[Pages S161-S182]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

LEGISLATIVE SESSION

______

LAKEN RILEY ACT--Resumed

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 5, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 5) to require the Secretary of Homeland Security
to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the
United States with theft, and for other purposes.

Pending:

Thune (for Ernst/Grassley) Amendment No. 8, to include
crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury to the
list of offenses that, if committed by an inadmissible alien,
require mandatory detention.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.

Cabinet Nominations

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, yesterday I watched closely the
nomination hearing for Pete Hegseth. He is President Trump's nominee to
be Secretary of Defense.
For the safety and security of our Nation, Pete deserves a swift,
swift confirmation. I am going to vote for him to be the next Secretary
of Defense, and I believe that vote is going to happen soon.
He was very clear in the hearing yesterday, the incoming
administration is going to refocus the Pentagon on American strength
and on hard power--not a woke agenda, which is what we have seen for
the last 4 years.
To me, this is very welcome news, and I believe it is welcome news to
Americans all across this country who are worried about the security of
our Nation and the strength of our Nation.
We have a significant problem in the military today. It is a problem
with morale and a problem with recruitment. Pete Hegseth is the right
person to address both of these issues and to make sure that we--
America--have a military that is ready to fight. Pete served in combat
at the height of the war on terror. He deployed overseas to Iraq, to
Afghanistan, and to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
He is a decorated veteran. He has earned two Bronze Stars. He also
earned the Combat Infantryman's badge. When Pete's executive officer
evaluated his performance in Iraq, the feedback was glowing. Pete, he
said, was ``an incredibly talented, battle-proven leader.''

Incredibly talented, battle-proven leader.

He ``always [completed] every mission to high standards with minimal
guidance or supervision.'' That is what you want.
Now, I heard Senator Schumer ask on this floor: Why should Americans
entrust Pete to lead our military? Well, Pete Hegseth answered that
question yesterday.
Senator Sheehy asked during the hearing: Are you going to have the
backs of the warfighters? To which our nominee said, yes, he will have
their backs. That is why Americans should trust Pete to lead our
military.
It is interesting to hear my Democrat colleagues dismiss Pete's years
of military service. They sounded angry about his plan to restore
American strength. They seemed frustrated that he clearly loves our
country and wants to continue to serve. Democrats tried to turn
yesterday's hearing into a kangaroo court. They claimed that Pete isn't
qualified.

[[Page S162]]

So let's talk about his military experience. The Department of
Defense is filled with people who have decades of experience working in
the Pentagon. The Pentagon just failed its seventh--seventh--
consecutive audit. Think about that for a second.
Each year, the American taxpayers send the Pentagon more than $850
billion--billion with ``b''--yet the Pentagon can't pass a single
audit. Look, it sounds like we don't need more experience like that. We
need a fresh set of eyes, a soldier--as Pete said himself--with dirt on
his boots.
Being Secretary of Defense isn't just about managing a bureaucracy;
it is about making America's military the best and most lethal fighting
force in the world. Pete is going to be a Secretary of Defense who
respects the warfighter and who respects the taxpayer. He is a bold
choice for the future of our military, a bold choice for the future of
our Nation, and the right choice to be Secretary of Defense.
A Senate confirmation is not an easy process, and the Secretary of
Defense is not an easy job. Yesterday, Pete gave strong answers to
tough questions. He is confident, and he is knowledgeable. He is ready
to lead the Department of Defense.
He knows the cost of war. He knows the price of weakness, and the
true value and the valor of American soldiers.
As Secretary of Defense, he is going to reestablish deterrence and
rebuild our military. He is going to champion American servicemembers
and restore American military readiness.
Pete is going to bring the Pentagon back to what its mission should
be: lethality, accountability, transparency, merit. The focus is going
to be on military readiness, not social experiments and partisan
policies.
America needs a strong Secretary of Defense now, immediately. Senate
Republicans will get it done.

S. 5

Mr. President, today the Senate is considering amendments to the
Laken Riley Act. The Laken Riley Act is actually bipartisan
legislation. It is a lifesaving bill. It is a lifesaving bill that is
going to lock up illegal immigrants and then deport them.
Republicans are offering targeted amendments to make this bill even
stronger. Senator Ernst has an amendment that would detain illegal
immigrants who commit murder or cause serious bodily injury. Senator
Cornyn has an amendment that will detain illegal immigrants who attack
law enforcement officers.
Those are the type of amendments that Republicans are discussing to
strengthen the bill. I know there is some Democrats who are trying to
undermine the bill. They want to replace it with thousands of pages of
immigration reform.
I have said this before, and it bears repeating: Republicans are not
going to undermine or weaken this lifesaving bill.
The Laken Riley Act is not comprehensive immigration reform. It is a
targeted piece of tough immigration enforcement. Republicans aren't
going to trade American lives for amnesty. We will make the law that
puts the safety of the American people first. That is what Americans
voted for in November: safety, security, for our communities, for our
citizens.
Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was recently asked about the
bipartisan Laken Riley Act. This is what he said, he said: Pretend that
you are in a parking lot in a Wal-Mart in Scranton, PA, as we are out
traveling around the State in our own home States.
He said: Well, I am going to vote against a bill that allows people
to deport people that are charged with a crime or have a criminal
record?
To me, I hope others will listen to Senator Fetterman and hear those
words and realize how ridiculous it sounds that anyone would vote
against the Laken Riley Act.
The Laken Riley Act deserves strong, targeted amendments and swift
passage in this body and then signed into law by the President.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Mullin). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Tennessee.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I have to say, I think the remarks I
planned today are so pertinent to what is taking place in our world as
we are hearing about the Trump effect actually bringing forward a deal
with Israel, Hamas, and the hostages because my remarks today are
centered on UNRWA, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees.
Now, this has been one of the biggest obstacles to peace in the
Middle East. To the world, UNRWA presents itself as an aid group for
Palestinians. But, in reality, this agency--this U.N. agency that has
been the recipient of 7.1 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars--is nothing
more than a terror group that works to undermine Israel's security and
safety. We have known this for years, but in the aftermath of the Hamas
barbaric October 7 attack on the Jewish State, we have learned much
more about UNRWA's terror ties.
Early last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that 10 percent of
UNRWA's staff have ties to Islamist militant groups. Among them, 6 took
part in the October 7 assault that left 1,200 Israelis dead and
hundreds more in captivity.
After reports emerged that an UNRWA teacher held an Israeli hostage
in his attic, I pressed the agency to investigate that employee.
Instead of taking action, the group dismissed this request and this
claim as ``unsubstantiated'' and called on the Israeli journalist who
reported the news to ``immediately delete the post.''
We also know that UNRWA has indoctrinated Palestinian children with
schools that glorify terrorism and promote violent hatred of Jews,
allowed Hamas to store weapons in their buildings, and provided support
and aid to the terror group.
Now, a new report from UN Watch, the top watchdog for holding the
U.N. accountable, shows that UNRWA works with Hamas, as well as
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, at the highest level of the agency. To quote
the report, ``this secret relationship allows the terrorist
organizations to significantly influence the policies and practices of
a UN agency with 30,000 employees, and $1.5 billion annual budget that
is funded primarily by Western states.
The evidence is overwhelming. In 2017, UNRWA's then-Commissioner
General met with leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to
strengthen--in his words--``a spirit of partnership.'' To protect the
agency's credibility, however, the Commissioner General urged the
terror leaders to ensure that ``discussions not be made public.''
Of course, open collaboration with U.S.-designated terror groups
could jeopardize the millions it receives from Western countries every
year. So they tried to cover it up so that they could keep getting
these millions and billions of dollars--as I said, U.S. taxpayers, 7.1
billion that has gone into this group.
In the years since, UNRWA leaders have repeatedly pledged support for
Palestinian terrorists. That same year, the agency's Lebanon director
told terror leaders that UNRWA hoped to have a strong partnership with
them. A year later, their program director in Lebanon met with a Hamas
official to discuss ``ongoing cooperation and coordination.''
Also in 2018, a former UNRWA official appeared at a rally alongside
Hamas terror leaders who urged support for UNRWA ``until we return to
Palestine''--meaning the end of Israel as a Jewish State. The UNRWA
official, of course, thanked the terrorist ``for their understanding.''
In 2021, the former Deputy Commissioner General of UNRWA met with
Sinwar--now, that is the Hamas leader who later planned the October 7
attack--after one of her employees admitted on TV that Israel's strikes
on Hamas are ``very precise.''
In response, the Deputy Commissioner General removed the employee
from his position and thanked Sinwar for ``his positivity and desire to
continue cooperation in facilitating the agency's work in the Gaza
Strip.''
You see there is a pattern here of participation between UNRWA and
between Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is just a sample of
the

[[Page S163]]

high-level meetings between leaders of UNRWA and these groups. The list
could go on and on and on. What this report makes very clear is that
UNRWA's support for terror groups is not something that happens at the
agency's fringes. Instead, supporting and enabling terrorism against
Israel is UNRWA's main purpose.
I want to say that again: UNRWA's support for these terrorist groups
is not just at the fringes. It is with their leadership. They are
supporting and enabling terrorism against Israel, and we need to
realize this.
This is why President Trump canceled U.S. funding to the agency
during his first administration, and it is why President Biden's
decision in 2021 to restore that funding--over $730 million that year--
was a huge mistake.
After the October 7 attack, I led the charge in introducing
legislation to defund UNRWA, and, in March of last year, President
Biden finally signed into law a 1-year ban on that funding.
With all we know about UNRWA, though, we need to make this ban
permanent, which is why I am working on legislation that will do just
that once we get a new President and once we begin to say no to these
organizations who take taxpayer dollars and turn around and use it
against the American people, use it for pro-terror, pro-violence
organizations and groups.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

S. 5

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, you will see for the next hour a whole
group of Republicans coming to the floor to be able to talk about one
issue: our need for border security and safer communities. This is
something that not just Republicans in the Senate are talking about;
this is something that the American people spoke loudly and clearly
about during the last election when they elected President Trump, a
Republican Senate, and a Republican House. There is not a single Member
who is a Republican in this body, in the House, or, clearly, President
Trump, who didn't talk about border security and safer communities
throughout the entire election.
Every single poll showed that this was one of the priority issues
that every single American was thinking about. A Gallup poll last year
found that more than three-quarters of Americans support increasing the
number of Border Patrol agents; that two-thirds of Americans want the
President and the Homeland Security Secretary to temporarily halt all
asylum requests when the border is overwhelmed; and third, a majority
of Americans support expanding border wall construction. People want a
secure community.
On the floor this week--we started last week and are still debating
it this week--is what to do on what is called the Laken Riley Act. Some
Americans are familiar with Laken Riley's story; some are not. Laken
Riley was a college student in Georgia who was brutally murdered by a
Venezuelan who came into the United States illegally, was detained at
the border, but then released. He traveled around the country wherever
he wanted to under a parole system that was given to him at the border
in 2022. He committed a crime, was arrested for that crime, and then
was released. He committed another crime--shoplifting. He was arrested
for that crime and was then released. The third crime, as far as we
know--there might have been many more, but the third crime, as far as
we know, was his murder of Laken Riley.
He should have never been in the United States. He should have never
been paroled at the border. He should have been detained and then
deported, but he wasn't. He was paroled into the United States. When he
committed a crime in the United States, he should have been deported,
but he was not. He was released. When he committed a second crime in
the United States, he should have been deported, but he wasn't. He was
released--before he ever got to murder.
The Laken Riley Act is pretty simple. It says: If someone is here
illegally and they commit a crime in the United States of stealing
Americans' stuff, like he did, that he is deported. I don't think it is
a radical concept to be able to say that Americans don't want someone
to come into the country illegally and take their stuff. Why this is
even a challenge to be able to pass this, I have no idea. This passed
in the House last session, but the Senate never took it up to even
discuss it.
If I go to any of the great 4 million Oklahomans in my State and I
say ``What do you think about someone illegally coming into the country
and stealing people's stuff? Do you think that is OK, that they should
still be able to stay?'' I don't think I would find anybody of the 4
million Oklahomans who would say ``I am OK with someone illegally
coming into the country, stealing people's stuff'' and say ``You can go
ahead and stay.''
That is all that this bill does. It says that if someone comes into
this country illegally and starts stealing stuff, they are detained;
they are held. They are not just allowed to be released to be able to
drift around the country to steal other things or to commit a murder
later. If they come into our country illegally and start stealing
things, they are detained, and they will go through the rest of the
legal process. It doesn't mean they are automatically deported the very
next day. They still have a legal challenge there. They can have their
legal challenge. But they are not going to just wander around the
country.
That is why we believe this Laken Riley Act is so important. It is
because we never, ever, ever, ever want to have another American who is
murdered by someone illegally present here, especially someone who had
already committed multiple crimes before they ever got to that murder.
So let's have the debate. I am willing to be able to talk to any one
of my Democratic or Republican colleagues who has a question about
this, but at the base of this is, why would we let someone who is
already illegally present in the country and who we already know has
committed additional crimes just continue to walk our streets just to
commit more crimes? Why would we not detain those individuals?
On Monday, President Trump will be inaugurated. I am looking forward
to working with him and seeing even what happens on day one to be able
to secure the border. This is something the American people want. They
want a border that is secure; they want communities that are secure;
and they want just basic commonsense things done, like if someone
breaks into our country and then steals stuff, they are actually
detained rather than just released to go do it again. Let's at least do
the basics that we can do while we continue to be able to work toward
the big projects that still need to be done.
Multiple of my colleagues will be coming in the moments ahead to talk
through this same issue because we feel like, on this side, it is
incredibly important we get this done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, this week, the Senate is proud to take
another step forward toward securing our southern border as we consider
the Laken Riley Act. I want to extend my deep gratitude to Senator
Katie Britt and Senator Ted Budd for their leadership in bringing this
bill forward.
First and foremost, I want to say that I strongly support this
measure. With this bill, the Senate will be taking a bold step for the
safety and prosperity of American citizens after 4 years of
mismanagement and decline and, ultimately, chaos at the border.
The Laken Riley Act is the answer to a loud and clear call made at
the ballot box by the American people to unite us as a country, to put
America first, and to address the tragic lawlessness that we see on our
southern border. So in the Senate's first order of legislative
business, we are answering that call.
The radical open border policies of the left have caused untold
suffering to families across the Nation--families like the Riley
family, who is still grieving the unimaginable loss of their beautiful
daughter Laken.
Laken was just 22 years old--a young nursing student with a promising
future ahead of her. Tragically, she was stolen from this Earth by an
individual who should have never been allowed to

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roam free in this country. Laken should be alive today, and she would
have been if her killer had been brought to justice before it was too
late. In Laken, we lost a bright and beautiful soul, as those who knew
her will attest.
The law should serve our citizens, yet it has somehow been Laken's
killer who has benefited from our system. It is time we honor Laken's
legacy by putting American citizens first.
The Laken Riley Act, while too late to prevent Laken's tragedy, is a
targeted bill that will save countless other lives. It will ensure that
other illegal immigrants who are not dissimilar to her killer are
detained for their crimes before they get a chance to commit another
and maybe a more serious offense. Anyone who has entered the United
States illegally and then committed a crime should and will face
detention and deportation. It sounds like common sense to me. Laken's
killer was arrested three times and released three times--once at the
border, again in New York City, and a third time in Athens, GA, mere
weeks before he took Laken's life. That will not happen and cannot
happen under the Laken Riley Act.
This is a problem that cannot be ignored or explained away or made
trivial. The American people demand change. The American people want us
to fix this system that failed to uphold the law and failed to keep
Laken safe. Her cause is their cause. It is the cause of every mother,
every father, every brother, every sister--of a young girl who simply
wants to go to school and then go out for a run in her neighborhood and
feel safe.
I know, at its core, this is truly a bipartisan issue. We all want to
keep our communities safe--all Republicans and Democrats. Our
Republican conference is completely unified behind the Laken Riley Act,
and we have managed to win over a majority of Senate Democrats for the
bill's initial consideration, including two who have signed on as
cosponsors. As my Democrat colleague from Pennsylvania has noted, the
failure to pass this bill would represent everything that is wrong with
Congress.
The truth is, the American citizens have had enough talk, especially
after these last 4 years. Now is the time for action. That is what the
election was about--action, not empty words. This week, we will have
before us a tranche of critical votes that America will be intently
watching.
To the families watching who have lost loved ones, like the Riley
family, we stand with you. We feel your grief and your pain, and we
will guard against this heartbreak ever happening again.
Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon my colleagues and me to
support America's families and pass the strongest possible bill for our
communities.
With that, I look forward to advancing the Laken Riley Act this week.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, today I join my colleagues in looking
forward to January 20, when we can turn the page on the failed border
policies of the Biden-Harris administration and get back to the
commonsense--commonsense--approach to border security under President
Donald Trump.
During 4 years of the Biden-Harris border policies, our country saw
the highest annual total of illegal alien crossings, the highest
monthly total of illegal alien crossings, and the highest total of
individuals on the Terror Watchlist attempting to cross our border.
These are the plain and simple facts. The Biden-Harris administration
has made our country less safe, less secure, and more vulnerable to
threats from abroad.
The American people saw beyond the Biden-Harris administration's
false claims that the border was secure and last November gave a very
clear and compelling mandate: Secure the border. Secure the border.
Already, the new Republican Senate majority is taking a first step to
protect the American people against the consequences of the Biden-
Harris administration's policies by working to pass the Laken Riley
Act.
Under this bill, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be
required to detain illegal immigrants who have committed theft-related
offenses and issue an immigration detainer request to local law
enforcement for illegal aliens who have committed related crimes.
The legislation can empower States to hold Federal officials
accountable when they fail to enforce Federal immigration law.
This important legislation is one we should have never had to pass,
but because the Biden-Harris administration played politics with our
country's borders and immigration policy, Senate Republicans are here
today ready to work on behalf of the American people.
Working with the Trump administration, we will prioritize the
enforcement of policies that protect our southern border, which include
reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols or ``Remain in Mexico''
policy, enforcing safe third-country agreements, and resuming
construction of the border wall.
In his first 100 days in office, President Biden revoked 94 Trump-era
Executive orders and reversed crucial border security policies.
In less than a week, President-elect Trump will be sworn into office.
He has committed to taking Executive action on day one to reinstate the
policies that will secure our border. I look forward to these changes
and working further to address the crisis created under the Biden-
Harris administration.
I also look forward to the debate that will take place in the coming
weeks regarding how Republicans will secure the border through
reconciliation. We are already hard at work on that. This will be an
important legislative tool that will help refocus resources so that the
professionals at ICE, CBP, and U.S. Border Patrol can focus on the
mission of securing our border, removing criminal aliens who should not
be in the United States, and addressing potential threats to the
homeland.
To accomplish these goals, we must recruit and retain more border
security professionals, modernize our border security tools like
autonomous towers, and better utilize technology like the counter-
unmanned aircraft systems along the border. The cause of these threats
to our homeland is clear: President Biden's failure to secure the
southern border.
Senate Republicans stand ready to work with President Trump to
advance the policies that kept our border secure during his first
administration. That is exactly what my colleagues and I will be
working to accomplish every day in the coming months because border
security is national security.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. BUDD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from North Dakota for
his comments in support of this legislation.
One of the highest priorities of the next administration is securing
the southern border, restoring law and order, and reversing the
dangerous open border policies of President Biden. Too many Americans
have felt the tragic consequences of these policies.
One of them was a woman named Laken Riley. She was a nursing student
at the University of Georgia, and last year an illegal immigrant from
Venezuela murdered her while she was out on an early morning jog.
What makes this story all the more devastating was that the killer
should have been stopped but wasn't. He should have been stopped at the
border in 2022, but he was paroled into this country. He should have
been detained when he was arrested in New York in 2023 but wasn't. He
should have been detained when he was arrested in Georgia for
shoplifting, but he wasn't. The chain of these events is downright
shameful.
We must make sure that these don't ever happen again, and that is why
I worked with my good friend Senator Katie Britt of Alabama to
reintroduce the Laken Riley Act.
This bill would require ICE to issue detainers and take into custody
illegal aliens who commit crimes like theft and shoplifting.
We need to stop these individuals when they commit minor crimes
before they are able to commit major crimes like the horrific murder of
Laken Riley.
The Laken Riley Act will empower the Trump administration to enforce
our laws, keep our Nation secure, and prevent--prevent--tragedies.

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Ladies and gentlemen, this is common sense. But if you stay here in
Washington long enough, you will sometimes feel that common sense is
not all that common.
But I appreciate the newfound bipartisanship that seems to have
broken out on Capitol Hill on this issue. It is wonderful. Dozens of
Democrats have now supported the Laken Riley Act. I want to welcome
them to the cause of law and order.
But a word here about amendments. And I thank Leader Thune, who I
think is off to a wonderful start, and I appreciate his leadership. He
is open, as he promised, to amendments--several on this side of the
aisle and several on the other. But let's just say that some of our
friends on the other side of the aisle, they have an amendment. And
let's say that it doesn't get the amount of votes. Let's not use that
as a pretext for them not supporting this bill. Let's support this. And
then you have our commitment to go back and work on that and take a
look at that specific legislation that they were trying to introduce by
amendment. But please don't use the failure of said amendment to not
support this very important legislation.
It is my hope that we can continue in this spirit and make sure that
the Laken Riley Act is passed by both Chambers and signed into law by
our Nation's 47th President, Donald J. Trump.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, President Biden is spending his final days
in office on a valedictory tour.
Now, here is one accomplishment he won't mention: a crisis on our
southern border which has spread chaos across our country, flooded our
communities with fentanyl, and cost innocent American lives.
Now, it is correct to call this one of President Biden's
``accomplishments.'' He intentionally reversed the Trump
administration's border policies as soon as he reached the Oval Office,
and it was by design--by design--that millions of migrants who
illegally crossed our southern border were released into our country.
This self-inflicted disaster will be a major part of President Biden's
ignominious legacy, and it is, in part, why Americans chose to return
President Trump to office in November.
When the American people voted for a Republican President and a
Republican Congress, they were voting to restore the rule of law at the
border. They were demanding that their government fulfill its
constitutionally delegated duty to provide for their national security.
They were demanding that their government do that, and they were
arguing, correctly, that it is not discrimination for a nation to
demand that those who seek to call it home do so legally.
The American people want the return of commonsense immigration
policy; that is all. That is what I hear back home. But you see, this
wasn't possible under President Biden.
Beginning next week, we will have a new President, and there will be
no excuses. The open-border policies must end. Criminal migrants must
go. The number of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officers must be increased. Barriers to illegal entry must be expanded
and enlarged. Republicans are working on legislation which will help
accomplish all of these things and improve the security of our border,
just like the American people expect.
It will be too little, too late for the family of Laken Riley,
though. Of course, she should still be with us today. The man who
murdered her last February should have never set foot in America. Her
death was preventable. Her killer entered this country illegally and
was quickly paroled. Then he was sent, at taxpayer expense, to New
York, where he was arrested and released. If that was the end of the
story, it would still be an outrage and an indictment of the failed
Biden administration. But from there, he went to Georgia, you see--all
courtesy of taxpayers--where he was arrested and freed again before
brutally murdering Laken Riley.
Weakening border enforcement, incentivizing criminals with specious
asylum claims to cross our border, failing to detain and deport these
very same people for crimes committed far away from it--these were the
policies that led to Laken's death. This cannot happen again. It can't
happen again to another American or to their family. That is why we
need to pass the Laken Riley Act. It won't singlehandedly end the
crisis at our southern border, no. That is not its objective. But it is
an important first step in the broader mission we have been assigned by
the American people.
Homeland Security must detain migrants charged with crimes--here
again, common sense--crimes like shoplifting, one of the crimes for
which Laken's killer was arrested. The bill we are currently debating,
the Laken Riley Act, requires that they do this and that we meet the
objectives of the American people as it relates to border security.
You see, enforcing immigration law is a national security priority. I
began emphasizing this years ago. I know so many other Americans
believe this in their bones. It is time Washington started acting like
it.
So this bill is one of many steps we should take to reverse the Biden
administration's open border policies. Stop the madness. Stop the
madness. I plead with my colleagues to support the Laken Riley Act. We
should pass it now.
Let President Biden have his victory tour. But starting next week,
the insanity ends, and we begin to secure our border.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, President Biden's open border policies
have created a national security, humanitarian, and drug catastrophe in
our country. In 2023, law enforcement encounters at the border found
169 people on the FBI's Terrorist Watchlist. In previous years, under
the Trump administration, that number was in the single digits. We have
had 10.5 million border encounters since Biden took office.
On a single day in December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
encountered 12,600 people trying to illegally enter into our country.
That is just along the southern border--12,600. It set an alltime,
single-day record for the number of people trying to break into our
country.
In years past, administration officials have said: If there are 1,000
people encountered at our southern border trying to get in, that is a
crisis.
So 12,600 is a catastrophe.
Record amounts of deadly drugs have also flown into our country since
President Biden opened our borders. We experienced this directly in
Nebraska. In 2019, when I was Governor, Nebraska law enforcement took
46 pills laced with fentanyl off of our streets--46. Then, after Biden
became President, in just the first 6 months of 2021, Nebraska law
enforcement took 151,000 pills off our streets--from 46 to 151,000.
While I was Governor, after Biden became President, we saw that our
law enforcement started confiscating twice as much methamphetamine, 3
times as much fentanyl, and 10 times as much cocaine because of our
open southern border and the cartels taking advantage of it.
And just like all around the country, our young people paid the price
as well. Taryn Lee Griffith was a young mom of two who took a pill that
was laced with fentanyl and died because of it. The single largest
killer of Americans 18 to 45 is fentanyl overdose, all facilitated by
President Biden's open border policies along our southern border.
Jose Ibarra was a different kind of problem. Jose Ibarra was a
Venezuelan national who crossed our border illegally in the Texas area
and asked for asylum.
His wife said he just wanted a better job, but regardless, the Biden
administration released him into this country. He was bused to New York
City, and there he was arrested for ``acting in a manner to endanger a
child under the age of 17.''
However, New York City is a sanctuary city. He was not detained or
deported, as he ought to have been. He was released. He made his way to
Georgia, and once again he was arrested; this time for shoplifting. But
once again he was not detained or deported by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.
And because he was not, he went on to brutally murder Laken Riley.
This

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tragedy could have been avoided if President Biden had been protecting
our southern border, if illegal immigrants were being detained and
deported. People who break the laws in our country need to be held
accountable. That is what the Laken Riley Act does.
It requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain people who
are breaking our laws. When people come here illegally, and they are
breaking our laws, they need to be held accountable. With the Laken
Riley Act, if you are committing theft, burglary, shoplifting, you will
be detained and tragedies like Laken Riley can be avoided.
This is just common sense that we need to enforce our laws. To me, it
is common sense that we need to protect our borders. And thank
goodness, starting in a few days, we will have a President who
understands the safety of the American people is the priority, and
President Trump will secure our borders.
The election results were overwhelming; President Trump has a mandate
to secure our borders. Senate Republicans will stand up to help him do
just that. The Laken Riley Act is our first step to be able to help him
do that. And I call upon my colleagues from the other side of the aisle
to continue to support this bill as they have done on the previous
votes.
Let's get this bill passed. Let's make sure other families don't have
to live through the tragedy that Laken Riley's family had to live
through.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, our Nation, this body, and the American
people are all too familiar with stories like Laken Riley's, the 22-
year-old nursing student beaten to death by an illegal immigrant, one
who was already in police custody in New York City before being let go.
Unfortunately, after 4 years of Biden's open border, this
heartbreaking story has become too commonplace. Hardly a day goes by
without hearing of another American who has fallen victim to crimes
perpetrated by the illegal immigrants the Biden administration let
flood into our country.
And worse, too many times an illegal immigrant arrested for a violent
crime posts bail, never to be heard from again, escaping through
loopholes in the law.
This crisis only continues. While these tragedies should have never
happened in the first place, my colleagues and I are taking action to
ensure they never happen again.
My legislation, Sarah's Law, in conjunction with the Laken Riley Act
will close these loopholes, so our laws no longer prioritize illegal
immigrants over our own citizens.
Working to secure the border and protect Americans is not a new fight
for me, but it became personal nearly 9 years ago. On January 31--so at
the end of this month--marks 9 years since Iowans Michelle Root and
Scott Root, whom I know personally, woke up to every parent's worst
nightmare. Their daughter, Sarah, was killed by a drunk driver who was
an illegal immigrant.
Sarah--and she is a beautiful, young woman. She was 21 years old, she
was from Council Bluffs, and she had just graduated from Bellevue
University in Nebraska with a 4.0 GPA.
She had her bachelor's degree in criminal investigations. She was
headed home after celebrating this really important milestone with her
family and her friends. Sarah had her entire life ahead of her; but,
instead, an illegal immigrant, Edwin Mejia, who was drunk driving with
a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit struck and
killed her.
One would think that Sarah's killer would clearly meet Immigration
and Customs Enforcement's enforcement priorities. But, no, citing the
Obama administration's November 2014 memo, ICE declined to take custody
of Mejia, despite his repeated driving offenses and history of skipping
court dates.
Before the Root family could even lay Sarah to rest, her murderer
posted bond and was released, never to be seen again.
To rub salt in the wound, the Biden administration removed Mejia from
ICE's Most Wanted list.
Since then, I have warned repeatedly against the dangers of letting
illegal immigrants--who have already broken our laws--roam the country
and continue their lawlessness.
I have continually called on this body to step up and protect
innocent Americans from criminals who are here in our country illegally
and pass my bill: Sarah's Law.
A loophole in the law means Sarah's killer escaped justice. But
today, we can do something to ensure no other family has to go through
the pain and the grief that Sarah's parents, Scott and Michelle, still
feel from their heartbreaking day.
My bill named in Sarah's honor would close the alarming loophole that
let Sarah's killer go free.
It would simply require ICE to detain illegal immigrants charged with
killing or seriously injuring another person, so they do not disappear
before facing justice.
It is common sense, folks. No parent should have to endure the pain
of losing a child like the Root family did. But, unfortunately, the
Riley family is experiencing this same heartbreak.
Sarah's and Laken's deaths are both tragic and, unfortunately, are
doomed to be repeated if we don't close the loopholes in that law.
Those who come here illegally and harm our citizens should, without
question, be detained so they face justice.
Again, folks, this is common sense. We can no longer prioritize
illegal immigrants over public safety. We must pass the Laken Riley Act
and Sarah's Law to send this message loud and clear for Sarah's family,
for Laken's family, and for the countless American families that this
action would protect.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii is recognized.

Trump Administration

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, after months of swearing up and down that
they were focused on lowering the price of eggs, the price of
groceries, the price of gas, the price of insurance--that was what the
last election was about, right? It was about inflation. It was about
the amount that people were paying. That is what the last election was
about. Interestingly, the very first thing that Donald Trump and the
Republicans have decided to do is to cut taxes for billionaire
corporations, and they are going to pay for it by ripping off working
Americans.
Now, that might sound like a political talking point. It sounds too
convenient, too absurd. How can you spend 4 years pounding on the party
in power about how much people are getting hit in the pocketbook--and
they were. And they were. The price of eggs; the price of utilities;
the price of gasoline--still in Hawaii around 4.59 a gallon. People are
still paying too much. Yet the first order of business is not to do
anything about that. It is not to do anything about that. It is to cut
taxes for the wealthiest international corporations in human history.
I am here today with my Senate Democratic colleagues, and I want to
make a sort of broader point. As Democrats struggle through, learn
about, argue about what went wrong over the last 2 to 4 years
politically, one of things that we did not do well enough is stay on
the same theme. This place gets crazy, and it is especially crazy with
Donald Trump as President. I remember, and it is distracting.
Even in the best of circumstances, people fly home, and then they
arrive on Monday. There is a 5:30 vote, and oftentimes, the last vote
is on Thursday at 1:45. So we talk about one thing from Monday at 5:30
until Thursday at 1:45, and the thing we talk about is often whatever
is on the floor or whatever is in committee. We are going to do that.
We have to do that. We have to comment on what we are working on. But
we are also going to talk about this rip-off tax bill because that
illustrates the difference between the parties. That is going to
illustrate in three dimensions that all of this talk about lowering
costs was a lie.
I am here with my Senate Democratic colleagues, including members of
the Senate Finance Committee, led by Senator Wyden on the Democratic
side, who will be on the forefront of this particular fight. We are not
here because we are surprised that Republicans are going to raise and
not lower costs because we know that was the plan all along. We are not
here because we are shocked that Republicans want to cut taxes for the
ultrawealthy. They do that like clockwork every time they

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win the House and the Senate and the Presidency. We are here because
nothing can distract us from the reality of what is about to happen.
This will be a giveaway of the worst kind at a time when people can
least afford it.
So how do they plan to do it? And this is a little technical, so bear
with me. House Republicans are saying that you have to pay for these
tax cuts, right? You reduce revenue to the government. In order to pay
for it, you have to find savings. You have to either get new revenue--
that is kind of off the table for Republicans; they don't like new
revenue unless it is tariffs, which Americans pay--or you have to cut
something.
So last Friday, this document was released--and I understand, if you
are watching this on your phone or even on CSPAN, it is kind of small,
right? I get it. This document listed their so-called pay-fors; in
other words, how are they going to pay for these massive tax cuts for
the wealthiest individuals, the wealthiest privately held and publicly
held corporations in human history?
Here are just a couple of things they are using as so-called pay-
fors: $700 billion in cuts, kicking millions of people off of Medicaid;
$500 billion out of Medicare, reducing access to care for seniors
everywhere; more than $150 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act
subsidies. What does that mean? If you are on ACA, if you get your
healthcare through ACA, the subsidy goes away, and your monthly
insurance bill is about to skyrocket. Tens of millions of Americans who
pay for their health insurance through the ACA exchange and receive
that subsidy are going to have to pay more. What happens with that
money? It doesn't go for roads. It doesn't go for firehouses. It
doesn't go for public health. It goes to this tax cut.
I am not exaggerating. This is not a rhetorical flourish. This is not
a political talking point. They are literally cutting Medicare,
Medicaid, possibly Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, and they
are going to take all these resources--these are their pay-fors--and
shovel it to people so that they can continue their private jet
subsidies, pay a lower tax rate, eliminate the 15-percent minimum
billion-dollar corporation tax.
So before we passed the tax legislation when we were in charge, there
were lots of the wealthiest corporations, international corporations,
in the history of the planet that paid zero taxes--zero taxes. So what
did we do both to generate money but also because it is a question of
basic fairness? We established a minimum rate for these wealthy
corporations. They want to eliminate that too. Why? Because this is
what they do. Because that is actually their governing philosophy.
You know, they say: Campaign in poetry; govern in prose. That is not
what is happening here. They campaigned on misleading people that their
abiding concern, their main concern was, gosh, people are paying too
much for a dozen eggs. And I don't mean to diminish that. People were
paying too much for a dozen eggs. But right now, inflation is 2.7
percent, and gas in a lot of places across the country is below 3
bucks. So people were paying too much, and people were rightly pissed
off--by the way, at Democrats, too, for not recognizing how acute this
problem was for a lot of American families. I get it. But I don't know
anybody who thinks the solution to people paying too much out of pocket
is to make them pay more out of pocket.

There is not a single voter that I know--not a single voter that I
know--that I have interacted with who says: You know what. Gosh, I wish
the highest corporate tax rate were just a little bit lower. Gosh, I
wish the 15-percent minimum billion-dollar corporation tax were
rescinded. Gosh, I wish people who are being subsidized so they can
afford healthcare--I wish we would eliminate that. And, gosh, I wish we
would use all that money and shovel it back to the wealthiest people in
the world.
So we are not going to stop talking about this. I just had two
hearings with Sean Duffy and Marco Rubio. I know Pam Bondi was today.
Lots of very exciting and interesting things are happening, and we are
going to have to comment on that. We are going to have to engage in
that. But every week, we are going to be talking about this rip-off.
Every week, every opportunity we get, we are going to be talking about
this because this is the difference between the two political parties.
With that, I want to yield to my very good friend, who really
understands tax policy and with whom I have been working on this and
with whom--we fought together to win the ACA fight many, many years
ago. Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut.
I yield the floor.
Mr. MURPHY. Thank you very much, Senator.
I just can't believe we are talking about something that nobody
wants, right? That is what this comes down to. The No. 1 priority for
Republicans is extending and likely expanding a tax cut that benefits
the wealthiest 1 percent, .1 percent in this country at a rate that
dwarfs--dwarfs--the help for anyone else.
The tax cut that we are talking about extending gives a tax cut to
the top 1 percent of earners in this country that isn't 10 times bigger
than working families at the bottom of the income scale; it is not 100
times bigger; it is not 500 times bigger. Taxpayers in the top 1
percent will get a tax cut 852 times larger than working families at
the bottom of the income threshold--852 times bigger.
What we have seen coming out of the pandemic is that while the broad
middle of the country has been struggling, the wealthy have gotten
richer and richer and richer. We have more billionaires than ever
before in this country. The folks that don't rely on salaries, that can
just plow their income and their earnings into the capital markets,
have reaped huge, huge rewards. So the very, very wealthy in this
country right now, at this moment in time, don't need any more help,
and yet the average family that is in that top 1 percent bracket is
going to get a tax cut on average of $70,000. Well, if you make $30,000
in this country, you are going to get about $100 back in your pocket.
Of course, the theory is that if you just layer on tax cuts for
corporations and for billionaires and millionaires, that money will
eventually trickle down to everybody else, right? That is a lie. That
is not true. That is a fraud. It has never been true. It has been
perpetuated on the American public because it is a great way to
rationalize giving the bulk of tax cuts to the very, very wealthy. The
idea is that somehow that will make it down to the rest of us. Go on to
any Main Street of this country, go into any subdivision in your
State--you won't find many of your constituents who make $50,000 or
$100,000 or even $200,000 who have had much of that trickle down to
them.
To Senator Schatz's point, 8 years ago when this tax cut was first
put into place, it was egregious not because of the balance only but
also because the whole thing was borrowed. All that money was just put
on the American credit card--a credit card that comes due and ends up
getting paid by middle-class families one way or the other.
This time around, I guess the good news is that they are talking
about paying for it, not borrowing, to give a huge tax cut to
corporations and to billionaires and millionaires. Instead, they are
talking about immediately taking money out of the pockets of working
families and seniors and poor people. Instead of borrowing money and
having the bill come due for middle-class families later, this new tax
cut for billionaires and corporations is going to be financed by an
immediate cut to services and benefits to some of the most vulnerable
people in this country.
At the end of last year, as a means of passing the continuing
resolution, there was a deal apparently cut--this is reported in the
press--in which there was a promise made to finance this tax cut with
$2 trillion of cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid--poor kids, poor
families. Medicare--seniors in this country.
Now, $2 trillion is a hard number to get your head wrapped around,
but there is no way to enact $2 trillion--$2 trillion, a ``t''--worth
of cuts in Medicare and Medicaid without hundreds of thousands of
people, senior citizens and poor kids, losing access to care. You are
literally--this is not hyperbole--$2 trillion worth of cuts means that
nursing homes shut down. People are put out on the streets. It means
that poor kids don't get access to mental health services.

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So what happened 8 years ago was cruel--a tax cut put on the American
public's credit card, 80 percent of the benefits going to the very,
very richest, and none of it trickling down. This version that
Republicans are talking about passing in a matter of weeks is even more
cruel because it is the same balance: the benefit going to the very,
very wealthy--President-elect Trump's friends who pay to get in and out
of Mar-a-Lago--but financed immediately by cuts that are going to be
devastating for the people in this country who get up every day relying
on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. So I agree with my friend from
Hawaii. We have to be down on the floor talking about this every single
day.

Folks thought it was an inevitability 8 years ago when Republicans
made it a priority to steal health insurance from 20 million Americans.
And by the skin of our teeth, we were able to save health insurance for
20 million Americans. And maybe if we raise enough of a fuss about this
massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the
very, very wealthy, we can stop this egregious policy as well.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, let's talk about Trump's betrayal of
middle-class America. In 2017, many of us warned that Trump's tax
giveaway was a disaster for working families. It was a giveaway to
billionaires. It was a giveaway to powerful corporations. It stole from
America's Treasury, increasing the debt of this country to gild the
richest Americans. They wanted platinum treatment. They wanted more
money than anybody else has ever imagined, and they got it from Trump
by draining the American Treasury.
Well, that failed America's working families. There is nothing about
giving several hundred thousand dollars to the richest Americans--that
is each one of them--that helped a single working American.
These policies are coming to an end in 2025. But now, Trump 2 is
coming along, and he says: I campaigned on working Americans, but I
want to raid the programs for them and raid the Treasury to enrich them
again. I didn't give them enough the first time around. The rich are
not rich enough. I campaigned for working families, but I am going to
betray them with tax cuts, tax giveaways, a tax raid on programs and
the Treasury for the richest Americans. That is the Trump betrayal that
we are facing right now.
CBO says extending the Trump tax cuts would blow a $4.6 trillion hole
in the Federal budget over the next 10 years. As my colleague just
pointed out, Republicans are saying they might decrease the size of
that hole by raiding healthcare for Americans. What an evil and twisted
plot that is, what an assault on working families across our Nation.
That $4.6 trillion--no, I did not say ``m'' for million or ``b'' for
billion; we are talking trillion, $4.6 trillion--should go to basic
services for all Americans or reduce our deficit instead of going into
the pockets of the very few.
So whom are you for? Are you for the very richest 1 percent and 0.1
percent of Americans who have so much money they don't know what to do
with it or are you for working families? Because this Trump budget is
the betrayal of working families.
If you are for working families, you invest in healthcare, you don't
raid it; you invest in housing, you don't raid housing programs; you
invest in education, you don't raid education programs.
Those are the foundations. Those are the good-paying jobs. Those are
the four foundations for families to thrive.
If you work an hourly job and make less than $34,000 a year--which is
the case for 50 million American taxpayers--you would get back $130 a
year--$2.50, roughly, two and a half dollars. All right. Right now,
that is less than a cup of coffee. Enjoy that every week because that
is what Trump cares about for those families who are working at the
bottom of the ladder trying to move up.
Instead of helping move up, he wants to take the programs away from
them and give them to these folks who are going to get a $280,000 per-
person tax break at the very top.
Look how skewed this is. Working families on the left get nothing.
The richest on the right get everything. That is what we are looking
at. That little tiny $130--just a little change in the cost of drugs or
your rent, your groceries wipes that out. Two thousand times the help
for the richest compared to those who are struggling.
That is twisted. That is warped. That is the Trump betrayal of
working families.
Let's stand for working families. Let's stand for healthcare and
housing and education, the foundation for every family to move up the
ladder because that is what it means to care about every American
family, whether they are in the party of the elite rich like the Trump
betrayal presents.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I join my colleagues on the same topic to
talk about the forthcoming debate that we will have about tax policies
in this Chamber. Since coming to Congress--really before, when I was a
mayor and Governor--I advocated for smart, simple pro-growth and pro-
family tax reform. Taxes should be fair. They should be consistent.
They should be predictable. And they should generate the revenue that
America needs to fund Social Security, Medicare, education, roads,
national security, and the other critical investments that matter to
our constituents.
I repeat what some of my colleagues said. In 2017, during the first
Trump administration, after the failed effort to take health insurance
away from more than 20 million people and deprive all Americans of
being protected from discrimination by insurance companies if they had
preexisting conditions--and thank goodness that reconciliation effort
failed when three Republicans joined Democrats to block that effort--
the Trump administration colleagues turned to the idea of tax reform.
Democrats were very willing to work on deficit-neutral, pro-growth
tax reform. But instead, Republicans chose: We don't want to have a
committee process. We don't want to include Democrats. We want to write
a bill, and we will write a bill that will pass partisan tax cuts that
will dramatically expand the deficit.
At this time--and I know my colleagues remember this--economists were
saying that America's corporate tax rate of 35 percent was high
compared to global averages. So there was some suggestion that what we
should do is lower the corporate tax rate to put it more in tune with
what other nations were charging. There is a little bit of an apples to
oranges difficulty in doing that because other nations use a VAT tax
that we don't use.
Most economists said if we wanted to make our corporate tax rate
equivalent to other nations, we should try to lower the corporate tax
rate from 35 percent to, like, 28 percent. And many of my businesses in
Virginia were coming to me saying: We have to be more competitive. We
have to have a corporate tax rate that matches up more with global
norms. Cut the global tax rate to 28 percent.

Instead, even though companies were only asking for that reduction,
our Republican colleagues plummeted and slashed the corporate tax rate
not to 28 percent, not to 25 percent but to 21 percent. And they didn't
even pay for it--didn't even pay for it. As Senator Murphy said, just
racked up higher deficits.
There were a few individual tax cuts in this bill. If you look at the
bill from 2017, it was mostly corporate tax cuts. There were a few, in
that pie chart, individual tax cuts. But they were heavily tilted
toward the wealthy, as my colleagues have described. Analysis at the
time showed households in the top 1 percent would get an average tax
cut of $60,000, while households in the bottom 60 percent averaged only
$500 each.
The bill also left out our Nation's poorest children. Nearly 20
million children were left out of the full value of the child tax
credit because it was not made refundable. Democrats demonstrated in
the American Rescue Plan that when you expand the Child Tax Credit and
allow it to be refundable, you could lead to a revolutionary drop in
child poverty when it was in effect. But Republicans took a different
route.
And on top of these inequities, that the bill was too heavily
weighted toward corporations, too light toward individuals, and with
individuals, too heavily weighted toward the wealthy

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rather than lower and middle-income people, the Republican bill in 2017
did another thing that was entirely unjustified. The bill made the
corporate tax cuts permanent and the individual tax cuts temporary. So
big, permanent corporate tax cuts; tiny, temporary, heavily skewed
individual tax cuts.
During the debate, I offered a simple amendment that virtually all my
Democratic colleagues voted for. And we said: Hey, look, let's go ahead
and reduce the corporate tax rate, but let's not reduce it to 21
percent. If we reduce it to 25 percent, which is a big reduction, we
can make these individual tax cuts for everyday people permanent, so at
least the individual tax cuts to everyday people would be permanent,
like the corporate tax cuts. All of my Republican colleagues opposed
it. The Senate was majority Republican so we were stuck with a bad
bill.
And that brings us to today. Republicans are debating how to ram
another $4.6 trillion tax cut through the Senate. I will remind my
colleagues that when the Senate Republicans did this in 2017, they were
really proud because they thought it would help them in the 2018
midterms. I think it was heavily driven by an electoral strategy. What
they found is after about 90 days of talking about it, the American
public was so mad that these tax cuts went to the wealthy rather than
everyday people that they dropped it as a campaign issue to talk about
other things and still lost badly in those midterms.
The proposed extensions are going to tilt toward the wealthy, as my
colleagues indicated. But get this, the deficit effects that are likely
to be felt in some of these distributional effects President Trump is
proposing, why not mitigate those by jacking up tariffs? OK. So we are
going to do tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, but we are also going to
do tariffs. And whom will tariffs impact? President-elect Trump often
says tariffs won't affect Americans; it will hurt China and Mexico. But
once the election was over, he acknowledged that he can't guarantee
American families won't be affected by costs of tariffs.
I am going to guarantee this. If President Trump moves forward with
broad-based universal tariffs, and they are not defeated in this body,
American families will suffer. American families will pay the cost. We
know it because we have seen it before. Study after study shows
American consumers bore the brunt of Trump's first trade war, and this
time it will be even more. Projections suggest that the tariffs will
impact American families to the tune of either between $2,500 and
$4,000 per American household in additional costs. So $2,500 compared
to this tiny, little tax benefit that everyday Americans will
experience.
Talk about salt in a wound.
We are going to do a tax bill for the wealthiest when they don't need
it, not do much for everyday people who do need it but put on the
shoulders of those same people tariffs that are going to increase the
cost of goods. Imagine coming out of COVID and other things and having
this kind of burden put on your shoulders.
There is a better path. Let me give you an example. Democrats are
going to work with Republicans to do tax reform that will be fair. Just
last year, we saw bipartisan negotiations in the House and how those
negotiations can lead to more balanced, more smart, better for the
deficit, bipartisan priorities.
Our colleague Senator Wyden was able to reach a deal with House Chair
Jason Smith on a bipartisan tax package that would have lifted children
out of poverty--the child tax credit--that would have incentivized
investment into research and development, good for companies who then
innovate, and that is good for jobs.
And also the third piece of this tax bill that was bipartisan would
have expanded our ability to build affordable housing. And it was fully
paid for.
This bill got 357 votes in the House. We can't get that for a
Mother's Day resolution in the House of Representatives. But then it
died here in the Senate because Republicans didn't want to take the
bill up because they wanted to wait to do a bill that would benefit the
wealthiest.
I urge my colleagues: You made a mistake before in 2017 by going down
a path that busted the deficit and made the American voters really mad.
Don't go down that path again. Work with us to find a tax bill that
will appropriately prioritize the needs of everyday American citizens
and small businesses.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BOOKER. Senator Kaine, would you yield for a question?
Mr. KAINE. I would yield for a question from my colleague from New
Jersey.
Mr. BOOKER. That was the stunning thing: Whom are you for? Are you
working for Americans, are you for American families, or are you for
the wealthiest of the wealthy?
I watched this in slow motion, this disaster for our country
economically, when I was getting lobbied by corporations in the same
way that you said. They said: We are not globally competitive. We are
not globally competitive.
Everybody here, all 100 of us, want American businesses to win. So,
yes, I think that we should have--my opinion was, yes, let's make our
tax rate globally competitive and get rid of some of these crazy
corporate tax loopholes that people use. So many companies pay zero
taxes.
So we could have had a bipartisan conversation that could have
reflected our values, lowered the overall corporate tax rate, and found
a way to get rid of loopholes so corporations don't find a way to
exempt themselves from taxes when the average police officer is paying
higher taxes than some of the biggest corporations.
I watched you during that time--this was 8 years ago--and you began
to say: Let's make sure that this tax plan benefits working Americans
because when you invest in middle-class Americans, in working-class
Americans, it is a proven way to grow the economy other than this
fallacy of trickle-down.
And so the stunning thing for me--and this is where I want you to--I
think that was one of the most powerful points I heard. It was when
people were coming to me and saying 28 percent, 27 percent, 26 percent.
The biggest corporations were saying it publicly. I was reading it in
the newspaper. The lowest thing I saw the corporations asking for was
25 percent. What were those conversations like when you were talking to
our colleagues on the other side? How did they end up at 21 percent and
then not even support an amendment to bring it back up to what the
corporate leaders were asking for to the benefit of working-class
people? How could that amendment not have passed?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is reminded that the question did
refer to the Chair.
Mr. BOOKER. Forgive me, especially with who the Chair is. I am
afraid.
So I direct that question to the Chair to the person here.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I will just direct it, and my answer is
going to reveal my naivete because my corporate sector in Virginia--and
my companies were like everybody's companies--were saying: Hey, drop
that 35 percent rate to 28. I may have had one that said to 25, but
they were basically saying: If you do it at 28, we are going to be
equivalent to other nations.
When the bill was put on the table--and, remember, we got it with
handwritten interlineations late in the evening when we didn't even
have an ability to even decipher what some of the handwritten
interlineations were, but we realized they had dropped it to 21
percent. I almost thought it was a typo. It was one of these
handwritten things. I thought it was a typo because the companies were
only asking for 28 percent. Then I looked further in this massive bill,
and I realized that all the individual tax cuts were tiny, temporary,
and expiring rather than being big and permanent.
So I went to my colleagues, and I said: Have I got a great idea for
you. You can take all of these individual tax cuts, if you shave off
some of the ones to the most wealthy, and you can make them permanent
and still do what the corporations had wanted us to do by having a
corporate tax rate equivalent to other nations.
I thought I was being helpful. I had a solution to a math problem
that I thought they were going to like. Instead, what they said is, no,
it has got to be 21 percent and these individuals are going to be
weighted to the wealthy and they are going to be temporary.
Mr. BOOKER. Would the Senator yield for one last question. Then I
will

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yield to Senator Lujan for his presentation.
Mr. KAINE. I would be glad to yield.
Mr. BOOKER. Senator, I came to the floor--or to the Chair, I came to
the floor to listen to the good-faith arguments of colleagues about the
Trump tax cut. I heard them say they would pay for themselves. This was
a mantra I heard over and over again: It will pay for itself. It will
pay for itself.
But independent folks, like on the Federal Reserve Board and the
Joint Committee on Taxation, found that their corporate tax cuts did
not pay for themselves, but they drove our government into a
multitrillion-dollar and more deficit. The benefits within this idea of
trickle-down economics--said by the same groups I just mentioned--were
that 90 percent of workers didn't see a dime. Overwhelmingly, it
expanded corporate wealth and the wealth of the top 1 percent
significantly and didn't inure to the benefit of the postal worker, the
cop, the firefighter, the plumber, the teacher.
It is stunning to me that I sat here and listened to folks. But my
challenge to you because you have been sort of a pragmatic, moderate
guy for a long time, and we are seeing this coming around the corner--
the estimates are now that their new tax plan that they are talking
about could cause a deficit and expand, again, by now over $4 trillion.
You have been around here longer than I have. When we start running
budget deficits, and we know factually that their last tax plan
expanded the deficit into the trillions--and this one is projected, if
they do it again, to be to the benefit of the top 1 percent and, again,
with very few of the benefits going to working Americans--what will
that mean for America's fiscal stability going out 10 years from now or
15 years from now?
What kind of pressures will that create, and what kind of calls do we
have from Republicans about how to fix the problem that their tax plan
has caused?
Mr. KAINE. I hope we can take this up in the Budget Committee. I have
some Budget Committee colleagues who are here on the floor. Senator
Whitehouse has been the lead Democrat on the Budget Committee for some
time and is now at the helm of another committee. But Senator Merkley,
who spoke passionately a couple of minutes ago, is now the lead
Democrat on the Budget Committee. We need to take up the issue of these
tax cuts as proposed and explore what the long-term consequences will
be.
The consequence will be to bust the deficit. The consequence will be
to put dollars in the hands of those who don't need them and take
dollars out of the hands of those who do when you combine it with the
tariff effect, but the consequence will also be significant on the
national debt.
As Senator Murphy said during his comments, the national debt gets
financed, and it gets financed in ways that ends up coming back. And
who pays for it? Everyday folks. So you will have a compounding effect
on everyday folks where they will not get tax relief. They may see
their taxes increase. They will see their prices go up with this tariff
blitz, and then they will end up being saddled with the consequences of
debt.
We should take the time to do this right. We should take the time to
do--again, I use the example of what the Finance Committee did last
year on the R&D tax credit, the child tax credit, and the low-income
housing tax credit. It is not that that bill was perfect, and it is not
that it included everything that you might want to include, but it is
an example of you don't have to jam this through with one party holding
the pen and excluding the other party. You can do a tax bill that can
get 357 votes in the House of Representatives on something that will be
paid for, not increase the deficit, that will help businesses innovate,
help children get a good start in life, and help people afford
affordable housing. If you do it the right way, we will come up with a
good plan, and I hope that we will.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for one more question?
Mr. KAINE. I will yield for another question.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Through the Chair, the Senator mentioned the Budget
Committee. In the hearings that we have had in the Budget Committee,
during which we have discussed tax cuts and their effect on revenues
and their ability to pay for themselves, how many times have our
Republican colleagues been able to produce a witness who, under oath,
would say that these tax cuts would actually pay for themselves?
Mr. KAINE. Precisely zero, even though that phrase that ``they will
pay for themselves'' or that ``they have paid for themselves'' was used
all the time, but no one would, under oath, say that that actually
happened.
It reminds me of a great political maxim. I think it was Eugene
McCarthy, a former Senator, who once said the issues candidate is the
one who says the word ``issues'' the most times.
Just saying these cuts will pay for themselves is not the same as its
being true. It wasn't true in the 2017 tax cuts, and we could never
find any credible witness who would come and testify to that effect.
With that, I have other colleagues on the floor who are ready and
raring to go, and I yield to them.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. LUJAN. Madam President, I especially want to start by giving
thanks to our colleague from Hawaii for asking us to come together and
have a conversation with the American people.
I am a proud Senator from the State of New Mexico--from a small,
rural community in the northern part of the State--and I wanted to come
down to the floor to continue this conversation as we have heard from
colleagues already talk about what this is and what this isn't. It
seems to me, when my Republican colleagues last did this, what I heard
in townhall after townhall across New Mexico was that, from Democrats,
Republicans, Independents, voters, constituents, they just wanted to
hear the truth. They wanted to hear what this is and what this is not.
So I am going to start off by holding up this report that says that
almost 60 percent of the benefit of extending the Republican tax
policies will go to the top 0.1 percent of the wealthiest in America--
0.1 percent of the wealthiest in America--and I am not talking about
the other 99.9 percent. Now let's define how much money people who are
in the top 0.1 percent in America are making. They are doing very well.
They are making $2.8 million per year. It is a lot of money, and they
are successful, but it is under the guise of giving middle-class
families, hard-working families all across America a tax cut when the
benefit goes to the top 0.1 percent. If you are making 2.8 million
bucks a year, yes, this is for you.
The American people just want to hear the truth. This is not for
those hard-working, middle-class families back home--my brothers and
sisters, police men and women who fight to keep us safe, the EMS who
respond when we need them the most, nurses, teachers, electricians,
ironworkers, pipefitters. You know, they are all the folks across
America who are doing everything they can to put some food on the
table, to keep a roof over their heads, to provide for their kids, and
maybe save for retirement if they have a little extra.
They are playing by the rules. This golden rule promised that, if you
fight hard and you play by the rules, you will do better than the
previous generation, and you are going to help your kids and everyone
who follows you. So while you are playing by the rules all across the
country--and I am talking to everyone not making 2.8 million bucks a
year--my Senate Republican colleagues are getting ready to rig the
system with a tax cut that is going to give more money to the people in
the top 0.1 percent--remember, the people making $2.8 million a year or
more. Well, maybe that will let some of those folks buy another jet
plane or another yacht if they are doing well as $2.8 million is a lot
of money.
Now, one of the concerns across the country is, just as it happened
before, my Senate Republican colleagues are going to try to do this
behind closed doors, all the while making false promises that this will
be for you, working-class families, all across America, but at the end
of the night, all they are going to do is stick you with the bill.
They are going to pay for this, as we have heard time and time again,
by eliminating programs that support our

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veterans, that feed young children or babies, that take care of our
grandparents or elders, or by taking away your children's ability to
see the same doctors they have been seeing since they were born.
Studies show that just extending this Republican tax scam would blow a
$4 trillion hole. Let that sink in. Facts. We are talking about the
realities of what this will and will not do.
The incoming administration is going to try and pass this off as--you
heard it here--a middle-class tax cut. That is how they are going to
sell this to the American people, but it is not. It is a handout to the
wealthiest folks who are making more than $2.8 million a year. The
economic analysis makes it clear that this tax scam will drive up the
debt and leave working families behind. We all know the way to grow the
economy is to invest in the working class, to lower taxes for working
families, and to bring industry and innovation back to our communities
across the country. The success of our teachers, our nurses, our
pipefitters, our firefighters, our police officers, and everyone in
between will be the success of building up the economy across America.
Now, look, you have heard this from my Democratic colleagues: I and
we are ready to work with my Republican colleagues to find better
solutions for growing our economy and lowering taxes to prioritize them
to target the middle class, to help them, but this scam is horrible. It
is why I wanted to come to the floor today to have a conversation with
my colleagues and to share the facts about what is happening here with
the American people and let my colleagues know across the aisle: Let's
work together. Let's truly deliver on a promise to help hard-working,
middle-class families all across the country, including in the State of
New Mexico.
I want to thank again Senator Schatz.
I yield to my colleague from Vermont as well, with whom I had the
honor of serving in the House and being part of this debate when it
happened.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Madam President, the situation for working families in
Vermont is really, really hard. They show up and work. They get a
paycheck. And, at the end of the month, when they try to pay their
bills, there is not enough there.
The situation for families is enormously insecure when it comes to
housing. We find Vermonters who are working at ski areas can't live
within an hour of the ski lift that they are attending. We find that
folks in factories who want to live in the community they grew up in
can't afford a house. They are competing, oftentimes, with cash buyers,
usually from out of State, and it is folks who are in the economy who
have the assets and have ridden the rising stock market--and good for
them.
But we need a tax system that is good for working families. People
want to work. They want to pay their bills. They don't want to have the
constant anxiety of whether they are going to miss a mortgage payment
or they are going to miss a rent payment.
To have a discussion about a tax policy that essentially funnels
money to folks who have done extremely well raises a fairness question,
which my colleagues have talked to, but it also raises a very practical
question about how do you grow an economy. You can only grow an economy
if folks who are working and committed to the communities they are in
can pay their bills, can earn what they need in order to pay the
grocery bill and to pay rent and healthcare. That is why the starting
point of tax reform should be addressing family needs that, by the way,
are employer needs.
The childcare tax credit really worked. It meant that families were
able to afford things, and we saw the results with a 50-percent
reduction in childhood poverty. What we also see is that when we can
put money into education so families can be secure about a safe place
and a good place for their kids to go to school, that will work.
So our starting point should be: How does this help the paycheck for
the working family? And that is pretty simple: the earned-income tax
credit, the child tax credit, low-income housing credits to build the
housing that we need. That is where we have to start.
Funneling money to folks who are doing really well and who have a
massive amount of discretionary income and where, for corporations, the
capital that they need to invest is there--there is not a capital
shortage. We need to focus on families, not on the well-to-do and the
corporations that got a reduction in taxes that was far more than they
even requested.
The second point I want to make is about the process that is being
used to pass the tax bill or to consider it. It is the reconciliation
process. By definition, what that means is it will be a Republican-only
bill. There will be no discussion among Democrats, where we have some
point of views that, by the way, are really beneficial to folks in my
State, whether they voted for Harris or they voted for Trump. A lot of
working families need that childcare tax credit.
The reconciliation process means that the political tradeoffs have to
all be in the direction of the most extreme wing of the House
Republican Party. So that process is going to handcuff us right at the
beginning.
The third point that many of my colleagues have made is that tax cuts
do not pay for themselves. You know, dream on. Folks like to say that.
It is as though it is magical. They don't pay for themselves. This tax
cut will add about $4 trillion to the deficit.
What is next? Then we say: Hey, we have got to cut spending. What
spending do we have to cut? Healthcare, the ACA premium support.
To the Senator from Massachusetts that would mean--and for a family
in Vermont--a lot of them will pay 300, 400, 500 bucks more each month.
That is on top of the high grocery bill.
So the pressure, then, if we have this explosion in the deficit, is
to cut spending, and it usually means that veterans are on the block.
It means that the low-income folks are on the block. It means that
healthcare for working families is on the block.
So let's have a tax system that is fair and also promotes growth and
invests in the folks who want to work to make this economy strong, who
want to build strong communities and take care of their families.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, we are in a climate emergency. Over just
the past few months, powerful hurricanes and severe wildfires have
caused nearly one-half of a trillion dollars in estimated damage.
The Los Angeles fires are estimated to be the costliest blaze in the
history of our country. Insurance is becoming unaffordable. People have
lost their lives. People have lost their livelihoods.
Rather than address our climate catastrophe, Republicans' highest
priority is passing a new $5 trillion tax scam to subsidize the
ultrawealthy at the expense of working families.
Now, in Massachusetts, per capita, we are the wealthiest State in
America. We are very proud of that. We believe in capitalism. But I
haven't had one millionaire come up to me and say: I need a tax break--
because they know they don't.
To pay for their tax scam, Republicans propose slashing Medicaid and
the Affordable Care Act, ripping away food security and other supports
that parents rely on to feed their children and keep a roof over their
head, and ending support for clean energy, which would only add more
fuel to the fires raging across our country. Los Angeles is just the
most recent example.
House Republicans have said they want to pay for their tax cuts for
the ultrarich with $300 billion in ``the Green New Deal Provisions in
the 2021 Infrastructure Bill.''
I don't know if that means cutting programs to get lead out of our
drinking water or stopping programs to help struggling school districts
buy new clean energy buses to cut costs and keep kids healthy. Maybe
they have a problem with programs that let people walk and bike and
live safely in communities across the country.
But we are watching hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-fueled
tragedy in the past few months alone. The Green New Deal is a systemic
response to this crisis.
I will give you a couple of numbers. Hurricane Milton, Hurricane
Helene--remember them last fall--two storms, 2 weeks? It was $300
billion worth of damage--$300 billion.

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They are saying: Let's cut the $300 billion for clean energy
programs.
Oh, sure, let's have the storms cost $600 billion worth of damage, $1
trillion worth of damage each time they come to shore. Sure. Why put
prevention in place? Why have wind and solar ever be deployed?
That is what they are coming for. It is outrageous.
Donald Trump and Republicans would rather trade programs to help
communities survive the climate crisis for tax cuts that help their
ultrarich donors survive tax season.
This week, in a response, I will be introducing legislation to make
polluters pay by increasing taxes on private jet fuel to $2 a gallon.
Do you know what these billionaires pay for their private jets today?
Twenty cents. That is the tax on the jet fuel they put in their luxury
jets to travel around America and the world. So we are just going to
bump it up to $2 a gallon.
That will ultimately raise $1.8 billion. I think they can afford it,
given what we are seeing happening in L.A. or Florida or North Carolina
or State after State in the last 6 months.
The tax-dodging ultrawealthy need to stop fanning the flames and
start supporting first-class solutions.
To tackle the climate crisis and to have a fair Tax Code, we need to
ensure that those doing more than their fair share to fuel the problem
are paying the bare minimum and are held accountable for contributing
to the solution.
So if Donald Trump and his Cabinet of fat-cat billionaires and the
three richest people in the world want to fly private jets to Monday's
inauguration to pay tribute to Donald Trump, the very least they can do
is to pay for the damage they are doing to our environment.
Per passenger, private jets pollute up to 14 times more than
commercial flights, and they pollute 50 times more than trains,
producing as much emissions as 5 million cars every single year. Do you
hear that? Private jets emit as much pollution as 5 million cars a
year.
Just a few hours of flying private offset the benefits of an entire
year of driving an electric car. That is not fair.
In just 1 year, Elon Musk's two private jets produced nearly 5,500
tons of carbon emissions. That is more than 300 years' worth of
emissions for the average American.
Everyday Americans should not have to subsidize the lavish lifestyle
of the ultrarich. The world's wealthiest 1 percent burn through their
entire carbon budget for the year in the first 10 days of January--10
days. So let's not let the 1 percent blow a $5 trillion hole in our
Federal budget as well.
Republicans just spent the past 2 years complaining about the
Inflation Reduction Act. Yet Republicans are preparing to spend
trillions on tax breaks.
They want to feed billionaires' greed instead of the families who
will go hungry when they cut SNAP. They want to grow billionaire excess
while they cut people's healthcare, including the two-thirds of nursing
home patients and 40 million children on Medicaid, and pursue work
requirements that do little.
Let me just say this. Ronald Reagan, 1981? He set the playbook. Who
followed it? Newt Gingrich, 1995. Who followed him? George W. Bush,
2021. Who followed him? Donald Trump, 2017. They each had the same plan
because the Republicans have a remarkable ability to harness voluminous
amounts of information to defend knowingly erroneous promises, and the
central erroneous promise is that it is possible to dramatically
increase defense spending, which they want to do and which those others
guys did; cut taxes for the richest people in our country--that is what
all these other guys did--and then to pretend with crocodile tears that
they want to balance the budget because all that is left are the
programs for regular families, for poor families.
We call it Medicaid. Do you want to hear another way of describing
Medicaid? Two-thirds of all people in nursing homes are on Medicaid.
Two-thirds of all people who are in nursing homes are being paid by
Medicaid.
Do you want to know another number about them? Fifty percent of them
have Alzheimer's.
How can families keep them in a nursing home? Medicaid.
Do you know another name we have for them? They are called Grandma
and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa are in nursing homes with Alzheimer's
because of Medicaid.
They want to cut that? Good. Come for it. We are ready for this
discussion.
The poorest children in our country, 50 percent of all children in
our country--50 percent--are on SNAP, on food stamps, at some point in
their life. That is the poorest children in our country. That is who
they are.
That is Medicaid. That is another way of talking about Medicaid--the
poorest children, the most vulnerable seniors. That is the piggy bank
they are going to use for tax breaks for billionaires. And they are
then going to turn and say: We are going to the Affordable Care Act.
Do you know another way of talking about that? That is how people get
the funding for opioid treatment and for mental health treatment. That
is the Affordable Care Act. That is millions of people.
Yes, just slash it. Sure. Who needs to help families with mental
health issues? Who needs to help families who have opioid addiction?
Why do that?
Then they say: We are going to go to wind and solar, and we are going
to cut that too. And we are going to keep the tax breaks for the oil
and gas industry.
Kick them in the heart; you are going to break your toe. That is what
this plan is all about. It is what the plan has always been about since
1981.
So we just can't let the ultrawealthy play while leaving hard-working
Americans to pay with their healthcare, their financial security, and
bearing the brunt of the climate atrocities.
We need economic justice. We need climate justice. We need wealthy
polluters to pay, especially jet-setting billionaires who are polluting
right now. And we need a system that works for the American people, not
for the billionaire excess that the Republican Party is going to bring
out to the Senate floor.
I yield to my friend from Rhode Island, a great leader, Senator
Whitehouse.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I would make the point to my friend
from Massachusetts that when Democrats used reconciliation, we used the
reconciliation process to do the Inflation Reduction Act and help
everyone. The Inflation Reduction Act meant green jobs to red States,
and it meant less pollution for everyone. The Republicans are teeing up
to use reconciliation to help big CEOs, billionaires, and big
corporations that are already doing amazingly well.
If you feel you are being left behind by those folks, it is because
you are. Look at what CEO pay has done, rocketing skyward, compared to
the pay of the top 1 percent--other folks in the C-suite who may not be
the CEO--compared to typical worker wages down here. Most Americans are
right here, and most of the benefit of this tax reform will go to these
folks.
CEOs are taking a larger and larger share for themselves of the
resources of American corporations, leaving less and less to pay their
workers, and that is the difference: rocketing upward and more or less
flat. They want to make this worse through their reconciliation.
If you want to add another backdrop to what is going on here, this is
the share of America's revenue that is contributed by corporations. A
lot of people in this body seem to want to go back to the good old days
of the 1950s when things were whatever they were then. Well, back in
the 1950s, more than 30 percent of America's revenue came from our
corporate community. Corporations were making a real and significant
contribution to America's revenues and enjoying the significant growth
that being an American corporation provides you. But politically they
hacked and they hacked and they hacked away at their responsibilities,
and now they are paying 6 percent of America's revenues. As wealthy as
American corporations are, they add 6 percent now of America's
revenues. And this, too, will be made worse by this Republican program.
Half the benefits go to the top 5 percent. If you are making over a
million bucks, it is a $78,000 tax cut; if you are making 50 grand, 273
bucks. Thanks a bunch. And the hit is going to come to regular
Americans through Medicare, through Medicaid, and through support for
their healthcare.

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They will even lower taxes for companies moving jobs and profits
offshore. How about that for ``Make America Great Again.''
I tell you, when you actually take a look under the hood, what you
see every time is that the benefits of these Republican tax cuts go to
the biggest corporations, to the billionaires, and to corporate CEOs,
and within those biggest corporations, the worst ones for moving jobs
and profits offshore. It is as reliable as the sunrise, and it is as
wrong as it can be.
I yield to my friend Senator Rosen.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Ms. ROSEN. Madam President, I thank Senator Whitehouse.
As it is my first time addressing you from the Senate floor since I
began my second term, I would like to start by saying how grateful I am
that Nevadans have put their trust in me to serve another 6 years in
the U.S. Senate. People in my State know that above all else, I am a
Nevadan first before any political party or ideology, and my track
record is clear. I will always support policies that work for everyone.
As Members of Congress, we have the opportunity to make a real and
meaningful difference in people's lives, and that starts by working to
make the American dream more affordable for hard-working people.
Heading into the new administration, I am deeply concerned about
President Trump's plan to cut taxes for the ultrawealthy and
billionaires on the backs of workers, senior citizens, and middle-class
families. When the Trump tax cuts were first passed in 2017, they
overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest individuals and the largest
corporations, while increasing our national debt and leaving the
middle-class and working families--well, they just left them with much
less to show for it.
Senate Democrats--we will fight. We will fight to stop this from
happening again. As we negotiate the upcoming comprehensive tax reform
package, we must focus on making sure it provides meaningful tax relief
for hard-working families--for you, for all of us. While the Trump
administration and Senate Republicans look out for billionaires and
corporations, Senate Democrats are working for you.
For one, we should be working to restart or expand several key tax
credits that help support American families, like expanding the child
tax credit, which will increase the amount of hard-earned money
families get to keep in their pockets. We also need to use this
opportunity to address the high cost of housing, which is impacting
families in Nevada and across the country. We must expand the low-
income housing tax credit so that we can help build more housing and
increase supply, and that ultimately lowers costs for you, for
everyone.

As someone who grew up in a working-class family, I know what it is
like to work multiple jobs and rely on tips to make ends meet. That is
why we need to make sure we put money back in the pockets of hard-
working Nevadans, which is why any package--any package--should include
the bipartisan plan to eliminate income tax on tips for service and
hospitality workers. By ending income tax on tips and adding guardrails
to prevent the ultrawealthy and CEOs from exploiting loopholes, we can
make sure that Nevadans keep more of their hard-earned money.
We also need to provide a broad-based tax cut for working families
and the middle class and make sure that families making less than
$400,000 a year don't see a tax hike.
Instead of lowering already low tax rates for corporations, we should
be providing much needed tax relief for our businesses, like restoring
research and development expensing.
Our country's strength has always come from the middle class--our
teachers, our first responders, our small business owners, our factory
workers--families who get up every morning, every day, and they send
their kids off to school and then go out and work hard to make our
Nation run. They deserve--they deserve--tax policies that work for
them, not tax cuts that leave them behind while the wealthiest of us,
the wealthiest of billionaires, the big corporations, reap the tax
rewards.
So let's be clear, though. If President-elect Trump and Senate
Republicans don't work with Democrats, Republican tax proposals--well,
they won't help you. They won't help your family. Republican tax
policies are only going to help billionaires.
We need to build an economy that works for everyone, for you, not
just those at the top. So to all the families feeling the stress, know
you are not alone. It is time for us to put your priorities first, to
lower costs, and to expand opportunity. I see you--all of you--and I am
ready and willing to fight for you and for all those you care about.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Madam President, I am joining my colleagues on the
Senate floor today for the same reasons--and I so appreciate my friend
and colleague from the great State of Nevada because she is absolutely
right, and my colleagues as well--drawing attention to what really is
happening here in Washington that has an impact on our individuals and
families back home.
Quite often, I see so many decisions being made here in this bubble
in Washington without any true regard or understanding of the impact on
Main Street, where we all live and we come from. And what we are
talking about today is what incoming President Donald Trump had passed
previously when he was President, which is this massive tax giveaway to
billionaires.
What the American people don't know, which we know and we are talking
about--and that is why we are here--is that tax cut for billionaires is
about to expire, and many of my colleagues, Republican colleagues, want
to extend the entire bill at the expense of middle-class families
across the country.
Now, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that
reauthorizing the Trump tax bill as-is would add $4.6 trillion to our
national debt. That would raise interest rates and make it more
expensive for families to buy a home, to send their kids to college, or
to start a business.
Based on how much time my colleagues across the aisle have spent the
last 4 years--as I have sat in the Presiding Officer's seat listening
to my colleagues, I have heard them say that we should be talking about
the deficit and doing something about it. I would hope that they would
want to avoid adding trillions of dollars to it, regardless of who is
in the White House, even now. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be
the case.
Instead, my colleagues now--my Republican colleagues--have come up
with two options for selling this legislation to the American people--
again, this legislation that will mainly benefit the very wealthy in
this country, the billionaires--legislation that is going to add $4
trillion to the deficit. This is how they plan to do it. One option is
Republican leadership in the Senate has suggested that because they
want to extend policy that currently exists, we should just ignore the
cost of extending it; there shouldn't be a pay-for; we don't have to
worry about it; that all of a sudden, that $4 trillion increase in
deficit just doesn't exist.
Now, I know we all wish we could forget about an actual debt
sometimes, but that is not what the American people sent us here to do,
and that is not what American people do. I can tell you that every
family across this country has to live within their means and manage
their budget--my family, my grandparents, my parents, everybody, every
individual. So we should be working together to address this issue.
The other option that I have heard from some of my colleagues across
the aisle to reauthorize this Trump tax bill is they have suggested a
pay-for which is to gut Medicaid in order to pay for tax breaks, again,
for the wealthiest people. I can't stress this enough: again, tax
breaks for the very, very wealthy--the top 1 percent--on the backs of
working families, on the backs of individuals, our middle class. To me,
that is just outrageous. Padding the pockets of the top 1 percent at
the expense of hard-working families is unacceptable, and nobody should
stand for that.
I urge my Republican colleagues and leadership in this body to work
in a bipartisan manner on this and find solutions that will benefit all
Americans, not just CEOs and their board members. There is a way we can
come together to make sure our middle class benefits, that our small
businesses and

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companies--by the way, that are essential for that middle class and our
labor force, because you need both--work together to benefit, and
really work and identify a pay-for and how we are not going to add to
the deficit.
I can't stress this enough: We need to come together and build on
spending reductions from the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act
instead of targeting Americans' healthcare. And let's ensure that the
wealthiest pay their fair share to protect the middle class and their
children from the exorbitant trillion-dollar bill the Republicans are
currently going to send to them.
The two options just do not work, but there is an option that works,
and I will stress it one more time. We need to work together in a
bipartisan way. This should not be a partisan issue. This should not be
done just through reconciliation without any input from the Democrats
because, at the end of the day, our families are no different, our
communities are no different.
My firefighters in Nevada are no different than firefighters in your
State. My hard-working laborers in my State, whether they come from the
service industry and it is somebody who is washing dishes in a
restaurant in Nevada, are no different than that person washing dishes
in some of my colleagues' States.
Everybody benefits if we come together in a bipartisan way, and that
is how this should work. And I am hopeful my colleagues are willing to
do so.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Cabinet Nominations

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday I came to the floor of the
U.S. Senate to talk about the importance of promptly confirming
President Trump's Cabinet. The American people having voted for
President Trump, having said that they are unhappy with the direction
the country is going in is entitled to his team to help him actually do
what he said he would do during the campaign.
Well, today I would like to reiterate that message; but, in
particular, I want to highlight some of the hypocrisy of our Democratic
colleagues on this important matter as it pertains to our country's
democratic processes.
We know that our colleagues are frequently warning that ways of the
Republicans are allegedly undermining democracy, but this is like the
little boy who cried wolf. If you cry wolf often enough, the people
begin to believe that it is not really serious; and, indeed, it
shouldn't be taken seriously in the case of the allegation that
Republicans are somehow trying to undermine democracy.
Let me give you an example. Back in 2022, when Republicans passed
State laws that included commonsense election integrity measures, like
voter ID, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer criticized these initiatives,
which were intended to ensure the integrity of our elections.
You would think that would be a no-brainer, that everybody would want
to embrace measures that would protect the integrity of our elections.
But he claimed somehow there was an attempt to suppress people from
voting. Well, I remember it wasn't that long ago when Barbara Jordan, a
Democrat from Texas, revered justly as an incredible leader for our
State and country, along with James Baker III cochaired a commission
that came out with voter ID as one of the consensus recommendations.
But now Democrats claim making sure that people are who they say they
are and using the same sorts of things that you need in order to get on
an airplane or to buy tobacco or a six-pack of beer, somehow that
undermines democracy. It just doesn't make any sense.
But here is Senator Schumer on the Senate floor. He said,
``Republicans across the country are trying to stop the other side from
voting. That tears apart, rips apart, the very fabric of our
democracy.'' I can almost see him crying crocodile tears as he says
that.
Well, I did a rough check a moment ago, and 152 million Americans
voted in 2024. If Republicans were trying to suppress the vote, we are
doing a lousy job because you are seeing historic numbers of people, a
lot of whom have not made a practice of voting before, showed up at the
ballot box this time because they hated the direction our country was
going in and they felt like this was our last chance, perhaps, to save
our country as we know it.
Well, the Senator from New York used this argument to advocate for
changes to the Senate filibuster rule--the requirement you get 60 votes
to close off debate--in order to pass what he called Federal voting
rights legislation. Well, first of all, what it would have done, it
would have preempted the States' laws when it came to voting practices
and created a single uniform standard here at the Federal level, which
would have prevented some of these commonsense measures like voter ID
from taking place.
Well, President Biden also expressed the same sentiment. He pressed
for the filibuster to be changed to advance the so-called voting rights
package, saying that the package must be passed ``to defend our
democracy.'' Well, actually, it would have made it easier to cheat.
Now, ironically, they used the same argument for democracy to
undermine the Senate filibuster, which is one of the bedrocks of this
institution. But what I have noticed is that if an issue can be framed
as a threat to democracy, Democrats throw any other concerns out the
window; hence, the sky is falling.
More recently, in 2023, Democrats brought up this same question of
protecting democracy as a reason to advance legislation addressing
artificial intelligence. Well, as it turns out, artificial intelligence
has been around for decades. It has recently captured the popular
imagination because technology has taken us to places we never dreamed
we could go.
Well, in 2023, the Committee on Rules and Administration held a
hearing on AI, and the Democratic leader said this:

If left unchecked--

Here he goes again. He said:

If left unchecked, [artificial intelligence]'s use in our
elections could erode our democracy from within and from
abroad, and the damage, unfortunately, could be irreversible.

That is a pretty common scare tactic. You scare people enough, well,
maybe they are willing to let you do things that they, otherwise,
wouldn't do upon calmer reflection.
He went on to stress the importance of Republicans and Democrats
working together to protect and reinforce our democracy. We are for
that. But here is what he said:

I can think of few issues that should both--unite both
parties faster than safeguarding our democracy . . . It will
take all of us, the Administration, the private sector,
Congress working together to protect our democracy, ensure
robust transparency and safeguards, and ultimately keep the
vision of our founders alive in the 21st century.

Well, taken at face value, that sounds pretty good until you start
beginning to look at the details about what he says we need to do in
order to accomplish that goal. That is where you see--begin to see the
huge disconnect. It is in pursuit of another agenda.
Democrats have become the party that cried wolf--or excuse me--threat
to democracy; and the more they say it, the less meaning it actually
holds. For what it is worth, I agree that the administration of private
sector and Congress should work together to protect rather than
undermine democracy. But we do have some different perspectives or
points of view about how we might do it. That is a laudable goal, but
not in pursuit of a fairly cynical and partisan policy agenda.
There is a very tangible way that Democrats can join with us to do
this, this week. They can cooperate with the President that the people
elected as Commander in Chief of the United States by confirming his
Cabinet. How is that for protecting democracy?
The opposite, which is to stonewall the President's Cabinet nominees,
to burn as much time as possible before we are able to get that done,
is not preserving and protecting democracy; it is undermining it.
Our Democratic colleagues never seem to lose an opportunity to say
that whatever the subject, it is a threat to democracy. But here they
are today participating in a campaign to stonewall President Trump's
nominees, which I would argue is undermining the democratic process. It
is denying an elected President of the United States, who won not only
the electoral college vote but the popular vote as well--to deny him
his team so he can actually get to work on January 20th doing what he
was elected to do.
Just yesterday, Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader, came to the

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floor to air his grievances on each of the President's nominees for the
Cabinet. He argued that many of the policies they would implement would
be disastrous. But the fact of the matter is the American people have
chosen. They did that on November 5 when they went to the polls and
they gave President Trump a substantial majority and even a mandate for
a new direction in the country.
They repudiated the failed policies of the Biden administration,
starting with what has been happening at the border, which is an
unmitigated disaster from a public health and public safety point of
view. And it would, indeed, be a threat to democracy if our Democrat
colleagues chose to ignore the will of the voters and deny the
President his Cabinet or delay it for no good reason and prevent these
nominees from going to work to implement the policies that the American
people elected President Trump to enact.
Unfortunately, this is sort of reflexive, it is kind of what our
Democratic colleagues do. I have been amazed to listen on television
and hear in-person for the last--however it has been--hour, Democratic
colleagues who came to the floor to speak, but they didn't talk about
the pending business, the Laken Riley Act.
This young woman was killed by an illegal immigrant who should not
have been in the country. I asked Pam Bondi, who is the nominee for
Attorney General, this morning during her confirmation hearing, I said:
If President Biden and Harris had secured the border, do you think
Laken Riley would still be alive? And she said, yes, together with many
others who have been victimized by illegal immigrants who come across
the border to do Americans harm in one way or another. Not all of them.
But when you open the border to 10 or more million people with 2
million of them ``got-aways,'' evading law enforcement, you don't know
what you are going to get.
Well, I take that back, you do know what you are going to get. You
are going to get some people who do not intend to come here for a
better way of life; they come here to rape and pillage and rob and to
commit crimes.
Well, Republicans are tired of hearing excuse after excuse from our
Democrats, some of these hearings are being delayed due to incomplete
background checks, but ask yourself who is responsible for the
background checks? Well, it is Joe Biden's FBI. The FBI owes it to the
American people to work around the clock, 24/7, to get these background
checks done on a timely basis.
Otherwise, we are, literally, undermining a democratically elected
President.
So I would urge our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to heed
their own words when it comes to confirming President Trump's Cabinet.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to talk a big talk
about defending democracy, but I would like to see them put these
commitments into practice by ending the undemocratic obstructionist
tactics that they are using to deny this President his team.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Vermont.

H-1B Visa

Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, as we go forward in this new session of
Congress, I would hope very much that there will be a serious focus on
the crises facing the working families of our country. We are the
wealthiest nation on Earth. In fact, we are the wealthiest Nation in
the history of the world. Yet, today, we have more income and wealth
inequality than we have ever had. Sixty percent of our people live
paycheck to paycheck. The life expectancy of working people is far
below that in other wealthy countries. Eighty-five million Americans
are uninsured or underinsured. Some 800,000 Americans are homeless.
Twenty-five percent of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year
or less. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any
major nation on Earth. Further, we remain, shamefully, the only wealthy
country not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.
Meanwhile, while working families struggle to put food on the table
and pay their bills, the wealthiest people in our country have never,
ever had it so good. We are now in the absurd situation, the grossly
unjust situation, where the 3 wealthiest people on top own more wealth
than the bottom half of American society, some 170 million people. The
3 people on top have more wealth than 170 million on the bottom. That
is not what America is supposed to be about.
In truth, there are a number of reasons why we are living in a nation
today where the wealth of the billionaire class is exploding while the
working class of our country struggles to keep their heads above water.
There are many causes as to why, despite a huge increase in worker
productivity, real weekly wages for the average American worker are
less today than they were 50 years ago--real weekly wages are less than
they were 50 years ago--and why, during that period, there was a $50
trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1
percent.
Now, a lot of the reasons as to why the very rich are becoming richer
and working-class families are struggling have to do with disastrous
trade policies which have resulted in the loss of millions of good-
paying jobs. The failure of Congress to raise the minimum wage to a
living wage is another reason why millions and millions of workers
today are forced to try to survive on starvation wages. Furthermore, we
are seeing and have seen aggressive and often illegal union-busting
activities on the part of major employers. All of those reasons, and
more, are issues that we have to deal with.
Today, I want to focus on one more reason as to why the working class
of this country is struggling, and that has to do with the H-1B guest
worker program.
Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, with a net worth of
nearly $430 billion, and other multibillionaires in the high-tech
industry claim that the H-1B Federal guest worker program is vital to
our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled engineers and
other technology workers in the United States. In other words, what
they say is that they are trying desperately to find highly skilled
American workers to do their jobs; just can't find them; just not
there.
In my view, Musk and the other billionaires who are strongly
supporting the H-1B Program are dead wrong. American workers are there;
they are just not looking for them.
In my view, the main function of the H-1B Program is not to hire the
best and the brightest. That is the theory--we have to bring in the
best and the brightest to help our companies function and grow wealth
in America. That is the theory, but in truth, the reality of what the
H-1B Program is, is to replace good-paying American jobs with hundreds
of thousands of lower paid guest workers from abroad who are often
treated as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest
workers, the more money the multibillionaire owners of large
corporations make. In other words, this program is not only grossly
unfair to American workers; in many ways, it is unfair to foreign
workers as well.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 2022 and 2023,
the top 30 companies using the H-1B Program laid off 85,000 American
workers while simultaneously bringing in over 34,000 guest workers from
abroad.
In 2019 and 2020, 85 percent of H-1B visas were awarded to entry
level and junior guest workers, who are paid between 20 to 40 percent
less than American workers in similar occupations.
So, No. 1, it is simply not true that the H-1B Program focuses on the
very rare and highly skilled workers that American companies cannot
find. Eighty-five percent, to repeat, of H-1B visas were awarded to
entry level and junior guest workers, and they are paid 20 to 40
percent less than American workers in similar occupations.
Let me just give you a few examples as to how unfair the H-1B Program
is. In Dallas, TX, H-1B software developers are making $44,000 less
than American workers doing the exact same job. This is information
from the U.S. Department of Labor.

[[Page S176]]

In Houston, TX, H-1B accountants--I did not know, to be honest with
you, that we had a scarcity in accountants, but be that as it may, H-1B
accountants are paid nearly $40,000 less than American accountants
doing the exact same work.
In Santa Barbara, CA, H-1B workers who are hired as computer system
engineers make just $45,000 a year. Does that sound like the kind of
salary that would bring forth some extremely, highly skilled people for
jobs that American workers cannot fill? Madam President, you tell me.
Why would a corporation hire an American computer systems engineer at a
salary of $110,000 a year when it is $65,000 cheaper to hire an H-1B
worker for that same exact position?
That is basically what this whole debate is about, and that is that
large corporations are paying foreign workers substantially lower
salaries than they are paying American workers. Madam President, if you
want to know why multibillionaire owners of high-tech companies love
the H-1B Program so much, that is the reason why. They are using this
program to substantially undercut the wages of American workers.
Moreover, there are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new
information technology jobs in America are being filled by guest
workers. According to the Census Bureau data, there are millions of
Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering,
and math who are not currently employed in those professions. In other
words, we tell kids ``Go out and get involved in STEM work. Become a
scientist. Become an engineer. Become a mathematician,'' whatever, and
then we bring in people from abroad to fill the jobs they were educated
to do.
Adding insult to injury, half of the top 30 H-1B employers are
companies whose major function in life is to outsource jobs, known in
the industry as body shops. In other words, the same companies that are
involved with supplying American companies with cheap foreign labor at
home are the same exact companies that provide even cheaper labor to
corporations when they move abroad. They are two sides of the same
coin.
Madam President, if there is truly a major shortage of skilled tech
workers in this country, as Elon Musk and others have argued, why did
Tesla lay off over 7,500 American workers last year, including many
software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, TX, while,
at the same time, applying to hire thousands of H-1B guest workers? If
these jobs are only going to the ``best and the brightest,'' why has
Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as
little as $58,000 a year, associate mechanical engineers for as little
as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as
$80,000 a year?
I will admit, I am not a rocket scientist. But, to my mind, those
occupations don't sound like highly specialized jobs that are primarily
for the top 0.1 percent, as Mr. Musk claimed last month.
If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with
highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest
workers being employed as fashion models, lawyers, dog trainers,
massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers? One might think that,
in the United States of America, we could find English teachers and not
need to bring in people from abroad. Further, does anyone really
believe that in America we do not have enough lawyers and need to bring
in more attorneys from abroad?
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we need
fundamental changes in our economic policies. We need an economy that
works for all, not just the few. And one small but very important way
forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms to the H-1B
Program in order to benefit American workers.
That is why I have filed an amendment to the Laken Riley bill that we
are debating this week that will do just that. I hope very much that
the leaders agree on allowing that amendment to be debated and voted
upon. Let me very briefly describe what this amendment does in terms of
reforming the H-1B Program.
First, this amendment would double the major H-1B fee that
corporations pay before they can hire guest workers from abroad. This
provision would generate over $370 million in revenue each year. And
what would we use that revenue for? Well, it would be used to provide
nearly 20,000 scholarships each and every year for American students
pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, math,
and other fields vital to the competitiveness of our Nation.
If the Members of this body truly believe we need H-1B visas in order
to compensate for a shortage of skilled American professionals, this
amendment will attract tens of thousands of America's best and
brightest young people into those fields.
Second, this amendment requires corporations to substantially
increase wages for the jobs they need before they would be allowed to
hire H-1B guest workers. Specifically, this amendment would raise the
prevailing wage for the H-1B Program to at least the median local wage.
In other words, if the H-1B Program is truly meant for ``the best and
the brightest,'' it should not be used as a tool to undercut the wages
of highly skilled American workers. And that is what this amendment
would prevent.
Third, this amendment would prohibit corporations from replacing
laid-off American workers with H-1B guest workers from overseas.
Corporations that are engaged in mass layoffs should not be allowed to
replace American workers with guest workers.
Finally, this amendment would prevent corporations from treating H-1B
guest workers, for all intents and purposes, as indentured servants.
Under current law, H-1B guest workers are often locked into lower
paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their
corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair, or illegal
working conditions. That is unacceptable, and that has got to change.
This amendment would make H-1B visas portable and give guest workers
the ability to easily change jobs.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy and others have argued that we need a
highly skilled and well-educated workforce. I agree. But the answer is
not to bring in cheap labor from abroad through the H-1B Program. The
answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain
that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce
that our country needs for the jobs of the future.
The bottom line: It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a
guest worker from overseas than an American worker at home. And that is
what this amendment is all about.
Let's be clear. Thirty years ago, the leaders of corporate America,
the political establishment in both major parties, and the editorial
boards of the most influential papers in our country told us not to
worry about the loss of millions of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that
would come as a result of unfettered free-trade agreements like NAFTA
and permanent normal trade relations with China: Don't worry about the
loss of those jobs.

And the reason they told us not to worry is that that job loss would
be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information
technology jobs that would be created in the United States.
Yes, they said, you lose blue-collar manufacturing jobs, but not to
worry. We will create zillions of good-paying, white-collar information
technology jobs.
I, personally, was a Member of Congress at that time and never
believed that. And I helped lead the effort against NAFTA and PNTR with
China. Unfortunately, I and the many others who opposed those trade
agreements were proven correct. NAFTA and PNTR cost us millions of
good-paying manufacturing jobs as large corporations shut down here in
America and fled to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries in
search of cheap labor.
And what about all of those great high-tech jobs that supposedly were
going to be created? Well, that didn't quite happen either.
As a result of the H-1B guest worker program and other guest worker
programs, major corporations are now importing hundreds of thousands of
lower paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar
technology jobs that are currently available.
In other words, heads, billionaires wins; tails, American workers
lose.
In my view, we can and must change that reality. A good place to
start

[[Page S177]]

would be to pass this amendment and put American workers first.
Multibillionaires and Big Tech should not be allowed to hire guest
workers to fill entry-level and mid-level information technology jobs.
Those jobs should be going to American workers who have, among other
things, the constitutional right to form unions and collectively
bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Madam President, I will be asking for a rollcall vote on this
amendment, and I hope very much we can get it to the floor. In my view,
the time has come for the American people to know which side their
Senators stand on this issue.
In order to accomplish that goal, I very much appreciated the
statement Majority Leader Thune gave on the floor of the Senate last
November about the need for more amendment votes in the Senate. Here is
what the majority leader said on November 14 with respect to the
amendment process:

[A]ll Members of the Senate--and not just the Members of a
particular committee--should have a voice in final
legislation through amendments on the floor. Members should
assume that amendment votes will be the norm. That will mean
taking tough votes at times, but that is part of our jobs.

I would very much agree with Majority Leader Thune. The truth is
that, in the past, whether it has been Republican leaders or Democratic
leaders, no one debates that the amendment process has been thwarted. I
hope we will see a new opening here where people will be allowed to
offer amendments and take up votes. That is what we were elected to do.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The Senator from Massachusetts.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 103

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I rise today to stop the unnecessary and
devastating consequences that will result from a ban on TikTok in the
United States. In a few moments, I will ask unanimous consent that the
Senate pass my legislation with Senator Wyden and Senator Booker, the
Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, to extend the deadline by which
ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, must sell TikTok or face a ban in
270 days.
This simple, one-sentence bill would avoid significant harm for
TikTok's creators, who depend upon the app to make a living, to find
community, to share resources during emergencies such as the Los
Angeles wildfires, and to discuss everything from the latest pop
culture trends to controversial political topics.
It is the home to 170 million American users--170 million American
users. That is over half of the U.S. population and 65 percent of the
United States adult population. It is 50 percent higher than the number
of Americans who watch the Super Bowl.
Those 170 million Americans will be devastated by a TikTok ban. Many
make their living on the app and could face difficulties paying for
groceries, rent, or medical care. Others may lose contact with a
crucial support system, leaving them isolated and scared.
If you don't believe me, then I encourage my colleagues to view the
thousands of videos posted by TikTok users over the past few days
explaining why TikTok is so important to them. These testimonials are
powerful evidence about TikTok's economic, social, and cultural
importance, and I implore my colleagues to listen to these users.
Now, supporters of the TikTok ban will claim that any delay will
threaten national security and allow China to, supposedly, indoctrinate
the youth with anti-American views.
First, I stand behind no lawmaker here in my commitment to protecting
children online. I am the original author of the only Federal online
protection for children today: the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act. And I have authored legislation to update and modernize those
protections. My Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act to
lift it up to age 16, that was blocked here on the Senate floor just 1
month ago in December. We had it out of committee. We could not get it
passed.
And I repeatedly sent letters to the Federal Trade Commission and the
Department of Justice urging them to investigate and impose penalties
on TikTok for putting their younger users at risk. When TikTok violates
the law and puts its users at risk, I will call them out and I will
demand accountability. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission has fined
TikTok for violation of my law, so, obviously, I am concerned.
But I am also concerned about what American social media companies do
to teenagers. They do the same thing. I am very concerned about what
they do to young children. According to the Surgeon General, we have a
mental health crisis in our country, pointing the finger at social
media--not one company, but all the companies that are targeting
teenagers and children in our country.
As for the national security arguments, I recognize that ByteDance's
ownership of TikTok poses security risks. I do not want China to have
significant influence over an important communications channel in the
United States and access to Americans' data, but Congress must
appropriately balance those risks with the serious hardship imposed on
TikTok's 170 million American users and the unintended consequences of
a nationwide TikTok ban.
With the impending TikTok ban, Congress has gotten that balance
wrong, and most importantly, the proponents of the ban have repeatedly
argued that TikTok is ``brainwashing Americans,'' but these claims are,
at best, just speculation. At worst, they are a disguised effort to
target Americans' speech.
So don't take it from me. In an affidavit in the District of Columbia
Circuit, a senior intelligence officer stated that the government has
``no information'' that China coerced ByteDance to covertly manipulate
content on TikTok. That is coming from our own government. That alone
should make us pause.
This is in the DC Circuit Court. They are not lying to a circuit
court. So they don't have any information with regard to that
accusation.
Even worse, rather than addressing China's supposed influence over a
key communications channel, the TikTok ban appears to be driving users
to alternative Chinese applications which we know even less about. In
fact, on Monday, RedNote--a China social media app--became the No. 1
most downloaded app on the Apple app store.
Is that the outcome that the law's supporters were seeking or thought
about?
The TikTok ban not only threatens to shut down a platform critical
for 170 million Americans, but also, 7 million American businesses use
TikTok. They use it as part of their business. All of that will shut
down on Sunday, 4 days from now--just shut down--7 million businesses
who use it.

And it is taking effect, at least in parts of America, at the single
worst period of time, a moment when TikTok creators in Los Angeles are
using the app to share their stories and find resources during the
tragic wildfires; a moment when a new President is set to take office
with different views on the ban--and President-elect Trump is asking
for a pause right now, asked the Supreme Court of the United States for
a pause--Donald Trump--a moment when the Supreme Court is still
considering the case, hasn't even rendered a decision yet; a moment
when the first official bid for TikTok was just submitted last week.
It is time for Congress to acknowledge that the rushed passage of
this law was a mistake. There were no hearings in the Senate. There
were no witnesses in the Senate. No one got to hear anything about this
ban because they put it into the bill that was going to provide
military aid for Ukraine, for Israel--humanitarian aid--and they just
stuck the TikTok ban into the legislation over in the House of
Representatives to send it over here.
We never had a hearing. We never had any consideration. And it is
time for Congress to acknowledge that the rushed passage of this law
was a mistake, that we need more time to let the courts and outside
parties consider this issue. We need to do a better job of
understanding the importance of the TikTok community and the impact of
a TikTok ban.
That is why I introduced the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act. This
bill does not repeal the underlying act. It simply gives TikTok,
Congress, the people here in the Senate, parties that might want to buy
TikTok, the incoming Trump administration--he himself

[[Page S178]]

is asking for an extension--and outside stakeholders additional time to
get this right.
We need time. We need time to figure this out. The court process is
still going on for something that started last April. That would never
have been expected to have occurred. We don't have any certainty as to
the outcome, one way or the other.
If this had happened in September, October, or November--out of the
courts--we could have then deliberated before the deadline on Sunday, 4
days from now. But it didn't happen that way.
So to the millions of creators who have bravely shared their stories
and explained why TikTok is important to them, I hear you, I am
listening, and I encourage my colleagues to listen as well and to give
a short reprieve to TikTok's death sentence.
TikTok is far too important to let it die like this on Sunday without
having given the extra time which is needed--time for President-elect
Trump, time for everyone to think about what an alternative pathway
could be to letting TikTok die.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
immediate consideration of S. 103, introduced earlier today; further,
that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. COTTON. Reserving the right to object, which I most certainly do,
TikTok isn't just another social media platform, TikTok is a Chinese
communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets
them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist
propaganda.
Congress recognized the unique dangers of TikTok when we voted on a
massive bipartisan basis last April to give its Chinese communist-
influenced parent company ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok to an
American buyer or to be shut down in America. That deadline is Sunday.
What is more, ByteDance and TikTok had plenty of additional warning
for years about the possibility of such action, long before Congress
set this firm Sunday deadline. The Trump administration, in 2020,
attempted to shut down TikTok.
So there was no rush as the Senator from Massachusetts asserted. We
didn't pull the rug out from under TikTok, and we didn't ban it.
Instead, Congress simply demanded that the app could no longer be owned
and controlled by our Nation's worst enemy, communist China.
In other words, TikTok's owners had plenty of time to find a buyer,
and there were plenty of willing buyers as well. Instead, TikTok
whined, lied, complained, sued, and lobbied. Oh, how they lobbied.
One notable lobbyist told me that he was offered $100,000 a month--
$100,000 a month--to represent TikTok, but he refused because TikTok is
a sewer of vile anti-Semitism. Good for him.
Unfortunately, I can't say that for the army of lawyers and lobbyists
who saddled up on behalf of communist China. They know who they are.
They should be ashamed of themselves, and they should know that I, for
one, won't forget it.
So let me be crystal clear. There will be no extensions, no
concessions, and no compromises for TikTok. ByteDance and the Chinese
communists had plenty of time to make a deal. In fact, the legislation
allows the President to grant a 90-day extension to the Sunday
deadline, though only if negotiations have substantially advanced, and
the sale could likely close in 90 days.
Neither is true today so I expect President Biden will not grant the
extension. And what President Biden cannot do under current law, this
Congress--this Republican Congress--certainly won't do by changing the
law, not over my objection, in any case.
And isn't it telling that ByteDance says communist China blocked the
sale of TikTok for these last 9 months? What exactly does that tell us?
Exactly what I said earlier: TikTok is a Chinese communist spy app.
Consider one reason why the bill passed with such a huge bipartisan
vote in April; namely, the backlash against TikTok for its deranged
lobbying campaign against the bill.
As the bill was being considered by a House committee, TikTok sent
push notifications to its users demanding that they call into Congress
and express opposition to the bill. This wasn't a case of American
citizens spontaneously rising up to exercise their First Amendment
rights but rather a foreign power egging them on, meddling in our
politics, influencing our legislative debates.
And what happened? Thousands of children--kids--called into
congressional offices, some threatening to kill themselves or to
assassinate Members of Congress. No foreign adversary should have that
kind of power over our politics or our children.
Imagine how Chinese communists would use TikTok to influence our
political debates during, say, a moment of heightened tensions over
Taiwan. And let's examine a little more closely just what TikTok does
to our country. Just last week, renowned social psychologist Jonathan
Haidt wrote that ``TikTok is Harming Children on an Industrial Scale.''
China's version of TikTok promotes math, science, and learning,
basically telling Chinese kids to do their homework and eat their
vegetables and respect their elders--most especially Chairman Xi, the
Chinese dictator. In America, by contrast, TikTok promotes violence,
obscenity, eating disorders, drug use, and even suicide.
Internal company documents even revealed that content promoting
pedophilia has long flowed right past TikTok's supposed moderators.
Without question, TikTok's lethal algorithm has cost the lives of
many American kids. China also uses TikTok to amplify its propaganda
and suppress information critical of the communist tyranny in Beijing.
Compared to other platforms, TikTok suppresses content related to
China's genocide against the Uighur people, Tibet, Taiwan, the South
China Sea, Hong Kong, Tiananmen Square, and the origins of COVID, among
other topics.
TikTok also meddles in the politics of other countries by amplifying
divisive content in, for instance, Israel, India, and, of course,
America. And don't forget that TikTok harvests a vast trove of user
data, including name, age, email, address, phone number, credit card
number, facial features, voiceprints, keystrokes, photos, videos, and
viewing habits.
This data can make users susceptible to manipulation and even
blackmail, not only today but also years from now when users may have
become influential persons in the military, the intelligence community,
business, media, and other walks of life.
We are sometimes assured that TikTok has taken security measures to
prevent Chinese communists from accessing this data of American
citizens, but according to whistleblower testimony and internal company
materials, these protections are about as airtight as a screen door.
So the end is coming for Chinese communist-controlled TikTok. Perhaps
the sale can be closed by Sunday, though I seriously doubt it. Even so,
that sale would have to pass legal review and guarantee that China
retains no residual influence at the company or through its algorithm,
no residual influence whatsoever. But one way or the other, communist
China will no longer exert this massive influence over our Nation and
our kids.
I will now yield to Senator Ricketts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. RICKETTS. Reserving the right to object. The Chinese Communist
Party is our chief foreign adversary in the world and the only external
existential threat to our Nation.
They threaten our freedom, our prosperity, our security, and our very
way of life. When I was Governor of Nebraska, I was the first Governor
to ban TikTok on State devices because of the threat it posed. Why did
I do that? Well, because Xi Jinping said that he wants to replace us as
the world leader. Dictators tend to say what they are going to do and
try and do it. We should take him seriously.
TikTok is one of the ways that he is trying to do it, trying to
undermine what we do around the world. The Chinese Communist Party
wants to replace us; TikTok is one of the ways they are trying to
influence our downfall.

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As many as 150 million Americans use TikTok. Fifty-two percent of
them say they regularly get news through TikTok, and we know that the
CCP uses TikTok to slant the news. This is part of their propaganda.
Data shows, for example, my esteemed colleague from Arkansas
referenced it, the anti-Semitism on TikTok. If you go back and look,
you can see 50 times the posts on pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian content,
50 times the views, despite the fact that overwhelmingly Americans
support Israel--the polling shows it--and that is just one of the
issues that they get involved with.
We wouldn't allow any foreign adversary, TV stations, radio stations,
or newspapers to reach 150 million Americans. Why are we allowing our
chief adversary in the world, one that seeks our downfall, to have that
kind of access? It makes absolutely no sense.
And, of course, the Chinese Communist Party has no free rights in
America. Those belong to American citizens. We need to make sure we
take a step against this. And last April, we did, overwhelmingly,
bipartisan, bicameral because this Congress saw the threat that TikTok
poses by the Chinese Communist Party being able to influence ByteDance
because they have to. ByteDance is a Chinese company. It has to do
whatever the Chinese Communist Party says. That is their law. They have
to do what the Chinese Communist Party says, so, therefore, they push
the propaganda.
As my colleague from Arkansas pointed out, they spy on Americans,
collect data on Americans. So we saw a bipartisan effort, over 350
votes in the House, to pass this bill and, by the way, the same
bipartisan support here in the Senate, passing 79 to 18.
The law gathered so much bipartisan, bicameral support because we
recognized this was about keeping America and Americans safe; that
ByteDance needed to divest TikTok so that we could be assured that the
Chinese Communist Party wasn't pushing its propaganda or spying on us.
We acted with conviction against that threat, and of course we know
from our classified briefings what that threat for TikTok was. And this
threat is not something far off or imagined. We have seen TikTok's
interference in elections elsewhere around the world, most recently in
Romania. The European Commission just opened an investigation on
TikTok's failure to limit election interference in Romania's election,
and that has caused all sorts of disruption in that country.
India has banned TikTok for the very same reason that they are seeing
the push of Chinese propaganda slants on their news media the same way
we see it here in America.
Albania, worried about Romania, banned TikTok. We passed a law that
did not ban TikTok. We passed a law that said you have to have an
American owner like, I don't know, radio stations, TV stations,
newspapers. The Senator from Massachusetts would like to give us a 270-
day extension. What is going to be different? What is going to be
different?
ByteDance has had 270 days, and rather than making legitimate
attempts to find a buyer--and, by the way, you all recall the news
stories when this law was being discussed and being passed. There were
a number of Americans who said they would be interested in buying them.
ByteDance didn't do anything.
Rather than looking for an American buyer, they decided to hire an
army of lobbyists and lawyers to try and subvert the will of the
Congress. They spent the last 270 days trying to avoid being sold. As
my colleague said, the Chinese Communist Party will not let them be
sold.
That, in and of itself, should tell you everything you need to know
about this. If the Chinese Communist Party is refusing ByteDance to
sell TikTok to an American buyer, you know they are using it to push
their propaganda and to collect data on us. They don't want those
algorithms coming to America because then they will be exposed. That is
what this is about.
This is a national security threat. That is why we took action last
April. They have had these 270 days. They did nothing with them. To
extend would mean nothing as well, except give the Chinese Communist
Party another 270 days to push their propaganda and to spy on more
Americans.
Finally, today, in our Foreign Relations Committee hearing, we had
the confirmation hearing for Senator Rubio, who has been nominated for
Secretary of State.
I asked him in his confirmation hearing earlier today why average
Americans in Nebraska should care about the threat the Chinese
Communist Party poses to our way of life, and he had a great response,
and I want to read it here.
He said:

If we stay on the road we're on right now, in less than ten
years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will
depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not.

Folks, this is a clear test of whether America is going to get off
that road. Are we willing to change direction? Are we willing to say to
the Chinese Communist Party enough, no further, not now? We are
changing. We are getting away from the bad practices of the past that
the Chinese Communist Party is taking advantage of.
Let's send a clear signal to Beijing that America's national security
is going to take priority. Let's stand strong. Let's remember, we
passed this law for a reason, and it is to keep Americans safe, and,
therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I am disappointed that my colleagues have
objected to this simple legislation. I recognize the national security
risk here. But the fearmongering about the supposed anti-American
content on TikTok is the exact type of government overreach that has
left tens of millions of Americans furious. The hyperbolic statements
made by my colleagues are especially concerning, given that the
intelligence community itself has acknowledged that it has no
information that China is covertly manipulating content on TikTok--no
information.
Let me say that again: In the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the
government was asked to present evidence that ByteDance was covertly
manipulating content on TikTok for the benefit of the Chinese
Government, and the intelligence community submitted an affidavit
saying that the government has no information that it is being
manipulated.
So as we are out here today--by the way, that would change the whole
debate. If they had information, we would be having a different debate.
If there were proof that they were manipulating, provided by the
intelligence community, we would be having a different debate. They
don't have any information.
And I sat in the same intelligence briefings that my colleagues did,
and I kept waiting to hear that information. I never heard it. I don't
think it is giving up secrets to say: I didn't hear any secrets.
I didn't hear them because there weren't any. And they made that
filing in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. They have no information.
And I have read the reports and news articles. I have tracked the
court case closely. I am clear-eyed about the risk. But unlike many of
my colleagues, I am also clear-eyed about the profound economic,
political, and social importance of TikTok to 170 million users and 7
million businesses in the United States, and I understand how many
creators depend on TikTok to find community, share their story, find
resources.
So my ask again here is simple: 270 days, and we can try to find a
resolution of this issue that doesn't have a draconian cutoff on Sunday
afternoon.
So this is the issue that we are confronted with at this point. We
don't have the evidence that is being cited by my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle. It doesn't exist. They may believe it, but
they don't have the evidence to present to this body because the
intelligence community has not provided it. Otherwise, again, as I am
saying, we would have a very different debate.
And this is a very important issue because the Supreme Court just had
a hearing--it is unbelievable that it is 9 months later--on the
constitutionality of your ban. So I think that the colleagues of mine
who spoke on the other side, they are saying: Well, they should have
already sold it.

[[Page S180]]

Well, they took it to court to find out if this law was
constitutional. They have a right to do that. They have a right to go
to the Supreme Court. They have a right to have a hearing. They have a
right to make their case. They have a right to say it is
unconstitutional. It hasn't been ruled on yet. It hasn't been ruled on.
And so because of that, all I am asking for is more time.
Listen to Donald Trump. He is saying: Give it more time.
That is all I am asking for.
And I will say, as well, when my friend cites suicides and other
incredible consequences of social media in our society, I do agree with
him 100 percent. But it is not just TikTok. It is Instagram. It is
Facebook. It is company after company after company that is targeting
14-year-old girls with bulimia, with anorexia, with information that is
making them even sicker and sicker and sicker. That is why, when my
bill was killed here in December to pass a law which said that parents
can just say: Erase all that information you are gathering about my
daughter--and it is the third Congress in a row that happened. Yes,
TikTok should be stopped, and so should Facebook, and so should
Instagram--so should all of them.
But just don't raise it in a TikTok context. Raise it in a Senate
context.
That law should have passed. That should have already been on the
President's desk. And it was bipartisan. It was bipartisan. You want to
talk about lobbyists. You want to talk about stopping legislation.
So I agree with the gentleman on the fundamental fact that TikTok is
a contributor to this problem, but it is a part of a larger problem.
And I also want to make the point that there is no imminent threat of a
compromise of this information that we are talking about here today
because the intelligence community does not, in fact, have the
information to say that that is accurate.
So I agree with Donald Trump. Give it more time. Allow for the
process to play out. Allow for the Supreme Court to make a decision.
Allow for potential buyers to step forth. Allow for the users of
TikTok, the 7 million businesses that use it for their own families--
allow for the families in the fire zone in L.A. to continue to use it
to build community, to run their small businesses, and not cut it off
on Sunday. And that is what I have been asking the Senate to do.
So I regret that the objection has been raised by my colleagues. But
I tell you there is going to be real harm, and my hope is that I can
partner with President-elect Trump to try to find a resolution of this
issue so that we do it with the information that, right now, we do not
have to take such an action.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. COTTON. I want to respond briefly to a few points from my friend
from Massachusetts, and he is my friend. I want to make an underlying
statement, first off, for the Record, because this is a notable day.
Direct quotes from the Senator from Massachusetts: ``Listen to Donald
Trump,'' and ``I agree with Donald Trump.'' Underline that in the
Record. I am not sure you are going to see that again for the next 4
years.
But, more importantly, on this issue, the Senator is correct that
TikTok is not alone in causing harm for American kids. I agree with
him. Other apps can result in eating disorders or depression or mental
illness.
I voted for his legislation in December. I had my own online safety
legislation. The difference is that TikTok is influenced and controlled
by the Chinese Communist Party. And this bill did not just address
TikTok; it addressed all foreign adversary-owned apps.
You raised the question of RedNote. Well, guess what. If TikTok users
flood to RedNote, they are going to face the same challenge there
because it is also controlled by the Communist Party.
Second, the Senator has made a lot about some affidavit by some
intelligence community official in some case. I don't know what it is
referring to. I do know this: I have been on the Intelligence Committee
for 10 years. I chair it now. I have heard the testimony of senior
leaders that TikTok poses a great threat to our national security and
our people's well-being.
But I also know this: Third, you don't need intelligence. TikTok's
own internal documents reveal the threat that it poses to Americans.
The State attorneys general have brought lawsuits to defend their
people. Those lawsuits have produced documents that showed, chapter and
verse, exactly what TikTok has done to Americans.
And, finally, we keep hearing: It is only 270 days. It is only 270
days.
In 270 days, that is what TikTok will say again because it will not
have been sold because Chinese communists won't allow it to be sold,
because it is not just another app. It is not Instagram or Facebook or
X or anything else. It is a Chinese communist spy app.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. RICKETTS. I just want to briefly build upon my colleague from
Arkansas.
Two quick points: One, our colleague from Massachusetts has called
this a TikTok ban. That is inaccurate. The law that was passed, as my
colleague pointed out, was about foreign adversaries and required
TikTok to be sold to an American owner.
If it had been sold, TikTok could continue to be in operation. And my
understanding is, even if it is forced to close down because it hasn't
sold by Sunday, if it is sold in the future, it will be able to
reestablish operations, as long as it is to an American buyer.
So it is not a ban.
The reason it is a ban is because TikTok and the Chinese Communist
Party chose to make it a ban. ByteDance has not tried to parallel-path
this, which was my colleague from Massachusetts' point. They could have
been trying to sell it, the same time they were going through the
court, and had that ready. In fact, they could have written a document
saying: I am only going to sell if the Supreme Court says I have to.
They could have found a buyer and written a contract that way--
absolutely. They didn't have to make this a ban.
And with regard to my colleague from Massachusetts' other point, I
did offer a proof point based upon data here in the United States about
how TikTok pushes a Chinese Communist Party agenda to push their
propaganda. In this case, it was anti-Semitism against Israel by
promoting pro-Hamas, the terrorist group, posts--its posts--and then
pro-Palestinian posts versus Israeli pro-Israel ones. So I gave data
there.
But this is exactly the same kind of pushing of propaganda which has
led, I presume, India to ban TikTok, as well, because the Chinese
Communist Party is doing the same thing to them.
So a couple of points on this, and, again, I don't think anything
will be different 270 days from now because the Chinese Communist Party
will not allow TikTok to be sold because their algorithm would be
exposed.
With that, I would just end by saying that China must be deterred.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

Unanimous Consent Agreement

Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, at 5:50 p.m.
today, the Senate vote in relation to the following amendments: Cornyn
No. 14 and Coons No. 23.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Amendment No. 14 to Amendment No. 8

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we just locked in a vote on my amendment.
I would like to call up my amendment No. 14 to Senate amendment No. 8
and ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Texas [Mr. Cornyn] proposes an amendment
numbered 14 to amendment No. 8.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To expand the list of criminal offenses that subject
inadmissible aliens to mandatory detention)

In lieu of the matter proposed to be inserted, insert the
following:
``(ii) is charged with, is arrested for, is convicted of,
admits having committed, or admits committing acts which
constitute the essential elements of any burglary, theft,
larceny, shoplifting, or assault of a law enforcement officer
offense, or any crime that

[[Page S181]]

results in death or serious bodily injury to another
person,'';
(2) by redesignating paragraph (2) as paragraph (4); and
(3) by inserting after paragraph (1) the following:
``(2) Definition.--For purposes of paragraph (1)(E), the
terms `burglary', `theft', `larceny', `shoplifting', `assault
of a law enforcement officer', and `serious bodily injury'
have the meanings given such terms in the jurisdiction in
which the acts occurred.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to offer an amendment that would
add one more crime to the list covered by this legislation, and that
would be assault of a law enforcement officer.
Anyone who comes into the country illegally and harms these brave men
and women in uniform is dangerous, and dangerous not only to our first
responders but also to the safety and security of all Texans and
communities all around the country.
Unfortunately, we know, under the Biden-Harris administration, these
people who are committing these kinds of crimes are routinely being
released back into the streets, as we saw last February in New York
City when seven people were arrested for assaulting a police officer--
assaulting multiple police officers--outside of a migrant shelter in
Times Square. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made the decision
to release five of these criminal suspects without bail.
There is no question that these criminals should have been detained
and removed before they could go on and commit other crimes against
innocent victims.
My amendment simply would require ICE to promptly take migrants who
assault law enforcement officers into custody and ensure that illegal
migrants who commit crimes against the men and women in blue are
swiftly detained so they can be removed from our country.
I urge adoption of my amendment.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed
to finish my brief remarks before we proceed to the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 23

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, we are about to consider two amendments to
the Laken Riley Act. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to amendment
No. 23, which would strike section 3 of the Laken Riley Act.
I respect that colleagues on both sides of the aisle have expressed
their intention to vote for the Laken Riley bill and to advance it. I
have not yet made any such commitment out of concern about the
unintended consequences of several provisions of this bill. I want to
briefly speak to the consequences of the section that my amendment
would strike.
Amidst real resource constraints, unpredictable migration patterns,
and fluctuating diplomatic sensitivities, our Federal law enforcement
officers at ICE and CBP make thousands of complex decisions day in and
day out about how to deal with interior enforcement, about border
encounters, who to detain, and who to release. It is because these
decisions involve so many complex factors that the Supreme Court has
repeatedly recognized that the Federal Government is and should be the
ultimate authority on enforcement of our immigration laws.
Section 3, however, would mark a sea change by inviting every State
attorney general to sue whenever they disagree with even an individual-
level Federal decision regarding detention and removal. This could
create uncertainty or even chaos by encouraging conflicting lawsuits
brought by different States in different courts.
I will remind my colleagues that this provision may have been drafted
when the view was that Republican States' attorneys general would sue a
Democratic administration to move closer towards the enforcement vision
that they prioritized. Roughly half of the State attorneys general
belong to each political party.
I hope that my colleagues who have reflected upon the consequences of
this provision will conclude that we should not have the division and,
frankly, ultimately the chaos in the enforcement of our immigration
laws that would likely result from having a raft of lawsuits brought by
State attorneys general in courts all over the country testing and
challenging almost literally every detention decision.
I believe it is possible for this act to be improved, for it to
advance public safety, and for it to make a contribution to the
country, and it is my hope that the amendments being offered will be
taken up and passed.
I will urge a ``yes'' vote on my amendment for all of my colleagues
because I think an improved bill should be the ultimate objective of
this amendment process.
I yield the floor.

Vote on Amendment No. 14

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is on
adoption of amendment No. 14 offered by the Senator from Texas, Mr.
Cornyn.
Mr. CORNYN. 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 bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from West Virginia
(Mr. Justice), and the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis)
would have voted ``aye'' and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty)
would have voted ``aye.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) is
necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 70, nays 25, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 3 Leg.]

YEAS--70

Baldwin
Banks
Barrasso
Bennet
Blackburn
Blumenthal
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Cantwell
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Gallego
Graham
Grassley
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kelly
Kennedy
Klobuchar
Lankford
Lee
Lujan
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Ossoff
Paul
Peters
Ricketts
Risch
Rosen
Rounds
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Sheehy
Slotkin
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Warner
Warnock
Wicker
Young

NAYS--25

Alsobrooks
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Duckworth
Durbin
Gillibrand
Hirono
Kaine
Kim
King
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Padilla
Reed
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Smith
Van Hollen
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse

NOT VOTING--4

Hagerty
Justice
Lummis
Wyden
The amendment (No. 14) was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Britt). The Senator from Delaware.

Amendment No. 23

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the
pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 23, as provided under
the previous order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment by number.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Coons] proposes an amendment
numbered 23.

The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To strike the section that authorizes State attorneys general
to sue Federal immigration authorities for alleged violations relating
to the detention of aliens)

Beginning on page 3, strike line 9 and all that follows
through page 8, line 10.

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1
minute to this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S182]]

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I ask my colleagues to vote in favor of
this amendment, which would focus and streamline this bill and make
more likely its passage.
Many of us who have served here for many Congresses regret the
falling away of the frequency of amendments intended to improve the
bill. My amendment would remove the section that will encourage endless
litigation by State attorneys general.
I will remind you, our States' attorneys general are roughly equally
divided between the parties, and attorneys general can now and today
sue against what they believe is manifest injustice in the Federal
immigration system. This provision would encourage them to sue down to
individual detention and release decisions.
I think it improves the bill to remove that section and focus on its
critical public safety provisions.
I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment and the consideration of
additional amendments in the future that will improve this bill.

Vote on Amendment No. 23

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on adoption of the amendment.
Mr. COONS. 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. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from West Virginia
(Mr. Justice), and the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis)
would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty)
would have voted ``nay.''
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) is
necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 49, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 4 Leg.]

YEAS--46

Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse

NAYS--49

Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hawley
Hoeven
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Rubio
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young

NOT VOTING--4

Hagerty
Justice
Lummis
Wyden
The amendment (No. 23) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Order of Business

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, filing cloture does not signal an end to
our amendment process. We have been having constructive conversations
all day. Those yielded the votes this evening, and I expect those
conversations to continue tonight and into tomorrow so we can vote on
more amendments this week. But at some point, we need to pass this
commonsense legislation and get it to the House so that they can ratify
what we have done.

Cloture Motion

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk for
Calendar No. 1, S. 5.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
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 Calendar No. 1,
S. 5, a bill to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to
take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United
States with theft, and for other purposes.
John Thune, John Barrasso, Steve Daines, Bill Cassidy,
Katie Britt, Mike Lee, Kevin Cramer, Ted Budd, Jim
Banks, Dave McCormick, John Cornyn, John Hoeven, Rick
Scott of Florida, Roger Marshall, Tommy Tuberville, Ron
Johnson, Dan Sullivan.

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask consent that the mandatory quorum
call be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________