key point here is that doing so by asking to bypass the entire Senate process of developing legislation is not the approach. As chairman of the Finance Committee, which is the appropriate forum in which this debate on our trade policy should be held, I object to this unanimous consent request.
Mr. President, while hard-working Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities, there is one class of people who have never had it better: fraudsters. Scammers are stealing more than $1.4 billion from taxpayers every day.
Yesterday, I released a list of con artists who each fraudulently billed government programs for $1 billion or more. These billionaire bandits looted programs for the elderly, poor, disabled, and veterans to lavish themselves with million-dollar mansions, Rolex watches, expensive jewelry, and luxury cars.
One fraudster brags:
He ripped off Medicare for over a decade before getting turned in and said:
Based upon the numbers, he isn't lying. If grift were a government Agency, the ``Department of Fraud'' would be the fifth largest. The $521 billion going to fraud every year exceeds the individual annual budgets of the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, Homeland Security, State, and Justice.
That is right, folks--fraudsters are being better taken care of than our veterans and farmers.
Fraud is not a victimless crime, either. In fact, it has far-reaching consequences. We have learned that taxpayer dollars stolen from the U.S. Small Business Administration financed the assassination--yes, you heard it right--the assassination of Haiti's President in 2021. A team of Colombian mercenaries and their pistols, rifles, and tactical gear were all paid for with the support of $840,000 fraudulently obtained from the Small Business Administration. The political instability resulting from the assassination forced hundreds of thousands of Haitians to flee their nation, taking refuge in the United States. The Biden administration provided many of these migrants with food stamps and medical care--also paid for by American taxpayers.
The inability to safeguard small business assistance resulted in taxpayers footing the bills for both the crime and its consequences.
Many of these scams also involve identity theft that upends the lives of the unsuspecting Americans who then must suffer the consequences.
For example, the Medicare number of a woman in California was stolen by scammers who used it to fraudulently bill for hospice care. When she sought physical therapy for an injury, Medicare denied her coverage because she was listed as dying in hospice.
Think about that. The same government Agency that wouldn't provide her with the healthcare she was promised approved and paid for bogus medical bills submitted by scammers using her information.
Medicare exists to ensure folks like her receive medically necessary care, not to make billionaires out of fraudsters. Yet the identities and personal information of more than 1 million Americans have been stolen by Medicare mobsters to file phony healthcare claims.
One illegal alien submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare and other health insurers, over just 6 months, using stolen identities. He laundered millions of the stolen tax dollars overseas to the Russian mob before some of his victims alerted Medicare that they were receiving notices for care and items they did not receive prescribed by doctors they had not visited.
Another con artist orchestrated a billion-dollar fraud machine that used foreign call centers to submit bogus bills. He treated programs meant to care for the elderly, veterans, and servicemembers like his own personal cash register.
From fake daycare centers to phony small businesses, the examples are absolutely endless, but the public's patience is not. According to the latest Gallup poll, 9 out of 10 Americans say government corruption is widespread. That is a record high number.
I challenge you to find any other issue where Democrats, Republicans, and Independents agree with each other more strongly.
We owe it to all Americans to stop the government grift. My Protecting American Taxpayers Act would do just that by stopping government Agencies from handing out quick cash with no questions asked, triggering automatic investigations when there are sudden and suspicious spikes in payment claims, banning convicted fraudsters from receiving taxpayer dollars, taking back the money that was already stolen, and sending those darn scammers to the slammer.
If enacted, this bill could save $240 billion. That is billion with a ``b,'' folks.
The choice is quite simple. Give the money to the fraudsters or return it to the taxpayers. What would really be criminal is if the Senate left town today without passing this meaningful legislation to eliminate fraud.
As if in legislative session, and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 452, S. 4952. 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, every bit-- every bit--of real fraud needs to be rooted out. Unfortunately, the Trump fraud policy is not about that.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have begun to make a habit out of calling any Federal policy they don't like ``undeserving fraud": Medicaid, fraudulent; Affordable Care Act coverage, fraudulent; SNAP, fraudulent; childcare, fraudulent; Social Security, fraudulent; kids with disabilities who need Medicaid for home care, fraudsters; small business owners with ACA plans, fraudsters; families who need help paying for groceries, fraudsters; working parents who need childcare, fraudsters; seniors living paycheck to paycheck, fraudsters.
Americans are struggling to afford necessities--food and electricity and medical care. The Republican solution to these challenges is to create more hoops, more redtape, more cuts. The result is more pain and suffering for Americans in need and higher costs for families.
When it comes to fighting fraud, there are proven approaches that we can use right now.
Earlier this summer, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Chairman Crapo, the senior Senator from Iowa, and Senator Cortez Masto that provides a sustainable funding boost to the cops on the beat at the Office of Inspector General at HHS. This organization is so good at what it does that it recovers up to $12 in fraud for every $1 spent on resources. My view is that is a no-brainer.
Senator Ernst's bill is chock-full of automatic triggers, privacy violations, and power grabs for Trump's false-flag schemes on fraud. It is nothing more than a veiled attempt to make life harder for the working families that I was just talking about, who need help with the rising costs of healthcare, childcare, and more.
For example, an automatic HHS investigation is triggered if a childcare provider's payments increase by 10 percent or more in a 6- month period. That increase could be triggered for reasonable situations: The provider is simply serving more kids, serving kids with disabilities, or creating more slots for infants.
The prospect of a Federal investigation, if they increase their enrollment or care for more infants, would deter many providers from expanding their services, making it even more difficult for families to afford good healthcare and childcare.
The bottom line is this government overreach wouldn't fight actual fraud. It would make it harder and more expensive for families to get the care and support they need.
In addition to funding the cops on the street, I am also squarely focused on going after the greatest source of fraud: sophisticated corporations and the ultrarich using well-heeled lawyers and accountants to flout the Federal laws to avoid paying what they owe or bilking billions from taxpayers.
In my view, that ought to be the focus of Congress' efforts to fight fraud.
Mr. President, I am sorely disappointed today that we were not able to pass this commonsense legislation. And we have seen, time and time again, actual examples being put forth in this body to demonstrate the grift of these scammers.
And, unfortunately, we are not able to pass what is bipartisan legislation--a package of bills that has passed through many of the various committees here in the U.S. Senate--again, a bipartisan package that stops the grift and the scamming of the Federal Government.
We held a committee hearing, not too long ago, where I had in front of me, in the Small Business Committee, a woman that came from Minnesota. She started off her testimony by saying: I am a Democrat, but I can't stand by idly and watch as money is flowing out the door to the grifters.
She gave very powerful testimony. She worked for the State government, and she saw the rampant fraud that was happening in Minnesota. She raised it to her supervisor. She raised the issue to those in charge, and she was told to be quiet and not question what was going on. It eventually led to her firing. But the problem was--and she brought it forward.
She said: Every dollar that was being scammed that I identified, it was important to me that it get to the families that need it. Why? Because at one time, I had been part of one of those families.
She grew up in a family that was poverty-stricken and filled with abuse. Their family relied on those dollars for their support and yet, as a grown adult, she saw scammers taking advantage of those programs that are meant for the elderly, for the veterans, for those that are struggling to break free from poverty. And what happened to her? She was fired.
So this is commonsense legislation, checks and balances put on those programs. For everyone enrolling in those programs, we should check to make sure that they do qualify and meet Federal law and regulations.
So, again, I am very disappointed that the Democrats have rejected this, again, a bipartisan package of bills meant to save our taxpayer dollars for people that are truly vulnerable. I am sorely disappointed.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today to seek unanimous consent to pass Senator Coons' and my bipartisan legislation, the NO FAKES Act.
The NO FAKES Act provides landmark Federal protection for the voice and visual likeness of creators and all Americans. It would protect them from the proliferation of harmful, AI-generated deepfakes that are created without their consent. From artists and songwriters to students and everyday citizens, our Nation deserves meaningful protections against these harmful deepfakes. Our bill would establish clear guardrails that protect our creators in Tennessee and across the entire country.
In addition to establishing a Federal intellectual property right in every American's voice and visual likeness, we also provide for a clear notice-and-takedown framework, as well as safe harbor provisions for companies that comply. These provisions ensure that when a platform receives proper notice of a deepfake, that platform must promptly remove or disable access to the harmful content. If they promptly remove the content, they won't face liability under the bill.
Importantly, we have included explicit First Amendment protections in this bill. For example, we have excluded commentary, criticism, scholarship, satire, and parody content from being removed, as well as news and sports broadcast material.
This legislation would protect artists while safeguarding creative uses for AI, which is why it has received endorsements from a wide range of stakeholders, including record labels, streaming platforms, AI companies, musical artists, and organizations involved in protecting our children and protecting dignity.
At this point, I yield to my colleague for his comments.
Mr. President, I would like to start by thanking my colleague from the State of Tennessee.
This has been a tremendous experience in working together to find a way to protect creators and, frankly, all Americans.
We live in an age of AI anxiety, AI optimism, and AI experimentation in a way never previously thought possible. In the next 5 minutes, I could generate a brief film in which a colleague, say, from the State of Texas is the hero of a major football game or a colleague from the State of Tennessee is performing what is otherwise known as one of Elvis Presley's landmark pieces of music.
We each do have a right in what makes us ``us'' in our voices, in our images, and in the property rights that attach to our likenesses.
This bipartisan compromise is the result of years of negotiation with the creative community, with platforms, with studios, and with a lot of different interest groups, including First Amendment and civil rights advocates.
This bill, the NO FAKES Act, creates a new intellectual property right to allow not just celebrities and famous Americans but all Americans to control their digital revenue. As my colleague just said, it creates a takedown system to allow you to promptly enforce those rights if you believe that a platform has wrongfully put it up and a prompt counter-notice process to allow you to have it taken down if the rights holder or the platform decides that it violates some fundamental right like the First Amendment. There are key and explicit protections for free speech, for parody, for satire, for documentaries, for newscasts, and for bio-pics.
The work that went into this, over years, was substantive and serious. I want to thank my chief counsel, James Barton, and I want to thank my colleague and her staff for their tireless work to first secure the support of the movie and music industries--the actors, singers, songwriters, performers--to secure the commitment and engagement of online platforms, like YouTube and TikTok; to get AI companies, like OpenAI and IBM, on board; and to get organized labor and child safety groups on board.
Ultimately, our bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a voice vote, and it has 14 bipartisan cosponsors. It is my hope that we will be able to pass this today in recognition of the hard work of my colleague from Tennessee and our cosponsors, Senator Tillis and Senator Klobuchar.
With that, I yield the floor to my colleague from Tennessee.
I thank my colleague for his consistent work on this.
He is so right. This has been something that we have worked on for years, and it is the result of so much bipartisan work and negotiation in explicitly putting in protections for free speech.
Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII and as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 446, S. 4591. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to start by commending my colleagues and friends, Senator Blackburn and Senator Coons. They both are sincere and passionate about this bill, and they both worked hard. They worked a long time to protect artists and to protect creators, and I support that endeavor wholeheartedly. I want to see this bill pass.
Indeed, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, I voted for this bill and expressed, at the time, that I wanted to see the bill pass. But I also said in the Senate Judiciary Committee that I was concerned that there were not sufficient free speech protections in the draft of the bill, as written, and that free speech parody and political parody needed to be more fully protected. There is a difference between stealing a country music star's voice and using it for commercial purposes and engaging in political parody.
For example, Spencer Pratt, when he ran for mayor of Los Angeles, had fantastic ads--made using AI--that parodied his political opponents. They were funny; they were effective. I don't think anyone watching thought Karen Bass was actually a Batman villain from the ``Lego'' movies, but people laughed, and they shared them, and they were effective communication.
Likewise, President Trump has used AI for political communication. I don't think anyone really believes that there was a flock of Canadian geese marching with machineguns. But, again, it was a powerful communication tool.
So, at the markup, I expressed that I and my team were happy to work with both Senator Blackburn and Senator Coons to enhance the free speech protections so you are protecting legitimate free speech while going after the theft of someone's right of publicity.
One of my concerns about how this bill is drafted right now is that it would apply to satirical websites like the Babylon Bee or The Onion, and it leaves the decision as to whether someone's use of a likeness falls within the exception--it creates an exception for what it calls bona fide parody, but it leaves it to Big Tech to make the decision as to whether it falls in that exception or not.
And the use of a deepfake law to silence and punish political speech is not idle speculation. In fact, California lawmakers have already suggested that Pratt's viral campaign ads could violate State deepfake rules. That, I think, is a real problem.
So I will reiterate, and I will say also that I have no hesitation against strong legislation that stops deepfakes. Indeed, I am the author, along with Senator Klobuchar, of the only legislation Congress has passed regulating AI and prohibiting deepfakes, the TAKE IT DOWN law. I think that illustrates the sort of approach we should have in targeting a specific problem--in that instance, publishing explicit, nonconsensual, intimate images, either real or deepfakes. That is now a Federal felony, and there is now an obligation on tech platforms to remove that content.
So I will repeat to my friends the commitment I made at markup: I am happy to work with you. I want this bill to pass, and I will suggest: Let's take the next few weeks to have our staff work together to strengthen the free speech protections. Then we can come back here and pass this into law while fully protecting free speech.
Mr. President, it has been disappointing that the Senator's staff chose not to accept the very language that he was wanting to see. We accepted that into the bill.
May I read to you:
So, if he thinks that he wants a candidate to be able to use certain images in political commentary in a nonharmful way, that is in there:
That is language that is there.
So, if he is wanting to do that, that language has been offered. He can solve this right now by putting his John Henry right there on that language.
I would also remind my colleagues that there are laws against impersonation. If it is the physical world, you are not allowed to impersonate somebody to defraud them; with the intent to defraud or defame; with the intent to deceive people; with the intent to create a false identity. It is a felony. It is a felony. The problem is that it is not applied to the virtual space. There is a difference there. But you try to protect people in the virtual space and, all of a sudden, people want to say ``free speech.''
So I would ask my colleagues: Are you opposed to any of the State laws that make it a felony offense to impersonate a person? Go to the bank. Drain their account. Show up at a place of employment, impersonating them.
Try to grab their retirement account. Oh, there are laws for that. But, no, you can scam somebody all day long online and get by with it. You can actually show people, as my colleague from Delaware said, in different situations, doing different things, and they have no right-- no right--to protect their name, their image, their voice in the virtual space.
I will contend that I disagree with my colleague from Texas. We have tried to work with his staff. We have tried to work with him.
The NO FAKES Act does not chill First Amendment protected speech. We have worked with First Amendment legal experts in drafting the bill, and we are confident that it is First Amendment compliant. We have even doubled down on this language.
Now there are States, including Tennessee, that already provide statutory protection against the misappropriation of a person's name, voice, or likeness, and those statutes have been upheld.
In addition, the stated goal of our bill is for courts--the courts-- to make decisions regarding First Amendment jurisprudence, not platforms. The platforms, thus, are not the arbiters for making First Amendment decisions. This is really helpful in preventing censorship of conservative speech online.
This bill contains the necessary, broad exceptions for entire categories of speech--including news, public affairs, sports broadcasts, documentaries, biopics, commentary, including political commentary, criticism, scholarship, satire, and parody. This protects more than the First Amendment and much more than the only Supreme Court case on this subject, Zacchini v. Scripps.
If someone believes their content that was removed from this bill was protected speech, they can submit a counternotice triggering judicial review within 14 days if the victim wants the material to stay down; otherwise, the content can go right back up. This ensures that any protected speech that is removed based on a notice stays down for a very short time while preventing platforms from engaging in censorship.
As my colleague said, we have worked with groups for years to get this right. We have gotten it right. The protections that my colleague from Texas wanted to see included in the bill are there.
This is legislation that should pass and make its way to the President's desk to make certain that every American knows their name, their image, their likeness, their voice cannot be used in the virtual space for deception, for fraud, for personal harm.
Mr. President, if I might just briefly conclude my comments on the same matter. I look forward to working closely with my colleague from Texas and my colleague from Tennessee to find compromise that allows us to move this bill forward. It is one of the most ready- for-enactment, defined, complete bills in the AI space that creates a new intellectual property right for all Americans. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Of course I respect First Amendment concerns, and, of course, I want to make sure that the notice and takedown process is set in terms of its incentives such that it leans towards protecting political satire and other forms of free speech, and I very much look
Mr. President, I want to share the story of a young man named Juan Lopez. Juan was a hard-working family man who lived in Georgia. On Black Friday in 2021 he was murdered while on the phone with his sister withdrawing cash from a stand-alone ATM.
Juan's story is not an isolated tragedy, and, sadly, many of these crimes are never reported.
Back in 1934, Congress enacted the Federal Bank Robbery Act in response to a plethora of bank robberies that plagued the early 20th century. This legislation did one simple thing: make bank robberies a Federal offense. And as a result, bank robberies fell dramatically.
Now, as we are seeing robberies happening at ATMs found at grocery stores, outside of banks, and on back-country roads, it is clear that action is needed to protect millions of Americans who rely on ATMs for cash--cash that buys groceries, that pays for public transportation, and that makes rent.
There are now more than 530,000 ATMs in the United States handling more than 10 billion transactions each and every year. As bank branches decline with roughly 20 percent fewer today than a decade ago, thefts at ATMs are rising, increasing 21 percent year over year.
In some cases, robbers can walk away with $15,000 in 5 minutes. And under current law, Federal prosecutors often lack the authority to pursue them. That is why, together with Senator Ruben Gallego, ranking member on the Digital Assets Subcommittee in the Banking Committee, I introduced the Safe Access to Cash Act bringing the Federal Bank Robbery Act into the 21st century. The Safe Access to Cash Act closes that gap in the law allowing Federal law enforcement to investigate and bring justice for crimes like this.
This legislation has support from our Nation's leading law enforcement organizations, from organizations that represent stores and retailers, and from groups that bear the financial cost of repeat ATM robberies.
I want to thank my colleagues Senator Grassley and Senator Durbin for their leadership in passing this legislation through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 350, S. 3798.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which had been reported from the Committee on the Judiciary, with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert in lieu thereof the following:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be considered and agreed to, and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment, in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
The bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
Mr. President, I rise to express the strongest possible support for the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act.
Senate Democrats began working on this more than a decade ago when I first became chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
This bipartisan legislation contains more than 60 tax reforms to improve tax policy for the American people. It cracks down, in particular, on shady tax prep services that scam low-income Americans to make a quick buck. For too long, taxpayers have been victimized by these shady tax preparers. They file returns that overclaim refunds; they pocket excessive fees from their customers; and then they leave the taxpayers struggling to repay the IRS for the erroneous tax returns the scammer filed on their behalf.
These updates will help ensure refunds get out the door on time. It will improve customer service at the IRS, and it will make it easier for taxpayers to get the help they need during filing season.
The bill contains provisions championed by Members--and I want to emphasize this--on both sides of the aisle. I could stand here all day describing how these provisions are going to improve service for taxpayers, but I am going to name just a few in the interest of time.
The bill includes provisions championed by Senators Warnock and Warner that will digitize tax returns, expand online services, and make it easier for taxpayers to know when they will be getting their refunds. A provision championed by Senator Bennet protects access to the Earned Income Tax Credit. A provision authored by Senator Welch would expand access to critical low-income taxpayer clinic services for taxpayers who have a dispute with the IRS. It includes an important provision by Senator Coons which reduces unnecessary tax burdens on Americans held hostage abroad, and a bill that I worked on with Senator Hassan that helps ensure that whistleblowers will receive the recognition they deserve for blowing the whistle on wealthy tax cheats.
So there has been an extraordinary amount of hard work that goes into this. I wish to yield now to my Northwest partner, and as we say in Oregon: This bill is no small potatoes.
Mr. President, Senator Wyden, thank you. You are right, this bill is no small potatoes; it is a legacy piece of legislation that will be of massive support and strengthening to American citizens. I thank my colleague Senator Wyden from Oregon for working in a bipartisan fashion with us to draft this legislation.
In fact, all of the colleagues in the Finance Committee have worked with us on this, and all of them have a piece of this legislation, as Senator Wyden has indicated, and I thank them as well.
Every year millions of Americans work diligently to comply with our tax law. When they do, they deserve a tax system that is competent and responsive. Too often, however, taxpayers encounter a system that falls short of those baseline requirements. The Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, or TAS Act, is a bipartisan response to this taxpayer frustration. It reflects what the Finance Committee has collectively learned through years of casework and oversight and proposals from both sides of the aisle.
It is designed to provide taxpayers with top-quality service and ensure taxpayers' rights are protected. For example, a taxpayer who files a return should be able to go online and know where he or she stands with the IRS. A taxpayer who calls the Agency should reach a representative promptly. A taxpayer who submits a document electronically should not lose legal rights because the Agency processes it late.
These are basic expectations of tax administration. The TAS Act modernizes the IRS so that it can better meet these and other similar expectations. It expands electronic processing of returns and correspondence so filers receive their refunds faster. It also improves online accounts and callback technology and requires the IRS to provide clearer information about backlogs, wait times, refunds, and suspended returns. It also improves online accounts and callback technology and requires the IRS to provide clearer information about backlogs, wait times, refunds, and suspended returns.
But modernization alone is not enough. A modernized bureaucracy can still be burdensome.
To better protect taxpayer rights, the TAS Act increases access to the IRS Independent Office of Appeals and the Taxpayer Advocate Service. It modernizes U.S. Tax Court procedures. It improves review in innocent spouse cases and other disputes. It unlocks funding for low- income taxpayer clinics. And it increases accountability for unauthorized disclosures of taxpayer information.
These are just a few of the examples of the 65 taxpayer-focused improvements in the TAS Act, which the Finance Committee approved by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 26 to 1.
That resounding bipartisan agreement is bolstered by support from the nonpartisan National Taxpayer Advocate and many leading tax practitioners, who agree that this bill will help the IRS administer the law more predictably and more promptly.
Once again, I thank Ranking Member Wyden and the other Members of the Finance Committee for their partnership in shaping and advancing this legislation.
I urge all of my colleagues to support the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act.
Mr. President, at this time, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5349 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.
Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Crapo- Wyden substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; that the title amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the title, as amended, 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 amendment (No. 6847), in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of Amendments.'')
The amendment was ordered to be engrossed and the bill to be read a third time.
The bill was read the third time.
The bill (H.R. 5349), as amended, was passed.
The amendment (No. 6848) was agreed to, as follows:
The title, as amended, was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, in 1972, there were just 300,000 female athletes in high school and collegiate sports. Today, there are over 3 million young women who are competing in high school and collegiate sports. This is something that every American should celebrate, and it is all thanks to what has happened with the law we commonly call title IX.
By requiring equal resources for facilities, training, recruitment, and scholarships for female athletic programs, title IX opened opportunities for women that would have been impossible in the past.
Today, female athletes are competing at the highest level of professional sports. From the Olympics to the World Cup, they are inspiring millions of young girls to pick up sports that improve their health, boost their self-confidence, and teach them leadership skills to succeed on and off the field.
It goes without saying that this incredible development, over the last five decades, would have been impossible if men were allowed to compete in women's sports and steal opportunities from girls. This is just plain old common sense. But when it comes to protecting opportunity and fairness for young women in sports, we have seen a
In Executive order after Executive order, the Biden administration pretended as if there are no biological differences between men and women. And they used the full weight of the Federal Government to force schools to allow biological males to play on female teams--endangering young girls and destroying fair play.
Parents were forced to look on as biological men took titles, medals, and trophies that belonged to their daughters. Many young women dedicated their entire lives to their sports, only to miss out on scholarships, career opportunities, and hard-earned records that they deserved.
The American people rejected this appalling agenda, and they returned President Donald Trump to the Oval Office with a mandate to restore common sense and protect our female athletes. And that is exactly what he has done.
On Inauguration Day, the President issued an Executive order that affirms the Federal Government's position that there are only two sexes: male and female. This ensures government policies are grounded in biological reality, not gender ideology.
A month later, I had the honor of joining President Trump in the Oval Office as he signed an Executive order that bans biological males from competing in women's sports.
As President Trump works to protect female athletes, it is imperative that we celebrate the accomplishments of the young women who practice, train, and compete every day to achieve excellence in athletics.
That is why I am calling for unanimous consent for my resolution to establish October 10--10th month, 10th day, or XX, which is like the female chromosome--as American Girls in Sports Day.
In addition to celebrating and honoring and cheering these female athletes, this resolution calls on sports governing bodies across the country to protect women and girls in sports. That is it--very simple.
It doesn't ask the Senate to create a sweeping new Federal program, and it doesn't ask that we amend any law. It simply asks the Senate to say that women's sports ought to be protected.
Yet every single time I have introduced this resolution since 2024, Democrats have come down to the floor, and they have objected.
We will see if they are going to do that again this year. If they object to celebrating our wonderful women, our girls, who are competing in sports, they are going to reveal that, once again, they have become the anti-woman party.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 934, submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Senator Blackburn's resolution.
Make no mistake, the Senator's resolution is not about celebrating the impact of women and girls in sports. This resolution is yet another salvo in the relentless, escalating attacks on Americans' freedom that MAGA Republicans are waging at every level of government.
While families are facing the affordability crisis, the Trump administration and my Republican colleagues care more about limiting Americans' access to vaccines and healthcare, dictating school curriculum and banning books, overruling the judgment of experts when the facts do not align with their extremist agenda, and even policing what sports kids can play.
You know, we should be having a big debate out here right now on the fact that healthcare costs are skyrocketing, gasoline prices are skyrocketing, diesel prices are skyrocketing, food prices are skyrocketing--everything is skyrocketing--and it is all cascading down onto the kitchen tables of families trying to pay their bills. And it is all because of this war in Iran.
And the price of fuel is going through everything in our society. The price of diesel is skyrocketing. That is what farmers use to do their farming. That is what farmers use once they finish their farming to put it in trucks and travel it across the country to put it on people's kitchen tables.
The prices are going up and up and up. We are not having a hearing on that.
Yesterday, the President met with all of the trillionaires and the billionaires in the White House who are the AI giants. And, of course, people are scared in our country. They are wondering: Is the government going to do anything to control AI and these billionaires and millionaires?
So Trump met with them, and when it was all finished, Trump said: You don't have to worry about it--he just took care of it, Trump--because all of these trillionaires and billionaires are all agreeing that they are going to voluntarily agree to a morally binding standard.
What? Are we really going to trust these people--by the way, they are all guys--these guys to really protect our people from AI?
Donald Trump is talking about something that is morally binding. We should be having hearings on this. We should be having debates on this out here. But we are not because, in a Republican-controlled Senate, they put all these people in a witness protection program. They don't appear before Congress. We don't debate the issues that are really impacting people, their families, and their kitchen table--the things that they really want to have the Senate do something about.
And that is because MAGA Republicans are obsessed with demonizing a small group of people to distract from the President's disastrous policy agenda.
And Senator Blackburn's resolution is just the latest distraction. This effort is senseless. It is cruel. It is hateful. Politicians in Washington, they don't get to decide who belongs in society and who does not.
I lead the Trans Bill of Rights because it is our moral obligation to defend the rights of trans people. Trans people deserve the right to healthcare, to receive proper identity documents, to safe schools and workplaces, to serve their Nation, to celebrate the same unassailable rights to education and to jobs and to housing as every other American--simply put, to experience the freedom, the joy, the opportunity afforded to every other American.
Earlier this year, I met with Abbott, a constituent of mine from Massachusetts. He is 13 years old, a three-time Little League all-star baseball catcher. Abbott is a successful and beloved student. And with the freedom and dignity to get the healthcare he needs, Abbott is thriving.
Every child deserves that freedom, that safety, that opportunity. Abbott understands this. He came into my office to demand that his rights and the rights of other children like him be protected. And I fully support him.
Today, I stand in opposition to this resolution, and I stand in defense of all children.
Here in America, we know that freedom must be fought for. It is fought for by people who say ``no more'' in the face of discrimination; ``no more'' in the face of invasive laws that seek to limit what healthcare you can get; ``no more'' to restrictions on whom you can love, what books you can read, what fields you can play on. Every transgender and nonbinary person deserves to live freely and without fear of discrimination.
This resolution is not about freedom; this resolution is about fear. And I will stand to object as many times as necessary to stop such fear, such hatred.
Mr. President, my colleague from Massachusetts really doesn't have to look very far to see how girls are being impacted by biological males that are playing in women's sports. Indeed, I have pulled some stats, and if you want to look at stolen gold medals, medals that have been taken from young girls and have gone to males, Massachusetts has had 70--70--70 girls--70 girls that were not able to receive the medal they actually
So when my colleague tells us this is hypothetical, it is not. We have a list--a list--of what has happened in different States: Arizona, 101 medals; California, 803 medals. You have Ohio, 123 medals. You have Illinois, 120 medals. This is something that is happening out there; it is not hypothetical.
My resolution is very simple. The whole thing is 2\1/2\ pages top to bottom. And it shouldn't be surprising that my colleague is objecting to a simple resolution honoring girls and women in sports because, as he mentioned, he had introduced the Transgender Bill of Rights, which would call on the Federal Government to allow individuals to participate in sports on teams and in programs that best align with their gender identity. In other words, it would allow biological males on girls teams and in their private spaces, like school facilities, bathrooms--places that align with their gender identity.
This is a very simple resolution, very simple. It celebrates the impact that American women and girls have had on sports culture throughout our history. We have all cheered as we have watched women compete and succeed. This resolution celebrates that. It recognizes the importance of title IX, which seems to be controversial to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
I yield the floor, and I submit for the Record the American Girls in Sports Day resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. President, I have the privilege--I have been in the Senate for 12 years, and I have never led a codel, but I decided one last trip that I wanted to take before I left the Senate was to get back over to Ukraine to really understand what is going on, on the ground and maybe what message we should convey to our colleagues here in the Senate and to our--to the administration and to the American people.
This is the second time I went to Ukraine. We also had a very, very productive visit with the government leaders in Poland before we traveled over to Kyiv and then to Kharkiv. We were actually the first delegation since the war began that has been able to get out to Kharkiv where the fighting is only about 10 or so miles away from the city's center.
But as we were going on the trip--well, first, when you are in Kyiv, which we spent the first 24 hours, it is an amazing sight to see a country that was illegally invaded that is being bombed on a daily basis still trying to have some semblance of normalcy--and this is in Kyiv.
But then when you go to Kharkiv and you see, as you are riding out there, civilian targets: gas stations, convenience stores, schools, and buildings that have all been bombed by the indiscriminate bombing of Russia, it gives you a real sense of the devastation, the heartbreak, and all that is wrong with the decision that Vladimir Putin made to invade a sovereign nation.
And I, for one, think that the war--I agree with the people of Ukraine. That invasion started in 2014. As a matter of fact, I remember vividly when I was campaigning in 2014 how critical I was of the Obama administration; in the face of an illegal invasion, the idea was to send them blankets, not to send them the support that they needed to repel a foreign invader.
Now fast forward, they are invaded again, and they are doing the same things in the outer reaches of Ukraine that they have been doing in Crimea. They are trying to--they tell kids in Crimea in school that the leaders of Ukraine are Nazis; that they are there for the denazification of Ukraine.
I find that rich since the President of Ukraine is Jewish, but that is what Vladimir Putin is telling his folks to tell these kids in school; that they are subhuman; that the people of Ukraine are. You can't think of them as human beings; you think of them as life forms that they need to eliminate.
But later on in the colloquy, I want to talk about what we need to do. But I also want to go back to a trip that I took a couple of years ago, my first time into Kyiv, and the devastation and the stories that I witnessed in an area called Bucha.
I did a floor speech after that visit, and I really want the American people to understand what happened there in about the first month of the war shortly after they invaded that February 2022.
Vladimir Putin directly allowed mercenaries and military officers to authorize their folks on the ground to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians.
There are numerous reports of rape of a daughter, rape of a wife in the presence of the husband, then to have the husband murdered. This is not fake; this is well documented. As a matter of fact, I went to a memorial where I saw those victims' names on a wall. That is what we are dealing with in Ukraine. That was 4 years ago, and they are continuing that systematic terror of this population.
That is what we are dealing with here. We are not dealing with two adversaries or two countries that we have good relationships with and that we are trying to calm a dispute between the two. We are literally talking about, in my opinion--I will let my colleagues speak for themselves--a fight between good and evil, between communism and Western democracy, between freedom and totalitarianism. That is what we are confronted with in Ukraine.
I could go on with a number of other examples, but rather than do that now, I would like to defer to my colleague from Utah, Senator Curtis. It was his first time in Ukraine, but some insights and takeaways from you, Senator Curtis, and then we will go to Senator Armstrong
Thank you, Senator Tillis, Senator Armstrong. It was a delight to travel with you. I think it is appropriate to point out how much work goes into a trip like this. To our team and our staff that put this together and to the Ukrainians that were our hosts, a big thank-you for the things we were able to see and do.
As you mentioned, this was a unique codel--the first, as I understand it, since the war began to actually go just a few miles away from the front.
We were told about stories where they would actually put a black bag over people's heads as they took them into these underground bunkers so they wouldn't be able to identify where they were later on for the Russians. They spared us that indignity and actually put us in vans with curtains that were 360 degrees as we drove into these facilities. We were then shown firsthand how this war is being fought and why this is a different war than most people expected and why the Ukrainians actually are having significant progress.
In reality, we saw drone pilots fly these drones into Russia, strike their targets, and have a pretty large impact. As a matter of fact, more Russians are being lost per month than they are able to replace.
My staff pointed out that had you put a snail on the Russian-Ukraine border the day the war started, it would actually make more progress than Russia has made. And I think that is an important story for us to come back and tell because the American people need to know this is not the war they thought it was 4 years ago.
Ukraine, we learned, is not the adversary we thought it was 4 years ago. It appeared, when this began, to be a very weak friend--a friend that was totally dependent on the United States for its support. In reality, what we found while we were there is that Ukraine is not only not weak and not dependent on the United States, they are actually now a partner with the United States in providing us things and help that will help us in the future. The benefits to the United States far exceed, in my opinion, what we have actually put into this. I think we will see that at a greater rate in the future.
Clearly, these drones have changed the way battles are fought. What Ukrainians are learning, the data they are collecting--imagine the data from
I would also like to mention that one of the aspects that doesn't get talked a lot about is how much humanitarian aid is going to Ukraine that is nongovernmental.
While I was there, I had a chance to peel off from our group and go see a village called Hansen Village. A constituent in Utah, a friend, started Hansen Village. Obviously, it is Mr. Hansen. The amount of effort and work he has put into this so that some of these Ukrainians can start over and have hope and have a chance is overwhelming and touching.
I had a chance to talk to a couple of people in this village and hear their stories of imprisonment and torture by Russia. One gentleman had seen his son tortured to death. The stories will break your heart. But I am so grateful not just for the U.S. support but for the humanitarian support.
It just may be in Utah that we have more people who speak Ukrainian as a second language than anywhere else in the United States, and certainly it touches a lot of the hearts of Utahans.
There is a lot I would like to cover, but I don't want to dominate. Perhaps we can come back in just a minute. But I would like to turn the time over to my colleague from Oklahoma, Mr. Armstrong.
Thank you, Senator Curtis, and it was truly a joy to travel with you.
This was not luxurious travel. We were getting tired of each other's odor by the time we got done with this trip. And we were pretty confined to the same van for a long period of time. But it was very impressive on us, I think, the images that we took away.
I think, you know, a lot of times, we think about things and everything here, and I think the questions we have here in the United States about, man, we have our own issues, we have our own budgetary issues, and we have our own fiscal issues that we need to deal with here--and all of those are very true, and all of those are very valid questions for Americans to be asking, including myself. But when you realize what is actually going on there on the ground; you realize the spirit of these people that did nothing wrong, that were minding their own business and had their own country attacked, had a democracy that they valued, that they cherished and had that attempted to be run over the top of; and you realize what is the difference--the reason they have been able to surprise everybody on the field is the spirit that they have and the belief that people like ourselves, people that believe in democracies, are going to be there to help and support them.
Well, I tell you what, they have surprised us all because of their passion, their belief in democracy, and what they know to be true versus what they are being told by Russians.
So it is impossible--that is the second time I have gotten to go to Ukraine--it is impossible to miss the spirit of these people and how badly they want to defend their own democracy and not be told somebody else's version of the world but their own open, free perspective of the world.
But despite that issue, there are also some very important things that we as the United States should be taking from this, and we have a great opportunity to do so. This war is different than any war that has been before us. This is modern warfare with AI involved in it, with very low-cost weaponry involved in it, and I think a display that we had better pay attention to of very--in the business world that I come from, we would call this continuous improvement on steroids. This is every day a feedback loop right back into their drone development systems every day about how to get better, how to improve their communication with their drones, and they have done a remarkable job.
If you think about the static approach that we have today to war and defense and how long it takes us to develop and to acquire our acquisition systems, that is no match for a group of people that have the spirit that they do and for a continuous improvement process that is being developed. They are giving us the opportunity to experience that without having to put our lives on the line, and we better take advantage and we better be listening and learning from their experience.
We better take seriously an opportunity that we have to help our allies to defend democracy in a place that desperately wants it. This isn't a matter of us not knowing what things will be like after we leave; this is an area that has a democracy, a stable democracy, and we need to be there to support it and show how much we care.
I have about 10 pounds of potatoes here for a 5-pound bag, but I am going to turn it back to Senator Tillis as well. So a lot of great observations we had.
I think what we all left with is an unambiguous view that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim.
We all need to understand that when Russia was lying to us and saying they were just doing a training exercise and then turned it into a special military operation, our best intelligence estimates indicated to us--not publicly but in a private setting at the time--that Russia would likely have air superiority within about 3 or 4 days and total control of the ground within a week or two.
Putin has failed. He never achieved anything resembling that. He has sent tens of thousands of Russians into a meat grinder. It is so bad now that he is talking about conscription beyond the forced conscription he has now. And get this--he is forcing young Ukrainians to kill Ukrainians because they are brainwashing these young people into thinking they are subhuman.
He is not conscripting Russians yet. He is likely going to. But what he is doing is letting people out of prison and giving them U.S. dollars--$40,000 and $60,000 bonuses--to go on the battlefield. One of them was a prisoner of war. He was a sexual predator right out of prison. His family was given $60,000 to go fight. Now he has been captured, and he is going to be used to possibly trade to get a prisoner of war back to Ukraine.
Right now, 30,000 Russians are dying every month. They are being plowed down, and they are making no ground. You heard Senator Curtis talk about a snail moving more quickly. That is mathematically true. If the snail started to get to where they are on the frontline right now, they would have beaten the Russians.
So the last 10 minutes we have here before we have a UC coming up, I think, at 5:05 is to talk about what is next.
What I think is next is asking the President, encouraging the President to use to the maximum extent possible the sanctions capabilities that Congress sent to him over the past couple of weeks to put the pressure on Russia, to not be the first President who equivocates against a Russian dictator, to continue the tradition of getting an opportunity. When you can win against communism, when you can win against totalitarianism, you do everything you can to win. And guess what. It will not require a single drop of American blood on the battlefield.
All the Ukrainians want is support. All they want is intelligence. All they want is to make sure that the European nations continue to do what they are doing and the United States maybe do a little bit more, and that has as much to do with sanctions as it has to do with materiel support. I, for one, hope we can do both.
If I have time remaining, I do want to talk about what I think is a dreadful trend in the last year and a half in terms of materiel support, but I would like to hear from Senator Curtis and Senator Armstrong about what we think we need to do to help Ukrainians before they go into the winter, which is when they are most vulnerable, because I firmly believe that if they make it through this winter, Putin's days are numbered and rightly so.
I will be brief because I want you to have the last word, but I came home convinced that we should continue finding ways to do four simple things: 1, help Ukraine to defend itself; 2, affirm NATO's resolve to use force against any threats or attacks on our members; 3, impose costs on Russia and those sustaining its war machine; and 4, one of the things we learned over there is that signals from the United
Well, we certainly learned that on the very frontline, Ukrainians are doing a great job of actually way outperforming the Russians on the frontline. But the thing they are not capable today of defending themselves from are the ballistic missiles and the jet- powered drones that they don't--the Ukrainians don't have the capabilities of building interceptors for that.
So you sit there on the frontlines with a lot of death going on and destruction among soldiers, but meanwhile, you have, every night while we were there, air raid sirens continuously.
And so you think about the impact on the people there. So they are really sitting there somewhat defenseless with drones in the air every night and ballistic missiles.
And so what I think we can do is they do need air defense interceptors; they need spare parts and ammunition that assist in the defense of their lands and their citizens, and they need them consistently.
And so that is one reason that I support the bipartisan Fast Tracking European Investment in Ukraine's Defense Act. That is S. 5175. This legislation would make it easier for NATO allies and other designated partners to purchase and transfer certain defensive munitions to Ukraine while maintaining congressional notification safeguards against unauthorized retransfer.
So this cannot be an American effort alone. Our European allies have an enormous stake, and they understand that and they should continue to carry more of the burden. But S. 5175 is actually designed to help them do that, and it welcomes greater allied investment in the American defense base and creates a more predictable pathway for our allies and partners to provide Ukraine with specified American-made munitions.
And so I would just say that that is, you know, we do--the Europeans are stepping up. I would say that is one thing that has come very positive out of that--they understand that--but we need to be taking the actions if we expect them to be aligned with us on the weaponry. And the weaponry they use, we need to make sure we are adequately providing it to them so they can help support Ukraine as well.
So that is one of the particular actions I think we need to take as well.
Mr. President, thanks again to my colleagues from Utah and Oklahoma.
This graphic--by the way, the gentleman putting this graphic up is my staff--my MLA--Mike Leeman. It is his birthday today. I don't know if that is allowed, to say that. I won't sing ``Happy Birthday,'' though, for the Parliamentarian's sake. But Mike Leeman is one of the ones who coordinated the trip.
You did a great job, Mike.
Mike also prepared these stats for me because I want to give you an idea of what the winter is going to look like and what the Ukrainians are up against if last year is any indication.
Between October 2525 and March of 2026, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission documented at least 423 attacks on electricity generation, transmission, and distribution facilities; 74 strikes on combined heat and powerplants.
Vladimir Putin is trying to freeze the Ukrainians to death. This is not targeting military facilities. It is targeting homes like people in the Gallery have here, hopefully, safely. It is targeting schools. It is targeting hospitals.
In Kyiv, the attacks resulted in nearly 6,000 multistory buildings not having heat. That is what happened last year. Does anybody believe that Putin is going to do anything less this year?
I could go through a long list of civilian targets, healthcare facilities, schools. Kids are meeting in subways now because they can't safely go to school.
That is the environment the Ukrainian people are living in year- round, but they have the unique threat of a harsh winter. And literally Putin's strategy of terrorism is to freeze them to death in their homes. That is what we are up against. That is what he did last year. Many people died.
What I am worried about--and what we need to do getting ready for this winter--is to change this trend. Our spending has dropped to almost nothing. Now, we are providing support and other forms beyond just the cash appropriations, but we need to do all of the above, ladies and gentlemen.
With the proper execution of the sanctions that we have authorized the President to move forward with, with the proper resourcing--and they are not asking for a lot. This speech alone gives the Ukrainian people hope. They are a pro-American country, and the Ukrainian people need to know that the Americans are behind them, that Congress is behind them. And we need this administration to take a few steps to make it very clear that they are behind them too.
And it starts with fast-tracking some of the funding that is available. I know it is complicated, but we have got to move quickly. And it also continues with the proper imposition of sanctions capabilities enabled in the bill that we passed in honor of Senator Lindsey Graham.
So over the next 93 days that I have left in Congress, I am going to do everything I can to use every lever we can to convince the administration that we have got to make it a priority. We have to move quickly.
The Ukrainian people are patient and still silently pro-American. I didn't go anywhere without having people in bombed-out facilities thanking America for what we have done there.
Well, I think in this winter America can do a little bit more and, if we do, Putin's days are numbered. That is good for democracy, and that is great for the Western World.
And that is our future--not a reemergence of the Russian Empire, not an opportunity to get success in Ukraine, move to Moldova, and try to Russify all of the free countries that the United States and the European nations liberated. That is the end goal, folks.
It doesn't stop with the occupied territory in Ukraine, unless America steps up, Europe continues to do its job, and we stop them in their tracks.
And that, by the way, is not only good for Europe, but it is good for the Russian people who are suffering under his leadership.
I am going to offer to my colleagues--we are going to be mindful of time. But if you would like to make a few closing comments, I want to thank you.
I see at least one of the staff up in the audience. It was a trek. We were on planes, trains, and automobiles, but I can't think of a more rewarding trip. I had the pleasure of traveling with you all and your staff, and I thank you.
Senator Curtis, do you want to wind up, then Senator Armstrong?
Mr. President, my closing remarks are just simply this: When you make trips like this, you find out firsthand who your friends are and who they are not. And I will clearly say that Ukrainians are allies and friends, and Putin is not.
Mr. President, I would just add--and Senator Tillis mentioned this--the Ukrainians are worn out. They have been fighting this war. Those on the frontline have been fighting this war for a long time, and you realize how much it means to them that we are there.
I think the sanctions bill that was passed is a huge signal that the United States is still behind them, but they desperately need that. They need to show that we care.
I don't know how many times I told somebody: Listen, if you drove through a neighborhood where I am from some, you will see plenty of blue and yellow flags supporting you. So don't misunderstand that America wants to see you be successful, and we are working hard to make sure that we help you and we provide the resources for you.
They are counting on us to be behind them, and we need to follow through on that support.
Mr. President, we appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion amongst my colleagues. Again, I thank you all for joining us and the staff that have put it together and support us, and I hope everybody will say a prayer for Ukraine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am here to talk about the Kids Online Safety Act and receive unanimous consent for its passage, but I cannot begin this conversation without remarking on the colloquy that we just heard because I so strongly welcome the powerful statements made by Senator Tillis.
I hope he reflects a growing consensus on his side of the aisle in favor of action by the United States to help prepare Ukraine for the long, hard, cruel, potentially devastating winter ahead.
I came back from my 11th trip to Ukraine just several weeks ago more convinced than ever that the United States must stand behind Ukraine, not just with words on the floor of the Senate and not just with the Russia sanctions bill--as profoundly and important as it is--but the kind of materiel, self-defense, and other military aid and economic support that will help Ukraine weather the cruel, hard winter ahead.
And there were three requests that President Zelenskyy made to me when I sat face-to-face with him at the National Prayer Breakfast: the Russia sanctions bill, air defense, and Starlink. They are all potentially within the control of the United States of America.
And time is not on our side or their side, and they are fighting our fight. Our national security interests are at stake. In North Carolina and Oklahoma and Utah--all across the country--our sons and daughters will be in harm's way if we allow Ukraine to fall to Putin's slaughterous, murderous aggression.
So I am hoping we can have a conversation in the next 30 days so that when we come back and we do the NDAA, we can make use of this consensus to take that next step.
We are not done with the Russia sanctions bill, significant as it was. And I thank my colleagues for joining in that effort in the memory of Senator Graham and the response to the pleas from Ukrainians for our throttling flow of revenue to Putin's war machine. To bring him to the table and to seek peace, that is the goal--peace in Ukraine, security for the people of Ukraine who are so bravely fighting now.
I thank my colleagues for their support for Ukraine and for the United States standing up and standing strong for the people of Ukraine, and I welcome this colloquy.
I hope the next time we are on the floor, talking about it, we can make it a bipartisan colloquy because support for Ukraine should be and has been bipartisan.
Mr. President, I want to share my appreciation--speaking of bipartisanship--for my partner in drafting and advocating the Kids Online Safety Act, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Unfortunately, she had to make a flight and so is not with us physically. I think she is here in spirit.
I don't claim to speak for her, but we have worked together tirelessly on this bill through public hearings--the kinds of advocacy that it has taken to get us this far with whistleblowers, documents showing that Meta and others knew that their products were harming children.
This bill is the result of years of painstaking negotiations with our colleagues, with advocates, with tech companies. And because of those negotiations, and all the work that was done, we were able to pass this legislation through the Senate by a 91-to-3 vote. We have hundreds of endorsements from across the tech industry itself.
But the major reason we have reached this point is very simply the parents and young people who came forward and spoke to colleagues, gained the consensus that we needed to go forward. This bill is a tribute to parents and kids who have been the most effective advocates.
And let me begin by making absolutely clear, the talking points about censorship or privacy are simply a red herring. This bill is about product design, not blocking content. It is about making product design safe, not about censoring.
Those talking points about censorship or privacy are simply misleading and false. None of it exists in this legislation. The Kids Online Safety Act simply imposes the same standards of accountability that every other industry faces. It requires tech companies to be responsible for their own products. It requires transparency. It gives kids and parents the tools to protect themselves.
Now, just very bluntly, the reason this measure hasn't passed is the tech industry's power, its money, its sway, its lobbyists and lawyers-- armies of them. And there is a human cost to delay. The human cost is lives.
One of the most heartbreaking experiences of this fight is meeting parents who have lost their children--some of them who lost children after the Kids Online Safety Act was introduced. If the Kids Online Safety Act had been law, maybe their kids would be alive today.
I meet parents whose children were taken from them in 2023, 2024, 2025.
Holding back this legislation has cost lives.
The excuse was engineered in Silicon Valley and K Street not to adopt our legislation. Those excuses and lobbying have cost several lives. And, frankly, if delayed today--if it occurs--that is potential damage as well. More children will suffer because the tech industry seems to have a powerful veto over the U.S. Congress.
I want to speak directly to all the parents, everybody watching at home, especially parents who have lost children. There are moms and dads who are anxious that social media is doing harm to their children, and young people themselves who know that they are losing control over their lives because of the addictive content, purposefully made addictive and driven to them by algorithms beyond their control and beyond their knowledge--secret algorithms.
We will overcome Big Tech's obstruction. We will overcome Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. We will overcome the Big Tech obstruction that has so far prevented KOSA from becoming law.
Our coalition has grown, and it is growing. We have more cosponsors and more support than last session. We will not go away. We will not surrender. We will not give up. That is a promise.
Senator Blackburn and I will fight as long and hard as necessary to pass this bill. We will pass it again through the Senate. It was approved unanimously by the Commerce Committee. And we will send KOSA to the President's desk after it is passed.
But we need your help. We need your help to contact, literally, Members of Congress over the next 30 days to ask them--as they ask you for your vote: Where do you stand on the Kids Online Safety Act? Will you vote for it?
Put KOSA on the ballot and demand that Congress pass a strong internet safety bill to protect children.
So I want to thank all the cosponsors, all of my colleagues who have supported us, all the parents and children, all of the advocates, and hope that we can actually pass it by unanimous consent today. And if not then, as soon as we return.
And I ask, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration of S. 1748 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Reserving right to object, if good intentions created laws--or created good laws--there would be no need for congressional debate.
I have no doubt that the authors of this bill genuinely want to protect children, but the bill they have written promises to be a Pandora's box of unintended consequences.
KOSA would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platform to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
While proponents can claim that the bill is not designed to regulate content, imposing a duty of care will inevitably lead to one outcome: the stifling of First Amendment protected speech.
Although many organizations have expressed concerns relating to KOSA's effective censorship mandate, I want to discuss one group in particular.
During the 2024 effort to pass KOSA, a pro-life organization, Students for Life Action, stated:
Students for Life Action concluded its statement by stating:
If KOSA can silence pro-life speech because online messages encouraging adoption and discouraging abortion might cause a teen mom anxiety, then KOSA is the kind of censorship all those who believe in the sanctity of life should oppose.
KOSA should not pass the Senate. But it certainly should not pass the Senate today, the 50th anniversary of the Hyde amendment, which bans Federal taxpayer funds from being used for abortion.
No matter how many times the bill text is altered, no matter how many times KOSA's authors try to disguise its censorship, the reality remains that this legislation will silence constitutionally protected speech.
Government mandates and censorship will not protect children online. The internet may pose new problems. But there is an age-old solution to this issue. Free minds and parental guidance are the best means to protect our children online.
I want to respond very briefly because everything that has just been said in objection to this bill is totally irrelevant.
It is irrelevant because it is based on the misunderstanding that this bill somehow imposes censorship or content evaluation. In fact, it is not a free speech issue.
The bill explicitly focuses on design features. Section 102(a) says a platform must exercise reasonable care in the ``creation and implementation of any design feature'' when that design feature foreseeably contributes to one of the enumerated harms.
The bill even defines ``design feature'' in section 101(4) as a platform feature or component that encourages or increases ``the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the . . . platform''-- ``the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the . . . platform.''
It couldn't be clearer that we are talking here about the kind of design feature that is involved when a manufacturer makes a defective toaster or a car that goes off the road, or some other harm-causing feature that could be foreseeably corrected.
And, finally, the bill specifically protects a child who goes looking for content.
Section 102(b)(1) says the duty of care cannot be construed to require a platform to prevent a minor from ``deliberately and independently searching for, or specifically requesting, content.''
In short, the duty of care has nothing to do with censorship. It says nothing about allowing government enforcement based on the viewpoint of users expressed through speech. And it preserves the First Amendment and everything that is involved in it.
I know my colleagues understand that America is in the midst of a mental health crisis. And one in four children ages 9 to 17 reports sexually explicit interaction with someone they believe was an adult online. And 59 percent of U.S. teens report having experienced cyber bullying.
This problem will not go away in the next 30 days. It will only become more egregious and urgent. And so I regret that Senator Paul is objecting today, but I am hoping that we will act quickly when we return.
Just last week, it was reported that the Trump administration intends to develop public land in several States, including Oregon, to build new data centers.
Since he took office, Donald Trump and his allies have taken every opportunity--every opportunity--to chip away at what belongs to the American people, all in an effort to boost profits for corporations and secure bigger campaign support for themselves.
Public lands are owned and paid for by the American people--our taxpayers. The people get to decide what to do with their public lands, not the big corporations and especially not Donald Trump.
By now, it is well proven that all too often these facilities place massive demands on local utility grids and scarce water supply. In Western States like mine, this is especially troubling as we are facing very serious drought conditions.
My legislation gives Congress a chance to stop these corporate land grabs before they do more damage. This is an opportunity to reject the effective privatization of America's beloved public lands and protect them for future generations of hunters and anglers and hikers and campers.
Congress must not let the Trump administration establish a dangerous precedent, a precedent that our public lands are a fire-sale inventory for development by the highest bidder.
I urge any Member of this body that cares about preserving our public lands and putting a stop to Trump's taxpayer rip-offs to support my bill.
So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5658, submitted earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Reserving the right to object, local communities have a right to determine whether a data center makes sense for them; some want them, some don't.
This bill would obstruct that right in places where Federal land is so abundant, you can't drive 5 miles without running into it. Washington should preserve local flexibility rather than declare an entire category of land off-limits.
The fact is, that can't happen because the reality is, these lands are already being developed in my home State and across the West right now. This is an immediate threat to public lands that we have the opportunity and a requirement to address today in order to protect them.
You can't wait to set something up--the way that my colleague from Kentucky is talking about--while Trump runs roughshod over America's public lands.
I am going to be back in this body again and again until we get a balanced approach to protection with respect to these issues, which we are not getting today because of my colleague's objection.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. President, the Federal Government has become a gold mine for fraudsters. Just last week, we saw that one health insurance marketplace had over 700,000 fraudsters and over $2 billion in fraud. In the 6 months since President Trump tapped Vice President Vance to lead the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, Federal investigators have uncovered more than $200 billion in fraud against the American taxpayer. Think about that--hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from hard-working Americans every single year.
The fraud is egregious, and it is systemic. Consider New York City. The Vice President's task force discovered that there is more than $2 million in unemployment insurance fraud every
For years, as government spending boomed, this theft from the American people was treated as a cost of doing business. Career bureaucrats shrugged, and politicians--many purposefully--looked the other way, all while fraudsters kept stealing and looting from our country.
In that environment, it isn't too surprising to learn that there was not a Division at the Department of Justice focused on investigating and prosecuting fraud against the government. President Trump saw that. Vice President Vance saw that. Attorney General Blanche saw that. And they took action. They created the National Fraud Enforcement Division within the Department of Justice to root out this fraud and hold the fraudsters responsible.
We saw this problem here in Congress as well. I launched the Senate Anti-Fraud Task Force with my colleagues to help build durable solutions to prosecute this fraud and prevent it from happening in the future.
That is why I rise here today--to take the first step in ending the rampant fraud against the American taxpayer and to enshrine the National Fraud Enforcement Division as a permanent Division within the Department of Justice.
Fraud against our country has become not only a multistate problem but a transnational criminal enterprise. To address this problem, we need a permanent National Fraud Enforcement Division that brings together prosecutors, investigators, Federal Agencies, and State and local law enforcement to attack fraud on the frontlines. The mission is simple but very, very important: Protect the American taxpayer and government against fraudsters. That mission should transcend red jersey-blue jersey party politics. Find the people stealing taxpayer dollars, and bring them to justice.
Today, right here, we can make that Division permanent. Regardless of party affiliation, every Member of this body should want taxpayer dollars to go where they are supposed to go, not into the pockets of fraudsters. It is that simple, truly. So often, we squabble over commissioning studies or we analyze a problem or host briefings to research root causes of an issue or hem and haw toward issuing a white paper, but today, on this Senate floor, we can permanently establish an enforcement Division that does three things: finds fraud, prosecutes fraud, and stops fraud.
The House passed this bill with overwhelming bipartisan support. Why? Because stopping the theft from the American taxpayer is just as important as deciding how to spend those dollars.
When I am back home in St. Louis, I often hear from the great people of the Show-Me State with similar complaints. They are sick and tired of watching criminals steal millions--billions--of dollars while their friends and families struggle to achieve and receive basic services. They are sick and tired of a government that can track down a single Venmo payment, but somebody can't find the organized fraud rings walking out the front door with an obscene amount of taxpayer dollars. These are not signs of serious governance, and at a certain point, indifference to fraud becomes complicity in it.
As chairman of the Senate Anti-Fraud Task Force, I have seen how deep the rot goes. Fraudsters exploit virtually every government program ever created. They create fake businesses. They bill for services never provided. They manufacture beneficiaries who do not exist. They exploit vulnerable people as names on the screen while diverting money into their own pockets to fund obscene purchases and lifestyles.
These people, they are sick and twisted people. They are cold and calculated. These fraudsters are running an entire criminal enterprise into empires to steal from the American people.
The purpose of government assistance is to help Americans who genuinely need it. Government assistance should not help subsidize lavish lifestyles for criminals who have learned how to manipulate a lackadaisical legislature. We need prosecutions with real authority, with serious resources, so that our government can follow the money wherever it leads and consequences--real consequences--for those who defraud our country.
If we are a serious Senate, we must be able to say with clear eyes: If you steal from the American people, we will find you, and we will prosecute you.
You may hear shortly that this division already exists. And thanks to President Trump and Vice President Vance, that is currently true. But without this bill codifying it, fraudsters will know that their paydays will soon return because a future administration could disband the division, be distracted elsewhere. There should be no reason that the U.S. Senate should object to creating a permanent division within the Department of Justice to find and investigate and prosecute fraud.
I would also like to thank Senator Moody for her work on this. Senator Moody has been fighting fraud since day one, and she has been a great partner. We served together as attorneys general, and she had a reputation for that even then.
I want to yield the floor at this point to Senator Moody.
Mr. President, thank you to my good friend and colleague Senator Schmitt. The grift is real, and the grift is great. I rise today to urge my colleagues to pass this vital legislation to stop the rampant fraud that we are seeing around this country.
Through my previous work as Florida's attorney general, certainly my colleague and his work as attorney general, we know how important it is to safeguard our citizens and the American taxpayer.
I was a founding member of the new Senate Anti-fraud Task Force, and I know every time we uncover another case of fraudsters benefiting off our public tax dollars, it is a slap in the face to hard-working Americans.
We are so grateful to this administration and Vice President Vance for stepping up and taking the lead. We know that fraud being uncovered across the Nation sets up a challenge to Congress to address our laws to make sure it is not easy to accomplish; that the criminals don't have their work laid out for them; that they don't keep getting away with this. Congress should be embarrassed if we don't take action.
I was as shocked as everyone here when reports came out that criminals in Minnesota stole an estimated $9 billion in taxpayer funds.
In addition, the administration has uncovered more than $260 billion in fraud nationwide. Americans should be hopping mad.
That is why, when the House of Representatives recently voted overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion to advance commonsense policies holding fraudsters accountable, I worked directly with the House sponsors to file the Senate companion the very next day. That is why my colleague and I are standing here on the floor today to try to get something done immediately. We have to stop the bleeding.
The National Fraud Enforcement Division Act of 2026 would institute a permanent force for taxpayers within the Department of Justice.
To Senator Schmitt, to the House sponsors, and every other Member of this noble institution that has vowed to clean up this mess and actually do something, thank you. It couldn't come at a more important time.
However, while I stand here and talk about the importance of this issue, the common sense of this issue, and the support of the American people for this issue, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle block every effort we have made to address rampant fraud in this country.
We were sent here to be stewards of taxpayer dollars, to ensure we are spending the finite resources of this country responsibly. And yet every significant attempt taken by this body,
Dismantling the fraud economy and going after those who defraud the American taxpayer should be a 100-to-0 issue.
When Senator Ernst tried to pass her antifraud legislative package-- with many of the provisions being bipartisan--earlier today, Senate Democrats blocked the bill.
Just last week, I tried to pass a No Aid For Ghost Students Act in committee, making sure we weren't outlaying money for students that didn't even exist, and that got stalled by the Democrats.
Every new idea or proposal that we put forth is panned or outright rejected, even if the idea saves taxpayer dollars for more crucial needs or would lead to refunds to the American taxpayer. It is irresponsible to not do something. We should be embarrassed.
And think about what is happening. I am talking about the Dems not allowing us to push forward legislation to fix laws that are allowing this to happen. Right now, we are just trying to put forward a permanent division to enforce existing laws, and we can't seem to get that through, even though it passed the House bipartisan.
When we are told actions speak louder than words, I can only draw one conclusion; that certain Members or parts of this institution prioritize fraud recipients and grifting the apparatus over the fiscal health of the country or our fiscal stewardship responsibilities.
I hope I am wrong. I hope that we, as the Senate, as the legislators we are, will come together to support this cause and permanently enact and set up a Fraud Enforcement Division. There could be nothing simpler. And if we pass the National Fraud Enforcement Division Act today, we guarantee that more fraudsters and bad actors are held accountable for stealing taxpayer dollars. I say: Let's get this done.
Mr. President, the American people have paid the bill for fraud for too long. Now is the time for the fraudsters to pay.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 9576, which was received from the House; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have to start by noting that President Trump and his cronies are using the White House to commit political fraud and corruption on an epic scale. This is unprecedented levels of corruption. The rot runs deep.
And to allow for that massive Trump corruption, the administration dismantled the ordinary mechanisms of government that deter, investigate, and punish that kind of activity.
We should be embarrassed at an administration that has deliberately destroyed the mechanisms of government that investigate and police corruption. The DOJ historically had all sorts of different components that worked to investigate and prosecute fraud: the Public Integrity Section; the Consumer Protection Branch; the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team; the Tax Division; the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, known OCDETF. All have been gutted or side- lined under this corrupt administration. If there is something we should be embarrassed about, it is the destruction of those mechanisms.
Along with that, in his first month, the President dismissed 19 inspectors general, the actual people whose job it is to root out fraud and corruption in government.
It is clear that fighting fraud is not this administration's priority. What is, is weaponizing the Justice Department to use as a tool to go after President Trump's political enemies, and this new component is the perfect vehicle for more of that.
The Division's current head, just to give you an idea, is the former cochair of the so-called Weaponization Working Group, which is the semicovert array of Trump operatives put into government across various different organizations to go after and punish his political enemies and to propagate the lie that somehow he actually won the election against Joe Biden.
We have asked, on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questions about what this Division--how is this going to work? What is its structure? What is its operation? No answer.
So this whole thing is clouded in mystery, tainted by the Weaponization Working Group, and completely at odds with destruction of all the organizations within the Department of Justice, the components that actually did this work and whose destruction our Republican friends had absolutely no complaint about as they were being torn apart.
Now, there is one that I will focus on: the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. When I was a U.S. attorney, I had an OCDETF group, and we worked in a very important way. OCDETF was who had brought Federal, State, and local law enforcement together to focus on organized crime, drug trafficking, and major fraud operations. It targeted major players. It had a financial crime component. Fraud was a piece of it, and the cartels and other big crime networks were its target.
President Reagan established OCDETF. What is not to like about it? It is very successful. It had a winning track record. Well, OCDETF got eliminated entirely by the Trump administration.
So I have a bill that would actually do something more meaningful about fraud, that would take a proven mechanism that worked for 40 years targeting cartels, big organized criminal investigations, huge fraudsters, RICO characters, and simply restore it to the way it was. It was working perfectly well.
Mr. President, so I, therefore, ask that the distinguished Senator's consent be modified and, instead, the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 4004 and the Senate proceed its immediate consideration; and 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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modification?
My bill is simple. It should be a really uncontroversial purpose codifying the National Fraud Enforcement Group. It has done remarkable work protecting American taxpayer dollars. And by the way, this wouldn't survive. This isn't just for this administration--beyond it. It would be great if a Democrat President somewhere down the road was focused on this with an existing National Fraud Enforcement Division.
But the proposed amendment deals with a completely different topic. Regardless of how you feel about the amendment, it seeks to undo the administration's new model for combating transnational organized crime, a new model that has been incredibly successful.
During the prior administration, fentanyl and other dangerous drugs poured across Joe Biden's open borders. Those drugs poisoned our communities, destroyed families, and stole the lives of Americans who should still be here with us today.
Cartel members poured across the open border as well and victimized the American people with violent crime, human trafficking, and dangerous drugs.
In Missouri, the consequences of that open border were all too real. There are empty chairs at kitchen tables, parents who buried their children, grandparents raising their grandkids.
President Trump ran on closing the border and stopping the flow of these dangerous drugs. He understood that it is our obligation to protect the homefront, protect those families, and use the resources at our disposal wisely.
To accomplish these goals, he reoriented how the Federal Government counteracts transnational organized crime, focusing on using Homeland Security task forces. That model incorporates FBI and DHS agents alongside
The reorganization sought to go upstream and get to the source of the true problem, securing the border and stopping the cartels and other transnational criminal organizations. By focusing on the actual root of the problem through the Homeland Security Task Force model, we have seen investigators, prosecutors, intelligence analysts, and immigration enforcement working together to disrupt the cartels and the criminal networks threatening our country.
That is how we should fight crime that operates across borders, by taking the fight to them. And there is an important downstream effect of this approach: The trafficker moving fentanyl often also traffics people, launders money, and arms violent gangs.
By updating our law enforcement model to meet the reality on the ground and the realities of modern transnational criminal threats, the new Homeland Security Task Force model has achieved remarkable success. Our intelligence Agencies have reported that fentanyl crossing the border fell 55 percent after President Trump took office.
In some year-over-year statistics, drug flows have been cut by 98 percent--98 percent. And the new Homeland Security task forces have arrested thousands of criminals, including more than a thousand cartel members, hundreds of MS-13 gang members, and hundreds of Tren de Aragua members.
They have seized tons of illegal drugs, including more than 300,000 fentanyl pills, and they have taken thousands of illegal guns off the streets as well from hardened gang members and cartel members.
Law enforcement agents have worked tirelessly over the past few decades to try to stem the tide of transnational organized crime and criminal gangs. The Trump administration inherited the status quo with dedicated law enforcement agents but an organizational and operational model that wasn't working.
So the administration got to work and reorganized the operations, and the results have been promising. This proposed amendment--an amendment to a bill that seeks to codify protection for American taxpayer dollars--would disrupt this new model approach, and it tries to codify the old approach of combating transnational organized crime. That would be a return to the approach that just wasn't working.
We should instead allow the administration to continue its good work of reorienting enforcement through the Homeland Security Task Force model. Too often, people in DC confuse the survival of a program or an enforcement model with the success of its mission.
President Trump's reorganization efforts broke that mold, and it proved to be one of the most important steps we have ever taken against the cartels. This amendment is an attempt to revert to a prior model that wasn't working, and it is a distraction from our effort to codify the administration's important efforts to protect Americans' hard- earned taxpayer dollars against fraudsters. And for those reasons, I do object.
Mr. President, 2 years ago, the American people elected a new Congress and a new President. The American people did so based on a promise that the President and his allies in Congress would work to bring down high costs.
So now it is worth asking a simple question, one that the American people will ask their elected representatives when they return home in a few days: Did the President and his allies in Congress make good on their pledge to bring down costs for American families? The answer is clear: No.
Not only has the President failed to make good on his pledge to bring down costs, not only is it evident that he never even bothered to try, but it is clear that on virtually every metric, it costs more to be an American than it did 2 years ago when this President was sworn in and the 119th Congress began.
It is worth taking a moment to go line by line, cost by cost, broken promise by broken promise, to examine the ways in which the President's policies--including his tariffs and his war--have driven costs higher and higher.
Before the President took office, he promised that he would bring gas prices down from $3 a gallon to less than $2. But under this President and his majorities in Congress, gas prices haven't just failed to go down, they have instead shot up to around $4.50 a gallon, meaning gas costs 50 percent more now than when Donald Trump entered office.
Since the President began his reckless war with Iran without a plan to win, the American people have paid an additional $93 billion on gas in less than a year, and, on average, each American family has had to spend $790 more on gas since this war began.
And the President failed even more catastrophically to bring down diesel prices. Diesel now costs around $3 more a gallon than it did when the President took office. Farmers and truckers are weathering the highest prices for diesel in American history, with costs at the pump exceeding $6.50 a gallon last week.
Now, it is one thing to fail on a promise to lower the price of something; it is quite another to be responsible for the highest price of that good ever recorded in our country's history.
The President also promised to make healthcare ``affordable again.'' Of course, this is not at all what happened. Instead, the President gutted Medicaid to take away healthcare for millions of Americans in order to pay for tax giveaways to billionaires like himself.
He also allowed health insurance premiums to surge, meaning more families now pay more for insurance every single month, even if they don't get sick.
Just before the President took office, the average monthly cost for health insurance was $468 a month. The President did not reduce those premiums by a dime. Instead, families now pay $611 a month. That is almost $150 more monthly, almost $2,000 more per year--$2,000--dollars that could otherwise be spent on the mortgage, the rent, repairs for the car, let alone parents just using it to do something nice for their kids.
And what about the cost of groceries? The President promised repeatedly that he would bring down grocery costs. Well, let's look at the numbers.
Since the President took office, ground beef has risen to $7 a pound, and coffee has risen from about $7 a pound to more than $9.
Now, I don't know if the President is right when he says that ``groceries'' is an ``old-fashioned word,'' as he often claims, but I do know that old-fashioned math tells us that $9 is more expensive than $7.
And let's say we take everything all together--all the goods and services that we pay for every day--and add it all up. How much, if at all, did the President and his allies in Congress reduce costs?
They failed to reduce costs at all. The American people have had to pay an additional $4,200 on goods and services since the President took office. The President had nearly 2 years to try to lower costs, and instead, families had $4,200 more taken out of their pockets.
This isn't a partisan point. This isn't spin. This is just basic mathematical facts--facts that make evident that the President both completely failed to lower costs and honestly didn't even try.
So if the President failed to bring down costs, what has he been working on these last 2 years? Well, the President's been clear about his priorities. He is not interested in lowering costs for families. He is interested in raising monuments to honor himself.
He hosted military parades in his honor. He destroyed the East Wing to build himself a golden ballroom. He has been trying to put his name on other monuments. He is running taxpayer-funded ad campaigns praising himself. And, according to a new report from the Joint Economic Committee Minority, while the American people are paying more to keep up with high costs,
Now, we throw lots of numbers around in Washington, but it is worth remembering what the American people know full well: This is real money we are talking about. It is the American people's money. We owe it to them to ask: How could that same $1.8 billion help them?
What can $1.8 billion buy when it is not being diverted by an apprentice dictator, who, rightly fearing that no one will ever honor his Presidency after he is gone, rushes to build gilded tributes to himself?
Mr. President, $1.8 billion, it can buy a lot of things: It can pay for the electric bills for 12 million families for a month; it can fill up more than 35 million tanks of gas, even at the President's new high prices; it can buy 600 million school lunches, fully paid for, so our children can have a good, healthy meal at school; $1.8 billion could hire around 30,000 new firefighters to keep our communities safe; and it can pay all the medical expenses--every medical bill--for more than 88,000 American veterans for an entire year.
If the President insists on spending the people's money on himself, he owes them an explanation. So if I have one request today, it is this: I want the President to explain why a monument to honor himself is a better use of taxpayer dollars than paying for healthcare for veterans.
Is a ballroom to make one man feel like a King more important than healthcare for a year for the heroes who fought to keep our country free? What more did America's heroes--people who have given everything to this country--what more do they need to do to deserve the $1.8 billion that the President would rather spend to honor himself? And when in America did honoring service become less important than honoring one man's ego?
I know that a majority of Americans, including many of my Republican colleagues, also find the President's vanity projects distasteful, but I think we are all doing a bit of play-acting if we forget that the President's determination to shower himself in honors is not simply excessive or distractions but is wrong and is distinctly un-American.
Consider our other Presidents. George Washington didn't order the construction of the Washington Monument. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson didn't pick out sculptors to build their memorials. John F. Kennedy didn't name the Kennedy Center. And none of them tried to put themselves on our currency. They received these honors from grateful citizens after their time in office. The current President is the only exception to this rule.
George Washington was a rich man as well, but he used his wealth to support the Continental Army. He didn't use his office to enrich himself, nor did he have any interest in being King.
The reason why this matters is because the President's desire to appease his own vanity and his failure to bring down costs are linked because it is deeply telling that the President will go to such extravagant lengths to honor himself. He will break with American values and precedent when they stand in the way of his whims; he will use a wrecking ball to tear down buildings; he will spend great time and effort planning every detail; he will file court appeals while defying court orders; he will pilfer taxpayer funds and even ignore the law and the Constitution--all just in his mission to leave a gilded tribute to himself.
But he can't be bothered to lift a finger to bring down costs despite his promise to do so.
What does this all reveal? It reveals that the President is uninterested in listening to what the American people want.
The American people don't want the President to build a golden ballroom; they want him to build homes that they can afford.
They are not asking for parades and car races on the National Mall; they want to pay less at the pump on their way to work.
They don't want his face on our currency; they want to keep more money in their pockets.
So, in closing, what does the final accounting of this President's broken promises tell us? Since the President took office, Americans have had to pay $4,200 more to keep up with rising costs while the President spends $1.8 billion to keep up with his own ego.
In short, it tells us that the President seeks to rule but that he is unable to lead.
He seeks to honor himself, but he is unable to honor his word.
Madam President, we have a challenge--a problem--and that is the President is exercising a line-item veto, and line-item vetoes are unconstitutional because the Constitution assigns the power of the purse to Congress, not to the President of the United States.
Laws are not suggestions. The Constitution is not optional. A President is not a King. That was the Founders' vision for our democratic Republic.
But on Friday, President Trump swung a wrecking ball at the Founders' vision, at the Constitution. He and Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, proceeded to--in the dark of night--notify that they were canceling nearly a billion dollars in programs authorized and funded by law.
Well, let's be clear. Canceling resources for these programs is both illegal and unconstitutional--illegal because the funding is in law, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President himself, and unconstitutional because the Constitution creates a separation of powers, with the power of the purse belonging to Congress, not the President.
This has been tested a few times. In 1996, Congress tried to give the President a line-item veto, and the Supreme Court struck it down. It struck it down as unconstitutional because it violated the Constitution's separation of powers.
Yesterday, the independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reaffirmed that this strategy by Trump, called a pocket rescission--a fancy name for a line-item veto--is illegal. Here is what they said. I will quote it at some length.
And that fiscal year--we are hours away from it ending.
So, in other words, more simply put, it is Congress' job to design, authorize, and fund programs. It is the Executive's job--the President and his team's job--to implement those programs. The assignment of responsibilities is designed to ensure that we have a government that serves the people.
In a democratic republic, the people's representatives in Congress-- from every part of the country, from every walk of life--debate and negotiate and legislate so that you will have programs and spending decisions that reflect the needs of every part of the Nation. We don't just deliver programs for red States when Republicans have the majority; we don't just deliver programs for blue States when Democrats have the majority--no. All of us, working together, produce spending bills to serve people throughout this country--urban and rural, north and south, east and west, plains and coast. However you want to divide up the country, we serve everyone. So a President taking those bipartisan agreements to serve everyone and canceling out individual programs is both illegal and unconstitutional.
But in an authoritarian, strongman state it is all different. The President alone decides what gets funded and can use that power to reward allies and punish opponents. In those states, there is no separation of powers; there is one authority. Call it a King. Call it a czar. Call it an emperor or a dictator or a tyrant. Whatever you call it, it doesn't fit in a democratic republic.
We do not have a tyrant or a dictator. We do not have a King. We have
But last year, Trump did exercise his strategy of operating as a King in a, if you will, line-item veto through this fancy term ``pocket rescission,'' canceling nearly $5 billion in programs authorized and funded by law.
That tool, called a rescission, was created under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, and it allows the President to propose canceling a program, but it also says that cancellation does not take effect unless Congress votes to cancel the programs, and we haven't voted to cancel these programs. So, therefore, that is why it is illegal to cancel them.
Well, it is pretty straightforward. The law says that no rescission or cancellation goes into effect without Congress authorizing the cancellation by law.
Madam President, I have here what I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, a statement from the chair of Appropriations, Senator Susan Collins.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
She notes:
Then she goes on to cite the independent Government Accountability Office.
So on both sides of the aisle, those of us who are defending the Constitution are coming together and saying: We have to fix this, and we have to put an end to this end run of canceling programs with days to go and then claiming the clock has expired.
This is essentially the situation. Imagine Cinderella and she is in her carriage. The carriage turns into a pumpkin at midnight. So in comes the President, and the President says: We are going to pause these programs--or Cinderella's travel--and so we are going to hold her hostage for a few minutes until midnight so her carriage will turn into a pumpkin.
And then, the equivalent of that, of course, is that the program's legal window to be implemented has expired.
That is what is going on here, and it is an ugly, ugly version of ``too clever by half,'' as we say back home, to do a line-item veto.
And my colleagues across the aisle, we will all be affected by this. The programs the President tried to cancel--his process of canceling-- may be programs that are favored by one side or the other, but imagine a different President with a different set of priorities.
We have to defend the institution. We have to defend the Senate and make sure that no President of any party, at any time, gets a line-item veto that corrupts us from being a democratic republic into being an authoritarian state.
So as Democrats and Republicans all sworn to the same defense of the same Constitution, let's come together and set this right. And we have tried to set it right before. In the Appropriations Committee, I and others offered amendments to say: Hey, make sure this is immune from being undone by a rescission within 90 days.
Colleagues, you know, wanting to not embarrass a President, said, well, they are not going to support that; the Republican majority said they wouldn't support that. But we heard assurances that they agreed with us, with the principle, that they weren't going to let it happen, but here it is. Five days before the end of the fiscal year, it just happened, and the chair of the Appropriations Committee is crying out and crying foul that this is not acceptable under the law or the Constitution. So let's all listen to her. Let's all listen to the Constitution.
So this situation must be remedied, and a number of my colleagues are here tonight to speak to it. And I just want to pass this conversation on to the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee to emphasize how important it is that we address this and we address this tonight.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Madam President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for setting out what is going on here because, as he said, on Friday night, President Trump announced that he was stealing more money from the American people.
Trump and his Budget Director, Russ Vought, call it a pocket rescission. Well, whatever you call it, it is illegal. Trump is taking the bipartisan funding that we passed, funding that Democrats and Republicans agreed on, that he signed into law, and he is now ripping out the pages he doesn't like. Forget about ideas like Congress and the law.
Look, this is theft from the American people, plain and simple. In this case, Trump is tearing away funding to help Americans buy a home. He is cutting off funds for healthcare research which would prevent things like hospital infections that are dangerous or saving taxpayers literally billions of dollars. But you know what, Trump could not care less. While he blows your tax dollars on an illegal war, Trump is illegally cutting off funding for health research, housing, and more.
I guess that is no surprise given how this President is constantly out of touch with American families--saying ``tariffs'' is his favorite word or saying that he loves inflation or saying he wants housing costs to go up. He said that. But where are my Republican colleagues who passed these funds that Trump is now stealing? Because this did not come out of left field. No one can pretend to be surprised by what is happening now.
When Russ Vought was nominated as Trump's budget chief, he was pretty darn transparent about the fact that he planned to break the law, he planned to tear up our bills, and he dared us to stop him. That didn't stop every Republican Senator from voting for him. When his Deputy was nominated and told us this summer that pocket rescissions were very much still on the table, what happened? Once again, every Senate Republican voted to confirm him too.
Anyone watching could see this coming from a mile away. Trump used this scheme to unlawfully impound $5 billion last summer, for heaven's sake. That is why Democrats have fought again and again and again to prevent the President from being able to use this illegal tactic, including in recent negotiations over the CR that is now law. But Republicans have refused to work with us to prevent Trump and Russ Vought from stealing from the American people. Time after time after time, they have shot down our attempts to stop this administration from defying Congress and robbing our constituents.
Let's talk more about this pocket rescission scheme for a minute and what is at stake. President Trump and Russ Vought are saying: Hey, we can ignore the law. We can ignore bipartisan deals and just make our own decisions as long as we do it last-minute.
Everyone knows that is ridiculous and illegal. Congress would never have created a system that gave any President the ability to decide to just ignore or bypass a law. It makes no sense. In fact, GAO has looked at what this President has done and has said it is clearly illegal twice.
My Republican colleagues know this. Some of them have even said so. But whenever they have had the chance,
Well, now, tonight, they are getting one more chance. Senator Merkley and I and others have a bill to help Congress reassert its authority-- our authority--and head off Trump's completely illegal pocket rescission scheme. And we should be clear. Trump isn't just illegally robbing our constituents through this pocket rescission; there are a whole lot of other funds that he is refusing to get out the door--more healthcare research funding, grants to prevent teen pregnancy, funding to protect Americans from global health threats, and even a quarter of a billion dollars to help families in rural areas get the financing they need to finally achieve their dream of owning a home. Hundreds of families in rural America will be denied the shot to buy a home as Trump lights this money on fire tonight. So it is not just the pocket rescission; it is all the rest of the money this administration is holding up or misspending. The Republicans have been pretty quiet about it.
Russ Vought has always made his message to Congress painfully clear. He thinks the votes we all take here don't count. He thinks the laws we pass are optional.
Now is the time for our Republican colleagues who said they would never let this happen to help us now pass a bill that makes our message to Russ Vought equally clear: Stop stealing from our constituents. Start following our laws.
Madam President, I rise with my colleagues. I appreciate the Senator from Oregon and the UC he will seek in a few minutes about a very important bill to reclaim congressional authority over appropriations. I think both Senators Merkley and Murray have done a good job of laying out the law that appropriations are an article I power for Congress and the Impoundment Control Act requires that, once appropriated in a budget that the President signs, the dollars have to be spent.
And so they have done a great job with the law, and the President with these pocket rescissions is violating the law.
Since they have talked about the law, I want to talk about priorities. I want to talk about priorities and what this move of the President shows about his priorities.
When the news was announced that he was going to cancel $800 million of appropriated funding in a budget that he had signed, he and some others said they are trying to shrink government or make government more efficient.
Folks, that is a joke. That is a laugh line.
You heard my colleague from New Hampshire talking about spending money on ballrooms, on arches, on trying to put his name on buildings. He is not trying to shrink anything.
You see news in the last couple of days about President Trump stealing money from the Department of Homeland Security to run ``Love Me'' ads on television because he is so insecure about his low popularity.
Can I take money that is supposed to be going to protecting America's border and turn it into ``Love Me,'' ``Love Me,'' ``Love Me'' ads on television?
He is not trying to shrink anything. In fact, the White House is here trying to get us to agree to a 40-percent increase in the Pentagon's budget in the middle of an illegal war so he can continue to, as he says, restart bombing after the midterms.
Can I just ask this question: Has any President ever publicly put ``midterms'' and ``bombing'' in the same sentence?
I am likely to restart bombing after the midterms.
Who has that thought much less says it publicly? So the President who is cutting the $800 million is seeking more money for an illegal war, is running ads about himself on television, is trying to build ballrooms and arches and put his name on buildings--this is about priorities.
Can I tell you about just one of these items that the President is proposing to cut in the $800 million? It has been alluded to by my colleagues.
The $800 million in funding includes, in the midst of a housing crisis, when all of our constituents are talking to us about housing affordability--the Trump administration wants to cut $56 million to the HUD Housing Counseling Program, which aims to expand and preserve home ownership opportunities in every ZIP Code in America.
Now, this funding in Virginia enables nonprofit organizations in my Commonwealth and around the country to offer essential financial and support services for families looking to access the American dream of home ownership.
One of my providers in Virginia reports they have helped--using these funds--they have helped over 1,000 families in the past 2 years achieve the American dream of owning a home, and a large factor that has contributed to their success has been these funds that President Trump wants to cut.
With the funding, they have helped families build basic financial knowledge and the skills they need to become successful homeowners.
In other cases, they work with families for a year or more to help them repair their credit and pay down their debt and save for downpayments, which helps them afford to buy a home.
The long-term support has helped bridge the gap for families to find a home and ensure they are able to become successful and sustainable homeowners.
So the Trump administration's decision to cancel that funding when they are seeking money for ads or ballrooms or arches or names on buildings or illegal wars is directly affecting our constituents in their effort to have a piece of the American dream.
Everything my colleagues have said about the law is correct. This violates article I of the Constitution. It violates the Impoundment Control Act. It goes against the promise that the President made when he signed the budget, that he would implement it.
But the thing that makes me the maddest and the reason I am so excited to be here to support my colleague is, to cut programs that help Americans afford homes to fund ads and ballrooms and illegal wars shows that this administration's priorities are completely out of touch with what our citizens expect of us.
And I hope my colleagues--if they are not willing to stand up for their own prerogative as Members of the Senate to write a budget, at least stand up for your constituents who are crying out for housing relief and not let that money be taken away to be put into ballrooms and illegal wars.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Madam President, I join my colleagues this evening to express my deep concerns. And I share your outrage, Senator Kaine, about the Trump administration's decision to recklessly take away funding for critical programs that hard-working Americans rely on to get ahead.
The President promised the American people when he was campaigning that he would lower costs, and instead he is putting services that millions of people count on at risk, including in my home State of New Hampshire.
Last Friday, the administration sent its request to cancel over $800 million in Federal funding. And because today marks the end of the fiscal year, there is not enough time for Congress to stop these funds from being eliminated.
This deliberate move, as my colleagues have said, is a pocket rescission, and it is illegal. Let me say that again. It is illegal, plain and simple.
Over the past week, I have heard from countless constituents in New Hampshire about the importance of the programs that are being cut by this pocket rescission.
This funding provides housing counseling support as Senator Murray and Senator Kaine have said. That is vital to people in New Hampshire who are trying to afford housing.
It provides vital healthcare research that saves lives and education programs. It is abundantly clear that these cuts won't bring down costs. They won't keep our neighborhoods safe, and they certainly won't make our country any stronger.
Now, it is not up to the President and unelected bureaucrats at the Office of Management and Budget to decide where the Federal funding goes. They can't cancel a program simply because they don't like it. That is what they are trying to do, but it is illegal because our Constitution grants Congress--not the executive branch--the power of the purse; Congress writes the checks and the administration is not supposed to just tear them up.
Even the GAO, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, has concluded that this move is illegal, not to mention that several of our Republican colleagues have also acknowledged that it is illegal.
When I talk with Granite Staters, one thing I consistently hear is that the cost of housing is a pain point for families already struggling with high prices.
The average price of a house in New Hampshire now is over $550,000. Too many young families can't afford that, and with housing prices hitting those highs, too many people are being priced out of this critical part of achieving the American dream.
That is why Federal programs like the Housing Counseling Program are just so important. Housing Counseling helps families buy homes, avoid foreclosures, and secure affordable rents.
Since the program began in 2009, it has helped over 4.2 million households across the country avoid foreclosure. In New Hampshire, thousands of families have used Housing Counseling to lower their home purchase price, to reduce their debt, and to secure safe and stable housing.
For example, Jake and Lisa are a young married couple who lived in an apartment in Grafton County, which is in the northwest part of our State. Their landlord decided to sell their apartment, and Jake and Lisa needed to relocate. But because of high housing costs, they struggled to find a home that was in their price range.
They couldn't afford to use a buyer's agent, so they turned to a HUD- certified housing counselor. In one instance, their housing counselor helped them obtain a home inspection that revealed major heating and electrical issues, and without this help, they might have closed on a home that would have cost them in the long term.
Their housing counselor also helped them create a plan that allowed them to pay their debts while maximizing their savings. And just a few months ago in a happy ending, Jake and Lisa officially became homeowners. But without their housing counselor, who knows when, or even if, Jake and Lisa would have been able to achieve this milestone?
Sadly, they are not alone. Too many families are still looking for a safe and affordable place to call home. And Housing Counseling isn't the only program in jeopardy.
This administration has left $230 million in Federal rural housing funds unspent. Now, Russ Vought may not think that is a lot of money, but in New Hampshire, we think that is a lot of money. And we should be doing everything possible to help families put a roof over their head, especially in the most rural parts of our country where affordable housing options are too often few and far between.
By letting this funding expire, the administration is sending a clear message to Americans: Addressing sky-high housing prices isn't one of the priorities of the Trump administration.
Now, in addition to cutting programs that help Americans find housing they can afford, the administration has cut funds that allow students to master foreign languages and become more well-rounded scholars and to do business around the world.
I mean, the President says he wants to do business around the world. He wants the United States to be a global business hub. How can we do that if we have people who can't communicate in foreign languages? And the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships program has made it possible for students from New Hampshire to attend universities that specialize in foreign languages and international relations.
These fellowships provide the skills for Americans to be the bridge to other countries and to understand cultures around the world and to do business around the world. Eliminating 1,900 fellowships denies young Americans, including Granite State youth, from developing the skills to serve our country, to improve international relations, and to strengthen our national and economic security.
The administration has also eliminated $28 million in funding appropriated to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This includes cutting a grant program at Dartmouth College--Dartmouth College where we have the only medical school in New Hampshire.
The grant program is designed to improve healthcare quality and access for rural populations living in Northern New England. The program focused on improving care for kids with complex medical needs and for better coordinating that care for cancer patients.
This doesn't seem wasteful to me, but that is what the Trump administration said when they rescinded these funds.
Now, it is not just healthcare funding that was gutted as we know. OMB also canceled funding for a program that has helped Americans build safer communities since the 1960s. The Department of Justice Community Relations Service was established in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a mission to help States and communities address and heal from incidents of discrimination.
The idea behind this program is pretty simple. If we get people talking to each other--something that might be helpful in the Senate-- we can constructively deal with incidents like swastikas painted on synagogues or racial slurs that are used in schools, and we can foster understanding and help avoid outbreaks of violence.
I have seen very directly how this program can help. In 2022 at a middle school and high school in Dover, NH, which is next to the community where I live, tensions amongst students reached a boiling point after some students decided to write racially biased and anti- Semitic posts on social media.
The leadership of the schools reached out to CRS for help in defusing the situation, and CRS offered a program it had developed called the School-Student Problem Identification and Resolution of Issues Together, or School-SPIRIT--an appropriate name.
In this instance, the schools in Dover used School-SPIRIT to convene key school administrators, students, and community stakeholders to identify the biases and prejudices that were driving tensions and to formulate a plan to help diffuse those tensions through communicating.
All in all, this was a success story for the school and for the entire community. And yet, despite the many positive outcomes all over the country, Russ Vought all by himself decided that CRS needed to be shut down.
All of this is to say that these abrupt cuts to programs Americans rely on have only created uncertainty and frustration at a time when people are already feeling immense financial burdens. They are feeling uncertainty and anxiety about what is happening in this country. These programs matter to people in New Hampshire.
They make a difference in their lives. But the President and his cronies and this administration couldn't seem to care less. It is part of a disturbing but all-too-common pattern from this administration-- bypassing Congress, skirting legal authority, and leaving families to pay the price. And what is the administration prioritizing instead? Well, they are driving up prices. They are driving up the cost of gasoline, they are driving up the cost of groceries, they are driving up the cost of home heating oil that people in New Hampshire are going to depend on because the weather is starting to get cold, and they are doing it because of a needless and costly war in Iran.
The President is also spending Federal resources, as we have heard, for ads to promote himself and his administration. He is spending Federal resources to put his name on as many things as possible, to build a ballroom, to change the color of the Reflecting Pool, to build an arch that is going to obstruct the view of Arlington Cemetery. Americans don't see those as priorities. They are concerned about how they are going to pay for their groceries, how they are going to pay for their gasoline, how they are going to pay for childcare, and this administration is doing nothing--zero, nada, nothing--to help the American people.
So let me close with this. As a former Governor, I know how important it is to ensure that tax dollars are being spent efficiently and responsibly. But let me be clear. Taking a sledgehammer to programs Americans rely on every day isn't responsible governing.
Congressional Republicans and Democrats can stop this from happening again, and I look forward to working with my colleagues so that no administration, Republican or Democrat, tries to cut congressionally mandated investments again.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Madam President, I rise today because for the second year in a row, the President is trying to illegally steal money from the people I work for.
Eight months ago, Congress overwhelmingly passed bipartisan appropriations bills, and the President signed them into law. Democrats negotiated those bills in good faith.
With this pocket rescission, the Trump administration is saying those laws and the agreements we made when negotiating them don't matter, and he is saying the investments we made into the American people don't matter. That is going to make negotiating future appropriations bills significantly harder. How can one side make concessions if they know that the other side will tear them up along with the deal months later?
But I want to spend some time talking about the specific funding in this rescissions package that the President considers wasteful. Now, mind you, Donald Trump is spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on prime-time commercials promoting Donald Trump. He is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a gold-encrusted ballroom and an arch--a monument to himself--over the objections of veterans and their families due to its proximity to Arlington National Cemetery. He is spending tens of billions of dollars on a war in Iran which is raising gas prices and home heating costs for American families.
But none of that is what Trump or Office of Management and Budget Director Vought consider wasteful. No, no, no. They consider that a priority. What Trump and Russell Vought consider wasteful is $28 million for research to reduce healthcare costs and improve Americans' health. What they consider wasteful is $70 million in education funding that supports national security priorities and helps ensure we remain competitive globally.
First, let me talk about the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality--what we often refer to as AHRQ. The Agency is ``critically important, it helps us understand what we're doing well and where we have opportunities to improve.'' Now, that is not me saying that about AHRQ; that is what HHS's Deputy Secretary nominee told me at a hearing just 2 weeks ago. Ten days later, the Trump administration said it was going to illegally impound funding for this ``critically important'' work.
AHRQ has funded advancements in telehealth to help doctors better treat patients in rural areas and help lung cancer survivors monitor for recurrence. AHRQ has supported work to reduce the rate of hospital- acquired infections and to make sure that kids waiting for a heart transplant can get one. It has funded work to improve healthcare for older Americans coming home from the hospital. This little but mighty Agency has saved literally billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, but President Trump has decided that this research is wasteful and that his personal vanity projects are more important.
Let me turn to the Department of Education. There, the President is illegally cutting funding that supports important national security interests. It funds training in less commonly taught languages that the U.S. Government determines are a national priority. It helps educate students that go on to serve in national security and U.S. intelligence roles.
These are just a few examples of what President Trump considers wasteful. It is not tens of billions of dollars lit on fire for an illegal war in Iran or taxpayer-funded commercials to promote himself; no, it is funding for Americans' healthcare and education he deems wasteful.
This pocket rescission is illegal. It is also throwing away opportunities to improve Americans' health and make our country safer. These are small but important investments that we should be making.
There is plenty we don't agree on, but I wish all my colleagues would stand up for the laws we pass and the agreements we make as part of them and stop this President and any President, Democrat or Republican, from so blatantly breaking those laws.
That is what Senate Democrats have been fighting for, and that is why we didn't vote to confirm Director Russell Vought, who said this was exactly what he would do if confirmed. It is why we have tried to enact laws to prevent this nonsense idea of a pocket rescission so we don't get to this point.
Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side have refused to do that again and again. But I am not going to stop fighting to uphold the law and for these programs that benefit the people of my State and the United States of America.
Madam President, we have heard tonight from the independent Government Accounting Office that what the President did in proposing and putting forward this line-item veto is illegal. We have heard in the words of the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee that this is illegal. We have heard colleagues speak tonight from different directions about why it is illegal--because the Constitution makes it so. The Constitution says the power of the purse rests with Congress.
There have been undoubtedly a number of Presidents who wish they had a line-item veto. Nixon tried. He cut funds that had been passed into law, and the Supreme Court said: Nope, you can't do that. Have you read the Constitution, President Nixon? That is not just illegal; that is unconstitutional.
Then in 1996, Congress tried to actually shed its responsibility and give the President a line-item veto and say: Hey, Mr. President, we passed these bipartisan spending bills, but strike out anything you want.
The Supreme Court responded and said: No, Congress, you actually have this responsibility. You can't assign it to the Supreme Court. You can't assign it to the President. No, the Constitution places it squarely on Congress.
There is a reason for that, and that is, Congress represents the power of the people from every corner of the land coming together to craft programs and to decide how to fund them that serves this Nation. To delineate or to assign that important function representing people throughout the Nation and say ``None of that matters; the President can just kill any program he wants'' is to believe in a King.
I have news for my colleagues: There is no King in the Constitution. That is why we are here tonight.
There is also a very practical consideration. If you craft bipartisan spending bills that serve every part of the country, but then a partisan President can strike down the ones that, well, maybe are more likely represented by Senators from the other party or House Members from the other party, well, then you have undermined the whole concept of us working together to serve the whole Nation, and therefore you make it very difficult to do bipartisan bills in the future.
So that is why so many people have come to speak to this. That is why the chair of the Appropriations Committee put out such a powerful statement on it. That is certainly why I am here tonight. And that is why we have come to the floor with a bill, S. 5670, to fix this-- because the President, in exercising this line-item veto, said: I am going to do something clever. I am simply going to hold on to the funds that I am supposed to spend under the law until there is no time left in the fiscal year, in the financial year--a year that expires a couple hours from now.
So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5670, introduced earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would like to make two points.
First of all, the law that is at stake here that we are discussing is the Impoundment Control Act--surprisingly, very poorly written.
The good Senator from Oregon said that the Government Accountability Office--the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office--believes that pocket rescissions are illegal. Well, the fact is that is a reversal of their previous position. Every President since President Ford believed he had--or she had--that ability to do a pocket rescission.
So, again, it shouldn't surprise anybody that Congress wrote an awful law that is hard to interpret. It will probably all have to be sorted out by the Supreme Court.
The modification that the Senator from Oregon is proposing certainly wouldn't fix it. It certainly wouldn't clarify it. If anything, it would probably even make it more murky. So that is one reason to object to this unanimous consent request.
The other reason--this is probably the more important one--is this is a pretty small pocket rescission. Personally, I wish it was a lot larger. This storied Chamber--``Chambers'' includes the House--has allowed this country to accumulate $40 trillion in debt with no end in sight.
Over the course of the next 10 years, the total estimate of additional deficits and added debt is $26 trillion. So I personally am glad--I don't care who the President is, out of what party. I will generally support that President reducing spending, and I would applaud it.
So I am happy to allow the President to do pocket rescissions, other types of rescissions--whatever it takes--because Congress is certainly not fiscally responsible.
But, in particular, this $810 million--that is what we are talking about, $810 million. That is not even pocket change in our budget. Seventy percent of it is for funding in HHS's Refugee and Entrant Assistance Program.
Now, the reason we can rescind that money is because President Trump secured the border. Under the Biden administration, they threw the border wide open, creating a clear and present danger to this Nation and also a clear and present danger to unaccompanied children.
The Biden administration lost track of hundreds of thousands of children who were probably sold into involuntary servitude, sex slavery. That is what the Biden administration did with the help and abetting of the Democrat Members of Congress.
So 70 percent of the $810 million--$567 million--is simply money we don't have to spend to try and handle unaccompanied children that the Biden administration lost track of and probably got sold into horrific situations. That money doesn't have to be spent, and it shouldn't be spent.
And I am glad that President Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought have recognized that and will do a pocket rescission so we don't spend it. We can't afford it.
So those are the reasons that I am happy to object to this unanimous consent request.
Madam President, the Constitution matters. And what does the Constitution say?
That is pretty straightforward, and yet my colleague from Wisconsin just wanted to shred the Constitution. He says: It doesn't matter. We want a President to cancel programs.
He said he wouldn't even care if it was a different President.
Imagine a different President canceling programs in his home State. Maybe that Senator would be singing a somewhat different tune.
And then we saw that debt chart. Wow, well, let's understand where that debt comes from: the war in Afghanistan, from a Republican President; the war in Iraq, from a Republican President; the Bush tax cuts--1 and 2--for the billionaires and megamillionaires, from a Republican President; the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires under Trump 1 and 2. Those are the sources of that debt.
And so it would be a nice thing if someone would come to the floor about debt--from the other side of the aisle--and would actually own that they are the problem, that they have been pissing away our national wealth on foreign wars and giveaways to the richest and most powerful Americans, running up last year a bill that added $30 trillion to the debt over the next 30 years.
I didn't hear that in the commentary from my colleague from Wisconsin nor did I hear from him that he knows that if the interest rate is 1 percent higher than the Congressional Budget Office estimated, that $30 trillion debt that he voted for last year will be $50 trillion over the next 30 years.
And do you know what else? The estimate used for that debt was 4 percent, and right now we are paying 5 percent. So we are already 1 percent higher.
It just would be nice that those who preach fiscal responsibility would not continue to be the ones who are spending this Nation into bankruptcy. That would be nice because then we would have funds to invest in families, healthcare, and housing and education and good- paying jobs.
This century is going to belong to the nations that invest in education and infrastructure, not to the ones that give away the national Treasury to the richest Americans and say: The hell with families across this great land.
Madam President, congressional stock trading is profoundly corrupt. We in this Chamber were elected to serve the public, not our portfolio.
But what do the American people see? They see Senators and Representatives who are thinking about their portfolios when they are voting on different measures, including a whole lot of tax credits and tax deductions. They are both different elements.
If someone in this Chamber is sitting on a significant holding--let's say renewable energy stocks--they might be thinking about: I want to promote those stocks, rather than ask the question: Is this the right move for America?
What if they are sitting on fossil fuel stocks or oil stocks or maybe Wall Street stocks and they are thinking, ``I want to give a big break to the banking community on Wall Street to inflate my personal wealth''? That is just absolutely wrong. It is a massive conflict of interest.
About now, 14 years ago, Senator Sherrod Brown and I introduced the idea that we should end this stock trading, and that means buying, that means selling, and that means holding.
It has been a while to build the momentum on this, but even the President of the United States, in his last State of the Union, said we should attack this problem.
And the American people see that, while Members here are thinking about their portfolios--trying to make themselves richer, corrupting their votes on the issues before us--they are suffering.
Instead of thinking about your stock portfolio, maybe you should be thinking about the price of gas at the pump, maybe thinking about the cost of diesel and fertilizer for our farmers, maybe thinking about a war of choice--an unconstitutional war of choice--that is spending more than $1 billion a day.
Maybe we should be thinking about the fact that we have the most expensive healthcare system that delivers the least effective healthcare for a person in the developed world, and maybe we need to improve it.
Maybe we need to think about the fact that the career technical programs in other developed programs--other developed countries--are pretty good and maybe ours should be better.
Maybe we should think about the fact that college debt is a millstone around the neck of our children, when children in other countries are able to go to college debt free.
Maybe we should care about families instead of thinking about our portfolios.
The American people see Congress--the House and Senate Members--and
Come on. This is massively corrupt, and we should be ending it. So let's end it.
Entry-level employees and executive branch Agencies are required to recuse themselves from conflicts of interest, but Senators and Representatives think it is just fine to get rich on conflicts of interest and corrupt their representation of the public.
That is why we need the ETHICS Act, which would ban Members of Congress and their spouses, their dependents, and the President and the Vice President and their dependents from owning, trading, or holding individual stocks. If they want to invest in America, invest in a broad-based mutual fund that has establishment in all of these industries at once, like the S&P 500 fund.
Members of Congress should be banned from making new trades, and Members of Congress will have to divest their holdings or move them to mutual funds.
There is so much corruption that we need to tackle--banning crypto corruption; banning funding for Trump's gold-plated, billion-dollar boondoggle; stopping insider trading on prediction markets; implementing a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court; outlawing the taxpayer-funded ``cash for cronies'' slush funds, like the President arranged with his $1.8 billion fund when he sued himself to award himself $1.8 billion of money; banning Members of Congress to have a longer period before they serve as lobbyists; and more.
But Congress can lead by example. Right now, let's pass the ETHICS Act.
Now, some may say: Well, wait. Isn't there this bill coming from the House?
That House bill leaves people holding the very portfolios that we have to get rid of. It preserves the conflicts of interest. That is pretty damn weak tea--keeping the corruption and legitimizing it--and, meanwhile, throwing in an extra measure on the bill that proceeds to engage in the effort to rig the November election.
Wow, well, that is certainly not a serious effort to address this corruption. But the ETHICS Act, it is that serious effort. Let's pass it. Let's ban Members of Congress from trading stocks. Let's make it clear to every American that we are here to serve the people, not our portfolios
Madam President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the bill at the desk, the ETHICS Act; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Madam President, reserving the right to object--I would like to reserve the right to object on this.
My friend came with a proposal to try to ban the sale and ownership of stocks by Members of Congress. I am pretty confident of why this came up today, because earlier today, we had a vote in this body to ban Members of Congress from owning stock--or, I am sorry, buying and selling stock on it. But it also included what the vast majority of Americans also want and that is voter ID.
It is pretty simple and straightforward. It is a very short bill. It just mandated voter ID, and it also banned Members of Congress from buying and selling stock: short bill, straightforward, easy to read, uncomplicated language.
Now, every one of my Democrat colleagues voted against that bill, and their complaint was: It is because it is going to rig elections if you require voter ID.
Well, I would like to remind this body, the Chair, that 36 of our 50 states already have voter ID; exactly what we voted on. There is only 14 States that don't, which means 72 Senators in this body already serve in a State that has voter ID. This is not a complicated, highly politicized, red versus blue issue. This is Americans that just say: Hey, we show ID to do everything. Why don't we show an ID to vote?
In fact, the vast majority of countries around the world are completely confused by Americans, that we don't show ID to be able to vote, when most countries around the world do. It is not diminishing people's right to vote. This is acknowledging the reality of where 36 States already are--red and blue--that we show voter ID. It shouldn't be an issue.
But this particular bill that is being brought today, and the response that Democrats voting against the bill earlier today, it is different. This is not just a ``can't buy and sell stocks''--which I, by the way, totally agree with. That is why I wholeheartedly voted for the bill earlier today.
This one has some additional features in it that have not been discussed here on the floor that I think we should actually put out onto the floor. This bill itself also includes requirements for the Ethics Committee--which I happen to chair--which is a bipartisan, equally represented group here in the Senate that has to evaluate all this. So I am pretty attentive to bills that actually deal with this to know: How are we going to implement this?
So this includes a requirement for small businesses and family farms and all those, that the Ethics Committee has to come and evaluate every single one of those from every Member to determine if there is going to be a conflict of interest from them owning a family farm.
So let me give you an example. If you own a family farm, you can't be on the Agriculture Committee because that becomes a conflict of interest. So the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. Senate suddenly becomes a group of people that don't know anything about ag because this bill would force them to divest from their family farm or it becomes a conflict of interest in the Senate.
I, personally, don't want everybody on the Ag Committee to not be farmers. I would like to have some farmers on the Ag Committee and some people that know something about this.
If you own a family-owned business that is not a family farm, that is just an LLC--which it is typical for most family businesses to be incorporated as an LLC--this puts an additional requirement on them on any kind of securities ownership, which is pretty common in an LLC that anyone who serves in this body that has a family business, multigenerational business, may have to divest from that to be able to come into the U.S. Senate.
That would mean Senators can't come from a small, family-owned business. That puts out a lot of Americans that suddenly wouldn't be eligible to serve in the U.S. Senate.
This bill also prohibits what is called a qualified blind trust. It is one of the most misunderstood aspects of this. A QBT--a qualified blind trust--any Senator that is here that has a stock portfolio that is larger has the ability to be able to take all of those assets, put it into a qualified blind trust, and they are prohibited by law from talking to that person that is actually doing all the investments. They can't know what is in it; they can't get updates on it; they can't have any interaction. And it is called a qualified blind trust because we actually have to qualify that.
In fact, the Ethics Committee actually engages with everyone who has a qualified blind trust and the person that is there to actually get all communications. So we literally monitor that to be able to make sure there is no interaction on that. Well, this bill would actually prohibit this.
This bill would also prohibit digital assets. Well, I understand that for investment in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and everything else, but there is also a digital asset called stablecoins, and this body actually passed that. Stablecoins aren't an investment piece; stablecoins are just a dollar in digital form. That is all that it is.
This bill would prohibit Members of the Senate from actually having a digital dollar because it would be now considered a new investment asset, when it is not an investment asset at all.
I wish this bill would have gone through committee. There is a lot we could have discussed in committee to be able to work this through. But this
But it hasn't actually gone through committee to actually have any kind of oversight to try to figure out how to be able to perfect some of these areas.
Listen, this is not a bill that is just about ownership of stocks and buying and selling stocks. It is much larger. It gets into family farms. It gets into small businesses. It gets into stablecoin. It gets into all those different aspects on this.
This is the reason that, when we brought a stock bill earlier today, it is a short couple-of-pages bill to be able to make it very clear what it is and what it is not. It was not this 31-page very complicated bill that is actually being brought to the floor today.
So my challenge to all of my colleagues are: We should not be trading stocks. And if you have got stocks, those need to either be divested or put into some blind trust so that Americans have full trust that Members of this body are not looking at their portfolio all the time; they are actually looking at the people that live in their State and what they can do best to be able to serve them. That is where my colleague and I adamantly agree.
Where we disagree is on this text and what it does that is far beyond what is actually being advertised that it does.
So I would be very willing to be able to work with my colleague to be able to figure out how we can get this right because I think it is an incredibly important issue, but this needs more work back in the kitchen.
Madam President, I wish my colleague had actually got a bunch of things right, but he got a bunch of things wrong.
I don't know what propaganda he was reading, from what source that wants to continue the corruption.
But he said that the bill that came earlier today said you could not hold stocks. It actually allows you to hold those individual stocks. It allows the corruption to continue. And yet, he is saying: Oh, I voted for this great bill because it bans holding of stocks. But he is wrong.
There is a reason this was done. It was to allow a vote in the House, a vote in the House that pretended to address the issue, rather than addressing the issue.
And we have had a bill virtually parallel to this bill come through committee. It has been worked on in committee. Many of these elements and nuances--great. Fine. Let's continue that conversation. But don't come to this floor and misrepresent the bill that you voted on earlier tonight as having banned the holding of stocks because it allows it.
And second, blind trusts. They are called bogus blind trusts. As one Member of this body said to me: I meet every quarter with the guy who runs my blind trust.
You want another example? Who runs a blind trust for the President of the United States? His family runs it. His son is involved in running his blind trust.
Are you kidding me? Everyone understands blind trusts are not blind. So bring a bill that doesn't have bogus blind trusts.
It has an extensive exemption for small businesses, and yet we heard a lot of conversation about small businesses.
And then voter ID. Can't we be honest about the voter ID strategy? It was written to disenfranchise--fancy word for block citizens from voting that Republicans don't want to vote.
The President put forward an Executive order that said: You have to submit your voter roll to the President's team, they will decide who votes, and send the list back to you.
And then they went and got an ethics act--not an ethics act--SAVE Act--the SAVE Act. What did the SAVE Act say? The same thing. The President gets to decide who votes. That didn't pass here. And it didn't even have a majority support here, let alone supermajority support.
So, the President did another Executive order. And under this order, the President would strike down--his team would strike down people that look suspect to them.
What are we talking about? We are talking about 64 million American women whose last names do not match their birth certificate. Your name doesn't match your birth certificate, you can't vote. And the President could strike this down right before the election, making it impossible for people to proceed to get reauthorized to vote. And they couldn't even get reauthorized to vote, reregistered to vote, using their birth certificate. Wow.
And they didn't want Native Americans to vote, so they put in a provision that said any ID that doesn't have an expiration date is excluded. Well, you know, you are not a Tribal member year by year or month by month, my friends. You are a Tribal member for life. They don't have expiration dates. They knew that, and they put it in to stop Native Americans from voting.
Why? Why do you want to stop women from voting? Because they vote more on the blue side of the aisle.
Why do they write those ID requirements to stop Tribal members from voting? Because they vote more on the ``D'' side of the aisle.
People have called this Jim Crow 2.0. What are they talking about? After the Civil War, we had a national consensus, we were going to protect people's right to vote. And in the South, you had a lot of States that had a majority of Black citizens.
To this very Chamber, 2 U.S. Senators were elected from Mississippi; 14 Members of the House were elected from the South that were Black Americans. And then reconstruction ended in a horrific deal that was struck and the result was almost a century of blocking Black Americans from voting. And that is what the President wants to do.
Not specifically Black Americans, not the same way, but any group that votes predominantly on the blue side of the aisle.
Now, we actually had a bill, and it was called the Freedom to Vote Act. It had ID in it, but it wasn't ID designed in a partisan fashion.
So I say to my good colleagues: How about you actually come forward with a version of ID that isn't designed for partisan advantage? That would honor the vision of the Constitution. That was what was in the Freedom to Vote Act.
And the President wants to attack vote-by-mail. And why is that? Vote-by-mail is the highest integrity system in the land, bar none. Why is that? Because on election day, it is easy to manipulate the election.
Here is what you do: You change the location of the precinct voting from the previous year so people go to the wrong place; you proceed to put out false information about the location; you put out the wrong date for voting; you put out text messages--and this has been done-- saying ``sorry you missed the election last week, hope you will vote next year'' when the election is actually coming up the next Tuesday; you put in machines that don't work; you put in staff members that don't work; you perceive to create 8-hour lines like they created in the urban areas of Georgia--recent history.
That manipulation can't be done in vote-by-mail. That is why the President hates vote-by-mail, because it stops the rigging of American elections on election day.
And it has this very powerful form of voter ID called a signature. The same thing we use to verify checks and so many other transactions in life. Same signature we use on our marriage certificates. Same signature we use on financial transactions. And if the signature doesn't match, it gets challenged, and a voter has a chance to cure it.
My point here is that the bill that came before this Chamber earlier today was designed to rig the November election--my colleagues know that--and it allowed the corruption in stockholding to continue.
That is why we are creating and putting forward a real bill with real ethics tonight.
Madam President, I appreciate the conversation from my colleague.
I look forward to getting a chance to be able to work on the bill that is actually complete.
He asked where I got my information from that I actually listed out on this. I got it from a ``secret source,'' the 31 pages of the text of his bill. There was no outside group. I appreciate the conspiracy theory that some secret group must have manipulated it somehow and given me the information. I just read the text.
There are issues with the text. Again, we are back to--we can't have farmers on the Ag Committee and small business owners who may have to get rid of their family businesses to be able to run in the Senate. That is a problem.
As far as the accusation of the qualified blind trust and that there is someone who has said to my colleague that they talk to their qualified blind trust person every quarter, I would encourage my colleague to submit that to the Ethics Committee because that is a violation of current statute, if that is actually occurring, and it is already a violation. So, if my colleague knows of someone who is interacting with their broker and they have a qualified blind trust and they are interacting, as he claims, every month or every quarter, please let us know because that is something the bipartisan Ethics Committee would address immediately because that is already against Federal law to be able to do that.
My simple statement for today is: Listen, there is a right way to be able to do this. Let's do it. Let's go through the process. Let's actually figure out how to be able to get this done and get it done right, but this is not it. The way this bill is written has so many problems within the bill that I have to come down as the chairman of Ethics to say I would have to be the one charged to actually enforce this, and there will be major problems with this.
As far as the voting issues, I was listening with wonder on all of the issues about problems with voter ID. Apparently, my colleague believes that, if you have voter ID, you are Jim Crow 2.0; you are a racist State. Well, I am confident the folks in Rhode Island would be shocked to hear that.
This is an issue when we start talking about voter ID, and it is an accusation that comes at Republicans that all we want to do is be able to block people from voting. Rhode Island has voter ID. Delaware has voter ID. Connecticut has voter ID. Wisconsin has voter ID. Colorado has voter ID. New Hampshire has voter ID. Michigan has voter ID. I could go on and on and on. This is not a red State or a blue State issue. These are States that have said: If we are going to make sure we have secure elections, we are going to have voter ID.
Now, I happen to live in a State with a very high Tribal membership-- 7.5 percent of my State are Tribal members. We also have voter ID in my State. And do you know what? We welcome Tribal members to vote like every other Oklahoman.
We have voter ID in my State, and as shocking as this may seem, married women still vote in my State. This sudden accusation that married women will not be able to figure out how to do voter ID and get an ID I find offensive as a dad of two very smart daughters and one brilliant wife.
The issue today is not all this. Obviously, we voted on that earlier today. The issue is about this particular bill. This particular bill has problems that are solvable if we will actually get to committee and be able to work through the process, but as it is currently written, there are problems in the bill.
So I object to the bill, and I hope that we can work this out in a nonpartisan way in the days ahead to be able to resolve it.
Madam President, as if in legislative session and not withstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 6380 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
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. 6380) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Madam President, as in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc: Calendar No. 660, H.R. 837, and Calendar No. 665, H.R. 7831.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bills en bloc.
I further ask that the bills be considered read a third time and passed and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, all en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bills considered and passed en bloc are as follows:
Madam President, earlier today, I joined Senators Capito, Heinrich, and Whitehouse in introducing comprehensive, bipartisan permitting reform.
That agreement is the product of many, many months of negotiations and years of work to address a problem Congress has talked about for far too long: It takes too much time and too much money to build things in this country, and that problem is becoming more urgent by the day.
America's energy needs are growing rapidly. We need more energy, and we need it now. That means producing more energy. It means building more infrastructure, and it means making sure that Federal Agencies responsible for reviewing permits actually have the resources to process those permits in a timely manner.
Madam President, that brings me to the first bill that I just asked the Senate to consider today and that we just passed through the Senate today, the License to Drill Act.
The Bureau of Land Management currently charges a processing fee for each new application for a permit to drill on Federal lands. Those fees help fund the people and resources that process those permits, but that authority expires tonight at 12 midnight. The License to Drill Act extends it through fiscal year 2037 and directs those fees to the Bureau of Land Management Permit Processing Improvement Fund.
The idea is straightforward: The money collected from permit applications should help process permit applications. That is, after all, how we keep things moving. That is how we get a lot of these things done. So if we expect American energy producers to
Look, permits should not simply disappear into some bureaucratic black hole. As we confront rapidly growing energy demand--the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time and the stakes for which are unbelievably high--unnecessary delays in bringing new American energy production online carry real consequences.
This bill, also, did not appear on the floor out of nowhere. It went through the committee process. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, which I chair, examined it and advanced it unanimously.
The same is true of the two other measures that I just brought before the Senate and passed this evening.
H.R. 6380, the Chiricahua National Park Act, would redesignate Arizona's Chiricahua National Monument as Chiricahua National Park. The legislation has already passed the House. It was considered by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and it was favorably advanced by the committee. With this, this bill is on its way to the President's desk for signature.
H.R. 837 conveys the Pleasant Valley Ranger District Administrative Site in Arizona to Gila County. That legislation has also passed the House and gone through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. In its having now passed the Senate, it will be on its way to the President's desk for signature.
These measures all have certain things in common. They have been examined, they have gone through the committee process, and they are prepared now for the Senate to act, which the Senate has now done, for which I am very grateful. That work has been done here.
In a moment, when we are working on a much larger task--on the large and intimidating but also incredibly important task of comprehensively reforming America's permitting system--this is a commonsense set of proposals deserving to pass today. I am so grateful that they have passed. I am grateful to my colleagues on the committee and to my Senate colleagues for helping to make that happen.
Madam President, first, I would like to say that my colleague from Utah was out here a minute ago. We often disagree on many things, but every now and then, we agree on something. I just want to say how grateful I am that the Senate, today, passed by unanimous consent a bill that we have been working on for years and years and years, with the community around Crystal Reservoir, to make sure that that can be transferred from the Forest Service to the people of Ouray, who desperately, desperately need it. I am grateful that we were able to get this done, and we will continue to work on this together to make sure we get it passed in the House of Representatives. So it is a bright light in an otherwise not so bright day legislatively around here in the U.S. Senate.
Madam President, I wanted to come to the floor because today may be the end of the opportunity to talk on the Senate floor for this session of the Senate before we recess for the coming elections. I wish that there was a lot of stuff that we had addressed together.
The American people are struggling with costs and this economy in a way that they have never struggled before, and that is not an exaggeration. It is true in rural Colorado and in urban Colorado. It is true in Republican parts of the State and in Democratic parts of the State. It doesn't matter. People--no matter how hard they work--feel like they can't get ahead and their kids can't live better lives than the lives that they are leading; that no matter how hard they work, it is becoming harder and harder and, in some ways, impossible-- impossible--to live a middle class life anymore.
For the kids who are graduating from high school right now in America and for the kids who are graduating from college in America, it feels like the American dream is further and further and further out of reach because it is. It is. I see the pages who are sitting here on this floor today. They are the first generation of Americans since forever-- I don't want to depress you tonight, but I guess I can tell you the truth so you can help fix it. They are the first generation of Americans who are likely to earn less than their parents earned if we don't change it. We are living in a world where people who are 30--a lot older than the pages who are here today--on average, are going to earn less than their parents earned.
We are living in a time when 1 percent of the American people own 50 percent of the value of the stock market, and the bottom 50 percent of the American people own 1 percent of the value of the stock market. If you have not been somebody in the United States who owns assets--who owns real estate, who owns stocks and bonds--it has been a tough 15 years or 20 years. It has actually been tough going all the way back to Ronald Reagan, to be honest, when these trickle-down policies started. Ronald Reagan was certainly a purveyor of these. You know, he put in place a lot of the tax cuts and other things that were kind of the beginning of trickle-down economics. I don't think even he could have foreseen what the Trump administration would have done to pursue the kind of trickle-down economics that they have pursued. It has been like a raging forest fire that has gone across the United States of America at a time when our inequality is growing; at a time when Reagan could never have imagined, I don't think, the wealth inequality that we now have in this country, the lack of economic mobility we have in what I still refer to as the ``land of opportunity'' because, in the end, I am relentlessly hopeful about where this country is headed.
But the reality is--the reality is--unless you are at the very top of this economy for decades, you have not done well and your kids have done worse. That is the opposite of the American dream.
I am sorry to say this to the pages that are here, but there was a time in American history--when I was your age, for example--when we took it as a given that each generation was going to benefit from the work of the previous generation, and the greatest gift we could give the next generation was more prosperity than our generation had.
My daughters are now in their midtwenties--actually, to be honest, the youngest is in her early twenties--but my daughters are now in their midtwenties, and they are really serious about the question, which I am not going to repeat on this floor because I would be thrown out for using ``W-T.'' That is their view, though. That is their view because they know a lot about history. They know what the transition was from one generation to the next. They know what the solemn responsibility of every American generation was. And now they find themselves and their whole generation finds themselves completely ignored by this Congress, completely ignored by the President of the United States. He could care less about their future.
I used to be a superintendent of schools in Denver before I came here. I was in business before that. I have had kind of a checkered career on the way to the U.S. Senate. And I can tell you, I can assure you that President Trump does not see the families of the kids I used to work for in the Denver public schools, who are working two and three jobs just to feed their children, who are working two and three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads, just to pay the rent in this economy, this savage economy they are facing.
I am sorry to say this to the pages as well. The Trump administration is breaking new records every week. Gas prices are up 42 percent from the year before. Diesel is the highest it has ever been in American history at $6.50 a gallon. It has never been higher.
There are farmers and ranchers all over Colorado who have had to put thousands and thousands and thousands of incremental dollars, of extra dollars they don't have, dollars they need to invest in their own kids' future, dollars they need to invest in their own businesses--they are having to burn it in their tractors because Donald Trump decided to go to war in Iran--against the advice of all of his advisers, by the way, who told him that
Now, something that is hard to understand for some people around here is the effect of these interest rates, which are hitting some of the highest levels we have seen in decades. The 10-year yield is the highest level since 2007--20 years ago, two decades ago. You have to go back 20 years to get to an interest rate like this. The 30-year reached its highest level since June 2002. That is a catastrophe for anybody in this economy who is trying to borrow money. This is a catastrophe for anybody in this economy who is trying to pay a mortgage on a house.
Mortgage rates are now over 7 percent in the United States of America because of Donald Trump's policies, because he invaded Iran, because--I have to say both parties are somewhat responsible for this.
My friend that I respect so much from Oklahoma is here. By the way, my oldest daughter is living happily--happily--in Tulsa, OK, because she can pay I think 28 percent of her income in housing. She is very, very happy to be there at a time when, in lots of other places, no one, you know, who is her contemporary, who went to college with her, can afford to pay to live anywhere. So she is delighted to have a chance to be there, to be working in Tulsa. But for people that are trying to buy a house in America, for her generation, rates are now at 7 percent, and none of them can afford to buy a house.
By the way, they got--I can't use those words. They got totally--you know the word I want to use--when interest rates were at zero, when the Federal Reserve was trying to keep interest rates at zero because the first Trump administration would say: Keep them at zero. Keep them at zero. Keep them at zero.
And what did that do? Yes, the loans went to zero as well--they were low--but the price of housing went through the roof; the stock market went through the roof. Anybody who had assets, anybody who was rich, anybody who had a fancy house anywhere in America benefited hugely.
We are in that moment again. We are in that moment again, the moment we have been in for almost 50 years in America. When the economy grows, the wealthiest people do incredibly well, and for everyone else, it is like a recession. In fact, it is a recession. It is a recession.
When there are recessions in America today, those are real recessions for working people and for poor people. For wealthy people, that is a period of economic growth. Our Nation has detached the wealthiest people. It is like they are in a capsule floating above all of us. They are in a capsule floating above all of us, and when the economy does well, they do great; when the economy does poorly, they do poorly.
I wish everybody well, everyone in this economy, but the reality for everybody else--in fact, I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that for 95 percent of Americans, for decades, the periods of economic growth have basically acted as recessions, and recessions have been devastating.
For the next generation of Americans, for my kids' generation, they can't even get a glimmer of economic prosperity, where their share of the American dream is going to come from, their opportunity to be able to participate meaningfully in this democracy and in this economy. And they are all smart. They are all--my daughter will get mad at me, but she is teaching a history class at a community college in Tulsa. And they know the history of this Nation. They know we have been a nation that stood for freedom and for opportunity for all these years. But something is broken in the way this works, and it doesn't work for them.
If you wonder, by the way, why we are facing all this division and chaos in our politics, if you wonder why we seem to be living in a moment when no one in this Chamber can work together and where the American people are--at least the ones that are on their social media-- are relentlessly at war with each other on that social media, there might be a lot of reasons, but I am telling you the real reason is because we have lost the sense of economic opportunity in the Nation because we don't really have it anymore for the people that are coming after us, and our gaps in wealth are just getting larger and larger and larger and larger. The chance for people to get ahead is getting harder and harder and harder. That always breeds politics of division; that always breeds the politics of chaos.
I wish Donald Trump were interested in any of this, except for the division and the chaos. His politics has been a politics of sowing division, of sowing chaos, of preying on the divisions we have, and we have, unfortunately, fallen into that trap at a time when America actually needs us to be solving the problems they are facing, and I think a lot of folks feel like we have just given up on it.
Our kids are reading--our literacy levels in America are worse than they were 30 years ago, and they were low 30 years ago. We spend twice as much as any other industrialized country on healthcare, and we get much worse results.
When Ronald Reagan--I mentioned him earlier--when he was President, we had the same life expectancy of everybody in the world. Now we are 6 or 7 years behind the industrialized world here in the United States. If you are African American in this country, whether you live in Oklahoma or Colorado, your life expectancy is even shorter than that.
The good news is that there is no shortage of challenges we could confront. I will give you another one that I know my colleague cares about and I care about. We now have $40 trillion of debt on the balance sheet of this country--$40 trillion. That is one of the reasons why interest rates are going up the way they are.
From my daughters Caroline, Halina, and Anne's perspective, their generation's perspective, they look at that and say: What did we get for that? You guys went out and borrowed $40 trillion. Like you put the biggest mortgage that you could ever pull out of a bank on the United States of America.
Imagine if our country were a big house, and you went out there and took a $40 trillion mortgage on it, and then you built yourself a swimming pool, and you built yourself a bunch of statues. I suppose, in the case of Donald Trump, you bought yourself a bunch of gilded stuff that you hung in the Oval Office or tried to knock Jack Kennedy's name off the Kennedy Center by putting your name up there, which doesn't deserve to be up there. It shouldn't be up there. You spent your time building statues and layering them in gold leaf.
The next generation of Americans might rightly say: You borrowed $40 trillion for this?
The reality is that all of that pales in comparison to the tax cuts these guys have given to the wealthiest people in this country without paying for it. All of that pales--and I just want to be honest and admit that it pales in comparison to the $8 trillion we essentially lit on fire in the Middle East to pay for two forever wars there that, by the way, President Trump said he would never repeat.
He got elected--actually, Barack Obama got elected by first saying: I am not against all wars, but I am against dumb wars.
He found a way to jump a whole generation of politicians to become President on the strength of that argument.
Donald Trump made a very similar argument, which is: No more long wars. No more forever wars.
Now he has created one. This war of choice in Iran is going to be a war that ends when the mullahs decide. That is a long war. That is a long war.
I have a long memory. I can remember. I can remember. This is long before you guys were born. I remember when our folks--our diplomats were
By the way, I am the first person to say the mullahs and Iran should never have nuclear weapons. They should never have nuclear weapons. That is what makes this even more irresponsible. He has no strategy. He has no game plan. He has no budget for what he is doing.
(Mr. HUSTED assumed the chair.)
He is consuming, by the way, missile after missile after missile that is really important to our deterrence of China and in the Pacific theater. And he hasn't paid for a single dollar of that--not a dollar, not a dollar.
By the way, I think all of us should be voting against his defense budgets. I am. I am, partly because they are not paid for but also because he has no strategy.
That is the best way for us to end this war. That has happened before.
We are not powerless. The U.S. Senate is not powerless. People on this floor, in both parties, they brought the Vietnam war to an end by saying: We are going to cut it off if you don't stop.
And we are in that position today.
I would be shocked if there is anybody over there who really supports what the President has done in Iran. I certainly can't find anybody in Colorado who is a Republican, a Democrat or unaffiliated--almost anybody, almost anybody--a handful who believe this was a good idea, especially the next generation.
And certainly not our farmers and ranchers, who are facing higher input, as I said, and now higher borrowing costs because of this President's policies and weakening commodity prices, because we have a completely incoherent trade policy.
Xi Jinping was just over here. Donald Trump did nothing to get him to buy our soybeans. And, by the way, having said that he was going to do something about it, he has now allowed Brazil to come and steal our business, which they are doing.
Exports are incredibly important to our farmers, incredibly important to our ranchers, and Donald Trump has cut them off for his ridiculous trade wars.
And I have said for years on this floor: We have to take China on. We have to take China on. But we have to do it in a smart way, not in a stupid way, not in an incoherent way, not in a way that gives Brazil the opportunity to knock our farmers out of the picture.
And I will say that everything that I said earlier about the difficulties of the next generation of Americans, the difficulties of the generation of kids that I used to work for in the Denver Public Schools--all of it is magnified if you live in rural America, if you live in rural Colorado, because it is just harder when you have fewer people.
Healthcare is more expensive. Childcare is more expensive. Groceries are more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Everything is harder, and you have to travel long distances to get places.
And now, everyone in America is spending more. Families are forced to pay more for everything. They are paying more on gas. Bags of groceries are a month's rent now or more. People are having to make choices between buying their kids clothes for school and buying groceries. There are hundreds of more dollars that people are having to spend on electricity and on housing itself and rent.
I haven't heard President Trump talk about any of this because the next generation is entirely invisible to him. He has no concern about it. He is not worried about it. That is not of his concern.
Every day he parades what his real interests are across the front pages of what is left of the newspapers of America and the television and his social media feed. And he is proud of it, by the way. He is proud of it.
So I know, when I talk about this, if he hears about it, he will say: Oh, I got his goat. Well, that is what I wanted to do.
And he is. He is proud of his corruption. He is proud. He wears it on his sleeve.
The latest of this was that he has now spent millions of taxpayer dollars on political advertisements--millions of taxpayer dollars on political advertisements.
I would be surprised if there is anybody here who supports that. We have 330 million Americans. Of that, all but three think that it is a bad idea to use their money--to use taxpayer money--when we have $40 trillion of debt, when we have 7 percent interest rates, when diesel is $6.50 a gallon, and that the President is using our money to pay for ads for his reelection and the election of people in his party in this midterm.
He is hanging his photograph, his picture, on the outside of the Federal Agencies here in Washington, DC. That is not the worst thing that he has done, but it does make me feel, every time I drive through it, like we are living in an occupied state, like we are living in North Korea or Beijing or some other place where the great leader is respected because he tells everybody in the country how they are supposed to think about everything.
I know he thinks he is the greatest President in American history. I know he does. He has even said that. I think he thinks he is greater than George Washington.
None of those people put their pictures on the outside of these buildings. None of these people tried to hang their name next to Jack Kennedy's name or put their photo on the Department of Justice or the Department of Labor.
But part of his renovation of this town has been a billion dollars in White House renovations, including his ballroom and his helipad--a billion dollars that he has spent on the ballroom and the helipad.
And he has cheerfully basically admitted that he has made $1.4 billion in crypto profits while being President of the United States, and his family has made untoward amounts. And he has relationships, the President, all over the world that are helping him pursue those economic interests while he is in the White House.
I know we are living at a really unusual time in American history. I know we are living in a time when there is enormous frustration, when there is enormous anger, when there is a lot of division and distrust. I know we are. But I think it is fair to say that most Americans don't want their Presidents to get rich when they come to office.
I think that most Americans know that no President has ever gotten rich the way Donald Trump has, when they can't even afford to pay the rent, when they can't even afford to buy shoes for their kids and give them school uniforms.
They know no President has put their own face on the outside of these buildings, like this is some cult of personality instead of what it is, which is the American democracy.
I think that most people in America are going to say that they don't really want to live in a country where Federal law enforcement wearing masks can show up in your neighborhood and bang on your door and drag you out of your house, which Donald Trump has also done.
I know that no American would agree--no American would agree--that any President should weaponize the Federal Government for his own political purposes.
This is not a country where, you know, if one party loses and the other one wins, that the one that wins uses its office to weaponize the power of the Federal Government against States that didn't vote for them or disagree with them.
And I am telling you, folks, that if we fall into that trap of treating that as the new normal, we are going to be here for a really long time because this is how democracies and republics die. This is how they spin out of control, when we jeopardize our values and our beliefs for a set of behaviors that are just totally out of the mainstream of American history--in this case, the weaponization of politics.
Colorado has witnessed a form of this firsthand. The administration canceled $109 million of transportation grants. The President denied disaster declarations for the Elk and Lee Fires in Rio Blanco County, and for flooding in Western Colorado.
They tried to block 100,000 families from receiving SNAP benefits. They have tried to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
And most shamefully--I mean, that is a long list. But most shamefully, they stole the promise of clean drinking water from 50,000 Coloradans in the southeastern part of my State who
We have passed it unanimously in the Senate. We have passed it unanimously in the House. And yet President Trump has taken it away.
So not only is he focused on the things that won't make our economy better, not only is he not focused on the next generation of Americans, not only is he not saying to himself, ``What do I do every day to try to deal with the costs that people are facing and the affordability crisis?''--it is a crisis that they are facing--he is making matters worse. It is like he is going out of his way to make everybody's life harder and worse.
I would be shocked if there are people here who actually support what he is doing in Iran. I know the American people don't. And it is not just because it is crushing them economically because of what the mullahs are doing with energy prices and what they are doing with--not them but what the war is doing with interest rates. It is not just because of that. It is because they can see how ridiculous this is--the lack of strategy, the lack of focus.
They know that he snatched Maduro in the middle of the night and that somehow he decided that dropping the bombs on Iran was going to get the same result, even when all the intelligence said: That is not what is going to happen. You are not going to replace the regime. You are not going to be able to take away their nuclear weapons from the air. They are going to constrict oil from the Middle East.
There isn't anyone in the Middle East that doesn't think they are not going to be paying tolls from now until eternity to the Iranians, to the mullahs, because of what Donald Trump has done.
It is ridiculous. It is not just a war of choice. It is a war that has created catastrophe for the American people.
We have lost the lives of soldiers in this country. They have bombed our military bases and the bases of our neighbors--which, by the way, our intelligence Agencies said they would--and now they are in a better negotiating position than they were before the war was started. And now they have people in charge that are actually more attached, if you can believe it, more attached to the prospect of getting nuclear weapons than the people that they replaced.
As I said earlier, he has put us in a worse position with China. Xi Jinping shows up here, and the President goes and meets him at the airport and drives him back to the White House and genuflects over and over and over to him.
And I can guarantee you, Xi Jinping was happy to be feted this way by the President of the United States because he knows how much advantage he is taking of the President.
The Iran war has been a huge boon to China--and to Russia, by the way. It has put them in a much better position than they were in before he started.
The Ukrainians, with no help basically from the President, finally had Putin on his heels. And they are doing an unbelievable job. We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude. And then President Trump gives Putin the gift of invading Iran, the gift of driving these people into each other's corner.
I mentioned his incoherent trade war with the entire world. We are basically tariffing the entire world, and that is haunting our farmers and ranchers. It is crushing our small business owners all over Colorado--and consumers as well. Consumer sentiment is at the second lowest point in 70 years.
Please stop, Mr. President. Stop. We cannot afford your policies anymore. We are trying to raise our kids, build our small businesses, turn something over to the next generation that we are proud of.
People are stuck in the jobs that they are in because there is nowhere for them to move. The hire rates in America are at record lows. No one can buy a house because of interest rates.
And, by the way, seniors who would like to maybe downsize and move out of their house so that my kids' generation can move in, they can't do anything. They can't go anywhere. And in many ways those folks, our seniors on fixed incomes, they are in as rough a position as anybody because of his policies.
But let me tell the Presiding Officer this. Here is what is happening in Donald Trump's economy right now: Forty-two percent of the recent college graduates in America--42 percent--are underemployed, and their peers are in even worse shape in this country. That is a hard way to start your life. If you are a young man in America today in your twenties, you are making 40 percent less in real dollars than you were in 1976--40 percent less in inflation-adjusted dollars than you were in 1976.
There is no way--no wonder people are getting stuck in their parents' basement. By the way, nothing would fill me with greater joy than having my own daughters move back into my basement, but I get the idea that kids don't want to do that. They want to start their lives. They want to start their businesses. They want to be able to afford higher education, which they can't. And now, even if they get it, 42 percent of them are underemployed.
I will just finish. I know that I have colleagues who want to talk. But let me just say one other thing that has been in the news lately that the President has been happily making news about, which is this whole issue of AI, which is part of the economic anxiety that especially the next generation is feeling--and for good reason. They are worried about what this is going to mean for their jobs and the economy. That is not irrational. That is why I put out language last week to create a new Federal Agency to actually negotiate with these guys.
No one in America has had a negotiation with Mark Zuckerberg over anything. We haven't had a negotiation about our privacy, our data, our kids' mental health, our economic interests. This Congress 15 years ago should have put this in place to deal with, if nothing else, the mental health issues that have been afflicting our kids because of these social media platforms.
But now, with AI, it is clear we have to have--Congress is never going to be able to figure it out. States can't regulate it.
We have Anthropic, one of the leading American companies, says that its technology poses an ``existential risk to humanity.'' That is what they wrote. That is what they wrote. I think about the lawyers that are drafting this stuff for the AI companies that are having to put in it that the technology is potentially an existential risk to humanity. And I wonder, if the worst happens, who they think is going to be there to sue them if they don't put that language in.
But that is where we are. That is what the industry is saying itself. The President has responded with his ``morally binding'' agreement with the AI companies and themselves, calling fears over AI a ``hoax''--a ``hoax.''
We could fix that here. We could create a new Agency in America to have that negotiation with Zuckerberg and the rest of these guys, just like Teddy Roosevelt did, Franklin Roosevelt did. There is a reason we don't have planes dropping out of the sky. There is a reason why we know our drugs are safe. There is a reason why we have been able to proceed with our nuclear weapons and nuclear technology without destroying ourselves. It is because we came together to work together in a way that was rational, created a synergy between the new inventions that were coming on and public safety, preserving innovation in America and public safety. We have to do that again. Well, we haven't been working on that because the President says his agreement is ``morally binding'' with these guys that are themselves saying that their own technology creates an existential risk to humanity.
We could have spent the time fixing our broken healthcare system, which is just becoming more and more and more expensive, in part, because of the President's policies. We could be dealing with our broken immigration system, reintroduce ourselves to the idea that we live in a nation of laws and we live in a nation of immigrants. We do, and we have been both at the greatest moments in this country's history.
I am sorry to say we haven't done any of that. I mentioned education earlier. I mentioned our literacy rates in this Nation that are the lowest they have been for 30 years.
So now we are going into this recess. We have all come out here this afternoon to do our procedural motions on
In fact, they doubt it. They doubt it because what they see is the economic catastrophe of the way the economy is working--not just under President Trump but for decades and now much worse under President Trump--and the political chaos that we are leaving behind. That is part of our legacy as well, unless we are going to figure out a way to come together on these fundamental issues and make some hard decisions here and focus attention on the next generation.
I have said many times that I don't blame Donald Trump for being elected President. I am sorry that he was, but I don't blame him for being elected. He won. But the rest of us that don't want to go down this road anymore on the American people's behalf have to find a different path. We have got to find a way to give each other hope in this country that we can make progress; that we can build an economy that, when it grows, it grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top; that we can have a Tax Code that actually supports work instead of passive investment, instead of just the assets that go up every time we pass a bill around here that wastes more trillions of dollars of the American people's tax money.
I am optimistic about that. I am not optimistic in this moment because we are leaving the Senate floor without having done it. I am not optimistic at this moment because Donald Trump is more focused on putting gild stuff on the walls of the Oval Office; putting his name on the Kennedy Center; building a ballroom; building a new triumphal arch in Washington, DC; breaking the Reflecting Pool; his own crypto. He is more focused on that than he is on the issues that we need to focus on. But there is nobody here who is surprised about that. He is not doing anything he didn't say he would do.
We need to find a way to create confidence in the American people so we can build a politics that is not just about chaos and division, that is not just about fanning the flames but is actually about embracing the next generation and our responsibility to them, our obligation to them--and I would say to this country--to fulfill and to live up to the example that our parents and grandparents set for us and to make sure we get this right before we move on. That is what we need to do, and I believe we will.
I appreciate the indulgence of the Presiding Officer. I am sorry to have gone on so long tonight. I thank the Presiding Officer for the time, and I thank my colleagues for giving me the chance to speak on the floor.
Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for allowing me to be able to slip in and do a quick history moment on the floor of the Senate. It is an interesting day, the 30th of September 2026.
Fifty years ago today, there was the passage of an appropriations bill that was just another appropriations bill, except this one was a little harder because it was actually a veto override.
Let me set the context for you. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled on something called Roe v. Wade. For the previous 200 years as a country, every State made a decision about abortion. That was the way it worked. In 1973, the Supreme Court stepped in and said: Nope, every State has to allow abortion across their State, and changed what we had been as a nation for 200 years to a nation that required an abortion in every single State.
Well, that was in 1973. In 1976, Congress--both House and Senate--had a serious conversation about are we going to fund abortion with Federal dollars. At the time, just to give you some history context on this, Carl Albert was the Speaker of the House. A Democrat from Oklahoma was actually the Speaker of the House. The majority leader of the Senate was also a Democrat. This was a Democrat-led House and Senate.
They debated it, and out of the House came an amendment called the Hyde amendment. It was named after Henry Hyde, who worked across the aisle and said: We may disagree on this issue of abortion that just came from the Supreme Court 3 years ago, but we should agree that we shouldn't allow Federal funding for abortion.
So a Democrat-led House of Representatives passed an amendment in the appropriations bill in 1976 which we still call the Hyde amendment today. It is interesting to be able to think about, at that time, in Congress, of the 535 Members of Congress, there were 100 pro-life Democrat Members of Congress. Now, 50 years later, there is one pro- life Democrat Member of Congress. A lot has changed in that time period.
But this simple agreement that we should not use Federal dollars to pay for elective abortions; that when I pay my taxes on April 15, it shouldn't be to pay for someone's abortion down the street--that was the agreement that was set in 1976.
Now, interestingly enough, it passed in that appropriations bill in the House. It was sent over to the Senate and passed in the Senate. It went to the President of the United States. It was a Republican President--Gerald Ford--at the time. He vetoed it, and it came back to Congress. And with 313 votes in the House of Representatives, they overrode President Ford's veto to pass that appropriations bill, including the Hyde amendment, on September 30, 1976, 50 years ago today.
I just thought, for just a moment, in all the chaos and of all the stuff and lots of important things that we are trying to be able to resolve today, for just a moment, we should just pause and remember the 50 years that we have had this simple agreement. Every single year since then, we have had this simple agreement: We will not use Federal dollars that come from taxpayers to pay for elective abortions across the country.
Some of us are still crazy enough to believe every child is valuable. We don't believe and I don't believe that some children are disposable and some children are valuable. I think they are all valuable. And I think there is some great value in telling the American taxpayers: You don't pay for the taking of human life; you pay for research from NIH and other things to be able to protect human life. That seems to be a better value.
Interestingly enough, studies have been done showing that 2.5 million children are alive today because of the Hyde amendment that passed 50 years ago. Those are folks teaching in schools; those are police officers; those are folks working in manufacturing; those are small business owners all across our country--2.5 million of them--that are alive today, just living life, doing their stuff, because the Hyde amendment passed 50 years ago. And it still gets passed every year.
I just thought for just a moment, in the Senate, we should pause and remember that day.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 365, S. 3315.
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 had been reported from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, with an amendment to strike all
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be withdrawn; that the Cassidy substitute amendment No. 5819 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 committee-reported amendment, in the nature of a substitute, was withdrawn.
The amendment (No. 5819), in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
(The amendment is printed in the Record of June 9, 2026, under ``Text of Amendments.'')
The bill (S. 3315), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed, as follows:
Mr. President, I will briefly speak to this. Improving cyber security resilience is essential to safeguard patients and ensure that providers can deliver care without disruptions.
My bipartisan bill, the Health Care Cybersecurity and Resiliency Act, would ensure health institutions can safeguard Americans' health data against increasing attacks. At a time when cyber attacks not only put patients' sensitive health data at risk but can delay lifesaving care, we need to do more to provide support.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to try to discharge 10 career ambassadorial nominees from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
In the 21 months the Trump administration has been charged with America's national security, we have seen a complete hallowing out of our diplomatic service. Even with wars in the Middle East, in Sudan, Ethiopia, in Ukraine, and a growing Ebola crisis and strikes against United States bases and diplomatic facilities, over 100 diplomatic posts remain empty. Meanwhile, China--who I think almost everybody in this Chamber would acknowledge is the United States' biggest competitor--has 170 Ambassadors in posts around the world.
Despite continued commitments from Secretary Rubio to send more career Ambassadors to the Senate for consideration, only 13 career Ambassadors have been confirmed under this
We have a crisis of U.S. leadership across the world. Not only has the President failed to nominate career experts to represent Americans, but he has gone a step further: He has arbitrarily recalled more than 30 career Ambassadors from countries across Africa, from the Middle East, from the Pacific, from the Western Hemisphere. These are all regions where the PRC is engaging our partners as we retreat.
We need American leadership overseas because competition with China doesn't just happen in the Indo-Pacific, and it doesn't just happen here at home, and it doesn't just happen in Africa or Latin America; it happens in every corner of the globe.
Ensuring American businesses can compete for market access, offering alternatives to China's debt-trap diplomacy tactics, shoring up our alliances, and attracting international talent are why we need Ambassadors to represent the United States on the ground across the globe.
Further, we know that China and Iran are working together to target American citizens and American infrastructure in the Middle East. If the Trump administration is serious about confronting China, we cannot let the Chinese write the future of foreign policy. This would be a dereliction of duty.
We don't know where the next crisis point may be, and without American leadership on the ground, we risk being caught flatfooted.
Now that these posters are up, I want to point out that, as I was talking about, we have 100 vacancies across the world. What we see here is where the United States has not filled ambassadorial posts. All this white, we don't have Ambassadors in those places. Look at China. They have Ambassadors in all those places.
This isn't a partisan issue. When our allies and adversaries alike see the United States represented abroad, we need to speak with one voice. Career Ambassadors are nonpartisan public servants, often with decades of experience in the regions where they serve.
So today, I am asking for unanimous consent to discharge from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the nominations of 10 career ambassadorial nominees, and I am here to urge the Trump administration to take seriously our national security agenda.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of PN1255-12, Peter Lord, Ambassador to Benin; PN1255-9, Keith Heffern, Ambassador to Gabon; PN1022-36, Daniel Travis, Ambassador to Sierra Leone; PN1022-39, Henry Wooster, Ambassador to Kenya; PN1201-4, Joshua Harris, Ambassador to Malaysia; PN1255-15, Nutan Patel, Ambassador to Cabo Verde; PN1255-7, Steven Gillen, Ambassador to Kyrgyz Republic; PN1255-8, Charles Goodman, Ambassador to Togo; PN1255-13, John McIntyre, Ambassador to Malawi; and PN1255-6, Natasha Franceschi, Ambassador to Nicaragua; and that the Senate proceed to their en bloc consideration and vote without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the nominations en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nominations of Peter Lord, of Florida, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Benin; Keith Heffern, of Virginia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Gabonese Republic; Daniel Travis, of California, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Sierra Leone; Henry Wooster, of Virginia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister- Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Kenya; Joshua Harris, of Maryland, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Malaysia; Nutan Patel, of California, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Cabo Verde; Steven Gillen, of Virginia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Kyrgyz Republic; Charles Goodman III, of Florida, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Togolese Republic; John McIntyre, of Texas, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Malawi; Natasha Franceschi, of California, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Nicaragua, en bloc?
Mr. President, I just want to point out how important it is to get our career Ambassadors on the ground, and hopefully, the administration will offer more career Ambassadors as nominees to the Senate.
Mr. President, on July 4, 2025, Central Texas experienced a once-in-a-century flooding event that caused the waters of the Guadalupe River to rise a shocking 26 feet in just 45 minutes. Homes were washed away, trees were toppled, streets were swallowed up, and communities in central Texas were ravaged, bringing an entire State to our knees.
The raging and merciless waters took the lives of 139 people, including 27 young girls who went to Camp Mystic in Kerr County. On that day, Heaven gained too many angels.
Even more shattering to think about is the reality that lives could have been saved if we had only had sufficient systems in place to deliver wireless emergency alerts to individuals in the danger zone after electricity and cell service were knocked out by the storm. That is why I introduced the Mystic Alerts Act along with Congressman August Pfluger to ensure Texans and all Americans can receive wireless emergency alerts on their mobile devices via satellite even when cellular networks are compromised. This legislation, which passed the House unanimously earlier this year, would help shore up this vulnerability and would undoubtedly save lives.
When disaster strikes, every second matters. Access to timely weather alerts would have given more Texans the runway needed to find higher ground before it was too late.
We couldn't save these 139 lives more than a year ago, but we will never be able to make things right for the families that continue to grieve unless we take a chance to honor the memories of those who lost their lives and their families and to prevent the horrors from hopefully ever happening again.
I urge my colleagues to allow this bill to advance to the President's desk tonight.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 7022 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (H.R. 7022) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, we are about to go back to our States, to recess sometime tonight or tomorrow, and then to proceed to the general election.
And there is an issue that hangs over the American people that concerns me, and I am sure concerns all of my colleagues, but on which we likely won't act before we adjourn.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and I are the cosponsors of the AI Whistleblower Protection Act, and it is one of a dozen urgently needed and important bills that would inject some guardrails, protections, and accountability into the rapidly advancing technology of AI.
Why is this a concern for me? Because in recent days, in recent weeks, there have been alarming incidents of AI agents breaking out of their containment sandboxes, taking on actions that even their designers and developers couldn't predict and can't fully explain.
And in recent days, the titans of the AI industry--folks like Sam Altman from Open AI or Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind or Dario Amodei from Anthropic--have been saying AI is improving itself so fast that we are at risk of it exceeding the capabilities of humans to control it--frankly, even to understand it.
So for those of you watching who might want to get tuned in to the debate and to the discussion, to be better informed, to be better engaged, I want to recommend a movie I just saw. It has got an unusual title. It is called ``The AI Doc: Or how I Became an Apocaloptimist.''
And the director, Daniel Roher, is a documentary maker who is facing being a parent for the first time, and he is trying to get his head around alternating depictions, predictions of doom, literally the extinction of the human race, or a utopia where AI will unlock the secrets to cheap, abundant, clean fusion energy or solve all the diseases, cancer, and other ravages known to mankind.
And in the course of an hour and a half, this very capable documentarian interviews dozens of the leading commentators, technology leaders, business leaders, civil society leaders, and researchers.
The first 20 minutes of the movie was so depressing I had to turn it off. It was so clearly predicting and making a compelling case for the imminent end of the human species at the hands of artificial intelligence that it became overwhelming. The next 30 minutes does the opposite. It gives you the most optimistic view possible: apocalypse or optimism.
And we here in the Senate and in the executive branch and in the House have a responsibility to reasonably, responsibly regulate in a timely way. There are so many dangerous technologies developed in the last century where we put guardrails around them, whether it was jet airplanes or nuclear energy, automobiles or the banking system.
I was in a terrible car accident end of June. I am here today because of airbags and seatbelts. Those were first advocated by safety folks like Ralph Nader. The Big Three auto companies mostly resisted. Why do we need seatbelts? When airbags came out, why the extra cost?
I was in a five-car accident where all five vehicles were totaled and every passenger walked away. And as I walked away, as I walked out of the hospital, I said to a friend: Thank God. What a miracle.
And he turned to me and said: And thanks for the seatbelts and the airbags.
When you get on an airplane and fly across the country, none of us probably can explain exactly how it works, exactly what the technology is. But we know that it has been maintained. It has been designed, maintained, funded, and flown by a tightly regulated group of people.
Airline pilots operate under very strict standards. Those who maintain and operate airplanes operate under very strict standards. That is why we don't have tragic disasters all the time.
So there are some good, concrete, bipartisan ideas for how we can inject some responsibility: some third-party auditing; some traceable records of what is happening, what has been done; some predeployment testing.
Earlier this week, I introduced my bipartisan AI Systems Transparency Act with Senators Lankford and Britt and Schatz; four Senators--two Republicans, two Democrats, from very different backgrounds-- introducing a bill to require transparency about what is driving these AI models so we can better study them, test them, and understand them.
There are lots of other good ideas that other Members have, but we, unfortunately, have a President who has said that the risks of AI are a hoax and, while hosting the titans of the AI industry, has refused to take seriously the idea that we in any way should meaningfully regulate this industry.
I understand we are in a dire competition with China. I agree with the assertion that the society or country that wins the race to frontier AI will have a decided advantage in national security, in science, in industry, in business of all kinds.
But we can and should do both: compete against China, invest in frontier models, and have responsible safety to prevent the worst scenarios from coming true.
We are able to do this in banking, to give one other example. Delaware, where I am from, is a major banking center. Every one of the largest banks in America has major operations in Delaware, and they operate under some real restrictions.
There are OCC and FDIC inspectors, regulators in every bank. They are required to follow know-your-customer laws, anti-money laundering standards. And after the 2008 to 2009 crisis, no one from the banking industry comes to me and says: We need a lighter touch regulation.
They understand that safety and soundness--the rule of law--allows the United States to have deep capital markets and safety.
Artificial intelligence is transforming our world, and whether it is adopting the AI whistleblower app that Senator Grassley and I are advocating for or it is adopting the AI Systems Transparency Act that Senator Britt and I and other colleagues are advocating for or other bipartisan bills, when we return in what will likely be a period of greater anxiety about AI, we need to act.
We need to take up legislation and move forward reasonable and responsible regulation.
Mr. President, I wonder if you have heard the story of Jason Rezaian. Jason was a Washington Post reporter--an Iranian American--who was stationed in Tehran and reporting for the Washington Post on the goings-on of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In 2014, he was arrested by the secret police and disappeared. Months later, it was revealed that he was a political prisoner being held at a notorious prison inside Iran. Jason was ultimately detained for 544 days before he was released, which he has recounted in his harrowing tale, ``Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison.''
When Jason returned to the United States at last, having been freed, returned to his family, what was the first thing he got from the U.S. Government? A tax bill, a tax bill for $20,000 for late filing and late payment.
Mr. Rezaian is a resourceful guy. He went to the IRS, and he said: Hey, how can you charge me for late payment, penalties, and fees? I was in prison in Iran.
They said: Well, how are we supposed to know that?
It was on the front page of the Washington Post.
They said: Well, we can't just forgive fees and fines for anybody who comes and talks to us.
They went through months and months of arguing back and forth, and he managed to get most of the fines and fees reduced but not all. And so after I met with him, now years ago, I drafted and introduced the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.
I bet you can guess what this bill does. There is a corollary--a companion--in the House, the End Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, and I am grateful to Congresswomen Titus and Tenney of Nevada and New York for their cosponsorship. It has passed the House unanimously.
Tonight, Senator Rounds and I have an opportunity to ask for unanimous consent that we pass this legislation in the Senate and send it to President Trump's desk.
Incredibly, when we asked for the score on this bill, it is positive because the IRS insists on litigating these cases, and they almost always lose them. They waste staff time and money suing people who were hostages or prisoners overseas.
This is simple; it is common sense; it is bipartisan; and it is compassionate. I want to thank Senators Crapo and Wyden for allowing Senator Rounds and me to pull this bill out of their larger tax package and pass it by unanimous consent tonight.
And I want to thank Senator Mike Rounds for being an early adopter. When I explained what happened to Jason Rezaian, he said: We should pass that and pass it right away.
Well, for better or worse, it has taken years, but here we are tonight on the verge of sending it to the President's desk. I cannot say how grateful I am for the chance to get this simple, clear, commonsense bill passed to help Americans who might tragically be held hostage or imprisoned wrongfully overseas.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 9496 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. President, with that, I understand this bill has been adopted by unanimous consent, and I am delighted to say that the End Tax Penalties on American Hostages bill will at long last go to our President's desk for his signature.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2252 and the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following bill: Calendar No. 106, H.R. 1829; further, that the committee-reported substitute to H.R. 1829 be agreed to; the bills, as amended, if amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, all en bloc.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am actually pretty sympathetic to the land management challenges in the West that have come from a history of public land disposal and development, but I cannot support the approach this bill takes transferring public land to a State without a fair exchange for the public.
Under the bill, if the State of North Dakota transferred State land to a Tribe, the State could then select Bureau of Land Management public land to replace them. The public would not receive any land or compensation in return for the land transferred to the State.
What is more, the bill doesn't specify which public land would be transferred out of public hands. It would allow the State to select any BLM-managed public land in North Dakota that hasn't already been set aside.
Land exchanges are an important tool for western public land management. I get that. I have supported many land exchanges in New Mexico and many other States, but land exchanges need to include a public process to determine which parcels are being exchanged. They must be in the public interest and be of equal value for the public and the other parties.
I am willing to work with my colleague from North Dakota to find a solution to the State lands within Indian reservations in his State, but the solution can't be simply giving away our public land, especially when we don't know even which lands would be transferred away.
I hope we can work together to find a different path forward on this issue but as the bill is currently drafted, I must object.
Mr. President, I would like to ask the ranking member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee who--we have worked together on many different issues and I appreciate that and I hope we can work on this one.
But there are some questions that I have to ask because I sincerely would like to get to a solution on a bill that, first off, does not affect other States. It solely affects land within my State of North Dakota, and it is supported by all of the reservations.
We have five reservations in my State, and the Native Americans on all of the reservations across the board have asked us to do this for them. There is no net loss of lands. This is simply exchanging State land within the boundaries of reservations for Federal land, which is outside the reservations, which then would be Federal lands within the reservations, which would be to the benefit of the Native American Tribes.
The only objection that I have heard from anybody at any time is in regard to hunting and public access. I am a hunter. I truly enjoy hunting, but I must admit I am probably not a hunter on the scale of my colleague from New Mexico. He is an accomplished hunter. We talk about it all the time.
He knows how important that is, obviously, to him and his citizens in New Mexico. It is very important to me and to my citizens in North Dakota. But here is a situation where there is no net loss of land, and, in fact, if anything, there will be more land open and available to hunters.
I was Governor of North Dakota for 10 years, and those State lands we opened up to public hunting and tourism. So there will be a gain for hunters and fishermen. And on the reservation, there is no net loss of public land whatsoever. It is a simple exchange of State land for Federal land.
These Federal lands will go from outside the borders of the reservation to within the borders of the reservation, and be managed for the benefit of those respective Tribes within the reservations.
And it is something that every single Tribe within my State has been asking for and we have been waiting for a long time to get done.
And here is how it worked out in the House: It passed unanimously. So, yes, I am willing to work on it, but I have been working on it for a long time. And I am simply asking that the House bill be passed and, along with it, a Democrat bill from the House also that would be of real benefit in the State of Arizona, the Apache County and Navajo County Conveyance Act, which is paired with this bill.
So by objecting, my good colleague from New Mexico is also holding up the Apache County and Navajo County Conveyance Act, which is important to
And so, again, I would ask for consent on this bill or at least some commitment as to how this is going to get done.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, this is like a three-legged stool where one of the legs is missing.
I support cleaning up the parcels inside of the Tribal reservations that currently do not belong to them.
But the public, who owns the Bureau of Land Management lands, also either need compensation or equal value. And this is simply a transfer of the public land of the United States of America that all of our constituents own, whether they are in North Dakota or New Mexico or Florida, without any compensation to the people of the United States.
Whether transferring public land to counties, transferring public lands to States, or transferring public lands to private entities, without an equal value for the public, is simply something I cannot support.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. President, there is no net loss of public lands. It is simply a straight exchange in terms of location. There is no net loss, none whatsoever.
I still fail to understand why the good Senator from New Mexico continues to make the case when there is no net lands. It is just a simple exchange.
The second thing I would, again, reiterate is: Okay. I know--I know that my colleague is sympathetic to this issue. I truly believe it. What I would like to hear is how we are going to resolve this. I would really appreciate some commitment for how this is going to be resolved.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I look forward to working with my colleague from North Dakota on the issue. I think we need to find a path forward here. Tribal trust land is not the same as public land. Transferring lands from the Federal Government to the status State is not equivalent, and we need something that is fair to the Tribal constituents, the State, and the public that owns those Federal public lands.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
I understand. But I, again, emphasize that the Federal Government will have the same amount of Federal land before and after. It is simply an exchange where it will be located within the boundaries of the reservation and will benefit the Tribes. By not doing this, we are denying it, to the Tribe's detriment.
And as far as the lands that the State would retain, then they would be outside the reservation.
So there is no net loss there. I will emphasize that again.
And the second thing is, by opposing this measure, my colleague is also holding up the Apache County and Navaho County Conveyance Act, which is paired with it to pass the House--well, both bills passed the House without objection, so I just find it interesting.
Here is two bills that went through the House on a voice vote, without objection, and they are being held up. I don't understand.
So again, I ask for either consent or some commitment beyond ``we will work together.''
I mean, I would like something--and I am sure the folks at the Tribes in Arizona would like the same thing--of some commitment as to how we are going to get to resolution within some reasonable period of time. What is it going to take?
With that, I ask for consent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I rise today to pass my bill which would ensure the Federal Housing Finance Agency's inspector general can do its job to protect the integrity of our housing market.
The inspector general is an independent official who investigates fraud, waste, and abuse in government Agencies. We can all agree that is a critical position.
Within the FHFA, the inspector general goes after legitimate fraud and abuse. The IG makes sure government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank meet the housing needs of our communities.
And the IG ensures American consumers who need mortgages and loans for their homes aren't being taken advantage of.
For example, during President Trump's first term, the FHFA's Office of the Inspector General caught the president and the chief information officer at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There is another example from just this month when the OIG worked with Florida law enforcement to investigate and prosecute a former attorney for real estate fraud.
There are so many more instances out there of this office going after fraudsters.
I, also, personally know how critical this work is, as a former attorney general of Nevada. It was the responsibility of my office to go after fraud and win restitution for Nevadans who had been exploited.
So trust me when I say: The work the OIG does is essential to making sure Americans are getting a fair deal.
Unfortunately, President Trump's pick to head the FHFA, Bill Pulte, has weaponized the Agency. Director Pulte has used his position to go after the President's perceived political enemies. He has pushed out staff who are doing their job, including economists who refused to inflate market outlooks. He has also forced out ethics and civil rights staff who help hold the Agency and its leadership accountable.
President Trump himself fired the acting inspector general last month.
Clearly, there is cause for concern here, and that is why we need to pass this bill.
The law already requires FHFA to provide its Office of Inspector General with the resources it needs to do its job. My bill would add safeguards to ensure that the FHFA must provide the funding that the OIG requests. This would protect the OIG from being shortchanged by any FHFA Director playing politics, and it would ensure the FHFA inspector general--and not Bill Pulte--determines the amount of funding it needs to do its job.
This bill would protect the American people from waste, fraud, and abuse, and to deter bad actors from taking advantage of their power. I encourage my colleagues to join me in passing this bill.
So, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5681 submitted earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, Reserving the right to object, this bill would amend the funding statute for the Federal Housing Finance Agency so that the expenses of the inspector general are collected through the annual assessments of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank in an amount independently determined by the inspector general.
I support independent oversight. The Inspector General Act already requires a separate budget estimate for that office, and it already lets the inspector general tell Congress if a proposed budget would impair that work.
Current law already funds this office. It has more than 100 employees and a budget of more than $50 million.
This bill goes further, though. It would make the inspector general's own determination the amount the director must collect. There is no ceiling, no reasonableness test, and no vote of Congress on this matter whatsoever.
These assessments, by the way, aren't free. They are costs on the housing finance system, and they show up in the mortgage market. We would literally be costing working Americans more money for mortgages so that a bunch of overpriced attorneys would
If the Senate wants to change how this office is funded, that change could include a cap, a reporting requirement, and, most importantly, a recorded vote. And for that reason, I object.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Iowa (Ms. Ernst), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Blumenthal), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 41, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 931; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The nomination considered and confirmed is as follows:
Mr. 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.
Mr. President, yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from former special counsel Jack Smith, the man who investigated Donald Trump's criminal effort overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Mr. Smith testified, under oath, about how the President pressured State election officials and Members of Congress to reject the results of the election, even though Trump had privately admitted that Joe Biden had won in 2020.
The President's subversion efforts came to a head on January 6, 2021, when an armed mob, that he incited, stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful transition of power.
Mr. Smith testified yesterday that it was Donald Trump who caused that violence, that he foresaw what would result from his conspiracy theories and that he sought to exploit it to remain in power.
We remain a democracy today because of the brave public servants, many of them Republicans, who refused to cooperate with the President's attacks on our democracy, as well as the men and women in uniform who defended this building and all of us inside on that dark day.
Now, in his second term, the President is again sowing chaos and doubt in our electoral process. He is attempting to exceed the authorities granted to him by the Constitution, which clearly gives primary authority over election administration to the States.
In March, President Trump signed an illegal Executive order which directed the Department of Homeland Security to overhaul the so-called SAVE database with incorrect and out-of-date citizenship information so it could be used to determine voter eligibility.
It was a reckless solution in search of a problem. Yet last week, the Supreme Court's conservative majority permitted part of this dangerous plan to move forward, allowing States to use the flawed database to verify the citizenship of registered voters.
This will inevitably lead to voter purges and disenfranchisement of eligible voters in States that choose to use this faulty system.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration's efforts to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections go far beyond the SAVE database. Just look at the Department of Justice.
In January, the FBI used widely debunked conspiracy theories to justify a raid on an elections office in Fulton County, GA, seizing ballots and voter rolls from the 2020 Presidential election.
Later, in March, the FBI seized election materials from a partisan, Republican audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, AZ.
In July, reporting emerged that the FBI obtained the IP address of an individual in South Carolina who registered to vote online.
In response to that last case, a former senior Justice Department official noted that, ``it's not typical and it's not appropriate'' ``for the FBI to be calling state election officials and just asking and conducting a fishing expedition to see private voter data.''
The FBI has also raided the office of a voting rights organization in Ohio, and they showed up at the home of a poll worker in Milwaukee to ask questions about the 2020 election.
These are unacceptable and unprecedented steps by the FBI, all in an effort to relitigate the 2020 Presidential election.
But it isn't just FBI Director Kash Patel. Other components of the Justice Department have joined these efforts to support the Big Lie.
DOJ's Civil Rights Division, often called the ``crown jewel'' of the Department, is responsible for enforcing the laws that protect the right to vote. But that mission has been effectively abandoned.
Instead of protecting voting rights, the Civil Rights Division currently seems focused on intimidating eligible voters and election officials.
In April, the Division sought to obtain election materials from Wayne County in the swing State of Michigan.
The Division has filed 31 lawsuits against States in an effort to obtain access to unredacted voter rolls, filled with sensitive voter data.
The Division is also planning to deploy 1,000 election observers across the country; the election observer program has historically played an important role in protecting the right to vote, but it is ripe for misuse under this administration.
Additionally, the Division has sent letters to election officials across the country threaten to file criminal charges against officials if a noncitizen casts a ballot in an upcoming election.
As the Republican-appointed Utah elections director noted in response to one of those letters, ``The federal government can best assist the State of Utah by allowing us to perform our required duties without unjustified interference, as intended by Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.''
Across the country, voters are beginning to receive ballots for early voting. I understand why some of those voters may look at this landscape and wonder if they should even bother trying to vote.
It is indeed frightening to watch this weaponization of Federal law enforcement. But that makes it all the more critical for Americans to make their voices heard, loud and clear.
And there is good news that should give voters confidence. While the Trump administration has had some victories, like the case before the Supreme Court last week, most of their interference efforts have been shut down by the Federal judiciary.
Those DOJ lawsuits to obtain sensitive voter roll data? Courts have rejected them in every ruling so far.
And countless State attorneys general, State and local election officials, and community organizations stand ready.
They have been tirelessly preparing for this election for months, and they will be working to protect every eligible American's right to access the ballot and have their vote counted.
Here in Congress, I am working with my colleagues to hold Trump administration officials accountable when they try to interfere with our constituents' rights.
The reality is the President's biggest fear is coming true: Americans are fed up with this administration's broken promises.
And if Donald Trump thinks that he will overturn the will of the people with a conspiracy-fueled attempt to void the election, he should be ready to once again lose in courtrooms across the country.
We Americans will not allow our collective voices to be silenced.
Mr. President, I rise to discuss my vote on rollcall vote No. 253, the motion to proceed to the Stop Insider Trading Act. I strongly support efforts to remove potential conflicts of interest, promote strengthened ethical standards, and restore public trust in government. That is why I voted for commonsense legislation--the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act--which became law and bans lawmakers from trading on nonpublic information and requires lawmakers to disclose stock trades. And, it is why I am a cosponsor of the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, led by Senator Ossoff, which would ban Members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks and similar investments while in office.
But instead of voting on that legislation today, Senate Republicans brought to the floor a bill that would continue to let members own and sell stocks and to trade stocks in privately held companies and therefore potentially profit from insider knowledge. As someone who has never owned individual stocks, I believe this bill simply isn't strong enough.
I am also disappointed that congressional Republicans have attached unrelated provisions to this legislation that would undermine voting rights. The bill includes provisions to restrict access to the ballot box that are more severe than any law in any state. The bill would effectively end voting by mail and create new burdens for voters and election officials.
Nothing is more fundamental to our democracy than our free and fair elections and the right of Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Voting is how the American people make their voices heard and ensure their elected leaders are held accountable.
While I have long supported efforts to ensure that lawmakers cannot use insider information to profit off of their elected office, we should not be making it harder for eligible Americans to cast their ballot. For that reason, I opposed the bill.
Mr. President, the penny has been a staple of American life since Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792, which mandated that the penny be valued at one hundredth part of a dollar.
The following year, in 1793, the U.S. Mint produced 11,178 copper pennies. Billions of pennies later, the penny has been made of zinc, steel, nickel, tin and bronze throughout more than two centuries of history and has featured on its face Lady Liberty, a Flying Eagle, an Indian Head, and, most notably, President Abraham Lincoln since 1909.
Since the early 2010s, the penny has cost the U.S. Mint more to produce than its 1 cent face value. Today, it costs taxpayers nearly 4 cents per penny to produce, costing the Federal Government an estimated $56 million annually.
As Americans rely heavily on electronic payments, including digital assets, to send and receive value, the penny has become an outdated and inefficient part of our currency.
One of my core missions serving on the Banking Committee has been to ensure how Americans transfer value in our payment and currency system is
I am proud to be leading the Common Cents Act in the Senate, which will bring the penny's role in our economy to an end once signed into law by President Trump. I am joined by my friends Senators Gillibrand, Lankford, and Wyden as cosponsors of this legislation.
The Common Cents Act ratifies the Treasury Department's decision in 2025 to permanently discontinue production of the penny. My legislation also provides crucial legal certainty for business by creating a clear national standard authorizing businesses to round to the nearest 5 cents, while specifying that electronic payments are not required to be rounded.
My legislation also authorizes the U.S. Mint to test and, if appropriate, implement a new lower-cost composition for the nickel, which could also save taxpayers money.
I want to be clear about the intent of that provision. The intent of this provision is to allow the Treasury and Mint to change the composition of the 5-cent coin from its current nickel-copper alloy to a zinc-nickel alloy. Not only should the Treasury and Mint evaluate the direct cost of production of the 5-cent coin when determining its composition, but it also should evaluate the cost and recyclability across the Treasury's and Mint's integrated coin-alloy and scrap- recycling system, as well as the availability of qualified suppliers and the overall resilience of the supply chain.
The current copper and nickel 5-cent coin, dime, and quarter production streams are operationally and economically interconnected. The current composition of the 5-cent coin uses a closed-loop recycling model, and the nickel-copper alloy used in the 5-cent coin is compatible with the materials also used in dimes and quarters. This allows the 5-cent coin scrap to be recycled and reused into dime and quarter feedstock.
The goal of the Common Cents Act is to save taxpayers money. Therefore, the Treasury and Mint should look at the impact and cost of changing the composition of the 5-cent coin, including the cost of production of the 5-cent coin and other coins, recyclability, availability of suppliers, and supply chain.
Discontinuing coinage like the penny is not new. Production of the half-cent coin was discontinued in the Coinage Act of 1857, and today, the Common Cents Act is another step our country will take to modernize how Americans transfer value.
The late Senator Mike Enzi, my predecessor from Wyoming in the Senate, began advocating for the abolition of the penny in 2017, when he introduced the Coins Act. I am proud to complete the work he began today with the Common Cents Act.
Mr. President, last year, the State of Hawaii officially designated September as Hawaiian History Month. Hawaiian History Month aims to recognize, reflect, and share Hawaii's history. This year, I come to the floor to celebrate Hawaiian History Month by highlighting three Native Hawaiian leaders who have played pivotal roles in the education and perpetuation of Hawaiian culture: Mary Kawena Pukui, Levon Ohai, and Kaiulani Murphy. These histories are necessarily brief, and I encourage my colleagues and all Americans to take the time to learn more about these revered leaders.
In the 1960s and 70s, there were tremendous efforts to revitalize and perpetuate the practices of Native Hawaiians. This era, referred to as the Hawaiian Renaissance, ushered in a cultural resurgence that embraced traditional language, hula, and music to give voice to Native Hawaiian culture. The restoration of the Hawaiian language, which had nearly been lost due to attempts to suppress its teaching, was a necessary part of this renaissance.
Mary Abigail Kawenau laokalan iahiiaka ikapoliope lekawahin eaihonua Pukui, born April 20, 1895, was one of the most significant Native Hawaiian scholars and cultural figures who helped preserve Hawaiian language, stories, and traditions. Her leadership, legacy, and outstanding contributions to Hawaiian knowledge earned her the honor of being recognized on the Native American $1 coin program in 2025. As a child, she was immersed in Hawaiian culture; her mother came from a long line of priests, medicinal experts, and midwives. Her mother raised her to be bilingual, receiving education in Hawaiian language, crafts, and culture in addition to the English language. Notably she is known for publishing more than 50 books and articles and composing over 150 songs and chants. Some of her most well-known publications consist of ``Place Names of Hawaii (1974), ``Olelo Noeau,'' and co-authoring ``Hawaiian-English Dictionary'' (1957, revised 1986). The nearly 3,000 Olelo Noeau she published help to share the wisdom, thoughts, guidance, and lessons of Hawaiian ancestors through her translated and annotated proverbs.
Another practice that was also revitalized during the Hawaiian Renaissance in the 70s and 80s was laau lapaau, the practice of Hawaiian medicine. In 1988, Congress passed the Native Hawaiian Health Care Act that recognized laau lapaau, knowledge passed down from generation to generation by Hawaiian practitioners, as a legitimate form of traditional medicine. Levon Ammon Ohai, from Kapaa, Kauai, is one of those Hawaiian medicine healers. Ohai worked as a Hawaii Department of Education teacher, as well as a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Because of his dedication to the preservation and perpetuation of traditional Hawaiian knowledge systems, practices, and culture, he is known in the community as a kahuna laau lapaau, an expert in the medical field. He is also recognized by Papa Ola Lokahi, a federally created entity working to better health outcomes in the Native Hawaiian community, as a traditional healer.
Another central part of the Hawaiian Renaissance was the revitalization of traditional wayfinding, showcasing the traditional migration of Polynesians. In 1976, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, with the help of Mau Piailug, a master navigator from Micronesia, sailed their first successful voyage on a double-hulled sailing canoe, named Hokulea. This voyage would be the first of many. In 2013, the Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage began, an over 40,000-nautical-mile voyage that used traditional wayfinding techniques. The journey's name means ``to
Kaiulani Murphy was a key crew member in the Malama Honua Voyage and has been a navigator on Hokulea for more than 20 years. Additionally, she was the first woman to navigate Hokulea from Tahiti to Hawaii. In August 2026, Murphy, along with three other Native Hawaiian women-- Shantell De Silva, Pomaikalani Bertelmann, and Lehua Kamalu--became the first and only known females to be granted Pwo, master navigator status, the highest honor and responsibility among traditional Pacific navigators. Murphy is dedicated to steering future generations of wayfinders at Honolulu Community College, where she is a full-time Hawaiian studies professor.
Every day, but particularly during this month, we honor and thank Mary Kawena Pukui, Levon Ohai, Kaiulani Murphy, and the many other Native Hawaiian leaders for their extraordinary vision, leadership, and commitment to the Native Hawaiian community at all points of Hawaiian history including past, present, and future.
Mr. President, some storms pass. Others permanently change the communities they pass through. For the North Carolinians who lived through Hurricane Helene, September 27, 2024, is not simply a date in the past. It is a dividing line between life before the storm and everything that has come after.
This week marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Helene.
Only 2 years ago, this Category 4 storm grew to insurmountable levels in a matter of hours, dumping up to 30 inches of rain with winds up to 106 miles per hour. The result: Family homes that stood for generations were washed away, small businesses that had long served as pillars of their communities were shuttered, and roadways connecting towns and neighbors were torn apart. But most devastating of all was the loss of 108 lives across Western North Carolina.
Like many North Carolinians across our State and many Americans across the country, I remember watching the storm carve its path through the Blue Ridge Mountains on the news that fateful Friday morning. As the storm picked up pace, I did everything I could to stay in constant contact with local municipal leaders on the ground to gather intel on the storm's growing severity and better gauge the damage it would inevitably leave behind. But when phone lines suddenly dropped, we lost all communication with one-third of the State. And nothing could have prepared us for what would come after.
Just days after the storm broke, I surveyed the wreckage from the air with North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. From above, the damage done was horrifying: Rivers rushed where roads once were, trees were collapsed onto buildings, cars were overturned, and homes were caught in mudslides.
When it was finally safe to reach the ground, the destruction Helene left behind was overwhelming. I will never forget touring an elementary school classroom in Watauga County that has been flooded by several feet of water during the storm. Walking over the debris and remnants of what once was a place of learning, growth, and opportunity for young children was chilling. That visit made one thing abundantly clear: The road to recovery was about more than rebuilding what Helene destroyed. It was about restoring our communities.
Overnight, Hurricane Helene left North Carolina with nearly $60 billion in damage and recovery costs, a price tag so large that it is hard to conceptualize. Now imagine that scale of destruction falling onto counties, small towns, and entities whose entire budgets are not measured in billions, but in millions, or less.
In the immediate aftermath of Helene, local governments had no choice but to completely drain their cash reserves to clear debris, restore roads, repair water systems, and provide the basic infrastructure that their communities needed to survive.
But Helene's severe economic impact extends far beyond the communities directly hit by the storm because the 39 disaster- designated counties account for 45 percent of North Carolina's GDP. That means western North Carolina's recovery is not just a regional priority; it is essential to our State's overall economic strength.
That is why my No. 1 priority in Washington over the past 2 years has been unlocking Federal aid for western North Carolina's recovery.
Over the past 2 years, I have made nearly 50 visits to Helene- impacted communities, and my staff has made many more. My casework team has worked on over 500 cases related to Hurricane Helene recovery, with positive outcomes leading to over $66 million in awards. My policy team has worked diligently to ensure western North Carolina receives the Federal disaster funding it needs by securing its inclusion in Federal disaster re supplemental legislation and ensuring the Disaster Relief Fund has the resources needed to support a full recovery.
I have also worked closely with Federal Agencies to clear backlogs and get recovery funds flowing so projects can get off the ground and outstanding bills can be paid. In the past 2 years, Federal Agencies have identified over $13 billion in Hurricane Helene-related awards, grants, infrastructure commitments, and Federal loan assistance for North Carolina, significantly advancing recovery efforts.
Since September of 2024, FEMA has assisted over 161,000 households with nearly $567 million in direct assistance. North Carolina was also awarded a $1.4 billion Community Development Block Grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to support recovery efforts and address housing needs.
Additionally, FEMA has removed roughly 15 million cubic yards of debris from rights-of-way and waterways, restoring access and helping communities move forward with rebuilding.
In a region where tourism drives local economies, fully reopening the Blue Ridge Parkway by the end of the year is a major milestone on the road to recovery. By the end of 2026, the National Park Service will have repaired more than 55 landslides along the parkway's 200-mile stretch through North Carolina. Although work will continue to repair visitor centers and historic and cultural landmarks in the coming years, the parkway's complete reopening will undoubtedly allow western North Carolina to enter a new stage of much-needed economic recovery by welcoming tourists back to the mountains.
When I think back to those first few days after Hurricane Helene, the devastation will forever be scared into my memory. But what stands out most is what emerged from that destruction: an extraordinary sense of unity. In every one of western North Carolina's 39 impacted counties, neighbors were helping neighbors. And that level of unity, in the face of severe adversity, is something I am enormously proud of.
I want to recognize and sincerely thank the faith-based and nonprofit organizations that were among the first to respond after Helene--and for their continued efforts in helping families across western North Carolina rebuild.
To every family still grieving the loss of a loved one, know that you are not alone. We will never forget the lives Helene stole from us on September 27, 2024.
Helene may have changed western North Carolina forever, but it will not define our future. That belongs to the resilient people who call the Blue Ridge Mountains home. As communities continue to rebuild, businesses reopen, and visitors return, western North Carolina will continue moving forward with the same strength and resilience that carried us through the storm--because, if the last 2 years have taught us anything, it is this: No storm is stronger than a community determined to rebuild together.
Mr. President, I rise today to honor and thank my constituent and longtime staffer McKenna LeVitt for her many years of service to the U.S. Senate and to the people of Nevada.
McKenna has been a key member of my team since my first year in the Senate, joining my office as part of our first intern class and then returning to work for me in a full-time role after she graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno. Over time, she proved herself to be an incredibly dedicated and talented staffer, rising quickly from staff assistant to legislative correspondent to legislative correspondence manager to legislative aide to legislative assistant and finally becoming our lead policy adviser for all energy, environment, public lands, water, agriculture, and Tribal issues.
In this role, McKenna has led my office's work on numerous public lands bills, multi-year legislative efforts that are critical to the landscape, economic development, safety, preservation, and accessibility of the land in our State. She has shepherded the Truckee Meadows Public Lands Management Act through Congress, one of the most significant pieces of legislation directly impacting northern Nevada in recent history. In introducing, negotiating, and working to amend this bill, McKenna has taken many hundreds of meetings and put in thousands of hours of work, collaborating with county and city officials, Tribes, the State of Nevada, conservationists, sportsmen, recreationalists, ranchers, landholders, housing developers, utilities, and others. She has taken public feedback, working parcel-by-parcel on changes and working across the aisle and with members of both the House and Senate and with committee staff to move this bill forward. Its future success in this Chamber will be due in very large part to her, and I am confident that we will get the Truckee Meadows Public Lands Management Act across the finish line thanks to her hard work on it these past many years.
She has also played a leading role in working with my national security team to obtain fair compensation for ranchers impacted by the modernization of Naval Air Station Fallon, helped draft and introduce dozens of bills and amendments, secured millions of dollars in critical funding for Nevada through appropriations, and taken what can conservatively be estimated to be over a thousand meetings with Nevadans. Whenever McKenna wasn't at her desk, we knew it meant she was in a meeting talking with Nevadans about how we could help them. It is her personal touch in these interactions that sets her apart, not only coming prepared with policy knowledge and ready to answer any question that comes her way, but also listening with empathy and fully adopting the challenges of her fellow Nevadans as her own.
As a colleague, McKenna is beloved, someone whom everyone on my team in both Nevada and DC considers a person they can trust. She has been there for people when they need her, just as she has been there for the State of Nevada. McKenna has a steady hand and an analytical mind, but also a heart of gold.
McKenna, I thank you for your service to Nevada and the country, and I look forward to seeing you grow and excel as you move back home to Reno and begin a new life with Ken. We will miss you, but your impact will be felt forever.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 5632. A bill to amend title 44, United States Code, to prohibit the closure of Federal records centers, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 5634. A bill to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide additional amounts of loan forgiveness to teachers of English learners and teachers of bilingual and dual language immersion students, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Supporting Providers of English Language Learning, SPELL, Act, which I introduced today.
English learners are one of the fastest growing student populations in the country. Across the United States, about 10 percent of all publc school students are English learners. In California alone, nearly 19 percent of all public school students identify as English learners. Yet we are facing a devastating shortage of teachers with the skills needed to support these students. If we do not address this shortage, the achievement gap for this vulnerable group of students will continue to grow.
Educating students learning English requires specialized instruction and unique teacher strategies. If we are going to meet the needs of these students, we need to facilitate the training and retention of high-quality teachers for our English learners.
The SPELL Act, would amend the Higher Education Act to provide up to $17,500 in Federal student loan forgiveness for teachers of English learners, bilingual students, or dual immersion students in high-need schools. This would match the level of loan forgiveness offered to teachers of other in-demand subjects such as math, science, and special education.
By lessening the financial burden on prospective English learner teachers, we can help incentivize a greater number of passionate and highly qualified teachers to enter and stay in the classroom.
As a Senator representing one of the most diverse States in the country with the most English learners and as an English learner myself, I am proud to work with my colleagues to push forward legislation to support our teachers. I want to thank Representative Espaillat for introducing this bill in the House, and I hope our colleagues will join us in supporting our English learner teachers and students.
Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Supporting Providers of English Language Learning, SPELL, Act, which I introduced today.
English learners are one of the fastest growing student populations in the country. Across the United States, about 10 percent of all publc school students are English learners. In California alone, nearly 19 percent of all public school students identify as English learners. Yet we are facing a devastating shortage of teachers with the skills needed to support these students. If we do not address this shortage, the achievement gap for this vulnerable group of students will continue to grow.
Educating students learning English requires specialized instruction and unique teacher strategies. If we are going to meet the needs of these students, we need to facilitate the training and retention of high-quality teachers for our English learners.
The SPELL Act, would amend the Higher Education Act to provide up to $17,500 in Federal student loan forgiveness for teachers of English learners, bilingual students, or dual immersion students in high-need schools. This would match the level of loan forgiveness offered to teachers of other in-demand subjects such as math, science, and special education.
By lessening the financial burden on prospective English learner teachers, we can help incentivize a greater number of passionate and highly qualified teachers to enter and stay in the classroom.
As a Senator representing one of the most diverse States in the country with the most English learners and as an English learner myself, I am proud to work with my colleagues to push forward legislation to support our teachers. I want to thank Representative Espaillat for introducing this bill in the House, and I hope our colleagues will join us in supporting our English learner teachers and students.
Mr. President, I have seven requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 9:45 a.m.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
The Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to Michael Kellermann, serving a detail from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the Committee on Natural Resources, and Francisco Alvarez, serving a fellowship from Sandia National Laboratories to the Committee on National Resources, for the duration of their assignments to the committee.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following fellows in my office be given floor privileges for the remainder of the 119th Congress: Alandrea Harris, Stephanie Meredith, Jada Owens, Dana Moffat, Kathleen Hart, and Jessica Nielson.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all Members of the Republican Conference be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or Joint Resolutions from October 1 through November 9.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the upcoming adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President pro tempore and the majority the minority leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences, or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent actions of the two Houses, or by order of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the Senate's adjournment, reports of committees and introduction of measures be authorized on Thursday, October 15 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 2273) 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 the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 571, H.R. 5235.
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 had been reported from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and 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. 5235) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 621, S. 5249.
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 had been reported from the Committee on Environment and Public Works with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert in lieu thereof the following:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment, in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
The bill (S. 5249), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 637, S. 2437.
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 had been reported from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert in lieu thereof the following:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment, in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
The bill (S. 2437), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 673, S. 1514.
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 had been reported from the Committee on Indian Affairs with amendments, as follows:
(The parts of the bill intended to be stricken are in boldfaced brackets, and the parts of the bill intended to be inserted are in italic.)
I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported amendments be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendments were agreed to.
The bill (S. 1514), as amended, 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 the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 676, H.R. 2400.
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 had been reported from the Committee on Indian Affairs, with an amendment to strike all after the enacting clause and insert the part printed in italic, as follows:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The committee-reported amendment in the nature of a substitute was agreed to.
The amendment was ordered to be engrossed and the bill to be read a third time.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 1055) 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 the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from S. 1564 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 1564) 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 the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 227 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative 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. 227) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
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. 4307) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 8352 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and 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. 8352) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions, which are at the desk: S. Res. 936, S. Res. 937, S. Res. 938, S. Res. 939, S. Res. 940, S. Res. 941, S. Res. 942, S. Res. 943, S. Res. 944, S. Res. 945, S. Res. 946, S. Res. 947, and S. Res. 948.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and 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.'')
Supporting the Designation of October 2026 as "Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month" to Raise Awareness of Substance Use and Misuse in the United States
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 866.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and 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. 866) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in the Record of September 17, 2026, under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned, to then convene for pro forma session only, with no business being conducted, on the following dates and times: Thursday, October 1, at 10:30 a.m.; Monday, October 5, at 4 p.m.; Tuesday, October 6, at 1:30 p.m.; Friday, October 9, at 1:30 p.m.; Tuesday, October 13, at 3:30 p.m.; Thursday, October 15, at 9:30 a.m.; Monday, October 19, at 9 a.m.; Thursday, October 22, at 9 a.m.; Monday, October 26, at 2 p.m.; Thursday, October 29, at 2 p.m.; Monday, November 2, at 4:30 p.m.; and Thursday, November 5, at 10:30 a.m.; further, that when the Senate adjourns on Thursday, November 5, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m. on Monday, November 9; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 453, H.R. 2347; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, at 5:30 p.m., the cloture motion filed during today's session of the Senate ripen.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of the Democratic leader.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, 20 months ago, Republicans won control of Washington on a promise to bring down costs, make government more efficient, and end senseless wars. But over the past 2 years, Republicans betrayed the trust of the American people. For the past 20 months, Senate Republicans catered to Donald Trump's every wish, but Senate Democrats stood up for the American people.
The Trump administration, empowered by his feckless Republican majorities in Congress, has been a catastrophe for working families everywhere. Rising costs, increasing chaos, and rampant corruption characterize the Trump administration and its Republican acolytes.
Though we lack the majority in both the House and Senate, Democrats came together like never before to hold Trump and Republicans' feet to the fire and do everything we could to stop them. We fought Republicans' radical agenda on front after front and blunted some of their worst attacks on the American people.
On costs, we worked tirelessly and fiercely to call attention to how Republicans' disastrous agenda is making costs for the American people skyrocket. Americans have watched the price of everything--everything-- explode these past 2 years--groceries, gasoline, healthcare, electricity, housing, childcare. Everything is more expensive.
Americans are crying out for relief, and instead of listening to Americans, my Republican colleagues across the aisle back the very same administration policies that have cost families an average of $4,200 in higher prices since Trump took office--$4,200 in higher prices because of Republican and Trump policies.
Senate Republicans back Trump's horrendous tariff tax to the hilt. Democrats fought Trump's tariff tax in court and won. Americans shouldn't have to shell out a fortune at the grocery store so Trump can pound his chest about his senseless trade wars.
As Trump has pursued new tariffs, Republicans in Congress have abetted these tax increases on families and small businesses, while Democrats have pushed to end them.
We fought back when Trump and congressional Republicans gleefully cut $1 trillion--$1 trillion--from our healthcare system so they could cut taxes for billionaires and their biggest corporation friends. The result: 5 million Americans have already lost their healthcare coverage. Can you imagine being a family with no healthcare when your kid gets sick? And another 10 million will lose it in the coming years. Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans with ACA coverage have to shell out more than $1,000 extra because of soaring premiums and deductibles.
Medicaid, food assistance--every program designed to help Americans keep their heads above water--all cut to the bones by Republicans in the Senate and in the country.
Let's not forget how Americans' electricity bills are up 18 percent under Donald Trump because Republicans gutted the historic investments Democrats made in the cheapest, fastest forms to get energy on the grid. We fought hard to secure these investments, and you had better believe we are going to fight to bring them back.
Republicans are also charging the American people for senseless foreign wars that they promised to end. The Republican majority continues to back Trump's disastrous war with Iran that has made gas prices skyrocket and mortgage rates soar.
Democrats know just how badly Americans are hurting right now. Republicans can turn a blind eye to the affordability crisis all they want, but fixing it means offering a positive vision to lower costs. That is what Democrats will continue to do.
Mr. President, on corruption, Senate Democrats have also been unrelenting in exposing Trump's unprecedented corruption. Senate Republicans have aided and abetted Trump's efforts to rob the American people and enrich himself every step of the way.
The Trump family has profited $4 billion off the Presidency in the past 2 years. Trump couldn't have done it without the Senate GOP stroking his ego and lining his pockets.
The list of Trump's scams and taxpayer-funded vanity projects is truly egregious. Billions of dollars in upgrades to Trump's $400 million foreign luxury jet, Trump's gaudy triumphal arch and his billion-dollar ballroom, his recent propaganda ad, sweetheart deals for his sons' companies from foreign governments, his $2 billion MAGA slush fund to funnel American taxpayers' money to himself, his billionaire friends, and January 6 insurrectionists--the list, unfortunately, goes on and on and on, and Trump charged it all to the American taxpayer.
Senate Democrats have laid Trump's grifting bare for the whole world to see. Now, everyone knows that this is the most corrupt administration in American history.
Americans are already drowning in higher costs; they shouldn't have to pay for Trump's corruption too.
Democrats are ready to actually drain the swamp--to really do it--to root out corruption and ensure government works for the people, not special interests.
Mr. President, on chaos, with a record so terrible, with an agenda so deeply unpopular, Trump has resorted to sowing chaos everywhere he can--chaos in our financial markets; chaos in our streets, where he unleashed his rogue ICE agents to go after Americans; chaos abroad, where his war has put our economy at risk--all because he didn't think to keep the Strait of Hormuz open when he began.
Republicans have embraced Trump's chaos at every turn, but Senate Democrats have done everything we can to restore stability, especially in our elections.
Trump has waged an all-out war on free and fair elections in the United States. He has tried to disenfranchise millions of Americans, kill vote-by-mail, and make it harder for people to make their voices heard in their democracy. Trump has given up on winning over the electorate, so he is trying to silence it.
Republicans tried to jam through Trump's SAVE Act--the most devious anti-voting rights legislation Trump ever dreamed up--to purge millions of voters from the rolls.
We told Republicans that the SAVE Act ain't going to happen. It didn't. We killed the SAVE Act in Congress, we took Trump to court over his attacks with his voter-suppression Executive orders, we protected mail-in voting, and we defeated Trump's attacks on our elections in case after case after case.
Senate Democrats launched our Election Protection Task Force to plan how we will protect our elections on election day from Trump, we held tabletop exercises to prepare for Trump's efforts to interfere with our elections, and we launched a historic Election Observer Program to train and deploy Senate staff volunteers across the country to monitor for any meddling in our electoral system.
In America, Donald Trump should know--he doesn't--that voters pick their leaders; leaders don't pick their voters.
You hear that, Trump? Voters pick their leaders; leaders don't pick their voters.
Senate Democrats have taken every precaution to make sure it stays that way.
In conclusion, make no mistake, the past 2 years have been hard-- extremely hard--on Americans. Costs are through the roof. Millions are losing their healthcare. Trump's masked agents have run down Americans in the streets. At least 19 Americans have been killed, and hundreds more have been wounded. The global economy is in tatters, and Americans are watching costs climb even further because Trump launched a reckless, illegal war with absolutely no plan.
We are fighting Trump tooth and nail on every front, but we are the first to recognize that stopping the worst of the worst isn't enough. We are ready to hit the ground running to lower costs, rein in chaos, and stop the corruption.
Republicans broke faith with the American people. We know we need to build that trust with the Americans back up, and we will.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
