[Pages S2295-S2327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

LEGISLATIVE SESSION

______

CONSOLIDATED APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2024--Resumed

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R.
4366, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

House message to accompany H.R. 4366, a bill making
appropriations for military construction, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year
ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes.

Pending:

Schumer motion to concur in the amendment of the House to
the amendment of the Senate to the bill.
Schumer motion to concur in the amendment of the House to
the amendment of the Senate to the bill, with Schumer
amendment No. 1618 (to the House amendment to the Senate
amendment), to add an effective date.
Schumer amendment No. 1619 (to amendment No. 1618), to add
an effective date.
Schumer motion to refer the message of the House on the
bill to the Committee on Appropriations, with instructions,
Schumer amendment No. 1620, to add an effective date.
Schumer amendment No. 1621 (to (the instructions) amendment
No. 1620), to add an effective date.
Schumer amendment No. 1622 (to amendment No. 1621), to add
an effective date.

recognition of the majority leader

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.

supplemental funding

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, we have until tonight for the
Senate to send an appropriations package to the President or else the
government will begin to shut down.
For the information of Senators, we are going to hold a live quorum
call in a few moments, and we will vote on cloture at approximately
noon.
I hope my Republican colleagues will work with us on a reasonable
agreement so we can get this funding package done today and send it to
the President's desk before a shutdown.

quorum call

I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll, and the following
Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:

Bennet
Carper
Casey
Collins
Cornyn
Durbin
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hyde-Smith
King
Lee
Lujan
Marshall
Murray
Padilla
Peters
Romney
Rosen
Schatz
Schumer
Tester
Young

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. A quorum is not present.
The majority leader.

motion to instruct

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to instruct the Sergeant at Arms

[[Page S2296]]

to request the presence of absent Senators, and I ask for the yeas and
nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker),
the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Kaine) and the Senator from West
Virginia (Mr. Manchin) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Alabama (Mrs. Britt), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the
Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley),
the Senator from Lousiana (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms.
Lummis), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
The result was announced--yeas 72, nays 18, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 77 Leg.]

YEAS--72

Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Boozman
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cramer
Duckworth
Durbin
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Lujan
Markey
Marshall
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Ricketts
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
Young

NAYS--18

Blackburn
Braun
Budd
Cassidy
Crapo
Daines
Lee
Moran
Mullin
Paul
Risch
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Tuberville
Vance

NOT VOTING--10

Booker
Britt
Cotton
Cruz
Hawley
Kaine
Kennedy
Lummis
Manchin
Wicker
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Van Hollen). A quorum is present.
The Senator from Kentucky.

H.R. 4366

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, porkbarrel spending elicits images of
politicos, fists full of cash to be passed out to the special
interests.
Porkbarrel spending sounds bad and smells worse. Porkbarrel spending
is the original sin of Congress that Big Government types can't rid
themselves of, can't rinse themselves clean of. Porkbarrel spending is
the grease that eases billions and trillions of deficit dollars to
flow.
What did our Founders have to say about porkbarrel spending, about
earmarks? The Constitution is quite clear: Taxation and spending are
only allowed if they are for the general welfare.
Justice Story, in our history, ruled that the general welfare clause
was not a general grant of unlimited powers but, rather, a limiting
clause that meant that government taxation and spending must be for the
general welfare of the people, not for parochial interests.
It is not for a sex club in Philadelphia. It has to be for the
general welfare of all people in the United States. It is not for a
parade in Detroit. It is for the general welfare of people.
The earmarks are porkbarrel spending, and they are not included in
the Constitution.
Justice Story referred to Jefferson in reaching this conclusion.
Jefferson wrote that ``the laying of taxes is the power, and the
general welfare is the purpose.'' So you can tax people generally, but
you have to spend the money generally. It has to be what is good for
everyone in America.
It can't be good for the ``Bubba Gump Shrimp Museum'' in Louisiana.
It can't be good for sugar cane in Louisiana.
It is supposed to be for the general welfare of the entire United
States. That is what Jefferson said.
He said that ``to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please,''
it shouldn't be so but ``only to pay [for] the debts or provide for the
general welfare of the Union.''
Jefferson continued: ``In like manner, Congress is not to do anything
they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes''
for what truly is ``for the general welfare'' of everyone in the
country.
Madison argued that spending must be tied to the specifically
enumerated powers in article I, section 8 of the Constitution. Why
would the Founders have written the Constitution and said we have
specific powers that we are allowed to spend money on? Why would they
write those specific powers and then say, ``Oh, well, whatever, just
spend money on whatever you want to spend it on''? They wrote these
specific powers because that is what they intended us to follow.
The 9th and 10th Amendments said if the powers weren't granted to
Congress, they were left to the States. A lot of these earmarks could
be funded by the States, but States have to balance their budget. Why
do the earmarks bump from the State to the Federal Government? Because
there is a printing press up here, and it is going full stop, 24 hours
a day--printing, printing, printing--and putting the next generation
into debt.
If you read article I, section 8, which enumerates the powers for
spending in the Constitution, you will find no references to funding
organizations that host sex parties.
The Senators from Pennsylvania stuck an earmark in here for an
organization that has public sex parties with whomever, whenever--
groups, no numbers--in a public forum. That is what your money is going
for. The Senators from Pennsylvania put an earmark in here for public
sex parties--really.
Does anybody think that that is in the general welfare? Does anybody
not see our Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves that Democrat
Senators from Pennsylvania wanted to fund sex parties in Philadelphia?
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows that.
They also want to fund environmental justice centers--whatever that
means--hell-bent on banning gas stoves. Really?
The bill has 6,000 earmarks, over $12 billion in spending. So this is
the cusp of it, but the overall spending is hundreds of billions of
dollars, and the spending at this rate will lead to $1.5 trillion
borrowed.
What happens to the borrowing? The Federal Reserve buys it, and your
prices go up at the store. Why does a steak cost 20 bucks in the
grocery store now? Because they have diluted the value of your currency
by all these earmarks, all this giving, and all this unconstitutional
spending.
Decades ago, William Proxmire rose in this esteemed body to tell the
American people about government waste. He was a conservative Democrat,
back when that existed. He awarded the ``Golden Fleece Award'' to the
worst examples of government spending. Every month for 13 years, he did
this.
Among the things he pointed out: A $27,000 study to investigate why
prison inmates try to escape. Really? We couldn't figure that one out
on our own?
A $6,000 guide on how to use Worcestershire sauce.
But here is my favorite, and Proxmire himself said this was one of
his favorites: $100,000 research grant to study whether sunfish that
drink tequila are more aggressive than sunfish that drink gin.
This is where your money goes. This is why we are bankrupt. It never
gets better.
The organizations that fund this, like the National Science
Foundation, they doubled their budget last year. Do you think we are
going to have more or less of this crazy spending on drunk fish if you
give them more money? They doubled the amount of money to the people
who are studying whether sunfish getting drunk on tequilas are more
aggressive than sunfish getting drunk on gin.
There was always a certain amount of punch to Proxmire's
proclamations. We could laugh at the lunacy of government. But that was
in 1988, when our overall debt was only $2 trillion. Now it is $34,
going on $35 trillion as we speak. Perhaps government waste is not so
funny anymore.

There are 600 pages of earmarks in this bill--over 6,000 earmarks of
porkbarrel spending for which the Constitution does not approve. It
adds up to $12 billion.

[[Page S2297]]

It would be difficult to choose which single earmark is the worst,
but here are some of the top 10: $4 million for a waterfront walkway in
New Jersey. You heard that right--$4 million for a walkway, for a fancy
new boardwalk to help the New Jersey shoreline compete with Staten
Island's. We are $34 trillion in debt, and they are going to take money
that is supposed to be for the general welfare to help one specific
town. This is a town with a median income of $100,000. Do you think
maybe they could pay for their own boardwalk?
And $3.5 trillion for Detroit's Thanksgiving parade float maker's new
headquarters. So the people who make the floats for the parade in
Detroit are going to get a new headquarters. Does anybody think that is
for the general welfare? This actually is giving money to a private
company. Where in the Constitution does it say we can take money from
everyone and give it to a private company? That is unconstitutional.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is given $1.75 million. You say: Well,
I love art. We need to fund art.
This is a regional art museum, and it is a museum that has a $5
billion endowment. Some of the richest people in our country give to
this museum, and that is great. Their names are on the wings of the
museum. That is great. We have always had support by rich people in our
country for museums. That is great. But we don't need to be taxing the
everyday working man in our country to send another million dollars to
a museum in New York that has a $5 billion endowment.
They also have a million dollars for the environmental justice center
in New York. It used to be justice that we thought should be color
blind. Now we have justice that is meted out based on the shade of your
ideology. So if you are a crazy climate alarmist and you think the
world is going to end and the polar bears are drowning from too much
water--note to self: Polar bears swim in the water; they live in the
water. The polar bears are not drowning because of global warming.
So we have the environmental justice center, which is full of a bunch
of crazy people who are only on one side of the issue. They believe
that we should ban everything: cars, gas stoves. Your money is being
sent to fund this politically charged nonsense that has nothing to do
with justice.
And $500,000 for gardens in San Francisco. Now, I understand the
smell is bad in San Francisco from the human feces, from the waste,
from the trash, from the litter, from the drug addicts who strew all of
their needles across the place. It is a bad deal in San Francisco. But
do you know what? They need to clean their city up. They don't need to
be asking for taxpayers in Kentucky and around the country to plant
flowers for them to obscure the smell of their problem because they
have let their city go to rotten ruin.
A million dollars to a nonprofit in Minnesota to build a coffee shop
for refugees. Think about this. You have just come to this country.
Many of these are good people. They are some of the best Americans.
They just got here, but we want to teach them about America. So instead
of teaching them frugality--someone who is new, who doesn't have much
money, they should go to the grocery store, and for 26 cents a cup, you
can make your own coffee--instead we say: Why don't we give a million
dollars to a refugee center so they can have a coffee shop and serve up
$7 lattes to teach the immigrants that this is what is great about
America? No, what is great about America is to get $7 lattes when you
are paying for it, not when the government is paying for it.
And $500,000 for a cyber crime vehicle for the Honolulu Police. Who
the heck knows if that is a competitive price? But for $500,000, you
can apparently get 2 Ferraris, 10 Teslas, and 20 Toyotas. The question
I have about cyber crime is: Are they using warrants? Are they
eavesdropping on all of us? Or are they actually doing warrantless
searches of innocent Americans? But this is not something the Federal
Government should be funding.
A $1.2 million earmark for bike paths in Rhode Island. Look, I am a
bike rider. I like bike paths as much as the next person. They should
be funded locally. That is not the general welfare. A bike path in
Rhode Island is the business of Rhode Island. Why should Rhode Island
pay for it? Because Rhode Island balances their budget. Like every
other State, they only can spend what comes in because they have no
printing press. Why do they ask the Federal Government to fund their
bike paths? Because we have a printing press. But that only is not for
the general welfare. It hurts the general welfare by causing inflation.
Deficit spending causes inflation, and that is what you get with this
bike path. Rhode Island has 28,000 millionaires. Why don't they tax
their millionaires? I don't care what they do to their millionaires for
their bike paths. Let them take care of it. But don't tax the rest of
the people of the country to pay for a bike path in one State.
The final earmark we have today is $209,000 for an air conditioner in
the Charles Town Old Opera House in West Virginia. You might ask
yourself how that is of general interest or in the general welfare, and
you would be right. It is not. It is very parochial. But you would also
ask why they spent $100,000 last year fixing the air conditioner that
is going to cost another $200,000 this year. Maybe competitive bidding
is not so good when you actually get free money from the government.
These are the 10 of over 6,000 wasteful earmarks included in this
minibus. I don't know which single one of them would receive Senator
Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award, but these are my terrible 10, and there
are more.
And this is only funding half of government. In a couple more weeks,
they are coming back. And if there were 6,000 earmarks this week, I am
guessing they will have 6,000 next week.
It gets worse. It is leading to generalized inflation. So not only
are they ignoring the general welfare clause, which means that spending
and taxation are supposed to help everyone equally--it has to be for a
general cause, such as the national defense, that we don't have for
Maine or Rhode Island or Kentucky. The national defense is for
everyone. It is a general cause. But when we spend it on parochial
causes, when we run up this enormous deficit, it hurts us all
generally. Inflation is a general punishment.
So I would say this bill is not for the general welfare of the
country; it is for the general punishment of the country because it
continues a $1.5 trillion deficit that leads to inflation that causes
all of us to not be able to afford food, clothing, gasoline. That is
what this is. This bill is an insult to the American people; the
earmarks are all the wasteful spending that you could ever hope to see;
and it should be defeated.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 4366

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the cloture motion
with respect to the House message be withdrawn and the only motions and
amendments in order to the House message to accompany H.R. 4366 be the
following: Hagerty No. 1634, Crapo No. 1625, Johnson No. 1633; Budd No.
1635, Lee amendment No. 1623, Schmitt No. 1626, Scott of Florida
amendment No. 1645, and Scott of Florida motion to refer; further, that
the Senate vote on the above motion and amendments in the order listed
with only the Budd amendment subject to 60 affirmative votes required
for adoption; that upon disposition of the Scott motion to refer, the
pending amendments and motion be withdrawn and the Senate vote on the
motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
4366, as amended, if amended, with 60 affirmative votes required for
adoption of the motion to concur, without further intervening action or
debate, and with 2 minutes for debate equally divided prior to each
vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask that the Senator modify his request
so

[[Page S2298]]

that the cloture motion with respect to the House message be withdrawn
and the only motions and amendments in order to the House message to
accompany H.R. 4366 be the following: Lee amendment No. 1623, Schmitt
amendment No. 1626, Scott of Florida amendment No. 1645, and Scott of
Florida motion to refer; further, that the Senate vote on the above
motion and amendments in the order listed, with 60 affirmative votes
required for adoption; that upon disposition of the Scott motion to
refer, the pending amendments and motion be withdrawn and the Senate
vote on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate
amendment to H.R. 4366, as amended, if amended, with 60 affirmative
votes required for adoption of the motion to concur, without further
intervening action or debate, and with 2 minutes for debate equally
divided prior to each vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modification?
The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. BUDD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object because this
modification would remove my amendment.
We are in the middle of the worst border crisis in U.S. history. The
story of this crisis is one of preventable tragedies compounding day
after day. And, sadly, we have seen it in my home State of North
Carolina less than 2 years ago when Wake County Deputy Sheriff Ned Byrd
was killed in the line of duty. He was murdered by illegal aliens who
never should have been in this country.
I believe that if an illegal alien commits the crime of assaulting a
police officer, he or she must be subject to immediate deportation.
Any Senator who claims to support the police should have no problem
supporting my amendment, which would attach the POLICE Act to this
funding package. The POLICE Act simply states that an alien can be
deported for assaulting a police officer, a firefighter, or other first
responder.
The bill has already passed the House, and it can be sent to the
President's desk by passing it right now. We have had good-faith
negotiations on this. We are even willing to have it at a 60-vote
threshold.
So I would ask that my fellow Senators support my amendment. Help
remove dangerous individuals before another tragedy strikes.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object because
this modification also removes my amendment.
Mr. President, in just the last 5 months, we have seen a string of
heinous crimes in which all of the suspects are illegal immigrants. In
September, a disabled person was brutally raped. In December of 2023, a
mother and her 16-year-old son were senselessly killed by a drunk
driver. The suspect was an illegal immigrant. A 16-year-old cheerleader
was stabbed to death in Edna, TX. In my State, a 20-year-old nurse was
run down by a drunk driver. The suspect was an illegal immigrant. In
January, again in my State, a Special Olympian was killed by yet
another drunk driver. In Campbell County, VA, a 14-year-old girl was
sexually assaulted. In February, a 10-year-old boy was slain in a hit-
and-run in Midland, TX. A 2-year-old was gunned down in a gang-related
shooting in Maryland. In Kenner, LA, a 14-year-old girl was raped and
another individual stabbed by the same illegal immigrant suspect. In
Montgomery County, MD, an 11-year-old girl was raped. And on February
22, Laken Riley was beaten to death while jogging in Athens, GA.
Now, yesterday, on the House floor, 170 Democrats--I believe the
number was--voted against a bill that simply would have made it law to
deport people in this country illegally that have committed crimes.
Now, that is just common sense to do that, and yet 170 Democrats voted
against that commonsense measure.
This must stop. My amendment is pretty simple. It is designed to pass
on a vote of a mere majority because it is completely germane to what
we are talking about. It prohibits Federal housing funding from going
to sanctuary cities that do not comply with a request from DHS to
provide advance notice of the date and time an illegal alien is
scheduled to be released from local custody. It is just very
commonsense. Let's force these cities, these declared sanctuary cities,
to follow the law and provide notice to DHS.
Now, the U.S. Senate is supposed to be the world's greatest
deliberative body. Why are we prevented from voting on an amendment
that is germane to the piece of legislation on the floor? This simply
is so commonsense. If the Senate doesn't think it is commonsense and
the Senate doesn't believe this is good to force cities to follow the
law, to provide notice to DHS of an illegal immigrant being released
from custody so that possibly that individual could be deported so they
wouldn't be around to rape and pillage and murder, why aren't we
allowed to vote?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. This
modification removes my amendment, and my amendment removes a very
perverse incentive for illegal immigration and for sanctuary cities. It
is very straightforward.
My amendment preserves the equal weight of each American citizen's
vote because it prevents the use of illegal immigrants coming into
sanctuary cities from diluting the votes of American citizens like
those in my home State of Tennessee.
Therefore, Mr. President, the Senate should be voting on this; it is
germane; and, therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection to the modification is heard.
Is there an objection to the original request?
Mrs. MURRAY. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Utah.

Motion to Table

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, just days ago, we saw the text of this
legislation in its entirety. We saw that it contained, among other
things, more than 600 pages of earmarks, totaling over 6,000 earmarks.
It spends a lot of money. It is significant legislation. Whether you
love it or hate it, you can't dispute the fact that the legislation
does a lot of things in government; it funds a lot of things in
government.
There are a handful of us who tried to get votes on amendments
because, after all, if this is to be put together by one committee of
the Senate without other Members having the opportunity to offer up
amendments and debate it and discuss it, we are neither a deliberative
body, certainly not the world's greatest legislative body, but it is
hard to even call us a legitimate, authentic legislative body more than
a rubber stamp for the Appropriations Committee if we are not allowed
to offer modifications to what the Appropriations Committee, in its
infinite wisdom and glory, decides to put on the floor of the U.S.
Senate.
This has always been a distinguishing characteristic of this body. It
is different in material respects from the House of Representatives. It
is different in that each State is represented equally, allowing each
State to be represented as a State, and it is also different in that it
is a body where we are supposed to allow for open amendment.
We have been blocked out of this. We offered up, just moments ago,
eight Republican amendments. The Democrats countered by saying: We will
give you votes on only four of them. Now, most of those four to which
they are objecting to having any votes are themselves germane. Those
that are not germane, they are willing to take up a vote at 60. Yet
they are still not willing to allow us to vote on them, including vote
on some things that are very significant and have enormous impact on
the safety, security, and prosperity of the American people.
Why? What are they so afraid of? Why are they willing to ignore 2\1/
2\ centuries of custom, precedent, and practice? Why are they willing
to disregard many more centuries of legislative tradition that goes
back to long prior to the time that we were even a country? Why are
they unwilling to do this?
So the reason they are able to do it is because the Senate has
resorted, time and time again, to this procedure known as filling the
tree. The majority leader fills the tree, and it is shorthand for he is
not going to allow any amendments.

[[Page S2299]]

So what I would like to do is set that aside, to table the tree-
filling amendment. To that end, Mr. President, I move to table the
pending motion to refer, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Vote on Motion to Table

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker)
and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) are necessarily
absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Alabama (Mrs. Britt).
The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 52, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 78 Leg.]

YEAS--45

Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Braun
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
Moran
Mullin
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Vance
Wicker
Young

NAYS--52

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Romney
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--3

Booker
Britt
Manchin
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
mandatory quorum call be waived and that there be 6 minutes equally
divided between myself and Senator Collins.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Washington is recognized.

H.R. 4366

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we are nearly there, and I am hopeful
that we can all come together and get an agreement to pass this
bipartisan, bicameral, full-year funding bill as soon as possible. We
all know the deadline. We are here in the Senate, ready to move quickly
in order to avoid a senseless shutdown. As I have said for months, we
actually can fund the government when everyone sits down at the table
and works in a reasonable, bipartisan way, and that is what we have
done.
Getting here has not been easy. We had to work through some really
tough top lines. We had to fight hard to keep out dozens and dozens of
extreme poison pills. We had to work long days and nights and through
weekends to hammer out the tricky details of this bill and make sure
Members had the chance to weigh in with their priorities.
Our work is not done yet. We have six more bills. We are working on
all of them right now. But this first package is evidence that we can
get things done when everyone is focused on what can actually help
folks back at home and what can actually pass in a divided government.
This isn't the package I would have written on my own, but I am proud
that we have protected absolutely vital funding that the American
people rely on in their daily lives. This package fully funds WIC, so
moms and babies will not be denied nutrition assistance. It sustains
our investments to help people keep a roof over their heads. It
protects core programs to make sure we can continue to deliver on
historic climate action while safeguarding our environment. It invests
in keeping Americans safe and in keeping America moving forward as we
rebuild our country's infrastructure. It strengthens our investments in
cutting-edge scientific research, from advanced manufacturing, to AI,
to clean energy. Critically, it delivers record investments in
supporting our veterans.
Really, I could be here all day talking about the many investments in
this bill that we all care about, but time is of the essence now.
This bill, I will remind everyone, received overwhelming support in
the House. It won the vote of a clear majority of both Democrats and
Republicans--339 votes in favor. That doesn't happen every day.
I have to say it wouldn't have happened at all without a heck of a
lot of people who have been working a long, long time on these bills.
So I want to thank everyone who put in the long days and nights for
weeks on end to get us here, including my staff on the Appropriations
Committee; Vice Chair Collins and her staff; our subcommittee chairs,
Senators Heinrich, Shaheen, Merkley, and Schatz; and our vice chairs,
Senators Hoeven, Moran, Kennedy, Murkowski, Boozman, and Hyde-Smith;
and both of our leaders, Senators Schumer and McConnell. There are many
people who worked hard to get us to where we are today.
These are strong bills. They provide crucial support to all of our
communities. And, by the way, they are long overdue.
I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' so we can finish these
bills.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I had intended in my remarks to go
through each of these bills and point out how critical they are to our
communities across America. The chair has done that to some extent, and
she has also thanked our great team of appropriators for their very
hard work.
Instead of going through the provisions, I want to offer my
colleagues a warning. If we do not act, at midnight tonight, we will
have a partial government shutdown. It will affect the Department of
Agriculture. It will impair the work of the Food and Drug
Administration. It will prevent military construction projects from
going forward. Do we really want a veteran who has bravely and loyally
served his country and is now trying to file a claim for benefits to
find that the Veterans Benefits Administration's doors are closed to
him or her? Is that what we want to have happen? It also would affect
the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development Departments. We
have an affordable housing crisis. Do we want more notices to go out to
those who are working on transportation projects that they may lose
their jobs if they are in the private sector because we didn't get our
work done? It would affect the Department of Energy and the Army Corps
of Engineers.
Why in the world would we want to shut down government and stop
serving the American people?
I have heard a lot of statements made on the Senate floor and
elsewhere that, regrettably, are not accurate. One is that none of
these bills has been subjected to the opportunity for debate and
amendments. The fact is, every single one of these appropriations bills
was individually considered by the Appropriations Committee. Every
single one of them was subject to robust debate and amendments--every
single one of them. Many of them were passed unanimously, others with
only one dissenting vote.
Furthermore, three of the bills we are talking about right now--the
Ag and FDA bill, the MILCON-VA bill, and the Transportation-HUD bill--
were brought to the Senate floor. So to say, as one of my colleagues
did, that there was no opportunity for amendments and debate is flat-
out wrong. Those bills were on the floor for about 7 weeks. We had 40
amendments.
So I would urge my colleagues to stop playing with fire here. The
House, controlled by Republicans, passed these bills as a package--the
six bills--with a very strong bipartisan vote, with a majority of the
majority voting for them.
It would be irresponsible for us not to clear these bills and do the
fundamental job we have of funding government. What is more important?
So I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on cloture, and I hope next
year that we can bring all of the bills to the Senate floor for the
kind of robust debate and amendments that we had on

[[Page S2300]]

three of the six bills before us. But keep in mind that each and every
bill passed in committee after we had 50 public hearings and briefings.

Cloture Motion

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 legislative clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
4366, a bill making appropriations for military construction,
the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for
the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other
purposes.
Charles E. Schumer, Patty Murray, Brian Schatz, Tammy
Duckworth, Jack Reed, Tim Kaine, Christopher A. Coons,
Benjamin L. Cardin, Margaret Wood Hassan, Richard J.
Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeanne Shaheen, Richard
Blumenthal, Angus S. King, Jr., John W. Hickenlooper,
Tina Smith, Alex Padilla.
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 concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R.
4366, a bill making appropriations for military construction, the
Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal
year ending September 30, 2024, 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 legislative called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Manchin) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Alabama (Mrs. Britt).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 63, nays 35, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 79 Leg.]

YEAS--63

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gillibrand
Grassley
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hyde-Smith
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Mullin
Murkowski
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Romney
Rosen
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Tillis
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young

NAYS--35

Barrasso
Blackburn
Braun
Budd
Capito
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
Murphy
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Thune
Tuberville
Vance

NOT VOTING--2

Britt
Manchin
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kelly). On this vote, the yeas are 63, the
nays are 35.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
Cloture having been invoked, the motion to refer and the amendments
pending thereto fall.
The Senator from Rhode Island.

Appropriations

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as the Senate considers the minibus
appropriations bill setting funding levels for fiscal year 2024, as
Budget chairman, I want the record to reflect that I filed the
requisite statements in the record adjusting the appropriations
topline, known as the 302(a)s, to allow this bill to proceed. It
complies with the spending agreement reached in January between the
Senate majority leader and the Speaker of the House.
This bill has major wins for workers, families, and for our climate
safety.
First, it resisted House Republicans' attempts to include harmful
anti-environmental riders. These toxic anti-environment poison pills
have no place in any bipartisan spending deal. They have nothing to do
with Federal spending; they are backdoor attempts to jam through
unpopular legislation that would never withstand the scrutiny of
regular order.
Second, this bill continues funding our clean energy future. It
includes nearly $1.7 billion to continue nuclear energy research and
development, including funds for microreactors and accident-tolerant
fuels; $60 million for DOE's new Grid Deployment Office to aid in the
development of much needed interregional electric transmission; more
than $950 million for industrial decarbonization to make American
companies more competitive in the global marketplace and address major
sources of greenhouse gas emissions; and $137 million for Department of
Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office to accelerate the deployment
of wind energy. These are meaningful clean energy provisions that will
help pave the way to a sustainable future for our children and
grandchildren, while providing green jobs now.
Third, this bill provides a combined $480 million for carbon
management technologies to assist industries in removing carbon dioxide
from industrial facilities, powerplants, and even directly from the
air. These technologies will reduce the harmful effects of fossil fuel
emissions and decarbonize the industrial sector, while spurring
American innovation and increasing economic opportunities across our
entire country.
While this bill includes important climate wins, it also includes
many other policy wins that will promote a stronger, safer, and more
prosperous American future.
We all benefit from passing these bipartisan spending bills and
avoiding a harmful government shutdown, and I am glad to be able to
make the necessary budget adjustments.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wanted to take a few minutes today to
talk about the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies bill. I
happen to be the ranking member on that Appropriations Subcommittee.
I thought it might be interesting to actually talk about what is
contained in one of these six appropriations bills that are on the
floor while discussions are going on as to how we move forward now.
I am one who is proud of the committee product that we have produced.
It was not easy, by any stretch of the imagination. It is always hard,
but this year it has been even harder.
This is an Agency within the Interior that really has oversight of
all of our major Federal land management agencies. This is the National
Park Service, this is the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife
Service, Forest Service, as well as the Environmental Protection
Agency--the EPA.
Included in this broader bill is funding for essential Indian health,
education, and resource management programs through the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service. And then, just to add more
complexity in terms of the scope of our committee, we also provide
funding for important cultural institutions like the Smithsonian, the
National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the
Humanities. So it is a pretty broad appropriations priorities.
I want to recognize the work of the chairman of the committee,
Senator Murray, and the vice chair, Senator Collins, who have worked to
advance these 12 appropriations bills through the committee. It seems
like decades ago--in fact, it was last summer--that we were able to
move them through. The Interior Subcommittee bill moved through
unanimously. It is pretty good, given the complexity and, again, the
scope within the Interior Department. But it is a process that allows
Members to have meaningful input.

Now, I understand that not everybody in the Senate is on the
Appropriations Committee, but that committee process that we went
through was a good, honest, robust, transparent process, and I
appreciate the effort that

[[Page S2301]]

went into it by Members as well as their staffs and then the outcomes
that we were able to advance.
The Interior budget is pretty important to a State like mine, where
some 60-plus percent of our lands are held under Federal management. So
there is a lot of space here where, when we are trying to advance
priorities, it seems that we can't move without permission from one
Federal Agency or another. So we pay attention to these budgets.
And it is not just the land management Agencies. It is the fact that
we have such a significant Native population in the State of Alaska. So
the BIA, the IHS, these have great implications for us. And then,
within the EPA Agency itself, when it comes to funding for clean and
safe drinking water, these are clearly areas where, in States like
Alaska, where our infrastructure is so delayed, these budgets are
important.
So as we are moving through a somewhat tortured process to get these
bills through to avoid a government shutdown, for this Senator, there
is no value in seeing the Department of the Interior being shut down
because we have failed to meet our requirements when it comes to
delivering on a budget.
The Interior bill's allocation is $38.5 billion. This is a reduction
of $1.5 billion to the enacted level. So this is about a 3.8-percent
cut. This is pretty substantial. And when you have cuts of that nature,
it really does require some very difficult funding choices. So how you
balance all this, how you work to address the most pressing needs
within the bills while ensuring that you do have meaningful reductions
that are able to help us meet the terms under the Fiscal Responsibility
Act--it isn't an easy endeavor.
One of the significant areas that we are responsible for within the
Interior bill is when it comes to wildland fires. The Presiding Officer
comes from a State where you have seen your share of wildfires.
Certainly in Alaska, but in so many of our States, this is a very real
and an immediate threat. So one of the most important investments that
we made was in our wildland firefighters, to protect capacity to fight
fire by maintaining the salary increases that we provided in the
infrastructure bill.
Without this additional support, those who are fighting on the
frontlines of wildfires were facing up to a 50-percent cut. We have
already seen the impact, the hard times that we have in being able to
attract and retain. You are not going to be able to keep many folks if
they are going to be looking at a 50-percent pay cut. So we were able
to make that investment.
For those of us who come from States where, again, a significant part
of the State is held in--where Federal lands occupy so much of your
State, whether it is Alaska, Nevada, or Utah--PILT, or payments in lieu
of taxes, is a very, very important account. We have fully funded this.
It is estimated at $515 million. But what this helps do: When you don't
have a tax base in your State because so much of your State is occupied
as Federal land, where do you generate that tax base to provide for the
needs of local communities, whether it is for county roads, public
safety, or schools? Well, PILT helps with that, to support energy
development critical to our Nation's economy, recreation activities
that power our rural communities, conservation efforts to protect our
public lands and wildlife. So much of this comes under this category.
We also are very focused on making sure that we are providing
investments for the general operation and delivery of critical programs
throughout Indian Country, and I will speak to that in just a moment
here.
Within the EPA account, we provide the Environmental Protection
Agency with $9.2 billion in grants and program funding. This is close
to a 10-percent funding cut within EPA to the enacted level. What we
attempted to do within this budget is to prioritize funding for those
programs that result in concrete actions to improve the quality of the
environment across the country. And I think we tried to ensure that the
mission moved forward in a way that does, again, allow for that
protection of the environment but recognizing that there are many areas
within the EPA budget that we could look to reduce.
One of the things that was pretty important to me was ongoing funding
for contaminated lands. We have significant issues in the State of
Alaska when, under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Native
people were promised lands, and many of those lands that were conveyed
to them were conveyed as contaminated properties. So we have critical
funding to help clean up ANCSA contaminated lands.
We also addressed the issues of air quality--in one of my interior
communities, Fairbanks, they have struggled to meet the PM2.5
requirements--and providing for these types of issues for our
communities as they try to meet these attainment levels of cleaner air.
What we do within the EPA account to invest in critical water and
wastewater projects--and again, in many places where you lack existing
infrastructure, these funds are critically important.
There has been some discussion about what the Interior bill does when
it comes to the Superfund Program because we did take reductions to the
Superfund Program itself. That was not something that I was initially
comfortable to do. I think we recognize that we have such an obligation
to address the contaminated lands throughout this country. But what we
have allowed for is funds that will help to address the needs in front
of us but also recognizing that we are receiving significant resources
from recently reinstated taxes. So that will allow for the funding
levels to really address the needs within the Superfund Program.
Wildland fire activities, again, as I mentioned, are key for so many
of us in the West. The Forest Service receives an increase, as well as
the Department of the Interior, to address wildland fire activities.
But what we needed to do was to end the practice of paying for annual
wildland fire preparedness and suppression out of emergency funds.
These are happening across the landscape every year, and so how we
have, in our budget, accounted for the increased demand that we see in
this account has been important.
I mentioned the support throughout Indian Country, particularly as it
relates to the Indian Health Service and many programs that we have an
obligation to fund that are so vital. Many of the costs within these
programs have grown, particularly within compact support services and
leasing and staffing costs associated with new healthcare facilities
that are operated by IHS or by Tribes under compact. So these are not
nice to fund; these are required to fund. So the bill supports these
necessary increases.

And I mentioned the cultural institutions like the Smithsonians, the
National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts and
Humanities. We basically have just kept the funding levels for the
operation and maintenance of our museums and centers.
But we were able to, in a tough budget environment, put together a
bipartisan bill. It is a bipartisan bill that protects our land and
people. It enables infrastructure projects that provide clean and safe
drinking water. It helps communities provide vital basic services that
I think many take for granted.
But we also helped to shape this bill so that it reflects the
priorities of Members on both sides of the aisle, and I am proud of the
good work that we have done to make sure that we are really targeting
and directing Federal resources where they are needed most.
There has been a lot of discussion on this floor, particularly on
this side of the aisle, about earmarks or congressionally directed
spending. I am one who--again, you hear me talk about the needs,
whether it is for infrastructure, water and sewer, and some of the
statistics that drive our State that make us so unique. I am not afraid
to stand on this floor and say, when my constituents come to me, when I
have city leaders, when I have legislators, when I have the State of
Alaska come to me and say: These are our priorities. These are where we
would like you to focus your energy. This is how you can make a
difference for our communities--and I look at those. We go through a
very transparent process.
In my office, when we get a CDS request, we post. You can go to an
interactive map of the State where you can click on and see what
congressionally directed spending requests have been allowed to
advance. And so I view this as my job because I don't really feel
comfortable in telling my State legislators, Governor, my mayors, my
city councils: Thank you for letting us

[[Page S2302]]

know what your priorities are. But in order for you to make sure that
they are going to be included in the President's budget or that that
Agency is going to hear you, you have got to go visit the BLM, you have
got to go visit the EPA, you have got to petition, you have got to make
your case.
That is why we are here. That is why we are here: to advocate and
stand up for the people whom we represent. So I will stand in front of
any of my colleagues and, again, remind them that these are not
priorities that Lisa Murkowski has invented. These are priorities that
have come to us from communities, from the regions where they have
debated and weighed and analyzed and stacked and ranked. And they come
to us and say: We need help. Can you help us?
So I am going to be there for them. I am going to stand up, and I am
going to say yes. This is our job. This is our role. This is Congress's
role. It is not the Agency's role to determine what that targeted
spending is for.
So we are dealing with those issues today. My hope is that we are
going to be able to advance to this measure, that the issues that have
kind of brought us to this midafternoon already will be worked forward.
I know that there are requests for amendments. I don't know why we
are having such a hard time figuring out how we deal with amendments
around here. It is just not that hard. It is just not. I don't think
that there is anything out there that should scare any of us about
taking an amendment. And if you win, you win. If you lose, you lose.
But the fact that we cannot figure out how to get to a time agreement
because the Democrats don't want to entertain amendments or they want
to direct what amendments we have--I think we can do a little bit
better.
The last thing I am going to conclude with is something that Senator
Sullivan and I have been working on for a while. And I actually regret
saying that it is just the two of us who have been working on it
because this is a national issue. This is a national security issue,
and this relates to icebreakers, polar security cutters. You all might
not think about them, in Arizona, as being something that is important
to you, but I would suggest that every State, every corner of this
country, needs to know that we have security through our waters, and,
sometimes, our waters are not always wide open. Sometimes, they are
choked with ice.
Hopefully, the Presiding Officer and I are going to have an
opportunity to go up and see some ice and understand what is going on
in the Arctic, understand what is going on in the Bering Straits,
understand what is happening around us, and to appreciate the fact
that, as an Arctic nation, we have one polar security cutter that is in
the water, and--you know what--she doesn't even go to the Arctic.
She plows out McMurdo every year. And she is so old and she is so
tired that she has to go back into dry dock. She sits there until she
is all done, and she goes back, and she plows out McMurdo. So we are
probably never going to see her in the Arctic. What a shame. What a
shame. Russia has more than their share of icebreakers up there. By
some counts, it is over 50--54. China has their icebreakers that they
are working on. They have six that we know of, probably more by now.
We are not engaging as an Arctic nation when others can move in the
Arctic and we can't--we can't. So what we have been working towards and
what this body has done and agreed to, we have a program with the Coast
Guard and authorized three polar security cutters. We funded one;
funding for the other two for design.
Things have slowed and stalled and are beyond frustrating. It is
pushing their arrival here far too many years. We have known that this
was going to be a multiyear initiative with the PSCs, so we planned for
that. We worked with the Coast Guard, and we worked with everyone in
the Department of Defense. They all agree that we need assets in the
water; we need to have icebreakers.
So what we are looking at is what we call a commercially available
icebreaker. In other words, you don't have to take 10 years to go out
and build yourself one; we have one that is built. It is sitting down
in the gulf right now. But we need to be able to buy it.
We had this approved in the President's budget last year. It was
authorized at all levels. It was funded until the very, very end--
literally in the middle of the night before we closed out--and, boom,
$150 million for a commercially available icebreaker gone. Gone. Nobody
is claiming credit or blame, but it is gone. So we are here again.
Funding for the commercially available icebreaker has been in the
President's budget. It has been approved on all sides. It has been
submitted. But somehow or other, it is still kind of in play. What does
that mean?
This is not on this tranche of bills that we are dealing with because
the Coast Guard's budget is in Homeland, but I am standing on the floor
because this is an issue for us. Colleagues need to understand that as
we are moving forward and we are talking about our priorities and what
should be included as we advance, I just want people to realize that
these are not matters that are Lisa and Dan's to work through; these
are ours as U.S. Senators, making sure we are addressing our national
security concerns. National security also includes our ability to
navigate through ice and our ability to be prepared in the eventuality
or the prospect of anything coming our way.
So we are going to keep pushing to make sure that everybody
understands what a significant priority this is. My hope is that once
we get through this initial minibus and we get onto the second tranche,
that this will not even be a matter of debate because it will be
resolved and people will recognize that we will soon have, coming from
the United States, an icebreaker that is capable of operating in the
Arctic.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Butler). The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. VANCE. Madam President, I am mindful here that we have 30 hours
of debate, if we want it, on a problem and on a question that has
completely devastated our country. I think it is worth actually
starting out by observing some of the procedural background that
actually led us here.
If you go back a few months ago, there was pretty broad consensus
that this country has a very serious problem at the southern border.
Even some of my Democratic friends admit this and worked I think in
good faith in an effort to help us try to solve that problem.
The legislation that came out of that bipartisan negotiation had a
couple of problems, the first of which is that the negotiation itself
was completely shrouded in secrecy from some of my colleagues on my
side of the aisle. That naturally breeds mistrust of the process. So
when you see a process unfolding where you don't actually know what is
in the legislation, you don't actually know what you are voting on, I
think you are understandably worried that what you are voting on is not
going to be that good for your constituents or for the country at
large.
The second problem with that piece of legislation is that the details
weren't revealed to my colleagues and me until right up to the moment
we were expected to vote for it. My memory is a little foggy, but I
believe we were given some sense of the details in a very high level a
couple of weeks before the text of the legislation dropped. The text of
the legislation--confirming some of those details and disconfirming
other of those details--we were given on a Sunday, and then we were
expected to vote on that legislation just a few short days later.
Now, we have to ask ourselves whether the bipartisan compromise that
wasn't actually that bipartisan because I believe it had a few
Republicans and universal Democratic support--near universal Democratic
support--whether it actually would have solved the underlying crisis. I
think you can make a very good--indeed, a completely airtight argument
that it would not have solved the crisis at the American southern
border.
Let me walk through three problems with that legislation.
The first is that the legislation did nothing on the question of
parole. If we go back to the Obama administration, the last Democratic
President this country had--no fan of Republican border policy--Barack
Obama paroled and his administration paroled about 5,000 people per
year. What that does is effectively grant some measure of legality to
people who cross the border illegally.

[[Page S2303]]

Now, that is meant to be used in a narrow and tailored way. You have
one person coming across the border illegally, and maybe some special
circumstance necessitates that we should give that person parole and
temporarily relieve them from immigration enforcement.
What the Biden administration has done is radically different. So if
Barack Obama paroled 5,000 illegal aliens every single year, Joe Biden
is paroling close to 1 million illegal aliens every single year.
Now, we know that isn't just bad for the direct reason that that is a
million people who are coming into the country illegally who should not
be here, but we also know that it invites others. In fact, if you go to
the southern border or you watch a media report of someone going to the
southern border and sticking a microphone in the face of somebody who
is crossing the border illegally, they will say: Well, we are coming
here because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have thrown open the American
southern border. They have invited everyone in, so that is what we are
doing.
You don't just legalize a million people every single year; you also
invite people en masse to come into your country illegally, with the
knowledge that their conduct will not be penalized and that the
immigration laws of the country will not be enforced.
So the compromise on border security did nothing on parole--perhaps
the single biggest problem of the Biden administration.
The second thing that it did is that it actually imposed a so-called
border shutdown that would run for 270 days per year, but there were a
couple of big exceptions. First of all, the shutdown only applied when
nearly 5,000 people per day crossed our southern border. That is close
to 2 million people per year. So why are we shutting down the border
only after 2 million people cross illegally in a given year? Why
shouldn't we shut it down much, much sooner than that? I would say as
close to zero as possible, but I recognize reasonable minds disagree.
But certainly we can all agree that 2 million border crossings per year
is a significant problem. We should shut down the border far before
that.
Now, that shutdown authority had a couple of other big problems.
First of all, it allowed the President of the United States an
emergency exception to the shutdown authority for 45 of the 275 days
that applied. It also gave the Secretary of Homeland Security--a man
whose job performance has been so terrible that the House of
Representatives has impeached him--it gave him 180 days of
discretionary authority to limit that border shutdown in the law.
So you have 365 days in a year. You have shutdown authority that only
applies once you hit a threshold of 2 million illegal aliens every
single year. On top of that, for the 270 days out of 365 that the
shutdown authority can even be applied, you give discretionary
authority to Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas for 235 of those 275
days, to waive it.
So if we had been lucky, we would have gotten 45 days of emergency
shutdown authority--again, with the baseline of 2 million people coming
into the country illegally every single year. That doesn't sound like
border security to me; it sounds like more recipe for an open border.
The third and final problem, something that I have to say my
colleagues on my side of the aisle, who negotiated in good faith--they
negotiated a border provision that--it is hard to imagine anyone who
takes border security seriously being more critical or more skeptical
of that border security provision.
In particular, it took the question of whether to grant asylum away
from immigration law judges, commonly called ILJs, and put it with
USCIS agents--people who are generally considered some of the least
interested in border enforcement in our country. So you are taking it
away from immigration law judges and giving the ability to grant asylum
to some of the most leftwing people within our immigration bureaucracy.
We know exactly what would happen. Whatever standard those folks are
meant to apply to the immigration system, whatever standards are meant
to limit them in granting asylum, if they are committed to granting
asylum, they are going to find way to grant asylum, and that is exactly
what they would have done.
That single provision made this the worst border security law perhaps
that has ever been attempted in this country. It is the opposite of
border security to give the right to grant asylum with the wave of a
pen to the people in our bureaucracy who are most committed to open
borders.
So those three problems created a border enforcement package that
would have made the crisis at our southern border much worse. Now, I
don't say that because I think that was the intent of everybody who
negotiated it, but sometimes when these things get translated from
high-level policy talking points into actual legislative text, the
details are terrible. In fact, the details of this particular piece of
legislation were terrible.
That led us to this brave new world in the border security debate in
our country where, having had a complete and utter failure for a border
security package that would have made the border crisis worse, my
friends on the other side of the aisle have now pivoted to a new
talking point that, in fact, because of this border security proposal
that was terrible, they are the ones who are actually interested in
border security.
Now, we know anybody who has paid attention to this problem knows the
reason why we have a problem at the U.S. southern border. In fact, the
Biden administration, when they took over a little over 3 years ago,
openly bragged about changing every single policy from the previous
administration that actually did something meaningful on border
security. They ended ``Remain in Mexico,'' and they bragged about it.
They radically increased parole, as we have already discussed, and they
bragged about it.
On issue after issue after issue, the Biden administration has taken
a series of Executive orders and has put those orders in place knowing
they would cause border security problems, predicting they would cause
border security problems, and then doing them anyway because they
didn't want to enforce the border laws of this country.
They wanted to throw the border open for a whole host of reasons.
They accomplished it, they were effective, and now, in the runup to an
election, with the President's poll numbers sagging, they have decided
that they really care about an issue they haven't cared about for 3
years and that, in fact, if the Republicans had just gone along with
their legislation that would have made the border security problem
worse, then somehow the border security problem would magically go
away. This doesn't make any sense.
Right now on the books, immigration law in our country allows the
President of the United States to issue an emergency border shutdown.
He does not need additional statutory authority from this Chamber. He
doesn't need a single piece of policy change. He could do it with the
wave of a pen. Immigration law in this country grants the President of
the United States extremely broad discretion to shut down the border
when he believes that he must do so. So if the President actually cares
about this problem, as he now pretends that he does, why doesn't he
actually implement the authorities he currently has under existing law?
Well, the reason, of course, is he doesn't actually care about the
border; or if he does, he feels politically constrained from the left
wing of his party. He cannot care about border security because certain
members of his own party would go after him.
That is not just hypothetical.
For those who watched the State of the Union last night, they will
know that the question of the murder of Laken Riley came up. To recap,
Laken Riley was a beautiful young woman with a lot of promise. She was
a nursing student, and she was brutally murdered by somebody who was
illegally in this country. She was brutally murdered by somebody who
shouldn't have been in this country in the first place. Indeed, if Joe
Biden had done his job, Laken Riley would still be with us today, may
God rest her soul.
I can't help but feel not just a sense of heartbreak over the loss of
somebody who shouldn't have been taken from us, but also a sense of
anger over the way in which this young woman's death has been used
politically by the other side to avoid taking responsibility for the
border crisis.

[[Page S2304]]

Let's just recap. The person who killed Laken Riley was in this
country having been granted parole. Remember what I said, that Barack
Obama granted parole 5,000 times, and Joe Biden has granted parole a
million times. Those additional parole cases all--call it 900,000
because it is just short of a million people that Joe Biden is paroling
every single year--approximately 900,000 additional parolees every
single year, and it is probably going to be closer to 995,000 parolees
this year because he is doing even more paroles this year than he was
doing last year. If you take those additional people, some of them are,
unfortunately, going to be criminals. Some of them are going to commit
crimes of violence, and some of them are going to do terrible things
like murder young nursing students who deserve to have a chance at life
and certainly deserve to be safe and protected in their own country.
Not only was this person granted parole--the person who murdered
Laken Riley--but this illegal immigrant also had lived in multiple
sanctuary cities. Policies that have been promoted in this Chamber--
policies adopted by some very leftwing people at the local level--gave
sanctuary to this person who should not have been in our country to
begin with. Because that person was granted sanctuary, they weren't
deported; they weren't sent back to their home country. They were in
our neighborhoods and in our communities, and this person committed a
terrible crime.
Now, we should ask ourselves, if you were serious about border
security, why not do something about the parole problem that Joe Biden
has completely blown up? If you go from 5 million parole cases a year,
you add 995,000, you get to a million parole cases a year, that seems
like a pretty bad set of policies, especially when we know some of the
people receiving those paroles are actually going and killing American
citizens.
Why don't we do something about that? Why can't this Chamber pass
legislation that would make it impossible for Joe Biden to grant so
many paroles every single year? Well, we don't do that.
Why wouldn't we do something like limiting funding for sanctuary
cities, legislation that has broad support--bipartisan support, I
should say, in the House of Representatives and, frankly, I think, even
has bipartisan support in this Chamber? But we are not going to vote on
it. I want to talk about that later because the procedural part of this
really does matter.
If we wanted to fix the border crisis, why not make it harder for
people to come and access asylum in this country instead of easier for
people to come and access asylum in this country? Remember, asylum
exists for the purpose of protecting people who are fleeing tyranny.
Most of the people who are coming across our southern border, they may
be perfectly good people, but they are classically understood as
economic migrants. They are coming to this country in search of better
opportunities and higher wages and better living conditions; they are
not coming into this country because they are fleeing tyranny and
persecution. They should not be able to claim asylum. Yet the Biden
administration has facilitated them claiming asylum, and this body has
refused to do anything meaningful about it.
Why aren't we working on the obvious roots of the border problem? Why
aren't we fixing it? Why aren't we doing something about the incredibly
pressing challenges that confront us at the southern border?
Instead, we have a political party in this country that has, for 3
years, ignored border security and wants to use it as a political tool
these days instead of actually solving the problem. And, again, the way
we know they are using it as a political tool is because if they wanted
to solve it, the President has every single emergency authority he has
right now to solve it.
Because of this, because we have a President who has the authority to
solve this problem but chooses not to, one of the things that we are
confronted with in this Chamber is how to force his hand. Indeed, if
you try to understand American immigration policy in 2024 under the
administration of Joe Biden, Congress needs to fundamentally ask the
question: How do we force the President to do the job he refuses to
do--not, how do we give him additional discretionary authorities,
because he won't use those discretionary authorities; not, how do we
give him additional powers, because we know he won't use those powers.
The question is, How do we ensure Joe Biden does the job he doesn't
want to do? How do we force his hand to engage in commonsense border
security? There are a number of things we could do, a number of things
we have already discussed, but, unfortunately, this Chamber refuses to
do it.
That brings me to my procedural point. Why did you have the gross
majority of Republicans opposing cloture on this bill? It is not
because we like government shutdowns or want to shut the government
down; it is because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle refuse
to give us some amendment votes on immigration policy that were germane
to this legislation and would have addressed the problem at the
southern border.
Some of my colleagues will talk about those amendments, but there are
a couple in particular I want to point out. One, legislation--I believe
an amendment from my colleague, Senator Ron Johnson--that would have
made it much harder to have sanctuary cities in this country. It would
have significantly defunded the sanctuary cities in this country that
were the source of the protection given to the person who killed Laken
Riley.
Why should these municipalities receive unlimited resources from
their Federal Government if they are actively fighting the Federal
Government in the enforcement of immigration laws? Just defund them.
And what is going to be more likely is you are not going to defund
them, but the threat of defunding them will actually make them undo
their terrible policies and get serious about border enforcement. But
when you have a violent criminal living in your city who happens to be
an illegal immigrant, maybe you report them to immigration authorities
so that person could be deported as opposed to protect them. That is
what this legislation would facilitate--getting criminal migrants out
of our country and protecting our citizens. If that bill came to a
vote, you might say I am frustrated because that bill would not pass
this Chamber. But, in fact, the reason it is not coming for a vote is
not because it wouldn't pass this Chamber but because it would. If that
bill was voted, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate would vote for
it. So why aren't we voting on it? Well, we are not voting on it
because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are the
majority won't actually let us vote on it.

There is a second provision, a second amendment that really matters
here from my colleague, Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. Now, I won't
say that none of the other amendments matter, but these two amendments,
I think, are really important and meaningful. Senator Hagerty's
amendment would do something very, very simple. It would say that for
the purposes of apportioning congressional representation, you can only
count lawful permanent residents, meaning American citizens plus people
who are in this country legally. That is what Senator Hagerty's
legislation would do.
Now, you might ask: Who could possibly oppose only counting people
who are legally in this country for purposes of apportioning
congressional representatives? And the answer, of course, is people who
believe that they benefit politically from counting illegal immigrants
as part of congressional apportionment.
I wasn't here January 6, 2021. But to hear my colleagues who were
here, especially on the other side of the aisle, January 6 was the
biggest threat to American democracy in our country's history. Hundreds
of thousands were killed in the Civil War, but that doesn't compare to
January 6. World War II saw 330,000 Americans die--not nearly as big a
tragedy as January 6. September 11, 3,000 innocent civilians were
brutally murdered by terrorists, but a walk in the park compared to the
terrible incident of January 6, 2021. It was a threat to democracy--an
assault on democracy--the worst threat to democracy that this country
has ever seen. I have actually seen people repeat that phrase multiple
times who are representatives of this Chamber, and they do it with a
straight face.
Here is the problem with that. What is a bigger threat to democracy?
Is it

[[Page S2305]]

what happened on January 6, which, of course, was not a good thing?
There are people who committed violent crimes, and they ought to be
prosecuted. But what is a bigger threat to democracy, that day or
giving congressional representatives to people who shouldn't be in this
country in the first place?
California has five additional representatives in the U.S. House of
Representatives relative to my home State of Ohio. Why? Because
California has a large illegal immigrant population and those are
counted for purposes of congressional apportionment. So they are
destroying the democratic value of the people of Ohio's participation
in their own country by giving congressional representation to people
who shouldn't be in the country in the first place.
How does that make an ounce of sense? How is that not a major assault
on democracy? What if we have a Democratic administration for the next
4 years and another 50 million people come into this country illegally?
You rapidly get to a point where the people who belong here--the people
who are in this country legally--have a significantly lower
representation from their own Congress than they otherwise should. Why
is it that if you come into this country and break its laws, you get
rewarded with greater congressional representation; whereas if you are
in this country legally, you actually have your congressional
representation stolen from you? It is not just the inflation of
Congress's value, which is to say the destruction of the actual
democratic power of people; it is also the vote.
Multiple municipalities all across our country have proposed giving
illegal aliens the right to vote in this country. I am sure--though it
hasn't, I believe, happened in this Chamber--it will eventually happen
where somebody in this Chamber proposes we should give illegal aliens
the right to vote in this country. Isn't that a threat to democracy? I
think so. In fact, I think it is a far bigger threat to democracy than
anything we have seen in the last few years--maybe the single biggest
threat to democracy we have seen in the history of this country.
Never before have you had Senators and representatives of the people
refusing to allow a vote on whether we should only count U.S. citizens
for purposes of doling out Congressmen. I just can't believe it.
I can't believe that anybody would disagree that Congressmen and
women should be given to the American people, not to criminal migrates
in this country. Does Laken Riley's killer deserve a congressional
representative? Well, that person gets one now, thanks to the failure
of this body to even vote on Senator Bill Hagerty's amendment. Again,
it is not because they wouldn't support it; it is not because this
Chamber would refuse to vote on Senator Hagerty's amendment. It would.
And that is why it is not being allowed to vote because certain people
in this Chamber--certain Senators of this Chamber--do not want to force
their colleagues to take tough votes. And for that reason, Senator Bill
Hagerty's amendment will not even be voted on, though it is germane and
though it would make this country much safer, much more secure, and
much more democratic.
Bear to point in this immigration debate where you have to believe
some pretty absurd things to actually continue to operate immigration
policy in this country with a straight face. Who would have believed--I
am 39 years old--who would have believed you would have a major
political party that is committed to the basic principle that illegal
aliens should have congressional representation? I can't believe that.
In fact, I am shocked that we are here, and yet we are. Not only so
committed to it, not only do they believe in it, but they are so
dedicated to it they won't even let amendments that would correct that
problem come to the floor for a vote.
I want to talk a little bit about one of the core problems here with
immigration in our country. I want to get a little more philosophical
here. I am going to read something from the Center for Immigration
Studies about the political importance of solving the immigration
debate in the minds of the American people. This is from the Center for
Immigration Studies:

Biden's Executive Actions: President Unilaterally Changes
Immigration Policy.

Let's talk about all the Executive actions the President of the
United States has taken to make the border more open and less secure.
We are just going to run through a laundry list of them because I
couldn't possibly remember all of them, there are so many--in fact,
over 90--only some of which I am going to actually report on here
today.
I might ask, Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has approximately 35 minutes.
Mr. VANCE. Thank you, Madam President.
So these are a reminder, a laundry list--but not a complete laundry
list--of all of the executive actions taken by the Biden administration
over the last 3 years--especially in the early part of his
administration.
This was issued on January 20, 2021, the very day that Joe Biden took
office as President of the United States, just 14 days after January 6,
which we just talked about.
Now, the Trump policy--one of Trump's major immigration policies
during his administration--was to complete the construction of a wall
along the southern border to help thwart illegal aliens from entering
the country. When Congress refused to appropriate the money necessary
to accomplish this task, the Trump administration declared a national
emergency at the southern border, which allowed it to reprogram unspent
money from the Department of Defense toward the building of the border
wall.
As of October 23, 2020, the Trump administration completed
construction of 386 miles of physical infrastructure, with 195 miles
under construction and 157 miles in the preconstruction phase. DHS
states that illegal drug border crossings and human smuggling
activities have decreased in areas with the barriers.
You often hear my colleagues on the other side say that walls don't
work. Well, of course, they don't work perfectly. Nothing is perfect.
But walls do substantially reduce the flow of sex trafficking, of drug
trafficking, and of illegal migration across the places where the wall
exists.
But here is the Biden policy--here to rescue the open borders agenda.
On January 20, the Biden administration fully rescinded the Trump
administration's proclamation that declared a national emergency at the
southern border. Biden's proclamation explicitly states that ``no more
American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall,'' and
``authorities invoked in [the Trump] proclamation will no longer be
used to construct a wall at the southern border.'' It also calls for an
``assessment of the legality of the funding and contracting methods
used to construct the wall.''
This immediately and instantly ended further construction of the
border wall. In fact, further wasting American taxpayer dollars, there
are pieces of the border wall that are just like lying in the desert in
certain parts along the border between Mexico and Texas, Mexico and New
Mexico, and Mexico and Arizona that could just be easily built up. It
actually costs more money to leave them rotting there in the desert,
and yet the Biden administration refuses to put them up.
And we know, of course, that over 100,000 Americans a year die from
the fentanyl that the Mexican drug cartels bring into this country,
that untold thousands of children and young adults are sex trafficked
into the country by those drug cartels. It is just an unbelievably
tragic situation.
Why you would stop completion of the physical border wall is perhaps
the least rational of all the Biden administration policies, besides
the fact that they want to give Congressional representation to illegal
aliens.
This is No. 2, question of interior enforcement. This is Executive
Order 13993, Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and
Priorities.
Now, the Trump policy was that President Trump issued an Executive
order enhancing public safety in the interior of the United States.
This EO scrapped the Obama administration's immigration enforcement
priority, which exempted nearly all aliens from removal, and replaced
it with a policy that made all removable aliens an enforcement
priority. This Trump order also targets sanctuary cities and made

[[Page S2306]]

them ineligible for Federal grants, except when deemed necessary by law
enforcement. Imagine that, defunding sanctuary cities rather than
paying municipalities to thwart the immigration laws of our country.
The Biden policy fully rescinds this Executive order. In the policy
section, President Biden generically says:

The task of enforcing the immigration laws is complex and
requires setting priorities to best serve the national
interest.

Well, who disagrees with that?
However, this EO fails to detail new enforcement priorities and
merely says the Biden administration will reset the policies and
practices for enforcing civil immigration laws. In other words, they
completely undid a set of immigration policy that was actually
facilitating the enforcement of our border laws. They kind of promised
that they would eventually return to it. They said enforcing the border
is in our national interest--well, thank you for stating the obvious--
and then they did nothing to actually reimplement the policy--maybe
adjust it a little bit, make it a little bit better, make it a little
bit different, make it a little bit worse, in my view, but to actually
do something meaningful. They just rescinded an order and let it lie,
and now, of course, we are living with additional terrible
consequences.

The Trump administration--this is the third of these. The Trump
administration implemented policies that focused on benefits integrity,
ensuring that illegal immigration did not harm American taxpayers.
In the ``public charge'' final rule, the Trump administration
instituted for the first time the regulatory definition of this ground
of admissibility found in the Immigration and Nationalization Act
section 212(a)(4). Through Trump's Presidential Memorandum on
Enforcement of Legal Responsibilities of Sponsors of Aliens, relevant
Federal Agencies were directed to update procedures, guidance, and
regulations to comply with current law and ensure that ineligible
immigrants did not receive Federal means-tested benefits.
In accordance, USCIS required sponsors to reimburse the benefits-
granting Agency for every dollar of benefits received by sponsored
immigrants. USCIS--this is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services--and other Federal Agencies thus placed the responsibility on
sponsors and employers, rather than American taxpayers, to finance
foreign workers benefitting from social programs, such as SNAP,
Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Now, here is an interesting thing about this. We live in a world of
scarce resources. And though I know some people disagree, I would hope
that most of the Members of this Chamber--I think it is true of both
Republicans and Democrats--believe that we ought to have social
insurance in this country. People fall down on their luck. They get
hurt at work. Some things happen. Bad things happen, and people
sometimes suffer for no reason and certainly through no cause of their
own.
Now, when that happens, they can't afford healthcare because of
something terrible that happened, or they can't afford to put food on
the table because something bad had happened. We have a social
insurance system in this country to ensure that we take care of the
neediest people in our country. Certainly, for children who through no
fault of their own are suffering from poverty, we want to make sure
these kids are able to get a bite to eat or go to the doctor when they
have to. That is a good thing, and I think most of my colleagues, to be
fair, on both sides of the aisle agree with that.
Here is the problem with that: We have scarce resources. The American
social welfare system--that social insurance system that ensures that
down-on-their-luck kids and parents are able to access food and
medicine--that thing is funded by money that doesn't grow on trees. It
is funded by American taxpayers.
And if you poll the American taxpayer, paying for healthcare for
children is one of those things that they are actually enthusiastic
about being taxed for. Most people don't like taxes for most reasons. I
am certainly no different. But when it comes to putting food on the
table or giving medicine to a kid who needs it, most Americans think
they are OK with supporting that. I am certainly among them.
But what happens when you take the number of needy children in our
country and you magnify it and multiply it by two times or three times
or five times because you have a number of illegal immigrants coming
into this country who need those same benefits--again, through no fault
of their own? Many of these children did not ask to be trafficked into
this country. They were allowed to be trafficked into this country by
the terrible, porous border policies of the Biden administration.
But we have to pick and choose, and we have to prioritize. And my way
of prioritizing would be this: that you give resources to people who
are citizens of this country.
All of us are members of an American national community, and we take
care of our own. We take care of our fellow Americans, but we cannot
and should not take care of every person who is down on their luck who
wants to come into this country even if they violate our laws to do so.
So on a Trump administration policy that would set the simple
standard that Americans take care of Americans, that we prioritize our
food stamps and our Medicaid for American citizens, did the Biden
administration say, yeah, that is actually a pretty good idea that
Americans should take care of Americans? No, the Biden administration
rescinded this policy too.
On February 2, 2021, Groundhog Day of 2021, the Biden administration
issued Executive Order 14012 which fully revoked the Presidential
Memorandum on Enforcing the Legal Responsibilities of Sponsors of
Aliens and took steps to rescind the public charge rule.
This Executive order announced the review of many standard procedures
in the existing naturalization process, including the N-400
application, fingerprints, background security checks, interviews,
civics and English language tests, and the oath of allegiance. It also
seeks to prevent the Trump era USCIS fee schedule from going into
effect and to find ways to further reduce the cost of naturalization,
while simultaneously increasing the use of fee waivers.

Finally, the Executive order created a Task Force on New Americans,
``which shall include members of agencies that implement policies that
impact immigrant communities.''
Now, the effect of this Biden administration policy is predictably
that a lot of people who are here in this country illegally are
receiving benefits and receiving benefits that ought to go to American
citizens first. This is predictable. In fact, it was, you might argue,
an explicit design and purpose of the Biden administration policy.
Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle will sometimes counter
that, well, there are certain benefits that illegal aliens can't get,
and we all agree with that. At least, I would hope all of us would
agree with that. But it is not so simple. For example, section 8
housing vouchers--I have known a lot of people in my life, a lot of
friends and family in my community, who have benefitted at one time in
their lives from a section 8 housing voucher. Now, under the letter of
the law, just to be clear, the section 8 housing voucher ensures that
people who are, again, down on their luck are able to keep a shelter
over the heads of themselves and their children--an important program
for people who need it.
Now, the section 8 voucher program cannot be used by illegal aliens.
OK, that is a good policy. Again, I would hope most of my Democratic
colleagues would agree. However, if a person is related to an illegal
alien, even a minor child, then an illegal alien can receive the
section 8 benefit on behalf of the minor child.
So there are millions of people receiving housing benefits and other
government benefits that shouldn't be receiving them because they are
enjoying and benefitting from this particular loophole.
So the idea that illegal aliens don't benefit from some of our most
generous welfare programs is just false. They do. And, again, I say
this not because we are angry at them but because we are angry at our
own country's leaders for allowing our citizens to be taken advantage
of.
Just to pose a hypothetical to make this point especially clear,
could we possibly--could we possibly--support the generous American
social welfare

[[Page S2307]]

system if our country had a billion people in it? We have 300 million
people now.
Given our funding problems, given our budget deficit, could we
possibly support a billion people, meaning three times as many people
receiving Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security? Of course, we couldn't.
The math simply doesn't make sense.
So, at some level, we have to say: These benefits were paid for by
American citizens. These benefits ought to go to American citizens, and
we should limit them to American citizens.
Another problem with inviting the entire world to come and benefit
from generous American social insurance is that it encourages people to
come to the country. If you, sort of, send a release out to the entire
world saying, ``If you come into the United States--even if you come in
illegally, even if you break this country's laws--if you come into our
country, you will receive generous food, medical, and dental benefits,
even though you broke the laws of the country in coming here,'' that is
going to bring in a lot of people that ought not be in the country in
the first place.
Again, you have got to set a standard, and you have got to set some
limits, and I propose that we set the limit at American citizens and
lawful residents.
When you become part of our community, we take care of each other.
That is part of the deal. But if you are not part of this national
community and you violated the laws to become part of it, then you
shouldn't benefit from Americans' generosity.
No. 4, the fourth Executive order the Biden administration has talked
about--by the way, the Biden administration took over 90 Executive
orders in the immediate aftermath of Joe Biden's being sworn in as
President of the United States. I am only on No. 4--only on No. 4.
Executive Order 14010, Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to
Address the Causes of Migration, to Manage Migration Throughout North
and Central America, and to Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of
Asylum Seekers at the United States Border.
Again, the Trump policy was to take numerous steps to combat the
surge of fraudulent, frivolous, or otherwise non-meritorious asylum
claims; discourage illegal aliens from taking the journey from the
Northern Triangle to the United States; and refine the standards for
asylum eligibility.
First, the Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection
Protocols, also known as ``Remain in Mexico,'' which required non-
Mexican aliens seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico until they
were able to be seen by an immigration judge.
Now, why does this matter? Because when people come into our country
illegally, they are often released for 6 years, for 8 years, for 10
years, with no consequences and with no enforcement action. So if you
know you can come into the United States illegally and, even if it is
acknowledged that you came into the country illegally, you can be
released into the Nation to await a court date for sometimes over a
decade, it is a massive invitation to illegal migration in this
country. And what the Trump administration very smartly did is it said:
If you come into the country illegally, we are not going to release you
in the United States, and you come back for your court date in 10
years, but you are going to have to stay in Mexico. You can await your
court date there.
And, of course, a lot of people, knowing they wouldn't be able to
benefit from this massive loophole, didn't come to begin with. It is
one of the reasons why border crossings were so much lower during the
Trump administration. The Biden policy was--portions of Biden's EO are
substantive, while other sections merely call for reviewing certain
Trump policies. Through this particular Executive order, Biden has
ended ``Remain in Mexico'' and a number of other title 42 authorities
that allowed the President--you might even say forced the President--to
engage in some commonsense border security. So that is No. 4.

No. 5, Executive Order 14011, establishment of interagency task force
on the reunification of families. The Trump administration reversed the
catch-and-release policies of the Obama administration that fueled a
surge of family units and those fraudulently posing as family units
coming to the southern border with no lawful basis to enter the United
States.
And the ``posing'' word is really, really important because, of
course, all of our hearts break when we see children separated from
their moms and dads, but we also know that the cartels traffic children
into this country and tell them to pretend that some person they are
coming with is a mom or a dad. That is, in fact, one of the ways in
which they benefit from our charity. It is one of the ways they benefit
from our kindheartedness, and it is one of the ways that they
manipulate and get around our immigration laws.
Now, an overly broad application of the Flores settlement ordered by
Judge Dolly Gee frustrated these efforts by severely limiting the
ability and length of time the Department of Homeland Security could
detain family units. In response, in 2018, Attorney General Sessions
issued a memorandum entitled ``Zero-Tolerance for Offenses'' under this
particular provision of the law, which resulted in the decoupling of
family units. The children were sent to HHS custody and treated as
unaccompanied minors, while the adults were treated as single adults
for enforcement purposes.
Due to a disjointed--sorry. One of the problems--Madam President, you
will forgive me--as you get older is that your eyesight gets worse and
worse, and I should have had my reading glasses.
This Biden Executive order officially rescinds then-Attorney General
Session's zero-tolerance policy memo and establishes a task force to
identify all children who were separated from their families in the
United States and the Mexican and southern border between January 20,
2017, and January 20, 2021, in connection with the operation of the
zero-tolerance policy.
Now, again, we have to remind ourselves here that the people who are
claiming that they are bringing their children in are very often not
bringing their children at all. They are someone else's children. A
number of my colleagues have visited the border and talked with young
people--sometimes under the age of 12--who have been brought in by
people who claim to be their parents, but, in fact, are sexually
abusing them. They haven't seen their parents in months, maybe in
years.
Eliminating the Trump administration policies on this issue
facilitates the very kind of predation that the Trump policy prevented
in the first place. It actively encourages the cartels to traffic
children and to coach these children to tell U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol that the people who are abusing them, the people who sometimes
abducted them are, in fact, their parents, and these poor children
don't know any better. What an absolute travesty and a humanitarian
disaster.
Madam President, may I ask how much time I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has about 16 minutes remaining.
Mr. VANCE. Madam President, I am not sure which of us is happier
about that reality.
I will make one more observation here from a report before I make
some concluding remarks, being mindful of time. So this is something
published by the Center for Immigration Studies report: ``Three Years
of Biden Immigration Policies Have Benefitted Criminal Aliens.'' This
was published by Jon Feere on January 9 of 2024.

For three years the Biden administration has claimed that
its policies are designed to focus on criminal aliens to a
greater degree than the policies under the Trump
administration. As DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas put it in
a September 2021 memo, ``By exercising our discretionary
authority in a targeted way, we can focus our efforts on
those who pose a threat to national security, public safety,
and border security and thus threaten America's well-being.''
It is now clear that the promised outcome has not been met
and that the Biden administration's policies have gutted the
nation's immigration enforcement system, with no concern
about the number of criminal aliens that are being released
into our communities.
Official data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
. . . reveals that the Biden administration has arrested and
removed significantly fewer criminal aliens than the Trump
administration. (This data comes from both ICE public
releases as well as a Freedom of Information Act . . .
request by the Center for Immigration Studies.) Contrary to
Secretary Mayorkas's claim, public safety and national
security have been significantly undermined by the Biden
administration's reckless policies, and the threats

[[Page S2308]]

the administration has created will continue to inflict
damage on American society for many years to come.
This analysis compares the first three years of ICE
criminal alien data under the Trump administration--

Which was 2017, 2018, and 2019--

to the first three years of ICE criminal alien data under
the Biden administration--

Which was 2021, 2022, and 2023--

and finds that criminal aliens have been top beneficiaries
of the Biden administration's immigration agenda. A criminal
alien is one who--

To define this term--

has a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges.

These aren't people, again, who just came across the country
illegally, which no person should do. These are people who actually
have criminal charges on top of the fact that they came across the
border illegally.

The data shows the Biden administration is responsible for
the following when comparing . . . years 2017, 2018, and 2019
to . . . 2021, 2022, and 2023:
57 percent decrease in arrests of criminal aliens

They are arresting far fewer of these criminal migrants.

68 percent decrease in at-large arrests of criminal aliens
44 percent decrease in detainer requests issued on criminal
aliens
67 percent decrease in deportations of criminal aliens
[And a] 55 percent decrease in immigration-related criminal
convictions

They are explicitly undoing the previous administration's immigration
policies, and they have the gall to say that this is all the Republican
Party's fault.

I wish that we had a Republican in charge of the White House right
now who could undo these things, but we don't. We have President Biden,
who refuses to enforce the border policies.

It should be noted that total annual arrests and removals
are larger than the numbers discussed here as this analysis
looks only at data related to aliens with criminal histories
and does not include data on aliens without known criminal
histories.

The Biden administration has cut arrests of criminal aliens by 57
percent. I just want to dig into this just a little bit more in greater
detail.

In the first three fiscal years under the Trump
administration, ICE made 389,237 administrative arrests of
aliens with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

That is 389,000 during the Trump administration.

In the first three fiscal years under the Biden
administration, ICE made [165,000] administrative arrests.

Now, remember that during this time--2021, 2022, and 2023--crime has
been going up relative to 2017, 2018, and 2019. In fact, 2021 and 2022
were the most violent years in about three decades, not just for
assaults and other things but also for murders. I believe 2022 was one
of the worst years for murders in this country in a very, very long
time. And yet the Biden administration is arresting fewer than half of
the criminal migrants in this country compared to the Trump
administration.
They can't say it is lower crime because the crime is a lot worse in
2022 than it was in 2018. What they can say is that it is lower
enforcement, lower enforcement that is endangering the people of this
country and endangering the citizens of our Nation.
Now, I have heard some say--and I want to address this comment--that,
in fact, crime is going down in this country. And it is one of those
things that is, like, half true but is completely and utterly dishonest
to the actual reality that we confront.
So if you look at the number of murders that exist in the United
States--the statistics aren't final, by the way--but in 2023, there
were less murders in this country than 2022, right? Good news. That is
the half-true part of the statistic, and that is why many of my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say it is hoax to say
that we have a problem with criminal aliens. There is a problem with
that.
Madam President, 2022 is one of the worst years on record for murders
in this country. Thirty-nine years old, it is one of the worst years of
my life for murders in this country, and 2021 was not much better.
So the 2 years of the Biden administration, they had skyrocketing
murders, some of the worst violent crime statistics in the history of
the country, and they are patting themselves on the back because it
came down a little in 2023.
That is not how this works. That is not a good thing to be a little
bit lower than the record highs of 2022. In fact, the number of murders
we saw in this country in 2023 is still much higher than what we would
have expected in this country 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
We have too much crime in this country. We have too many young people
like Laken Riley who are being killed or assaulted simply for living
their lives in their country, and the reason why we have this problem
is, at least in part, right here, because Joe Biden refuses to deport
criminal aliens. It has been the explicit policy of his administration.
And I have to say that Secretary Mayorkas said something I actually
agreed with here in referencing the discretionary authority of the
Biden administration because it is the discretionary authority of the
Biden administration that is the problem. The Biden administration
refuses to use that discretionary authority to actually do its job.
It is so funny to me, coming from outside of politics and spending
the last year in this Chamber talking to people, almost every single
one of my colleagues from across the political spectrum is
fundamentally a good person, but, in private, there is a broad
recognition that what we are trying to do is force the Biden
administration's hands. We are trying to identify tools that will force
Joe Biden to do what he already has the authority to do under existing
law.
We talk about the border shutdown in the border security deal that
went down just a few weeks ago in this Chamber. The border shutdown
authority was triggered at a point when nearly 2 million illegal aliens
came into this country every single year. Why do we need to wait for 2
million illegal aliens to come into this country before we shut down
the border? Can't we shut it down a lot earlier?
But, again, this makes sense in the very weird and deranged world
that we live in where we have a President who is less committed to
border enforcement than almost any President--probably any President
that we have ever had.
I was no fan, largely, of the policies of the last Democratic
President, Barack Obama, but say what you will about Barack Obama, he
was substantially more committed to border enforcement than Joe Biden
is.
Now, there is one last point that I want to make for some of my
friends and colleagues, especially those on the other side of the
aisle. We have a real problem of social stability in this country. A
lot of people talk about our rancorous political debates. A lot of
people talk about politics seems more zero-sum today than it has been
in a very long time. Well, I believe that one of the reasons why we
have such a broken political debate is because we have a set of
policies that has promoted social division.
I hear from constituents all the time who will walk into an emergency
room--and they go to an emergency room because their kid, you know,
they broke their leg on the playground or they hurt themselves in some
way or maybe it is a Sunday and you couldn't get into the doctor and
your kid has a bad sore throat. We all go to the emergency room for a
whole host of reasons, some serious and some a little bit less so.
Emergency room wait times in this country are near alltime highs, and
we know why they are at alltime highs: because there are 30 million
people who might be good people, but they shouldn't be in this country,
and they are making American citizens wait in line for healthcare.
This is a big problem in the State of Ohio: rural school districts,
districts that are already incredibly stressed by the fentanyl problem
and by a lack of funding, school districts that have a family or maybe
multiple families of migrant children who are dropped at their
doorstep. These kids don't speak a lick of English. These kids have
never been in the country. Many of them are traumatized because they
were brought into this country by drug cartels and sex traffickers.
These kids are not bad people, but why are we expecting American
citizens who are already working in overstressed public

[[Page S2309]]

schools to educate these kids? And do we honestly think that when you
take a rural school district and you drop a dozen kids who can't speak
a lick of English, that it actually makes life easier for the rural
kids in those districts to get a good education? Of course it doesn't.
Of course it doesn't.
You don't have to believe anything bad about the children who are in
those school districts. You just have to believe that every country has
its limits, and the thing that we need to be focused on right now is
the education of our own children and the well-being of our own
citizens.
That doesn't make us heartless. That just means that we recognize
that the first and most important obligation that we owe is to our
families, our communities, our neighborhoods, and our country, not to
people who have illegally crossed the border to come into this Nation.
We don't have enough services. We don't have enough resources, and we
don't have enough wealth to support the entire world at the level of
generosity that we support the American citizen. Overcrowded hospitals,
overcrowded schools, rising violent crime rates--all of these things
are the recipe for social dysfunction and social disaster.

We are dividing our citizens against one another. We are taking away
some of the critical resources and supports that make living in this
country a good and nice thing. And then we are surprised when our
politics is angrier than it used to be, or we are surprised when
Americans feel like their elected leaders don't care about them. Well,
if you are flooding rural Ohio schools and rural Ohio hospitals with a
bunch of people who shouldn't be there in the first place, then they
are right to think that their leaders don't care about them. If you are
creating an immigration system that is seeing rapid murder rates, even
as you radically reduce the amount of criminal migrants that you
arrest, then they are right to think that their leaders don't care
about them.
I don't know what is wrong with this President, but he seems to care
far more about the people who live outside of this country than he does
the people who live inside of this country. They don't just feel that
something is wrong with the political leadership in this country, they
are right that there is something wrong with the political leadership
in this country. And we could have taken real steps--very real steps--
to fix some of the problems that exist if only we were allowed to vote
on Senator Hagerty's amendment, on Senator Johnson's amendment, on a
number of other amendments that were offered by my colleagues that
would receive bipartisan majorities in this chamber if only we were
allowed to vote on them.
So with that, I say what a travesty that we haven't had the debate
the American people deserve and what a tragedy that we haven't voted on
legislation that would make their lives better and would make the
criminal migration problem improved in this country. They certainly
deserve it. I wish we would have done our jobs.
With that, I yield to my friend from Kentucky.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Madam President, what we have here is a pork fest of epic
proportions. You can't imagine how much pork barrel spending is going
on in this bill, but you should know about it. There are 6,000 earmarks
in this bill.
What is an earmark? An earmark is where a Congressman or Senator
says: Hey, I have this special interest--maybe they are a donor; maybe
they are somebody important in their area; maybe they are a relative--
and they want to name Bubba Gump Shrimp Museum after them or they want
to name some kind of museum after one of their donors, and that is what
gets put into these bills and bloats them beyond imagination. It is
also sort of the grease that eases in billions and trillions of other
dollars, because you get people to buy into the total package by giving
them a little bit of pork for their town, a little bit of pork for
their donors.
Porkbarrel spending elicits the images of politicos with hands and
fists stuffed with dollars, passing these out to the special interests.
And that is exactly what it is.
In 2010, 2009, there was this Tea Party uprising. There were people
concerned that their government had gone beyond its constitutional
limits and had begun spending money like there was no tomorrow, and
that the debt was rising at an extraordinary pace.
People came to Washington, and one of the things Republicans vowed to
do was be better. We voted within our conference to ban earmarks. And
for nearly a decade--maybe a little more than a decade--Republicans
didn't put forth earmarks. But it is sad to say that when we look at
the blame for the debt, that the blame goes to both parties.
People often ask me: Whose fault is it, Democrats or Republicans?
My answer is, yes, it is both parties. Now, both parties have
different priorities, but they do get together and they support each
other. They pat each other on the back, and everybody gets more money,
because the one truism about Washington is, they believe there are no
limits to the money.
In your State capitol, the revenue that comes in is spent. In your
county government and your city government, the revenue that comes in
is spent. The one place where there are no restraints, where there are
no tradeoffs, where the printing press runs 24 hours a day is
Washington. The Federal Reserve simply buys the debt.
But it is not without repercussions. As the deficits spiral upwards
and as the Federal Reserve prints more money to buy the debt, the value
of your dollar goes down. And the people who get the money first are
able to profit by the inflation before it trickles down to the regular
working class.
If you are a banker on Wall Street and you buy and sell the bonds,
you get the money right when it is printed, when the ink is still
fresh, and you get to spend it on par. You get to spend the money while
it still has 100 percent of its value. When it gets to you, when it
gets to America, and when it gets to all of us, it has lost its
purchasing power, so it no longer buys as much; and we see the prices
in the grocery store going up, and we saw wages sluggishly chasing
those prices.
This is inflation. Inflation is the bait and switch of Big
Government. People in Big Government on both sides of the aisle offer
you something for nothing. It is a bait and switch. The emperor has no
clothes. The emperor has no money. Your government has nothing to give
you but borrowing. They borrow from the future, and they give you
stuff. They give you these items that glisten in the Sun, and they are
shiny objects. And they say: Here, have this. More food stamps. You
don't have to work for a living. Or if you are a corporation, they will
give you a special perk or a benefit. You get all these things that are
not supposed to cost anything. The cost is inflation.
It is a deceitful way of running your government; it is a deceitful
way of borrowing from the future. But it is what goes on day in and day
out.
The Republicans, at least, put up a pretense. They say to the people
at home, and they go home, and they pound the desk and say: We are the
conservatives, and we believe in balanced budgets. But when you see how
the voting goes, it is not true. Some of the Republicans are
conservative.
So we had a vote recently to get on this bill. All the Democrats
voted for the 6,000 earmarks and all of the spending. There hasn't been
a spending bill that there has been significant Democrat opposition to
that I know of in modern history. They all vote for the spending.
But the secret unknown to a lot of people at home is that there are
12 or 15 Republicans--the Big Government Republican caucus--who vote
with the Democrats; because, see, what has happened is we have
abdicated the power of the purse.
The power of the purse we hold and could use at any time. See, 41
Members of a party or a caucus or a conservative group could stop
legislation and demand that the other side compromise.

But that is not what happens. The conservatives can never muster 41
votes because there are 10 or 15 Big Government Republicans who side
with the Democrats; and, therefore, there is really no power to the
purse. There is no ability to restrain spending. In fact, the opposite
happens.
A lot of people don't understand this. They think there is no
compromise in

[[Page S2310]]

Washington, and the opposite is true. There is compromise every day on
every spending bill; but it is not compromise between Big Government
and constitutional government, it is compromise between Big Government
Democrats and Big Government Republicans.
The Big Government Republicans want to send foreign aid to all far-
flung reaches of the planet. They also want to fund the wars in all far
reaches of the planet, and they want to fund the military-industrial
complex. That is the traditional Republican condition. The Democrats
take that position now, too. So they are all together on this.
And then on the welfare proposition--the idea that you don't have to
work and, basically, we will just pay you not to work and that the
payment for nonwork is actually now exceeding the payment you get for
work--that is a Democratic proposition. But the Big Government
Republicans say: Oh, that is fine; if we can get the military-
industrial complex money, we will give you the welfare money. So it is
welfare and warfare. And they do come together.
The media won't report this. They either don't understand it or are
ignorant or just incompetent. They don't report it to you. They say
that the problem is not enough compromise, the problem is not enough
dialogue. No. The country is bankrupt because there is too much
compromise and too much dialogue between people who believe in Big
Government.
And so we have, on an annual basis, a deficit of $1.5 trillion. Now
during COVID, it was even worse. During COVID, it was like $3 trillion.
But we are now adding debt at about $1 trillion every 3 months. It used
to take a decade to add a trillion in debt; now we are adding a
trillion in debt in 3 months.
Our interest payment has doubled. Interest, within a year or two,
will be the largest item in our budget. Now, interest doesn't let you
buy anything. It is just paying the bankers for the privilege of
borrowing from the future. As your interest payment grows and crowds
out everything else--it is sort of like having credit card interest,
and all of a sudden you have got so much on your credit card and your
interest payment is so high that it crowds out all of the spending and
forces bankruptcy.
That is where we are headed.
But we don't use the power of the purse because Big Government
Republicans are really no different than Big Government Democrats. They
all have come together, and they have compromised. We get the warfare
and the welfare State, and they are more than adequately funded.
We spend about $6 trillion, and we bring in about $4.5 trillion. And
you ask: Well, how long can that last? I, frankly, don't think much
longer. We bring in $4.5 trillion. That is a lot of money. It is not
like we do nothing for people. We should do 4.5 trillion dollars'
worth. People say: Are you for no government? I say: No, I am for what
we bring in. We bring in $4.5 trillion. That is not a tiny government.
I would probably actually be for smaller than that, but I would settle
for: Let's have 4.5 trillion dollars' worth of government. Let's have
what comes in is what we spend.
But if you put it in perspective and you try to say: What would $4.5
trillion buy of our government expenditures? How much would the tax
base that we have pay for? It is interesting. If you add up Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps, it equals about $4.5
trillion. The four entitlement programs, the big entitlement programs,
would consume all of the money.
So we vote on a budget every year. You think that is all of the
spending. No. We only vote on a budget that is one-third of the
spending. Two-thirds of the spending is entitlements, and nobody ever
votes on it. It is never reformed. If you touch entitlements or say
anything about it, AARP will send out notes to all your constituents
saying: Tell them to take his hands off my Social Security--even if
your goal is actually trying to preserve Social Security for another
generation by actually reforming it.
It is the only way it will last. I will tell you the honest truth
that nobody else will tell you. Social Security is going to have to
rise in age--the eligibility rate. We did it once in 1983; the age rose
from 65 to 67. We did it gradually a couple months a year over 20
years. And, really, once it was enacted, there weren't that many
complaints. Did people love it? No. Do I want to raise the age? No. But
if you want to preserve Social Security, you have to raise the age. And
to do nothing, to stick your head in the sand and say ``we are not
going to talk about entitlements'' means you are not a serious person.
Because the entire budget that we vote on excludes all of the
entitlements and is military and nonmilitary--they call it
discretionary spending. It is about $1.5 trillion. So the deficit
actually equals our budget. If we zeroed out our budget, that is how we
would balance the budget. We are not going to do that. But if you were
to take everything and cut a very small amount of every program,
including the entitlement costs--not necessarily the benefits but the
costs--if you were to cut across the board, you could actually begin to
balance your budget. It is what any normal business would do. It is
what any family would do. And yet we do none of that, and it goes on
and on and on.
So this year, we will have a deficit of $1.5 trillion. The bill
before us codifies that. It is not all the spending; there will be a
little bit more spending next week. But all the spending together is
still at the rate that we will borrow $1.5 trillion.
Some people don't quite grasp this. They are like, oh, it is this big
number, but it does not mean anything. We have had a debt forever. But
what it means is higher prices in the grocery store. If you are not
bothered by higher gas prices or higher grocery prices or higher
electricity prices, then you don't need to listen to me. Just forget
about it and pay the higher prices.
But people are being squeezed. The people being squeezed are those at
the lowest part of the socioeconomic ladder, those with fixed incomes,
or those retired. But we have now linked most of the retirement
benefits and most of welfare to inflation. So they are kind of getting
their bumps to try to keep up with inflation. It is actually more the
working class, those who are working for a living, being paid
privately, who are having more trouble keeping up with this. This is
the problem we face.
But we add to this the parochial interests of letting people get
stuff for their city or for their State or a bike path here or there.
Our Founders looked at this, and they put it into our Constitution. Our
Founders said that spending and taxation should be for the general
welfare. And this was discussed over and over again because if it only
said ``the general welfare,'' the argument would be, what does that
mean? That could mean anything, right? But that isn't where they left
it.
They said that all spending and all taxation should be for the
general welfare, and then they listed what they thought were the
Federal prerogatives or powers that apply through general welfare. They
are things like the national defense. We don't think it would be very
convenient or very efficient for each State in the United States to
have their own defense, so we agreed that was a Federal problem. We
agreed that commerce between the States shouldn't be interrupted. We
agreed that the border surrounding us should be--they aren't being
currently--but should be a national concern. But for most other things
like a bike path or a museum, we agreed that was a parochial
interest. We didn't tell your State government they can't do it. So
there is nothing in the Constitution that says that your State can't
provide museum funding or for a bike path, but it is in the
Constitution that the Federal Government doesn't do that.

Now, why do they want to buy a bike path up here--so there is a bike
path in Rhode Island that they want? Why do they want that?
Well, the people from Rhode Island stuck it in there. It is an
earmark. They want it so they can go home and they can get their name
put on the bike path, and then people will love them because they act
as if it was their money that they brought back. Well, it is not. It is
everybody's money, and it is not being spent constitutionally because
it is being taken to Rhode Island, and nobody in the rest of the States
authorized that in the Constitution. You can tax the people of Rhode
Island to pay for bike paths, and you can tax

[[Page S2311]]

the people of Kentucky, but it is not constitutional to take our money
and send it back.
It is also unwise for another reason. Why do you not want earmarks?
Why do you not want pork-barrel politics coming from Washington? Why?
Because we have no limits. We have got a printing press. I mean, we
just print money 24/7, all day long. The debt? We borrow--I think it
is--more than $2 million a minute. We have probably borrowed $40
million since I started talking a few minutes ago. I mean, it is just
out of control.
But why do we want the bike path in Rhode Island to be paid for with
U.S. tax money instead of Rhode Island tax money? Because Rhode Island
only has so much money coming in--so does Kentucky, so does Texas, so
does Tennessee. Now, States will borrow, but they typically have to
borrow against some sort of capital or they have to sell bonds. You
know, we just borrow. We borrow from ourselves up here. States don't
have a Federal Reserve, for the most part, and cities don't, so you
want the spending to be local. Why? Because your local mayor or your
city council or your State legislature has to make a decision.
So, for example, everybody wants something. Let's say that there are
10 roads in your town that you want to be paved or improved, and
everybody kind of agrees we need to improve these 10 roads. You list
them 1 through 10, but you only have got enough money to fund repaving
8 roads. Do you repave all 10 or do you repave 8? No. If you work for a
city government, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat or an
Independent, you pave what you have money for that year, and you put
the last two that you couldn't pay for this year first on the list for
the next time.
When I mention that here, that is such a foreign concept that I had a
chairman from the opposite party of one of the committees look at me
and say: We shouldn't have to choose.
I said: What do you mean?
He said: Well, we shouldn't have to choose. If it is a good cause, we
should give them money.
Well, everything is a good cause, but we don't have the money. But in
Washington, it is not a choice; it is ``Put it on my tab.'' There is
never really the realization that there is a finite amount of money.
There is never really a realization of the pros and cons of spending
money we don't have. Like I have said, look, we bring in $4.5 trillion.
There are a lot of things we can do with $4.5 trillion, but we would
have to look for some savings places.
Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of saying: We can look
everywhere but not at entitlements. So we had a big debate about a year
ago when McCarthy was the Speaker over there, and he ended up losing
his Speakership over this. They made a deal to raise the debt in an
unlimited amount for 2 years, beyond the next election, in exchange for
these spending caps, but the spending caps were high enough that it
still looked like many on the other side wanted more money, so they
made a side deal.
All of these deals, though, were to expand the amount of spending. It
didn't really cause any restraint. Then, when you looked at how much
was actually being spent by this debt deal, you found that we were
still leading to a $1.5 trillion deficit in 1 year.
The spending goes on and on and on. There doesn't seem to be any sort
of restraint. People say: Well, we are in the minority. Republicans are
in the minority. What could we do? It only takes 41 of us. About an
hour ago, we had a vote. If 41 Republicans would have said no, we would
have exerted the power of the purse, and they would have had to
compromise.
Instead, we don't compromise conservative with liberal, Big
Government with constitutional government; we compromise with the Big
Government Republicans siding with the Big Government Democrats to
spend more money. There is no conservative influence on the spending of
money because it just goes out the door--it flies out the door--and it
is printed up, and the debt is bought, and your prices at home go up.
This has been going on for a very long time.
Our Founding Fathers looked at the general welfare clause and said
that the money should be spent for the general welfare. Justice Story
ruled in 1833 that the general welfare clause was not a general grant
of unlimited power but, rather, a limiting cause that meant government
taxation and spending must be for the general welfare. It must be for
something that is for everyone, as opposed to something that is just
for one State or one city. Jefferson agreed, and Justice Story quoted
Jefferson in his argument.
Jefferson wrote that the laying of taxes is the power and that
general welfare is the purpose for which the power is to be exercised.
Taxes were not to be laid or spending was not to occur for any purpose
that Congress pleases but only to pay the debt or provide for the
welfare of the Union.
Congress was not to do anything they pleased to provide for the
general welfare but only to lay taxes for the purpose that would be
beneficial to the entire country. It wasn't for bike paths. It wasn't
for museums. It wasn't for sex parties in Philadelphia. The
Pennsylvania Senators actually had an earmark in here for sex parties--
communal sex parties--in Philadelphia. Even they were embarrassed after
that one came out, and that earmark they have taken out now, but that
is the kind of stuff that gets stuck in here. There was a road to
nowhere in Gravina, AK, from a few years ago--all kinds of parochial
interests that are not part of the general welfare and not allowed by
the Constitution.

Madison reiterated this in the sense that he said that the money to
be spent for the general welfare must be tied to one of the
specifically enumerated powers from article I, section 8. Article I of
the Constitution has to do with the spending powers, the powers granted
to us. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says those powers not
granted to us are left to the States and people, so just because our
Federal Government is not supposed to build bike paths doesn't mean
your State can't. That is left to your State, and you can decide if you
have enough money to do it and how you want to spend your money.
People have written, if the Constitution only said you have to spend
for the general welfare but listed nothing else, that it could be
interpreted that the general welfare meant anything, but because we
said for the general welfare and then we listed specifically the powers
of Congress, the understanding is that the powers of spending for the
general welfare are limited to the specific powers given to Congress,
and we listed them.
They wanted to be very certain that this wouldn't become an all-
encompassing government, taking all of our taxes, and government would
become so huge that it couldn't be controlled, but that is largely what
has happened over time, is that government has grown and grown and
grown.
William Proxmire was a conservative Democrat back when there used to
be conservative Democrats. There really aren't any left--they have
either become Republicans or gone extinct--but William Proxmire used to
talk about spending in the way Republicans do now, and he would point
out some of the worst spending.
One of the things he pointed out, I remember, was a study about
happiness--$50,000 to study what made people happy and another $100,000
to study what made people fall in love. But my favorite one is this--
and this was one of Proxmire's favorites. It was $100,000 spent to
study whether or not sunfish drinking tequila were more aggressive than
sunfish drinking gin. So we did a study on fish to see which made them
more aggressive, tequila or gin. This is the kind of insanity we live
with.
You think, Well, maybe it got better over time; maybe we instituted
reforms, and they quit wasting our money so much. I will give you a
recent example. Because the dollar is no longer worth as much--this is
a recent example--I think it was three-quarters of a million dollars to
study whether or not Japanese quail on cocaine are more sexually
promiscuous than Japanese quail that are not on cocaine. This is the
craziness of your government. So any time you think, Well, government
is doing everything possible, and we can't possibly cut one penny,
remember what they are spending your money on.
A lot of the worst waste from government comes from the National
Science Foundation. You say: Well, certainly, they have put some
reforms in place

[[Page S2312]]

since they were studying what made people love each other or what made
people happy; certainly, they have put some reforms in place. No. They
just give them more money. We had a bill just 2 years ago that nearly
doubled the amount of money going to the National Science Foundation.
Do you think they are more or less likely to be frugal and wise and
less wasteful with our money if we double the amount of money we give
them? This is what passes for oversight in this town, and this is a
real problem.
The earmarks are the tip of the spear that make it worse because,
often, if you have got someone wavering in the wind and they actually
think that they might be conservative and that they might not vote for
the spending bill, they say: What if we give you this? What if we give
you this airport? We will even name the airport after you in your
district. An airport named after you? Boy, that is a bonus. Then, if
you do that, you need to vote for the entire bill. So what happens is
the entire bill gets bigger and bigger as everybody gets an airport or
a park named after them.
I personally think we shouldn't name any parks after politicians. It
is not their money; it is your money. I mean, it is taxpayer money. If
you are a person who worked hard and gave money to build a park in your
town, by all means, put your name on it, but we shouldn't have any
politicians' names on it. At the very least, they ought to be dead. I
am not saying we should cause their deaths. I am just saying they ought
to be at least dead before you put their names on it. But we have
living politicians with dozens and dozens of parks with their names on
them. It is not their money to give.
There is a famous story of Davy Crockett, who was a Congressman here,
and it is called ``Not Yours to Give.'' There had been a fire in
Georgetown, and they raced over there to put the fire out. In those
days, there was a communal fascination and a communal eagerness to help
put fires out. There weren't as many official fire departments.
Georgetown is a pretty good, probably, buggy or horse ride from here.
But they raced over there--even the Members of Congress--to try to
put the fire out. Sure enough, the next day, they said: Well, we need
to give them money. And Davy Crockett was persuaded. He voted to give
them money. But he got home, and he got to talking to a farmer across
the fencepost.
The farmer said: Well, you know, you saw that fire, and you saw that
damage, and you saw the calamity of those people. You wanted to help
them, and I understand that sympathy, but you are not here at home, in
Tennessee, to see the suffering of the people in your own community who
have an equal need and an equal right to that.
But, really, charity is not something that was part of the
government's mission. Government was supposed to be the law-and-order
parameters to allow the engine of capitalism to create the wealth that
allows us to take care of people, but more and more, it has become to
replace charity and to become the bread and to become the sole focus of
generation after generation who don't know the wonder of work.
I have often said to people that I think everybody ought to work.
Everybody who can work should work. I wouldn't give out any benefits to
anybody who can work who doesn't work. It sounds harsh, but, really,
you have got to think work is actually a bonus; work is a benefit; work
is a privilege; work is something that everybody should want. I don't
care whether you clean the carpets here or you own the building. Work
is a redeeming value, and it is how people get their self-esteem.
But we now live in a generation where everybody gets a trophy if you
participate: Hey, come participate in the welfare program; here is your
trophy. But it actually is demeaning to the people, and it keeps more
and more people on this.
People say: We need Medicaid for everyone. I say: No. We want
Medicaid for only those who can't help themselves. We want that number
to be 5 or 10 percent of the public, not 40 percent of the public or 50
percent of the public. That means you are failing. We want to grow
business where people have their own insurance, where there is private
insurance, where there is a marketplace where prices would come down,
but that doesn't happen as government becomes more and more involved.
If you look at the two areas where prices are rising the fastest--
education and healthcare--what do they have in common? Government
dominates these spaces. Government gives free tuition--the endowment of
Harvard's billions of dollars--and the tuition goes like this. You
would think there would be some sort of semblance of competition, some
sort of semblance of price competition, and there doesn't appear to be
because the government subsidizes it. It is the same with our drug
policy as well.
We are here today to discuss spending, but the other side is just
discussing, Oh, well, the government will shut down. While I don't want
the government to shut down--I think it is chaotic to have
interruptions in government--I do think that there is an argument for
whether or not keeping the government open and spending money at the
same level we are spending it and causing the debt to rise at this same
degree--whether keeping it open and borrowing so much money is actually
good or bad for the country.
I actually think we are damaging our country. The greatest threat to
our national security is actually our debt. The threat is from within.
We are not going to be overrun by foreign armies. We really are not in
danger of being invaded by a foreign army. Now, you can't tell the
people who spend the money on military that because they want more,
more, more.
So when you look at the negotiations over the debt deal from last
year, they first said that two-thirds of the spending entitlements
wouldn't be touched. So how do you expect to balance your budget or do
anything significant to your budget if two-thirds of the spending is
taken off the table? So all of the entitlement spending was taken off
the table. We were not going to look at that.
So the remaining third is what we vote on, on the budget, when we
have a budget. We haven't had one in years. I produced my own budget,
just from my office, just so we can actually have a vote on what a
balanced budget would look like. But whether it is Republicans or
Democrats, most of the time, they don't even put forward a budget. We
spent $6 trillion with no budget. Can you imagine a corporation of any
kind of size spending that kind of money and having no budget?
So two-thirds of the spending is entitlement spending. The remaining
third is half military and half nonmilitary. We call it discretionary
spending. The budget we vote on is about $1.5 trillion. That is about
equal to the debt. So, if you eliminated all of that spending, that is
what it would take to actually balance the budget. But when we did this
big debt deal about a year ago, the people who wrote it said it was the
greatest thing since sliced bread. They said: Well, we are not going to
put any caps on entitlement.

So two-thirds of the spending is rising at about 5 to 6 percent a
year. This is the bulk of the growth of government. It is coming from
the entitlements--Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security.
Of the remaining third of spending that we vote on, half is military.
The hawks on the Republican side said ``We have to grow the military''
even though our military budget is bigger than the next 10 countries
combined. We have an enormous military-industrial complex, but they
said it has to grow at 3 percent.
So the entitlements are two-thirds of the spending. They are growing
at 5 to 6 percent. Then a sixth of the spending, which is military, is
growing at 3 percent. So now we are looking at 16 percent of the
government--the nonmilitary discretionary budget--it is about $700
billion.
McCarthy actually made a decent point on this. He said: Look, you
don't want me to look at entitlements. They are going to go up. You
don't want me to look at the military. It is going up. You want me to
look at the nonmilitary discretionary spending. Sixteen percent of the
budget, and you expect me to do something with it.
I think this deal was a bad deal. It went along with just continuing
the status quo. But his point was well made and well taken. If you
don't look at all of the budget, you really can't do anything with it.
It is just going to

[[Page S2313]]

keep growing and growing. If you take entitlements off the table and
you say ``We are not going to look at entitlements,'' that is a fearful
way of looking because you are afraid the people will be unhappy with
you.
We have a trillion-dollar Medicare budget. Is there anybody in
America who doesn't believe we couldn't save some money in that without
actually cutting patient care? A trillion dollars. If you talk to
executives from hospitals or executives from big corporations and you
tell them you have a trillion-dollar budget, is there no place that you
could reduce spending--there are all kinds of improper payments in
Medicare and Medicaid, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
There are problems with efficiency. There are problems that--through
leverage and size, we could reduce costs, but it doesn't happen.
You ask yourself, why is government so inefficient? I think the best
way to look at it is--Milton Friedman put it this way. He said that
nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as their own. That is the
difference between government and the free market.
If I ask you for $1,000, and we are going to put it all together, and
50 people are going to give me $1,000, you are all going to think
about, what did it take to make that thousand dollars? What was the
work and the labor expended in that? What are the chances that I lose
my investment? You are going to make a heartfelt decision. It is not
always going to be perfect. But if I ask you who is going to make the
wiser decision--the person giving up $1,000 of their own money or a
city council man giving up a million of someone else's money--they can
never have quite the same heartfelt, feeling-in-the-gut decision making
if it is not their money. Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely
as their own.
The other difference is this: When a business spends money, they get
automatic feedback. They get, every day, a report. They get a report if
it is a profit or loss. They know whether they are making money every
day, every week. They can lose money for a while, but if they do--they
have to make payments to the bank--they will have to adjust their
practices. There is a constant feedback loop.
Government doesn't have that. Government, in fact, has really the
opposite. It may be a lag time of years, and, really, things can go on
decades up here losing money. We can go on decades doing something that
is horrific, and nobody figures it out; nobody ever changes it or even
reauthorizes it.
I will give you an example, and this has come up recently--the child
tax credit. The Democrats love this. This is a refundable program. It
is not really a tax credit. You get it if you show some effort to work.
But you don't get your tax money back, you get somebody else's tax
money.
The problem with this program is that 25 percent of the people
getting the tax credit are cheating. It has a 25-percent fraud rate.
There are people abusing the system who came into the country
illegally, had a child here, and then they are putting the Social
Security number down of the child who got here even though they came
here illegally. There are people putting fictitious names down. And the
government will issue you a taxpayer identification number even if you
don't have a child.
Twenty-five percent of the money is going out fraudulently, but about
half of it is being refunded to people who don't pay taxes. So it is an
enormous welfare program. This is the problem.

What we need to do is incentivize work. Instead, there are reforms
being looked at for this program. The Democrats have decided: Well, we
think work should be like maybe work once every 3 years. Currently, the
work requirement is a little bit of work each year, and you still get
other people's money, but now the Democrats want to change it to, well,
if you work once every 3 years, you still get somebody else's money.
Everything is to dilute the value of work, all within the context of
a government that borrows $1.5 trillion a year.
We are borrowing money so rapidly. We have never, ever before
borrowed money like this. We are exceeding even the level of borrowing
of World War II.
Am I the only one bringing this up? The Chairman of the Federal
Reserve, who is not typically seen as a partisan Republican or a
partisan conservative, said that the problem of the debt is urgent.
Jamie Diamond, head of one of the biggest banks in our country, Morgan
Chase, said essentially the same thing about 2 weeks ago. Nassim Taleb,
who wrote the book ``The Black Swan,'' is saying the same thing.
Various economists are warning us that this is a predictable crisis
coming. This is a slow-moving but yet one of the most predictable
crises in our history, the debt crisis. It is coming. You are already
seeing the signs of it. You see the signs of it when you go to the
grocery store. You see the rising meat prices. You see the rising gas
prices. You see the rising electricity prices. It is not really the
prices that are going up; it is the value of your dollar that is
shrinking. It is basically--they are inverses of the same principle,
but the value of your dollar is shrinking because we print more dollars
to pay for the debt. The debt is paid for by printed money, so the
supply increases.
We have been lucky probably for decade after decade. It has been
somewhat of a scheme in a way. We are the world's reserve currency. So
as we print up money to buy our debt--some of the people who buy our
debt don't live here. China has about $1 trillion worth of our debt.
Japan has close to $1 trillion. England and Europe have another
trillion. About a third of our debt is owned by foreign countries, so
often, when they buy our debt, the money doesn't necessarily circulate
here.
We also tend to import more than we export. So when we import goods,
we pay foreigners with our dollars. The dollars often go overseas as
well. You can go to the far-flung reaches of our planet, to small
villages, and there will be people trading in dollars. Why is that
good? We give them our inflation. We have passed on our inflation. If
all that money came home, we are chasing our goods, and you might see
20 percent inflation at this point.
But even as it exists now, realize that inflation is a hidden tax
that hurts the working class and the poor the most. The rich can always
do well. The expenses for the rich, you know, are a small fraction of
their salaries. If you are working class or poor, most of your salary
goes to your rent, to your mortgage, to your gas, to your electricity,
to your food, to your clothing. So as the pressure of the prices rises,
wages struggle to keep up with it.
But the people who get the money first--the people on Wall Street;
the people who buy and sell the bonds; the people who then buy the
equities and buy the stocks--they are getting the money first before it
loses its value. They have been known to bid up the stock market, and
the rich have gotten richer, and it has become harder and harder for
the middle class.
This is the bait-and-switch because your politicians--they run for
office, and they promise you something for nothing. It is a scheme. It
has been going on since the beginning of time. They will come and say
``You don't want to work? Here is money for not working'' or ``If you
want money for the military-industrial complex, we will give you this
money, it is free, and there are no repercussions to handing this money
out.'' But there are; there is just a delay or a lag time.
What happens is, the inflation is this hidden tax that you pay. It is
not free. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Something for nothing
doesn't exist. It only exists as a figment or as a fairytale or as
something that people who want to run for office use to try to trick
you. They are saying: Take this; it is manna. Take this; it is free.
Here--dangle this shiny object--take this, and you will be better off.
But in the end, the country is teetering in the balance, and people
sense this. People have a way of sensing this more than the leaders.
The elite up here think they know everything, but talk to the common
man. I tell any politician up here: Talk to a man or a woman who has
grease on his hands and ask them what they think about the welfare
state. Ask them how much sympathy they have for people who don't work.
Ask the guy or the woman who has grease on their hands and works hard.
You can tell they work hard. You can tell by the grip on their hand
that they work with their hands each day. Ask them what they think
about people who don't work. You will get less sympathy than you will
get from anybody you ever meet because

[[Page S2314]]

they work hard, and they are tired of their tax dollars going to people
who are not working.

Are there people who can't work? There is a very small percentage. Of
those who aren't working, it might be 1 or 2 percent who can't work.
The vast majority are able-bodied; they can work. The vast majority
should be sent back to work immediately. The vast majority should be
told: Get a job or your benefits run out.
We don't do that. We go on and on and on. Through the pandemic, we
kept adding Federal benefits. At one point, we had $52,000 a year for
not working between State and Federal benefits. If you were a couple,
two, you could be getting over $100,000 a year not working. Who is
going to work when you can get a hundred grand for not working? This
why there has been a sluggishness getting people back into the
workforce.
The thing to remember about our country is the incredible engine that
freedom and capitalism and volunteerism and trade has brought to this
country. People are dying to get into this country. It shouldn't be
lost in the debate over immigration what a great place this is and how
many people want to get here.
Some of the best Americans just got here. I know many people are
first-generation Americans, and they are great people. They bring a
work ethic. In fact, sometimes there is a better work ethic from the
people who just got here than the people who have been coddled
generation after generation after generation of not working.
It is not that anybody is inherently bad, but we bring out the worst
tendencies in people by offering them things. It is not good for people
not to work. There is an interconnection between addictiveness and lack
of work.
There is a self-fulfilling--there is a reward, a self-esteem-building
aspect to work. Everyone should work--not as punishment but as a
reward. But we have a system where, if you say that people should work
and that we shouldn't pay people for not working or that the wage for
not working shouldn't be anywhere near the wage for working, you are
seen as somehow being too harsh, but the opposite is true. If you truly
care about your fellow man and woman, you would want them to work. You
would want to have in place very few obstacles to work. The benefits
for not working should be short-lived and small and, frankly, not that
good to get people back to work.
There are millions of jobs unfulfilled right now. We often think,
well, there is only, you know, 3, 5, 8 percent unemployment, but it is
really about 30 to 40 percent not participating. They have something
called the labor force participation rate. It hovers around 60, 62
percent, which means you have a high 30 percent of people eligible for
work not working. This is the problem we have.
If we look at what made our country great, what made America great in
the first place, it is freedom, being left alone, low taxes, low
regulation, a small Federal Government, a small footprint for
government everywhere so people can thrive.
I have traveled this country, and I have seen amazing things. I have
seen amazing success, from the vast wealth of the wealthiest to the
vast wealth of the middle class. In this country, in my State, you
could be of modest income, two people of modest income, and own your
own house and live on several acres of land.
The American dream is out there. It is still waiting. We have too
many people, though, proclaiming victimhood. The color of my skin, my
ethnicity, or this and that--I am a victim. Nobody will hire me. It is
completely untrue.
People need to know that actually there has never been a better time
to be alive. There has never been less racism, less bigotry, less
unfair business tactics than at any time in the history of the world.
If you don't believe that, you need to know more about history because
history is replete with really awful kinds of situations for people
from different races and different backgrounds.
This is the best time ever to be alive. Don't let anybody tell you
that there is not something great around the corner for you. If you get
a college degree, people want to hire you. They don't care the color of
your skin, I promise you. There is not a publicly traded company in our
country discriminating against people. If anything, they want you more
because they want diversity.

Don't let us get absorbed in this idea of victimhood. What we need to
understand is what made the country great, or there is not going to be
all these jobs; there is not going to be this engine. This engine of
prosperity is from letting people be free, leaving people largely
alone, and keeping government out of their way.
But it can't be a government that coddles us from cradle to grave. It
can't be a government that says you can't have a gas grill. It can't be
a government like California, where they say everything causes cancer.
My favorite is, if you are at home putting together a gas grill,
which is an impossible task, if you ever did it--it can take hours, but
maybe that is just me. When you are putting your gas grill together and
you look at the warning sign on it, the warning sign will be: This gas
grill is safe in every State, but it causes cancer in California.
I mean, that is the kind of stuff we have. Unfortunately, they have
been leading the way with stifling-type regulations that, then, the
rest of the country emulates until they run into problems with it.
We now have people wanting to ban cars. They want to have no internal
combustion cars like within the next 10 years. Well, when you have
mandates coming from elites who don't work, have never worked, don't
know anything about work, never been to the grocery store, and they are
telling you that you can't drive a car or that all the trucks are going
to be electric within 10 years, you have got people who are elitist who
think they know best for you.
But, really, what our country is about is choice. It is about freedom
of choice.
These are the same elitists who would tell you: Oh, you have to take
the COVID vaccine.
If you look at the science of taking a COVID vaccine, there is no
indication for a COVID vaccine for young people--none, zero. There
hasn't been from the very beginning. Most of Europe doesn't require it
for under age 12 or even suggest it for under age 12.
If you look at parameters, usually, you have to prove some kind of
parameter to prove why you should take a vaccine. The vaccine in
children--actually, and adults--doesn't stop transmission. They have
all finally admitted this. The vaccine does not stop transmission. So
it is not about you protecting other people. It is only about you.
Now, there is still a question on hospitalization and death. If you
look at targeted categories of people who might die from COVID,
particularly back in 2020, 2021, over age 65, there was a reduction in
hospitalization and death for the vaccine. I have admitted that from
the beginning. But it varies wildly depending on your age.
If you look at healthy and under 25, what you find is virtually zero
deaths among healthy individuals--unless you have an extraordinary
problem, virtually zero deaths from COVID.
So, when they look at it, they try to say: Does it improve things?
It doesn't stop transmission. That is the key to a lot of vaccines.
They stop you from getting it. This one doesn't.
But if you look at hospitalization and death, you can't find a
difference because, under age 25, it is virtually zero. The death is
very close to zero, if not zero. The hospitalization is very close to
zero. So you can't really prove it.
So when I have challenged the so-called experts on this, they have
said: Well, we decided that kids should take it from 6 months on
because they will make antibodies. If you give them a vaccine, they
make antibodies.
My response to Anthony Fauci was: I can give your kid 100 vaccines.
He will make antibodies every time. It doesn't mean he needs to be
vaccinated 100 times. It is really supposed to be about efficacy and
preventing disease.
But this is the same sort of loss of belief in individual choice. The
choice of whether or not you give your kid a vaccine should be yours.
A lot of people don't realize this, but the CDC's vaccine advisory
committee and the FDA's vaccine advisory committee suggested that only
people at risk for COVID should end up taking the booster. It didn't
suggest anybody

[[Page S2315]]

under 65 really needed to take the booster.
The Biden administration, though, came forward and decided they would
make it 6 months based on antibody production. You can give any foreign
protein and cause the body to make any foreign protein, and you will
make antibodies. That is not proof that you need something.
If you want valid studies to know whether or not you should vaccinate
your children, you would have to have a variable within the study that
says: Has my child been previously infected. Why? Because inoculation--
vaccines are basically based on natural inoculation. When you get COVID
and you have an immune response, that is what the vaccine is trying to
emulate.
We now know, by looking at the studies of this, that, actually, among
those who were infected but not vaccinated, compared to those who were
vaccinated but not infected, you find that the chance of getting
infection again is much less in those who were naturally infected.
Now, some have taken this to argue and say: Oh, you just won't be
able to be infected.
That is not true at all. That is ridiculous. No one has said that or
would say that. What I have said is people want to know the truth if
they have already been infected.
Much of the country over age 65 got vaccinated at least twice. Like
97 percent of people over 65 got vaccinated twice. Most of them have
been infected at least once or twice. What they would want to know is
the truth: What is my chance of dying or going to the hospital if I
have had two vaccines and been infected twice?
Well, the studies aren't including--this is from our government, and
we wonder the reasoning--they aren't including whether you have been
infected. Well, if you don't include the variable of whether you have
been infected or not, how would you know whether to get vaccinated
again or whether you need to.
We know a couple of things for certain. The virulence of the virus
was much greater in 2020 and 2021. It has gotten less each year. So the
virus has mutated to be less dangerous. We also know that the amount of
immunity, both from vaccine and from natural immunity, has grown. And
as the two have grown, what we have now is an endemic virus.
Unfortunately, even in this body, we still have a crazy rule telling
our pages that they have to have three vaccines. With kids, it actually
goes against, I think, medical advice to do that because there is a
risk of a heart inflammation with the vaccine. It is not a huge risk,
but it is about 4 in 15,000. But what is their risk of hospitalization
and death at this age? Virtually zero.
So if you categorize or section this out by age, what you end up
finding is that, in the elderly population at risk for COVID, it, in
all likelihood, still makes sense for vaccination. In the younger
crowd, where the death rate and hospitalization rate are virtually
zero, what you find is that the risk of the vaccine actually exceeds
the risk of the disease.
If you want to be vaccinated, you should be allowed. It is a free
country. But we shouldn't have mandates throughout government that
actually may well be malpractice. Most of Europe doesn't recommend
vaccination for COVID for kids. Most of it doesn't recommend that, when
you are sick, you get vaccinated.
I heard a story recently, and this is just bizarre in its nature. It
has to do with the idea of submission. A man took his mom to the
hospital in California. She was 83 years old, and she was very sick
with COVID. They would not admit his mom to the hospital until she was
vaccinated. She was sick with COVID, and they would not admit her until
she was vaccinated. She is in the process of getting the worst
inoculation you have ever seen, she is about to die, and they want to
vaccinate her.
The reason you don't do that and the reason why it should be
malpractice for these idiots to have done that--it is mandated by
government. That is the first problem. But even the CDC, for a year or
2, admitted that you don't vaccinate people while they are sick, and
you don't vaccinate people within a couple of months of being sick
because they have already had a significant immune response. And we
know that the side effect of heart inflammation is an exuberance of the
immune response. So when someone is already mounting an immune
response, you don't want to accentuate that.
In most of the deaths in COVID, by the time you die from COVID, you
are no longer testing positive. You are now dying from this overly
exuberant immune response, this cytokine storm that is flooding your
system and causing your blood vessels to leak fluid into the tissue of
your lungs. It is a terrible situation and a situation where we can
learn more.
But the interesting thing, as we went through the treatment for
COVID, that we discovered was that the one thing that worked better
than any of the newer drugs and almost anything was actually an old
drug, probably discovered in the thirties or forties. That was Solu-
Medrol, or IV steroids. It had a 37-percent reduction in death among
those severely ill.
When I asked some of the elites--when I asked Anthony Fauci about
using IV steroids in March of 2020, his response was: We have tried
that, and it doesn't work. We are going to use remdesivir.
In the end, remdesivir may have helped, but there were a lot of
people who have equivocations as to whether or not, in the end, that
remdesivir was of great benefit.
Ultimately, when we look at healthcare, we should let the individuals
make their choice. I met a doctor this week from Maine who had her
license removed simply because she chose to give alternative treatment.
The alternative treatment--I am not positive of the efficacy, but I
do know that one of the alternative treatments that people were giving
was already an off-label treatment for malaria.
If you look at hydroxychloroquine, it was originally given for
malaria. And then you look at hydroxychloroquine, and what it is most
commonly used now for is rheumatoid arthritis. One of the brand names
is Plaquenil.
I saw thousands of patients with this because we examined them to see
if there was an eye complication. So a drug that is being used off
label was used off label again, and they took this doctor's license
away. We have been using drugs off label for a long, long time.
Sometimes, they are used off label because it costs so much to get an
approval. It might cost billions of dollars to get an approval and to
prove to the FDA to say it has this efficacy.
Colchicine is another medicine like this that has been used in
arthritis--severe arthritis of the feet--and colchicine has never been
given the exact approval because of the money entailed it would take to
get there.
As we look at this spending bill and as we look at whether or not we
should continue spending money like there is no tomorrow, I think it is
important that we realize that this is a debt that is being passed on
to the next generation. It is being passed on to the working class, the
poor, and those on fixed incomes as we speak, but it is also being
shoved onto the next generation.
There is a lag time between the printing of the money and the
spending of the money and the rising of the prices. Now, for 2 years,
we have been told by this administration that it is transitory, that
inflation is transitory, and inflation has persisted. I think there is
so much money that has been put into the system. When we had COVID, the
entire economy was shut down, and they passed out free checks to
everyone. I thought it was a mistake then. We never should have shut
the economy down.
I don't think it affected, really, the transmission rate. If you look
at the transmission rate and you look at the culprits of it, most of
the deaths in the early stages came from group homes. In New York,
nearly 50 percent of the people who died in New York died in group
homes.
Before we had the vaccine, there were some things we could have done,
if we understood or at least appreciated natural immunity. One of the
things you could have done early on, when there was no vaccine, would
be to have the people staffing the COVID wing be people who had
recovered. I actually suggested this for the Secret Service guarding
the President--that you should put Secret Service agents who have
already recovered from COVID as the primary people around the
President--before we had a vaccine.

[[Page S2316]]

There are things that we could have done. But in discounting natural
immunity and sort of acting as if it wasn't a thing, that it did not
have potential, it was a real disservice to people. It also was used to
fire people. They fired firemen, policemen, doctors, nurses.
It is kind of interesting that, in the beginning, they were firing
all these people for not having a vaccine, and, in the end, they were
letting doctors and nurses work with masks on who were still positive
for COVID. In fact, if you look around this body and you see somebody
with a mask, it is usually somebody who has COVID. So we kind of still
do the opposite of what historically we would do. If you were sick or
you had a disease, you stayed home. Now, we tell people: Oh, wear a
cloth mask with your favorite sports team on it to work, and you can
still work positive with COVID--the opposite of good sense. Good sense
went out the window.
But when we look at whether or not we can spend this money--spend
money we don't have--we need to look at the ramifications of that. The
ramifications are basically inflation, rising prices. And so I think
that it is a disservice.
But it is a bait and switch. It is people saying: Oh, let's help
people by just giving them stuff, giving them stuff they want.
And when we give them stuff they want, we don't tell them there
really is a hidden price, and that the price will be inflation--that
your steaks might cost $20 at the store; that gasoline will go up; that
potatoes, vegetables, all these things will rise; but that your salary
will not rise as much.
We don't talk about the disincentive to work. We pay people more not
to work than to work.
Our Founding Fathers were quite clear about this. Our Founding
Fathers said that generalized spending from Washington should be for
the general welfare. It shouldn't be for bike paths for Rhode Island.
It shouldn't be for an S and M club in Philadelphia. It shouldn't be
for some environmental alarmist museum that wants to ban gas grills in
New York City.
It was supposed to be about the general welfare, things that we all
kind of agreed to. National defense, something we can't do city by
city, protecting our borders--those are the things that the general
welfare is to provide for.
If you wanted other things, it was to be provided for by States and
by localities and by charities. We got away from this. And as we have
gotten away from this, we are damaging our country. There is a rot and
ruin that is coming from within, and that rot and ruin is threatening.
It is threatening our very existence.
There may come a time in which there is a panic, and the panic may be
when people suddenly lose confidence.
Right now, they say the dollar is like the cleanest shirt in a closet
full of dirty shirts. All the currencies of the world are dirty shirts.
They all have their imperfections, and they all have inflated, and they
all have leveraged their currencies. They say: Well, the dollar is the
least bad of all these bad currencies. That has been largely true. The
dollar has been the reserve currency, so it goes around the world to
finance both sides of transactions around the world, so it hasn't all
come home.
But there is always the possibility of a loss in faith. We are
accumulating debt like no other country in the world. Most of Europe
actually balances their annual budget. The fact that we don't and the
fact that our debt accumulation has risen--there may come a time in
which there is a panic, in which the world says: No more. We are going
to quit buying the dollar.
Does it happen gradually or does it happen suddenly? If it happens
suddenly, what happens in the calamity of a dollar losing 25 percent of
its value in a day instead of 25 percent of its value over several
years?
These are my concerns, and I think that it behooves all of us to do
something very simple, very practical, something that every American
family has to do, and that is simply to spend what comes in. It doesn't
mean we won't be able to help people who are poor, people who are
hungry. It doesn't mean we won't have a military. It just means we
can't be everything to everyone all the time, and there needs to be
some limitations. The limitations need to be basically, let's spend
what comes in. It is a reasonable proposition for the American family.
It should not be an unreasonable proposition for our country.
I recommend that we say to this deficit spending: No more. Let's make
America great again by balancing our budget and being responsible about
our money.
Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator's time is reserved.
The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to explain why the
Senate should vote on my amendment to the funding bill and why the
Democratic leader is wrong to hold up this process. This is a process
that should already be concluded by now. It is simply because he wants
to avoid voting on my amendment.
My amendment is simple. It would require that the census determine
basic population statistics--like the number of citizens, noncitizens,
and illegal aliens who live in this country; you know, what the census
is supposed to do--and it would require that only U.S. citizens be
counted in determining the number of House seats and electoral votes
that go to each State. That is pretty simple. That is pretty
straightforward. That is how most Americans think things should work
here in America.
Unfortunately, illegal aliens are currently counted for the purposes
of determining how many congressional seats and how many electoral
votes a given State may obtain. The more illegal aliens, the more
noncitizens in your State or your district, the greater your voting
power in Congress and the greater your voting power in Presidential
elections. This means that in a State like California--millions of
illegal aliens result in California getting several more congressional
seats, several more electoral college votes.
This not only destroys the principle of one person, one vote by
making some Americans' votes more powerful than others, but it
encourages illegal immigration in sanctuary cities as a way to increase
political power. Think about that.
Over the past 3 years, Americans have seen the devastating
consequences of this perverse incentive to bring illegal migrants into
this country to leverage them, to build more congressional districts
and more electoral votes on the backs of these illegal migrants.
Joe Biden has allowed nearly 10 million migrants to come into our
country illegally just since he took office 3 years ago. That is
significantly more than the entire population in my State. That is more
than 13 congressional seats and electoral votes that are wrongly
distributed.
Several weeks ago, video emerged of a Democrat House Member from New
York calling for more illegal immigration to her district for
redistricting purposes. Yes, you heard that. What she means is that
Americans are fleeing blue cities and States en masse because of bad
government. But congressional seats are allocated based on population,
so if you are losing population, you either have to backfill it or lose
congressional seats. This Representative stated that because of
population loss, she needs to fill her district with illegal aliens.
She has to do that just to keep from losing her congressional seat. She
is inviting these illegal aliens to come into her district in New York
just to do that. Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, if you want to know who
it is.

The Representative who made these comments represents New York's
Ninth Congressional District. That is the same district in which the
James Madison High School resides. That is the same district--James
Madison High School recently had to clear out its rooms, recently had
to clear out the school for illegal immigrant housing. The children
were told to go home, to study by Zoom. Their school was now being
confiscated to place illegal aliens in their school.
Interestingly, that is also the very same district that the
Democratic leader formally represented when he served in the House of
Representatives. Even more interesting than that, James Madison High
School is the very high school that our Democratic leader attended.

[[Page S2317]]

The weight of every American's vote should be equal. More illegal
alien resettlement shouldn't mean more political power. My amendment
would ensure just that.
Currently, a sanctuary city with hundreds of thousands of illegal
aliens not only gets more electoral votes and congressional seats
because these illegal aliens are counted, but the weight of residents'
votes are stronger because their voting power includes the population
of noncitizens despite the fact that these noncitizens can't vote.
These illegal aliens provide leverage to citizens in these sanctuary
cities.
For instance, in a sanctuary city congressional district that
contains 50 percent illegal aliens, the number of actual voters is
half, and the power of their votes is double relative to a district
that contains only citizens. Think about it. Your district is 50
percent illegal aliens. Those citizens who are allowed to vote have
twice as much power as those congressional districts like those in my
State that don't have these illegal aliens counted.
Only citizens should be counted in determining the power of citizens'
votes.
If this perverse incentive and dilution of Americans' votes is
allowed to continue, the surge in illegal immigration under President
Biden will also continue, and it will continue because they want to
increase power in sanctuary States. This destroys the one person, one
vote principle.
All of this is to backfill congressional districts, just like the one
in Brooklyn, NY, that Congresswoman Clarke was calling for.
That is why I am offering my amendment, Hagerty No. 1634, to preserve
the one person, one vote principle and to ensure that only citizens are
counted in determining the power of citizens' votes. If Democrats
allowed a vote on it, we could have resolved this whole process
already. Yet we are still here.
The question is pretty simple: Are Democrats willing to vote on my
amendment to stop illegal aliens from being counted in determining
congressional seats and electoral votes or are they so desperate to
preserve this political power grab that they can't possibly risk the
chance of losing it and bringing my amendment to a vote?
There is no question where the blame should lie for any delay or
government shutdown that might occur from this. I am not asking my
Democrat colleagues to vote for this; I am simply asking that they vote
on it--although I hope they would consider the implications of putting
their interests over the interests of the citizens of this country on
an issue this important to the American people. Our citizens deserve to
know where their representatives stand.
I thought I might take our audience back in time, back to when this
began, back to when President Joe Biden took office in January of 2021.
When Joe Biden came into office, he immediately began to repeal the
successful policies that President Trump had instated to ensure
security at our southern border. He did this in an effort to
precipitate the border crisis we currently are experiencing.
I warned back in January of 2021, and I am going to read a direct
quote here, that ``these proposals inspire lawlessness, [they] enable
the flow of illegal drugs and human trafficking and [they will]
threaten Tennessee communities [that are] already hurting due to the
ongoing pandemic.'' My warning back in January of 2021 has come true.
Then President Biden appointed Secretary Mayorkas to head up the
Department of Homeland Security. I warned against appointing Secretary
Mayorkas at the time. I explained to my colleagues that the DHS
inspector general found that Secretary Mayorkas intervened outside the
normal protocol to push through visas when he worked in the Department
before, including securing a visa for an executive from Huawei, the
communist Chinese technology firm that has so aggressively in a
predatory manner tried to take over our own telecommunications and
information systems. Can you imagine that? A person who was using their
influence as a member of the Federal Government, in the Department, to
push for visas for executives from Huawei. That was Secretary Mayorkas.
My warnings were ignored. Secretary Mayorkas was placed into office,
and we have seen what has precipitated from that.
In February of 2021, I warned against President Biden's repeal of the
National Emergency Act at the southern border, the radical amnesty
proposal that President Biden came up with, and his termination of the
Migrant Protection Protocols that had been so effective. I warned
against all of these things because it would encourage more illegal
immigration, and in doing so, it would reduce opportunity for American
workers and place American citizens at greater risk of losing their
children and loved ones to overdose and at greater risk of crimes like
we have seen perpetrated in New York and Georgia.
Just under 3 years ago, I visited Guatemala and Mexico to get to the
heart of America's border security problems and to underscore the fact
that this is urgent, and it clearly needs to be dealt with. When I met
with President Giammattei in Guatemala, he spent an hour and a half
with me. He said: I can tell you what the ``root cause'' is of this
immigration crisis. It is the messages coming out of the White
House. He told me that we had precipitated a national security crisis
in his own country of Guatemala because now caravans were moving
through his country to get to ours. He said: I don't know who is coming
into my country. The danger that that places Guatemalans under is a
direct consequence of the actions that are being taken by your
President in America.

He told me this in the spring of 2021.
He also said something else. He said: The coyotes are smart. They
take the messages and they extract those messages from your President
and they market them to the most vulnerable people in my country. They
persuade them to take their life savings and, generally, their most
promising child and entrust those lifesavings and that child to a
criminal cartel that will then move that young person on an
extraordinarily dangerous journey from Guatemala all the way up to the
northern border of Mexico.
I just got back from our southern border. It is a disaster like
nothing I have ever seen. If you saw the risk that these young people
were undertaking by following the cartels on this journey--they have
given all their money to the cartels. Now these young people are
trapped and ensnared by them. They are placed in unbelievable
conditions and unbelievable risks.
What I saw down there would shock any of us in this room. This is the
type of risk that we are creating. This was the complaint that the
President of Guatemala made in no uncertain terms to me.
When I talked to the Foreign Minister of Mexico on the same trip, he
explained to me that we were destabilizing the economy of his country
as well. No idea where these people are coming from who are flying into
Mexico who are getting there by boat or any other means of transit, but
they have to deal with them as they march through his country.
The cartels are becoming so strong that the Mexican Government cannot
contend with them. The cartels today are multibillion-dollar criminal
organizations that are working hand in hand with the communist Chinese.
They are delivering poison into America every day. The precursor
chemicals from fentanyl are coming in from China to Mexico. The Chinese
criminals are working hand in hand with the Mexican cartels. They set
up operations to poison young people in America.
Now, the No. 1 cause of death for young people in America between the
ages of 18 and 45 is drug overdose. You can thank our open borders; you
can thank the cartels and the CCP; and you can thank President Biden
for enabling all of this.
I introduced the Migrant Resettlement Transparency Act that would
require the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of
Homeland Security to consult in advance with State and local officials
of those jurisdictions that would be impacted by the movement of these
migrants regarding the federally administered program of migrant
resettlement.
Don't you think our communities should at least know who is coming,
when they are coming, and where they are going to come? Can their
schools withstand it? Can the hospitals withstand it? Can our police
forces and social services withstand it?
These are very legitimate questions to bring forward, but we have had
a

[[Page S2318]]

dearth of information coming from the Biden administration. In fact,
the first discovery of their movement of these migrants into towns and
States away from the border was in my home State of Tennessee. They
filmed them flying in after midnight to Chattanooga, TN. These illegal
migrants were brought off planes, they were deposited in Chattanooga,
and then bused off to points unknown.
Our communities need to know what sort of impact they can expect from
all of this illegal activity. That information resides with the Federal
Government within the executive branch of this administration, an
administration that is acting in such a lawless manner that they won't
even tell us who is coming, what is coming, or when. It is
destabilizing cities and towns and counties across America, and it is
happening in my home State of Tennessee every day.
You know, back in May of 2021, when he appeared before the
Appropriations Committee, I asked Attorney General Merrick Garland if
he would be willing to echo Vice President Kamala Harris's message that
she had given: ``Do not come.''
Think about it, Attorney General Garland, our chief law enforcement
officer in America. I heard Vice President Harris say this: ``Do not
come.''
Would he be willing to echo that sentiment, send that message to
those who would illegally enter our country? He declined to do so. I
think that should tell you all you need to know when America's chief
law enforcement officer is unwilling to tell people to not enter our
country illegally.
In August of 2021, I asked my colleagues for support on my amendment
to ensure ICE has sufficient resources to detain and deport all illegal
aliens who have been convicted of a criminal offense in the United
States. Even though the Senate adopted it, Schumer and his Democratic
colleagues stripped it out of the final bill. Again, the leader allowed
his Members to vote for it for political purposes, but at the end of
the day, they stripped away ICE's ability and ICE's resources to
actually deport people who have committed criminal acts here in
America. Outrageous.

In 2022, it was revealed that while the Biden DHS was not securing
our border, they were actively working to censor Americans' speech. I
introduced the Disclose Government Censorship Act to require the
administration to disclose its coordination with social media companies
and its censorship activities. Well, I guess you can imagine what that
met with here in the Congress--again, an unwillingness to require our
executive branch to disclose when it works with Big Tech companies to
censor Americans' speech. They want the ability to do this. They want
the ability to police and censor Americans. Yet they will not police
our own southern border.
In August of 2022, all 50 Senate Democrats voted against my amendment
to direct the Judiciary Committee to ensure that ICE has sufficient
resources to detain and deport just a greater number of criminal
illegal aliens. Again, the response was no from every Democrat in this
body.
What are you saying when you vote no to providing the resources to
ICE to deport criminal illegal aliens? You are saying that you are
willing to support their criminal activity here in this country and
that you are not going to send them back to their country of origin
when they come here and do something like that.
They have also objected to my bill, the Stop Fentanyl Border
Crossings Act. And that objection has been made on multiple occasions
because I brought it to the floor on multiple occasions every time I
hear of another child dying in Tennessee and I talk with a parent or
grandparent who has learned from law enforcement or from healthcare
providers that their son or grandson or daughter or granddaughter will
not be coming home ever again because of being poisoned by fentanyl
that has come illegally across our border. My bill would have allowed
HHS to exercise its title 42 authority to combat this fentanyl
trafficking, to combat these overdoses.
Let me put this into perspective. Just last week, I looked at data
from 2021. I can tell you, the charts are moving in absolutely the
wrong direction, ramping up year after year after year. The latest data
the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation shared with me was 2021. I took
the annual number of overdoses, and I divided that number by 365 to get
to a daily count of drug overdoses in Tennessee of 86 drug overdoses a
day in our State--86 a day. That is just in 2021. It is probably up to
100 by now. It gets worse. When I looked at the number of deaths from
drug overdose in my home State of Tennessee, that calculated to 11 kids
per day dying in my State every day from drug overdose, from fentanyl
poisoning in most cases. When you extrapolate that across the Nation,
we are talking about 300 kids a day dying here in America. Why are we
tolerating this? Why is America tolerating this? Why would this body
not pass my Stop Fentanyl Border Crossings Act? Why is the
administration and my colleagues in this body, why are they willing to
look the other way?
It goes back to the amendment that I am here to talk about today. It
goes back to the very essence of power here in America and the way that
power is distributed. When you think about it, the simplest answer is
usually the right one. The simplest answer is usually the correct one.
It is called Occam's razor.
In this case, the simple answer is this: Illegal immigrants are
counted for the purpose of allocating congressional districts and
electoral votes in America. The more illegal immigrants that you have
in your State, the more congressional votes you get, and the more
electoral votes you get, the more say your State and your citizens have
when it comes to elections and legislation.
Look at what is happening in States like California, Illinois, and
New York. People are fleeing these States. I should say citizens are
fleeing these States. They are moving to States like my own in
Tennessee. They are moving to Florida. They are moving to other places.
They are leaving because of terrible policies. They are leaving because
of rampant overspending. They are leaving these blue States en masse
where the sanctuary cities are located. You won't be shocked to know
that sanctuary cities are located in New York, in Illinois, and
Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. These sanctuary cities act as a
giant magnet to attract the illegal migrants that have come across our
border. These migrants have already broken the law once coming into our
country.
Where are they more likely than not to go? Would it be to those
cities or States that have pledged not to enforce the immigration laws?
I think you know the answer. That is the motive behind the crime that
is taking place at our southern border.
I have been working to prevent the Biden administration from giving
plane tickets to migrants. You all probably heard about this. Illegal
migrants who come to our border are given plane tickets to fly anywhere
they want to in the United States.
Let me explain how it happens. A Biden program called SSP provides,
through FEMA, enormous sums of money to nonprofits that then, in turn,
take those funds to transport illegal aliens into American communities.
It has gotten much worse every year under President Biden. SSP and its
precursor program received $800 million to do this back in fiscal year
2023. That is up from just $150 million the year before it. The
recently rejected Senate border bill had an eye-popping $1.4 billion
extra for this SSP program that is used to fly illegal immigrants to
the cities of their choice in America. DHS's own website expressly
confirms that these funds can be spent on plane tickets to the
migrants' chosen destination. It says:

Onward destination transportation is defined as
transportation from a shelter and services provider to a
noncitizen migrant's--

That is a polite term--

final destination or point of contact.

It is limited in that it can't exceed 10 percent of the total funding
requested by the applicant. But that is a significant sum of money when
you look at numbers like this: $800 billion, $1.4 billion. These funds
are going to fly illegal migrants around the country at your taxpayer
expense.
The Biden administration is also giving migrants cash assistance in
multiple ways. More than $517 million in Biden ARP funds went to
illegal aliens in the United States, including one-time cash grants.
Think about that,

[[Page S2319]]

America. We are handing out over half a billion dollars in cash grants
to people who come to our country illegally. I am sure there are people
in my home State who would like to get a cash grant; not so for the
taxpayer, not so for the American citizen.
President Biden has also created massive new parole programs that are
attracting hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants. If you
look at USCIS's own website, it announces these migrants are eligible
for cash and myriad other government benefits.
Can you imagine this? Go check out the website of USCIS and see for
yourself. Migrants from Cuba and from Haiti are encouraged to come
here, and they are encouraged by telling them that they are eligible
for cash grants.
You know, I visited the southern border the other week. I spoke with
the Border Patrol officials there. I spoke with local officials and
sheriffs. I talked with ranchers there. And what the Border Patrol told
me was actually quite shocking--it is probably going to be quite
shocking to many Americans--that the Border Patrol has encountered over
20,000 Chinese nationals coming across our southern border just in the
past year.
You think about that. That is an incredible number of people coming
from China. The Chinese Communist Party knows who is leaving their
country. They have an ironclad control over the citizens of their
country. What are these people coming here for? Why are they here? Ask
yourselves that.
When I was in Texas, I went to a place called Shelby Park, in Eagle
Pass along the Del Rio sector. There, they have seen thousands of
illegal immigrants come in. I think many Americans have seen this. If
you recall that embarrassing image for this administration under the
bridge at Eagle Pass, that is Shelby Park. That section of bridge that
had thousands of migrants under it, that is Shelby Park. That is a
place where control had been completely ceded to the cartels. That is
Shelby Park.
But Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has now stepped in. He is enforcing
Texas law. He is subjecting people who set foot in Shelby Park to
criminal trespass. Guess what has happened since Texas has taken that
section of the border back? Illegal trespassing has stopped. What
Governor Abbott has proven is that when you enforce the law, illegal
immigration will stop.
The Tennessee National Guard has now gone down to assist in another
sector. Governors from across the country are stepping up and sending
National Guardsmen there to demonstrate that if you can secure the
border, even parts of the border, you can stop this illegal migration.
But it has got to take place across the entirety of the southern
border. Think about squeezing a balloon. You can stop it at one place,
but the migration just flows out to other points. But we can prove and
we have proven and it is being proven that enforcing the law will
curtail illegal immigration.
You know, perhaps the most striking thing that I learned two weeks
ago when I was down at the border was from visiting a rancher there.
And I have been to our border in California. I have been to it in
Arizona. I have been to it multiple times in Texas. But this last visit
was absolutely shocking to me.
Let me tell you the story of this rancher. He has 1,500 acres between
the Rio Grande River and the Union Pacific rail line. That rail line is
a target for what they call the ``got-aways.'' That rail line is what
they use to hop on and ride into the interior of our country.
The fencing along the border of his property has been absolutely
destroyed by the cartels and the illegal migrants. He told me he has
tried to fix the fence every night, and it gets cut down again. He will
fix it; it will be cut the next day. He cannot maintain the fence. He
has stopped running cattle on his ranch.
This is a rancher that is in the fifth generation of living and
working out their livelihood on this ranch. His livelihood has been
destroyed because of what is happening at our southern border and
because we have turned over control of our southern border to these
drug cartels that are moving the ``got-aways'' through his property.
He told me that he found 15 Syrians on his property the other day--15
Syrian males. What were they doing there? Well, they didn't come and
present themselves for asylum. They could have done that down at Eagle
Pass. They could have done that someplace else. No, they were on his
property as ``got-aways.'' They did not want to be caught. They didn't
want the white-glove treatment that I just described before where you
get a plane ticket and where you get cash. They are there for a
different reason. This is deeply concerning.
And many of you might have seen FBI Director Christopher Wray talk
about this. The national security alerts here in the United States and
across the world are at levels he hasn't seen since 9/11.
We should be deeply concerned about the national security crisis that
is unfolding at our southern border. Just this past year, over 170
different nationalities have been apprehended at our southern border.
Think about that. Over 170 different nationalities have been
apprehended at our southern border. That doesn't include those who got
away. Where are these people coming from? Why are they here?
I will tell you something else that was shocking that the rancher
told me. It was getting to be about dusk. He said, look over on the
horizon there. You are about to see some blinking blue lights. Sure
enough, in a few minutes, the lights started going off. He said: That
is your taxpayer dollars at work. Those are comfort stations, comfort
stations for those who have come across the border illegally. These are
comfort stations for the ``got-aways.'' He said: Here is what you will
find at the comfort station. First, and most important, at the comfort
station is a charging bar for your cell phone. A cell phone charging
bar is at the comfort station.
I asked: Why is that? Why do you need a cell phone charger there? And
he said: Because the people that come across illegally here use GPS pin
drops that are provided to them by the cartels and their coyotes to
help them find their way illegally into our country. That is the path,
he said, for them to find rides that have been arranged over WeChat or
some other overseas application that the cartels can use with impunity
to direct their illegal trafficking of humans and, I presume, drugs
into our country undetected.

They are marching right across this property, and we are providing
comfort stations for them to recharge their cell phones so they can
continue that process of coming into our country illegally. Also, you
will find water and food at these comfort stations. That is our
taxpayer dollars at work.
This is the Biden administration encouraging illegal immigration at
every level into our Nation. And if you think about the people that are
coming across that border that don't want to be caught, I can certainly
tell you there is quite a contrast between what they are going through
and what they are willing to go through versus the white-glove
treatment they would receive if they simply come to America and claim
asylum.
This is extraordinarily dangerous, my friends. Extraordinarily
dangerous. And it is wrong.
Speaking of being wrong, why should Americans have to live like this?
The rancher told me that his wife heard something in the middle of the
night. She said: I hear something out in the kitchen.
He said he grabbed his pistol, he went into the kitchen, there were
20--and he said--adult, military-aged males in his kitchen, eating from
his refrigerator and drinking everything in it.
He told them to leave. He used a different term with me, but he told
them to leave his home. Their response to him, he said, was: You are
out of beer. Go get me some more. He said he cocked his pistol. He said
these invaders slowly backed out. They went to his barn.
He said he thought for a minute about going to the barn, then he
realized he only had six bullets and there are 20 of them.
He has been advised by law enforcement not to allow his 18- and 12-
year-old children to go on the property unless they are armed or with
someone who is.
This is how we are treating Americans? This is how we are treating a
farmer, a Texas farmer at our southern

[[Page S2320]]

border? He and his family have to be subjected to this sort of
treatment, this sort of violence, this sort of horror.
Let me tell you what else he told me. He said, one day--he pointed
over to a bridge on his property near the railroad lines. He said there
were two men there with their arms zip-tied behind their backs and
bullets through their heads. Evidently, a cartel deal gone wrong. This
is organized crime taking place on his property in the United States,
and we are doing nothing about it.
He said, one day, his child found a woman whose leg had been severed
because she tried to jump on that Union Pacific rail line and missed
it, and the train ran over it. She crawled over to his property. She
was up in the bed of their pickup truck. His child found this woman,
and they came in and life-flighted her out.
He doesn't know whether she lived or not. But this is the carnage
that is taking place at our southern border because we are creating
these incentives to draw people in, to risk their very lives, and come
here illegally.
Americans should not have to live with this. American grandmothers
and mothers shouldn't have to take those calls from the sheriff or the
police chief saying that your son or daughter or your grandson and
granddaughter are not coming home because they have touched or somehow
encountered fentanyl that, again, has entered our country illegally
across that border.
This is a crisis of proportions that we have never seen before. And I
will reiterate the national security crisis, because it is getting
worse by the day. The Biden administration is now using their CBP app
to allow people to fly in directly to the United States from other
countries.
So it is not just at the border; it is at our airports. We tried to
get information about what airports are being used, where this is
taking place. Again, the Biden administration will reveal no
information. It is extraordinary; it is dangerous; and it is placing
American lives at risk every day.
If you think about that, if you think about the kind of crisis that
we are encountering every day, you have got to go back to the most
fundamental of questions, and that is: Why? What is the incentive for
putting Americans' lives at risk? What is the incentive for attracting
young people from throughout Latin America and other places to
undertake such a dangerous journey and to be entrapped by drug cartels
and criminal organizations?
What is the incentive to exposing our own children to the risks of
death by fentanyl? What is the incentive to overwhelm our schools--to
even kick kids out of the school that our Senate majority leader
attended as a child--so that illegal migrants can be moved into it?
What is the incentive for overweighting our system and creating
disaster across the cities in America? The incentive is simple: That
incentive is power. Power is what this is all about because power is
what is delivered when illegal migrants are allowed to be counted for
the purposes of allocating congressional districts and electoral votes.
They are allowed to be counted for allocating power in the Congress and
in the Presidential election.
And they are allowed to be leveraged by citizens in these sanctuary
cities to gain even more power than they deserve, taking away
legislative power and electoral power from States like mine, because
these illegal migrants magnify the votes of those people and those
districts.
They are getting greater representation because they are allowed to
count illegal migrants. Greater representation than they otherwise
would desire. And, again, look no further than the statements of
Congresswoman Yvette Clarke in Brooklyn when she says the quiet part
out loud, when she says she needs those illegal migrants for the
purposes of redistricting; she needs those illegal migrants to maintain
her district--because people are fleeing New York. She doesn't want to
lose her congressional seat. The simplest way to do that is create a
sanctuary city, a magnet, and bring those people in, stick them into
the high school there in Brooklyn, and allow them to be counted for the
purposes of allocating her Congressional district and, therefore,
adding another electoral vote to New York State. This is wrong. This is
the incentive, and my bill would correct that.
My bill would get right at this incentive, and it would stop this
perverse incentive to bring people here illegally just for the purpose
of being counted to expand power. That is what we need to do today. We
can step up and vote on this bill. We need to address this problem now.

I think when Americans find out the shocking news that this means of
counting electoral votes and congressional seats is being so abused
that it is standing as the incentive to subject our Nation to
incredible pain and misery, and it is standing as an incentive to
incite incredible misery for those people who undertake these journeys
that they should not.
I go back to what President Giammattei told me in Guatemala. He said:
Not only are you creating a national security risk with all of the
people who are moving through my country to get to yours, but, he said,
you are destabilizing families in my country. You are taking the most
promising young people in my country and creating a brain drain right
here because these families are handing their life savings to these
coyotes and these cartels, and they are sending their most promising
child on this dangerous, dangerous journey.
That should not be happening. We should not be destabilizing other
nations throughout Latin America, but that is precisely what is the
result of this perverse incentive back here in America. That is
precisely the result of the policies that have collapsed the protection
of our southern border and is precisely the reason you have people
showing up at the southern border now with ``Vote Biden'' T-shirts on
wanting entry into America because they see this. They see this
opportunity as a way to change their lives.
What it is, is a way to endanger their lives, and it is also allowing
these cartels to enrich themselves every day to a point that we can't
contend.
The Border Patrol tell me that they are outmanned and outresourced at
the southern border; that the cartels have better technology. They use
drones. They use technology, again, as I described, to put GPS
pinpoints along the way that they have mapped out to illegally enter
our country.
When I stopped by to visit with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
after I got back from the southern border 2 weeks ago, I explained to
them what I saw. And then I asked them what they were seeing.
They told me that Venezuelan gangs are rampantly operating in our
State. They told me about the sex trafficking that is going on. They
told me about the so-called Detroit Boys and Operation 313. That is the
area code for Detroit, and this is their effort to try to get these
criminal elements here in America who are partnering with the criminals
in Mexico to spread drugs and human trafficking across America.
They said that these Venezuelan gangs are moving young people in sex
trafficking from Nashville to New York to Houston and back. These young
people may never get out of their servitude to the Venezuelan cartels.
They told me how violent they are. This criminal activity is
happening on our soil. It is expanding because we are allowing it to
happen, and their supply chains--their supply lines are moving right
across that southern border into America. So not only are they
operating on the northern border of Mexico, but now they are freely
operating here in our country.
I will take you back to the remarks of our FBI Director, Christopher
Wray, who recently said the threat level that he has seen here in
America is greater than since 9/11.
We need to be deeply, deeply concerned about what is happening, what
has been happening, and, frankly, what may yet come from this national
security crisis that we are creating.
The dangers are very, very real, and the opportunity is before us
today to address these dangers by stopping this perverse incentive. I
hope we will undertake that opportunity. I hope we will have an
opportunity to vote on this today and bring it to an end.
I assure you we should have voted on this already. We should have
voted on it a long time ago but delay after delay after delay because
evidently our leader doesn't want to vote on it. Again, I

[[Page S2321]]

am not asking my colleagues to vote with me, but I am asking my
colleagues for the opportunity to vote on this.
And I appreciate all of you who are here today to listen to the story
about what is happening to America and to allow me to peel back to the
very core of the incentive that is causing all of this.
Let's address this. Let's stop this illegal trafficking. Let's stop
the drugs coming into our country. Let's stop the crisis at our
southern border. Let's allow our Texas ranchers and Arizona ranchers
and California ranchers to get back to business. Let's bring safety
back to our cities again.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I rise--maybe there are some discussions
happening about amendments actually happening. I would hope in a
Chamber that has historically been known as the world's most
deliberative body that we can actually do that. I find it hard to
believe--and it has happened on occasion--that Senators who were
elected here by entire States actually don't have the opportunity to
offer amendments to have them voted on. But here we are, and those are,
I guess, some discussions that are taking place.
I do have an amendment and one that saves $110 million and displaces
a position dedicated to algorithmic justice, whatever in the world that
is. But I thought it would be a good opportunity--because ``algorithmic
justice'' sounds very Orwellian to me--to highlight some of the real
abuses we have seen of free speech in the last few years.
I am 48. So I suppose I am one of the younger members in the Senate.
But I am also old enough to remember when people of all political
stripes, including liberals, actually believed in free speech; that it
was something that we believed provided a part of our national
identity. What makes America exceptional is that we can tolerate
different points of view--agree and disagree, persuade, be willing to
be persuaded--that that is a core American value.
I think what has happened in the last few years is this debate has
somehow gotten off the rails about the willingness of some to actually
censor because they disagree or they think something is threatening or
it might be misinformation. That might well be true, but the government
certainly doesn't have a right to tell you what you can hear and what
you can say. It just doesn't. It is fundamental, and they also don't
get to outsource that censorship to private parties.
In my last job, I filed a lawsuit Missouri v. Biden. And Missouri v.
Biden exposed a vast censorship enterprise. It is actually being heard
in the U.S. Supreme Court in about 2 weeks. So we filed the lawsuit--
Missouri and Louisiana filed it--and we were actually able to obtain
discovery in advance of the preliminary injunction hearing, which was a
win.
So thousands, literally tens of thousands of pages of emails and text
messages were exposed. And all I can say is--if I have the opportunity
to use all of my time, I could use--by the way, I would be more than
willing to go more than an hour--we will get to the court's ruling. But
I thought it might be worth highlighting because many Members--maybe
this will boost C-SPAN viewership. I don't know--but many of the
Members may not have heard the allegations and then ultimately what was
proven to the court in their opinion.
In 1783, George Washington warned that if ``the freedom of Speech may
be taken away--[then] dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the
Slaughter.''
That was in George Washington's Address to the officers in the Army
on March 15, 1783.
I think what I will do for the sake of cutting out some of this is
leave the citations out. You will have to trust me, but it is all on
the record. So you can find this. The citations are, in fact, noted.
The freedom of speech in the United States now--this is, by the way,
from the second amended complaint that was filed on June of 2022 in the
United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the
Monroe Division.

The freedom of speech in the United States now faces one of
its greatest assaults by federal government officials in our
nation's history.
A private entity violates the First Amendment ``if the
government coerces or induces it to take action the
government itself would not be permitted to do, such as
censor expression of a lawful viewpoint. The government
cannot accomplish, through threats of adverse government
action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing
directly.''

That is exactly what occurred over the past several years, beginning
with express and implied threats from government officials and
culminating in the Biden administration's open and explicit censorship
programs.
Having threatened and cajoled social media platforms for years to
censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the left, senior
government officials in the executive branch have moved into place--
does anybody--can you find some readers? I mentioned 48, but here we
go. The font on this, that I printed off, is more difficult to read
than I would have thought.

. . . moved into a phase of open collusion with social-
media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints,
and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian
guise of halting so-called ``disinformation,''
``misinformation,'' or ``malinformation.''
4. The aggressive censorship that Defendants have procured
constitutes government action for at least five reasons: (1)
absent federal intervention, common-law and statutory
doctrines, as well as voluntary conduct and natural free-
market forces, would have restrained the emergence of
censorship and suppression of speech of disfavored speakers,
content, and viewpoint on social media; and yet, (2) through
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and other
actions, the federal government subsidized, fostered,
encouraged, and empowered the creation of a small number of
massive social-media companies with disproportionate ability
to censor and suppress speech on the basis of speaker,
content, and viewpoint; (3) such inducements as Section 230
and other legal benefits (such as the absence of antitrust
enforcement) constitute an immensely valuable benefit to
social-media platforms and incentive to do the bidding of
federal officials; (4) federal officials--including, most
notably, certain Defendants herein--have repeatedly and
aggressively threatened to remove these legal benefits and
impose other adverse consequences on social-media platforms
if they do not aggressively censor and suppress disfavored
speakers, content, and viewpoints on their platforms; and (5)
Defendants herein, colluding and coordinating with each
other, have also directly coordinated and colluded with
social-media platforms to identify disfavored speakers,
viewpoints, and content and thus have procured the actual
censorship and suppression of the freedom of speech. These
factors are both individually and collectively sufficient to
establish government action in the censorship and suppression
of social-media speech, especially given the inherent power
imbalance: not only do the government actors here have the
power to penalize noncompliant companies, but they have
threatened to exercise that authority.

So, in this case, government officials--so a lot of these lawsuits
about what social media companies were doing, were filed against social
media companies themselves who moved to the Northern District of
California and were never to be seen again.
What made this lawsuit unique was government actors in their official
capacity were sued because of their activity and their censorship by
way of social media companies by threatening investigations,
threatening to pull section 230 protections if they weren't censoring
enough, threatening antitrust actions.
The complaint continues:

As a direct result of these actions, there have been an
unprecedented rise of censorship and suppression of free
speech--including core political speech--on social-media
platforms. Many viewpoints and speakers have been unlawfully
and unconstitutionally silenced in the modern public square.
These actions gravely threaten the fundamental right of free
speech and free discourse for virtually all citizens in
Missouri, Louisiana, and America, both on social media and
elsewhere. And they have directly impacted individual
Plaintiffs in this case, all of whom have been censored and/
or shadowbanned as a result of Defendants' actions.
Under the First Amendment, the federal Government should
play no role in policing private speech or picking winners
and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is what
federal officials are doing, on a massive scale--the full
scope and impact of which yet to be determined.
Secretary Mayorkas of DHS commented that the federal
Government's efforts to police private speech on social media
are occurring ``across the federal enterprise.'' It turns out
that this statement is quite literally true. This case
involves a massive, sprawling federal ``Censorship
Enterprise,'' which includes dozens of federal officials

[[Page S2322]]

across at least eleven federal agencies and components, who
communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation,
disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on
social media--all with the intent and effect of pressuring
social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech
that federal officials disfavor.

Moving to the General Allegations.

A. Freedom of Speech Is the Bedrock of American Liberty.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that
``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press . . .'' et cetera.

Article I, subsection 8 of the Missouri Constitution provides
something similar. I won't read the whole paragraph.

The freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by the
First Amendment is one of the greatest bulwarks of [our]
liberty. These rights are fundamental and must be protected
against government interference. . . .
If the President or Congress enacted a law or issued an
order requiring the suppression of certain disfavored
viewpoints or on social media, or directing social media to
demonetize, shadow-ban, or expel certain disfavored speakers,
such a law or order would be manifestly unconstitutional
under the First Amendment.
``If there is any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can
prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism,
religion, or other matters of opinion.''

That was in the West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.
In another case the First Amendment was noted:

``[T]he First Amendment means that government has no power
to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its
subject matter, or its content.''

That is Ashcroft v. ACLU.

``In light of the substantial and expansive threats to free
[speech] posed by content-based restrictions, the Supreme
Court has rejected as `startling and dangerous' a `free-
floating test for First Amendment coverage . . . [based on]
an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits.'
''

U.S. v. Alvarez.
Section 2 of the General Allegations: Merely labeling speech
``misinformation'' or ``disinformation'' does not strip away First
Amendment protection.

Labeling disfavored speech ``misinformation'' or
``disinformation'' does not strip it of First Amendment
protection. ``Absent from those few categories where the law
allows content-based regulation of speech is any general
exception to the First Amendment for false statements. This
comports with the common understanding that some false
statements are inevitable if there is to be open and vigorous
expression of views in public and private conversation,
expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee.''
The Supreme Court has thus rejected the argument that
``false statements, as a general rule, are beyond
constitutional protection.''
``Permitting the government to decree this speech to be a
criminal offense, whether shouted from the rooftops or made
in a barely audible whisper, would endorse government
authority to compile a list of subjects about which false
statements are punishable. That governmental power has no
clear limiting principle. Our constitutional tradition stands
against the idea that we need Oceania's Ministry of Truth.''

That is cited from the previous case as well and also cited, by the
way, ``Nineteen Eighty-Four'' by George Orwell.

``Were the Court to hold--

In that same case--

``Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful
discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech . .
. it would give government a broad censorial power
unprecedented in this Court's cases or in our constitutional
tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power
casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if
free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a
foundation of our freedom.''

Section 3. Counterspeech, not censorship, is the proper response to
``misinformation.''

When the Government believes that speech is false and
harmful, ``counterspeech,'' not censorship, must ``suffice to
achieve its interest.'' The First Amendment presumes that
``the dynamics of free speech, of counterspeech, of
refutation, can overcome the lie.''
``The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is
true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The
response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the
uninformed, the enlightened; to the straightout lie, the
simple truth.''
``The theory of our Constitution is `that the best test of
truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in
the competition of the market.''

It is in the same case, also quoting Abrams v. United States, 1919.

``The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond
to speech we do not like, and for a good reason. Freedom of
speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the
state but from the inalienable rights of the person. And
suppression of speech by the government can make exposure of
falsity more difficult, not less so. Society has the right
and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational
discourse. These ends are not well served when the government
seeks to orchestrate public discussion through content-based
mandates.''

Section 4. Americans have a First Amendment right to be exposed to a
free flow of speech, viewpoints, and content, free from censorship by
government officials.

The First Amendment also protects the right to receive
others' thoughts, messages, and viewpoints freely, in a free
flow of public discourse. ``[W]here a speaker exists . . . ,
the protection afforded is to the communication, to its
source and to its recipients both.''

That is Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens
Consumer Council, from 1976.

The right to receive information is ``an inherent corollary
of the rights to free speech and press that are explicitly,
guaranteed by the Constitution,'' because ``the right to
receive ideas follows ineluctably from the sender's First
Amendment right to send them.''
``The dissemination of ideas can accomplish nothing if
otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive and
consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that
had only sellers and no buyers.'' Lamont v. Postmaster
General.
``A fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that
all persons have access to places where they can speak and
listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once
more.'' Packingham v. North Carolina.
``[A]ssuring that the public has access to a multiplicity
of information sources is a governmental purpose of the
highest order, for it promotes values central to the First
Amendment.'' Turner Broadcasting Sys., Inc. v. FCC.

I am going to skip a little bit here.
Section 5. Government officials may not circumvent the First
Amendment by inducing, threatening, and/or colluding with private
entities to suppress protected speech.

It is ``axiomatic'' that the government may not ``induce,
encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it
is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.'' Norwood v.
Harrison.
A private entity violates the First Amendment if the
government coerces or induces it to take action the
government itself would not be permitted to do, such as
censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.'' Knight First
Amendment Institute.
``The government cannot accomplish through threats of
adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it
from doing directly.''
Threats of adverse regulatory or legislative action, to
induce private actors to censor third parties' speech,
violate the First Amendment. See Hammerhead Enters. v.
Brezenoff (``Where comments of a government official can
reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of
punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the
failure to accede to the official's request, a valid claim
can be stated.'')

I am going to save you all the citations from that.

The unprecedented control over private speech exercised by
social-media companies gives government officials an
unprecedented opportunity to circumvent the First Amendment
and achieve indirect censorship of private speech. ``By
virtue of its ownership of the essential pathway,'' a social
media platform ``can . . . silence the voice of competing
speakers with a mere flick of the switch.'' Turner.
``The potential for abuse of this private power over a
central avenue of communication cannot be overlooked.''
Part B. The Dominance of Social Media as a Forum for Public
Information and Discourse.
Social media companies have become, in many ways, ``the
modern public square.'' Social media platforms provide
``perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private
citizen to make his or her voice heard.''
``Today's digital platforms provide avenues for
historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including
speech by government actors.''

By the way, you can follow that online. You can also listen to the
Supreme Court arguments in 2 weeks.
I will just close with this. This is a case that is being argued, and
as we talk about these issues, I would hope that, as a body, we could
come together to allow individual Senators to offer amendments. I would
hope that, over time, we can also find common ground on this idea that
the government shouldn't have any business in suppressing speech. The
temptation to control so-called misinformation is great, and this case
stands for the proposition that you cannot outsource that to social
media companies. It is an Orwellian scheme that played out

[[Page S2323]]

among a whole host of government agencies and bureaucracies, and I hope
that case, which I think is the most important free speech case in the
history of our country, spells it out very clearly.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the general allegations
from the seconded amended complaint of Missouri v. Biden be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

General Allegations

A. Freedom of Speech is the Bedrock of American Liberty

94. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states
that ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press . . .'' U.S. Const. amend. I.
95. Article I, Sec. 8 of the Missouri Constitution provides
``[t]hat no law shall be passed impairing the freedom of
speech, no matter by what means communicated: that every
person shall be free to say, write or publish, or otherwise
communicate whatever he will on any subject, being
responsible for all abuses of that liberty . . . .'' Mo.
Const. art. I, Sec. 8. Article I, Sec. 7 of the Louisiana
Constitution provides that ``[n]o law shall curtail or
restrain the freedom of speech or of the press. Every person
may speak, write, and publish his sentiments on any subject,
but is responsible for abuse of that freedom.'' La. Const.
art. I, Sec. 7. All other State Constitutions likewise
protect the freedom of speech as a fundamental right of the
first order.
96. The freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by the
First Amendment is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty.
These rights are fundamental and must be protected against
government interference.

1. Government officials lack authority to censor disfavored speakers
and viewpoints

97. If the President or Congress enacted a law or issued an
order requiring the suppression of certain disfavored
viewpoints or speakers on social media, or directing social
media to demonetize, shadow-ban, or expel certain disfavored
speakers, such a law or order would be manifestly
unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
98. ``If there is any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can
prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism,
religion, or other matters of opinion.'' W. Va. State Bd. of
Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943).
99. ``[T]he First Amendment means that government has no
power to restrict expression because of its message, its
ideas, its subject matter, or its content.'' Ashcroft v.
ACLU, 535 U.S. 564, 573 (2002) (quotations omitted).
100. ``In light of the substantial and expansive threats to
free expression posed by content-based restrictions,'' the
Supreme ``Court has rejected as `startling and dangerous' a
`free-floating test for First Amendment coverage . . . [based
on] an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and
benefits,' '' United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 717
(2012) (plurality op.) (quoting United States v. Stevens, 559
U.S. 460, 470 (2010)).

2. Merely labeling speech ``misinformation'' or ``disinformation'' does
not strip away First Amendment protections.

101. Labeling disfavored speech ``misinformation'' or
``disinformation'' does not strip it of First Amendment
protection. ``Absent from those few categories where the law
allows content-based regulation of speech is any general
exception to the First Amendment for false statements. This
comports with the common understanding that some false
statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and
vigorous expression of views in public and private
conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to
guarantee.'' Id. at 718.
102. The Supreme Court has thus rejected the argument
``that false statements, as a general rule, are beyond
constitutional protection.'' Id.
103. ``Permitting the government to decree this speech to
be a criminal offense, whether shouted from the rooftops or
made in a barely audible whisper, would endorse government
authority to compile a list of subjects about which false
statements are punishable. That governmental power has no
clear limiting principle. Our constitutional tradition stands
against the idea that we need Oceania's Ministry of Truth.''
Id. at 723 (citing G. Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
(Centennial ed. 2003)).
104. ``Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful
discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech . .
. it would give government a broad censorial power
unprecedented in this Court's cases or in our constitutional
tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power
casts a chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if
free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain a
foundation of our freedom.'' Id. at 723.

3. Counterspeech, not censorship, is the proper response to supposed
``misinformation''

105. When the Government believes that speech is false and
harmful, ``counterspeech,'' not censorship, must ``suffice to
achieve its interest.'' Id. at 726. The First Amendment
presumes that ``the dynamics of free speech, of
counterspeech, of refutation, can overcome the lie.'' Id.
106. ``The remedy for speech that is false is speech that
is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The
response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the
uninformed, the enlightened; to the straightout lie, the
simple truth.'' Id. at 727.
107. ``The theory of our Constitution is `that the best
test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself
accepted in the competition of the market.' '' Id. at 728
(quoting Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919)
(Holmes, J., dissenting)).
108. ``The First Amendment itself ensures the right to
respond to speech we do not like, and for good reason.
Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence
of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person.
And suppression of speech by the government can make exposure
of falsity more difficult, not less so. Society has the right
and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational
discourse. These ends are not well served when the government
seeks to orchestrate public discussion through content-based
mandates.'' Id. at 728.

4. Americans have a First Amendment right to be exposed to a free flow
of speech viewpoints, and content, free from censorship by government
officials

109. The First Amendment also protects the right to receive
others' thoughts, messages, and viewpoints freely, in a free
flow of public discourse. ``[W]here a speaker exists . . .,
the protection afforded is to the communication, to its
source and to its recipients both.'' Va. State Bd, of
Pharmacy v. Va. Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 756
(1976).
110. The right to receive information is ``an inherent
corollary of the rights to free speech and press that are
explicitly, guaranteed by the Constitution,'' because ``the
right to receive ideas follows ineluctably from the sender's
First Amendment right to send them.'' Bd of Educ., Island
Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 867
(1982). ``The dissemination of ideas can accomplish nothing
if otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive and
consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that
had only sellers and no buyers.'' Lamont v. Postmaster Gen.,
381 U.S. 301, 308 (1965) (Brennan, J., concurring).
111. ``A fundamental principle of the First Amendment is
that all persons have access to places where they can speak
and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once
more.'' Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1735
(2017).
112. ``[A]ssuring that the public has access to a
multiplicity of information sources is a governmental purpose
of the highest order, for it promotes values central to the
First Amendment.'' Turner Broadcasting Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512
U.S. 622, 663 (1994). Indeed, ``the widest possible
dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic
sources is essential to the welfare of the public.'' United
States v. Midwest Video Corp., 406 U.S. 649, 668 n.27 (1972)
(plurality op.) (quotations omitted).

5. Government officials may not circumvent the First Amendment by
inducing, threatening, and/or colluding with private entities to
suppress protected speech

113. It is ``axiomatic'' that the government may not
``induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish
what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.''
Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 465 (1973) (quotations
omitted).
114. A private entity violates the First Amendment ``if the
government coerces or induces it to take action the
government itself would not be permitted to do, such as
censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.'' Knight First
Amendment Institute, 141 S. Ct. at 1226 (Thomas, J.,
concurring). ``The government cannot accomplish through
threats of adverse government action what the Constitution
prohibits it from doing directly.'' Id.
115. Threats of adverse regulatory or legislative action,
to induce private actors to censor third parties' speech,
violate the First Amendment. See Hammerhead Enters. v.
Brezenoff, 707 F.2d 33, 39 (2d Cir. 1983) (``Where comments
of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as
intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory
action will follow the failure to accede to the official's
request, a valid claim can be stated.''); see also Bantam
Books v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 68 (1963) (holding that a
veiled threat of prosecution to pressure a private bookseller
to stop selling disfavored books could violate the First
Amendment).
116. The unprecedented control over private speech
exercised by social-media companies gives government
officials an unprecedented opportunity to circumvent the
First Amendment and achieve indirect censorship of private
speech. ``By virtue of its ownership of the essential
pathway,'' a social media platform ``can . . . silence the
voice of competing speakers with a mere flick of the
switch.'' Turner, 512 U.S. at 656; see also Knight First
Amendment Inst., 141 S. Ct. at 1224 (Thomas, J., concurring).
``The potential for abuse of this private power over a
central avenue of communication cannot be overlooked.''
Turner, 512 U.S. at 656.
Mr. SCHMITT. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

[[Page S2324]]

Order of Business

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
notwithstanding rule XXII, the only motions and amendments in order to
the House message to accompany H.R. 4366 be the following: motion to
concur with Lee amendment No. 1623; motion to concur with Schmitt
amendment No. 1626; Scott of Florida motion to refer; and motion to
concur with Hagerty amendment No. 1634; further, that the Senate vote
on the above motions and amendments in the order listed; that upon
disposition of the Hagerty motion to concur with further amendment, the
pending motion to concur with a further amendment be withdrawn and the
Senate vote on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the
Senate amendment to H.R. 4366 without further intervening action or
debate and with 2 minutes for debate, equally divided, prior to each
vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, after months of hard work, we have good
news for the country. Tonight, the Senate has reached an agreement,
avoiding a shutdown, on the first six funding bills. We will keep
important programs funded for moms and kids, for veterans, for the
environment, for housing, and so much more. Because both sides
cooperated today, we have taken a major step toward our goal of fully
funding the government. Today's bipartisan agreement gives us momentum
and space to finish the remaining appropriations bills by March 22. Of
course, it is going to take both sides working together to keep that
momentum alive.
To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets
done, this bipartisan package says otherwise. It helps parents and
veterans and firefighters and farmers and school cafeterias and more.
We have fully funded WIC so 7 million moms and kids won't be
malnourished. We have built on the infrastructure law by providing
billions to repair our roads and bridges and highways. We have given
our Federal firefighters a raise. We will be able to hire more air
traffic controllers and rail safety inspectors, and we are taking care
of our veterans with support for veterans' homelessness, mental health,
and women veterans.
Now, to my colleagues, please be on notice. We expect five votes,
including a final vote to approve the bill. We want to move quickly. So
I ask Senators to come here quickly for the first vote--so we don't
have to drag that out--and then stay in their seats or near the floor
until we finish our work. We are seeking 10-minute votes on the final
four votes.
I want to thank our appropriators, who have done such a fine job--
Chair Murray and Vice Chair Collins--as well as the Appropriations
staff and my staff.
Thank you to Leader McConnell, Speaker Johnson, and Leader Jeffries.
This is an outcome both parties can be proud of because we have found
the way to put the needs of our country first.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

Amendment No. 1623

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, for the past few years, Americans have
watched with a certain degree of dismay and even horror as the U.S.
Department of Justice--an institution that has long been revered by
many Americans, including myself, now a former Federal prosecutor--has
been weaponized by the left to go after those whose views are deemed
unacceptable and who have been deemed targets by political appointees
in the Biden administration's Justice Department because they have been
perceived as a threat to their own political interests.
From the text messages of illicit lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
at the FBI to the Crossfire Hurricane scandal, to the current
prosecution of Donald Trump, Americans have lost faith in the
Department of Justice, and they want the political weaponization of the
DOJ to stop.
Unfortunately, this weaponization has only gotten worse under this
administration as we have seen with the use of unnecessary force and
the prosecution of peaceful protesters at abortion clinics; the
investigation of Catholics based on their religious beliefs and their
attendance of traditional Latin mass; and, of course, the labeling of
concerned parents as domestic terrorists based solely on their decision
to show up to a school board meeting and raise legitimate concerns
about how their children are being taught and otherwise treated at
school.
My amendment would prohibit the Department of Justice from
prosecuting any individual in contravention of the Justice Manual. The
Justice Manual is a bible of sorts within the Department of Justice. It
is the Department of Justice's rule book for Federal prosecutors. Now,
Justice Manual section 9-27.260 is clear.
It reads as follows:

Federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision
regarding an investigation or prosecution, or select the
timing of investigative steps or criminal charges, for the
purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of
giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or
political party.

The prosecution of former President Donald Trump by the Department of
Justice through special prosecutor Jack Smith would appear, at least
outwardly, to violate these ``impermissible considerations''--
considerations they are not allowed to make--and is intended to give
the sitting President, who is polling miserably with the American
people, an unfair advantage this November. This is a clear violation of
the Justice Manual, of its plain terms. That is exactly why my
amendment would prohibit funding for these prosecutions based on
impermissible considerations--considerations that violate the
Department of Justice's own policy manual, not just for the prosecution
of former President Trump but also all Americans.
The American people want our Federal law enforcement to get back to
its mission: keeping America safe by taking violent criminals who are
destroying our cities and our communities and our families off the
streets instead of focusing on destroying the Biden administration's
political opponents. They expect and demand more of the Department of
Justice, and we should too.

Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1623

To that end, Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment
to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366 with my amendment No. 1623.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Utah [Mr. Lee] moves to concur in the
House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366 with an
amendment numbered 1623.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To prohibit the use of funds to initiate or decline a Federal
criminal charge based on impermissible considerations)

At the appropriate place in title V of division C, insert
the following:
Sec. ___. None of the funds made available by this Act may
be used in contravention of section 9-27.260 of the Justice
Manual (relating to impermissible considerations for
initiating and declining charges).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There shall be 2 minutes of debate equally
divided.
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, at the end of the day, the American people
understand something is terribly wrong. They understand that, when the
Department of Justice is politically weaponized to prosecute again and
again political opponents of this administration, including and
especially the 45th President of the United States--a man who is the
principal rival, the lead political opponent of the current President--
something is terribly wrong. They are violating the Justice Manual.
That is not right. This amendment would fix that, and I urge my
colleagues to support it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the Lee amendment has such good language
that it is already in law. The Justice Manual already establishes a
standard with virtually verbatim language as in the Lee amendment.
Furthermore, the Justice Manual reflects the express prohibitions
against discrimination by law enforcement, enacted by Congress in the
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and in title VI of
the Civil Rights Act. It also reflects consistent holdings by the
Supreme Court on due process and equal protection.
The only time they believe this has been successfully implemented was
during the Trump administration,

[[Page S2325]]

when there was fear that they were going to weaponize the Department of
Justice, and this standard, which is already in the law, at least
discouraged many from participating in that exercise.
The good news is this language is redundant, and it is unnecessary.
The bad news is, if we adopt it, we are going to stop the process of
appropriating and avoiding closing the government this evening. I urge
my colleagues to vote no on the Lee amendment.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 15
seconds.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 30 seconds remaining.
Mr. LEE. To the extent this is already law, fine. We shouldn't
hesitate for a second in attaching a spending condition to this. The
truth is it is not part of law; it is part of the Justice Manual. We
ought to make it a condition of the spending bill.
As far as this causing a shutdown, this is going to take 10 minutes.
We are going to have this vote with or without opposition to it. We
might as well pass it now. What I didn't hear is any refutation of the
fact that the Justice Department has been weaponized against the 45th
President, President Biden's lead political opponent. That is wrong.

I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, is there any time remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time is expired.

Vote on Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1623

The question is on agreeing to the Lee motion to concur with
amendment No. 1623.
Mr. LEE. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears be to a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Manchin) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton),
the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley), the Senator from Utah (Mr.
Romney), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance), and the Senator from
Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance)
would have voted ``yea.''
The result was announced--yeas 43, nays 50, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 80 Leg.]

YEAS--43

Blackburn
Boozman
Braun
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
Moran
Mullin
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Young

NAYS--50

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--7

Barrasso
Cotton
Hawley
Manchin
Romney
Vance
Wicker
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cortez Masto). The majority leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, can we have order, please. There are a
lot of people who have to get to a lot of places. We are going to be
real strict on 10-minute votes. Stay in your place.
I also ask unanimous consent that the remaining votes in this series
be 10 minutes in length.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Missouri.

Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1626

Mr. SCHMITT. Madam President, I move to concur in the House amendment
to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366, with my amendment No. 1626.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Schmitt] moves to concur in
the House amendment to Senate amendment to H.R. 4366, with an
amendment numbered 1626.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To strike the provision making amounts available to the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration for salaries
and expenses, administration, and oversight of programs administered by
the Administration that were funded under the Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act)

In division C, strike section 542.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes for debate,
equally divided.
Mr. SCHMITT. Madam President, I will be brief and just sort of walk
through this amendment. This is a good government amendment that I hope
that everybody can get behind.
The House omnibus includes a provision allowing the NTIA to capture
337 million in IIJA funding to expand its bureaucracy.
So just to sort of walk through this, under the Infrastructure Act,
there was $42 billion for administrative costs. That is $850 million.
That money, as it relates to the BEAD Program, because it is pretty
diffused across the country, they don't have a lot of those
administrative costs.
So now they are coming back in under the BEAD Program and saying we
need $337 million for administrative costs. But they have only
justified $226 million. So this would save taxpayers $110 million.
If they want to justify it down the road for something specific, they
can go ahead and do that. But this is to sort of deal with that. If you
want another reason to support this: There is also some new initiative
related to Algorithmic Justice--whatever that is--and we would make
sure that no dollars go to Algorithmic Justice.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, my colleague from Missouri says this
is a good government amendment, but this, in fact, is not a good
government amendment.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided millions of
dollars to connect all Americans to high-speed, reliable, affordable
internet.
The IIJA provided an administrative set-aside of 2 percent to get
these grants out the door quickly and responsibly. What we are hearing
now is that the Commerce Department has projected that this falls short
of what is needed to successfully implement and oversee these programs.
So we increased that 2 percent to 2.7 percent to cover the shortfall
that helps States.
Now, the NTIA has grants on the Middle Mile Program that affect 38
projects in 35 States and Puerto Rico. And I am going to read for my
colleagues across the aisle, who are objecting to this 2.7 percent, the
States that are affected if these programs get cut, and their grants
will get cut: Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine,
Missouri--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senator, your time has expired.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Can I have an extra 10 seconds?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee,
Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
I would urge my colleagues to vote no and make sure these projects
can go forward with the oversight they require.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. SCHMITT. I will just respond.
I ask for 30 extra seconds.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. SCHATZ. I object.
Mr. SCHMITT. Fifteen seconds.
I would just say this: If that were true, maybe you have a good
reason to vote against it. That is not true. According to Commerce and
Approps, there is $110 million that won't be affected by any of that.
So this is just saving $110 million.

[[Page S2326]]

All the things the great Senator just talked about, all that is going
to happen. You are not taking anything away. You are just saving $110
million that Commerce and Approps say has not been justified.

Vote on Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1626

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the Schmitt
motion to concur with amendment No. 1626.
Mr. SCHMITT. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Manchin) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley),
and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Romney).
The result was announced--yeas 37, nays 59, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 81 Leg.]

YEAS--37

Blackburn
Boozman
Braun
Britt
Budd
Cassidy
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Grassley
Hagerty
Hoeven
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
Mullin
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Vance
Wicker
Young

NAYS--59

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Fischer
Gillibrand
Graham
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hyde-Smith
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--4

Barrasso
Hawley
Manchin
Romney
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. That took 17 minutes. I please ask the Members'
indulgence. Stay here. Let's get it done so people can get on their
way.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

Motion to Refer

Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, I have a motion at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Florida [Mr. Scott] moves to refer the
bill H.R. 4366 to the Committee on Appropriations of the
Senate with instructions to report the same back to the
Senate in 1 day, not counting any day on which the Senate is
not in session, with changes that remove all Community
Project Funding and Congressionally Directed Spending.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes for debate,
equally divided.
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, since Joe Biden took office,
inflation has exploded 17.9 percent. Prices on everything, especially
groceries, are sky-high, and hard-working Americans aren't able to keep
up. Unless we see significant deflation, which will only happen if we
cut spending, there won't be a relief from the massive damage that
Biden's inflation has caused.
One of the best ways to cut reckless spending is to stop earmarks,
and this bill has more than 6,600 of them costing taxpayers $12
billion. Earmarks are a corrupt practice. The American taxpayer should
not be used as a political piggybank.
My answer is simple: We should send this reckless spending bill back
to committee and remove all earmarks before passage.
Given that my Democrat colleagues have all removed at least one
earmark from this bill, this shouldn't be a tough thing to do before
government funding lapses.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I have spoken out previously about CDS
requests that Members have secured for their communities, but this one
really takes the cake. It would, at the eleventh hour, wipe out all of
the CDS requests in this bill, all of the hard work, all of the input
we asked everyone to provide us about projects that would help their
constituents would be gone.
This would completely overrule other lawmakers on projects they
requested and secured for their communities that they know best; not to
mention, it would sink this bill, all but ensuring a government
shutdown. This is completely unacceptable.
It should be unacceptable to everyone who has worked with us to make
sure this package includes the projects they know will make a
difference to folks back home. I strongly urge a ``no'' vote.

Vote on Motion to Refer

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
refer.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Manchin) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley),
and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Romney).
The result was announced--yeas 32, nays 64, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 82 Leg.]

YEAS--32

Blackburn
Braun
Budd
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Grassley
Hagerty
Hoeven
Johnson
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Vance
Young

NAYS--64

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Boozman
Britt
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gillibrand
Graham
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hyde-Smith
Kaine
Kelly
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Mullin
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden

NOT VOTING--4

Barrasso
Hawley
Manchin
Romney
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. My colleagues, that was 10 minutes, 30 seconds. Let's
beat 10 minutes now. Stay in the Chamber--the next to the last vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1634

Mr. HAGERTY. Madam President, I move to concur in the House amendment
to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366 with my amendment number 1634.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Hagerty] moves to concur in
the House amendment to the Senate amendment with a further
amendment numbered 1634.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To place a restriction on the use of funds relating to the
decennial census)

At the appropriate place under the heading ``General
Provisions--Department of Commerce'' in title I of division
C, insert the following:
Sec. ___. None of the funds made available by this Act may
be used to--
(1) conduct a decennial census that does not collect and
make publicly available the number of individuals per State
who are--

[[Page S2327]]

(A) citizens of the United States;
(B) nationals of the United States but not citizens of the
United States;
(C) aliens lawfully residing in the United States; or
(D) aliens unlawfully residing in the United States; or
(2) report to the President an apportionment population
that includes individuals who are not citizens of the United
States.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes for debate equally
divided.
Mr. HAGERTY. Madam President, my amendment is simple. It would
require that the census determine basic population statistics like the
number of citizens, noncitizens, and illegal aliens that live in this
country, and it would require that only U.S. citizens be counted in
determining the number of House seats and electoral votes that each
State gets.
Currently, illegal aliens are counted for determining how many
congressional seats and electoral college votes each State gets. The
more illegal aliens and noncitizens in your State or district, the
greater your voting power in Congress and Presidential elections.
This not only destroys the principle of one person-one vote by making
some American's votes more powerful than others, but it encourages
illegal immigration in sanctuary cities as a way to increase political
power.
In fact, a Democrat House Member from New York recently called for
more illegal immigration to her district for redistricting purposes.
The weight of every American's vote should be equal. More illegal
alien resettlement shouldn't mean more political power in America.
My amendment would ensure this, and I encourage my colleagues to
support it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, this amendment is exactly the sort of
poison pill rider we all worked to keep out of this important
bipartisan package. The census must be conducted in a nonpartisan,
nonpolitical way to get the most accurate data possible, data that is
used in countless programs that all of our communities rely on.
This amendment adds detrimental new requirements that would inject
politics into the census and have a chilling effect on the Census
Bureau's constitutional responsibility to count the number of people in
the United States, and, let's be clear, this amendment is probably
unconstitutional.
The Constitution requires apportionment by counting ``the whole
number of persons in each State.'' The phrase ``whole number of
persons'' is quite clear.
So in addition to just being plain wrong, this amendment is
fundamentally inconsistent with the clear language in our Constitution.
I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 1634

The question is on agreeing to the Hagerty motion to concur with
amendment No. 1634.
Mr. HAGERTY. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Manchin) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: The Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Hawley),
and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Romney).
Further, if present and voting: The Senator from Wyoming (Mr.
Barrasso) would have voted ``yea'', and the Senator from Missouri (Mr.
Hawley) would have voted ``yea''.
The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 51, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 83 Leg.]

YEAS--45

Blackburn
Boozman
Braun
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
Moran
Mullin
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Vance
Wicker
Young

NAYS--51

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--4

Barrasso
Hawley
Manchin
Romney
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cantwell). The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I want to thank everybody who has
worked really hard on this.
For all Members of the Senate, I yield back all of our time.

Amendment Withdrawn

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to concur
with a further amendment is withdrawn.

Vote on Motion to Concur

The question occurs on agreeing to the motion to concur in the House
amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4366.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr.
Manchin) is necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Romney).
The result was announced--yeas 75, nays 22, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 84 Leg.]

YEAS--75

Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Boozman
Britt
Brown
Butler
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Duckworth
Durbin
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Kaine
Kelly
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Lujan
Markey
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Mullin
Murkowski
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wicker
Wyden
Young

NAYS--22

Blackburn
Braun
Budd
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Hagerty
Hawley
Johnson
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
Murphy
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Tuberville
Vance

NOT VOTING--3

Barrasso
Manchin
Romney
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

____________________