NFIP Extension through 2023 Act

Senator Feinstein, Godspeed.

I had the pleasure of serving with Senator Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee. I also served with Dianne on the Appropriations Committee. In fact, we served on the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee. Dianne was the chair and I was the ranking member.

Dianne, you died with your boots on, and I think that was one of the things she most wanted to do.

Senator Feinstein and I didn't agree on much, but she was a delight to work with. She understood politics and government, especially today. It takes a big heart and a lot of wind and a thick skin, and that is especially true today.

There are some people in this city who didn't want Dianne to finish her term for political reasons. They tried to chew her up and tried to spit her out, and they tried to step on her. But they couldn't do it because Dianne was tough as a boot, and she wanted to die with her boots on, as a Member of this august body. And I am going to miss her.

Godspeed, Senator Feinstein.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2968

Mr. President, I am here today to try to extend the National Flood Insurance Program. It appears to me--I hope I am wrong, and I know, Mr. President, you agree with me--that we are headed toward a shutdown. If that happens, that means that the National Flood Insurance Program will come to a halt.

I don't want people to worry too much. If you already have national flood insurance, the program will continue to pay claims. But as long as government is shut down, you will not be able to buy new insurance. That is important because flood insurance is a huge part of the commerce of our real estate markets in America.

For most Americans, the purchase of a home is their biggest single financial decision they will ever make. In many areas--not just coastal States but many other States--you cannot purchase a home, if you have to borrow money, without flood insurance. So if we allow the National Flood Insurance Program to expire, it is going to shut down home sales where the entity loaning the money requires flood insurance. It is just going to shut it down. The real estate industry, for a variety of reasons--in part because of President Biden's inflation--is already having a tough time, and this will make it worse.

My bill would take the current flood insurance program and just extend it ``as is'' until December 31, 2023. If we don't do this--I want to make this clear, as well. Some of my fellow citizens may be saying: What is the big deal? Just don't buy it from the Federal Government.

You can't buy it from anybody else. The Federal program, imperfect as it is, is the only game in town. So if you are ready to buy a home and close on a home and you go to a mortgage lender and say, ``I need to borrow the money,'' and they say you have to buy flood insurance to get the loan, the Federal Government is the only entity you can go to. You cannot buy, for all practical purposes, private flood insurance in America today.

I mentioned that the NFIP was imperfect. I understate it. As I said yesterday on the floor, the National Flood Insurance Program, as administered by FEMA, is a mess. As I said yesterday, it looks like someone knocked over a urine sample.

FEMA made the program even worse a year or so ago with its Risk Rating 2.0. It went out and hired a consultant to design a new algorithm that made changes in the program without telling policy holders the basis for those changes. I met with FEMA a number of times. I said: Can I see your algorithm? They said: If we show you, we have to kill you--and I am in Congress. We are in litigation with FEMA right now.

Let me say it again. Risk Rating 2.0 made it even worse than it already was.

Ever since I have been in the U.S. Senate, I have been working with, I don't know, 20 different Senators and probably 50 to 100 House members who are involved to try to fix the flood insurance program, and it has been very difficult. We haven't been able to do it, but we will continue to try.

But in the meantime, the only thing worse than a bad flood insurance program is no flood insurance because, as imperfect as it may be, FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program is the only game in town. And if we allow this program to expire, it is going to

really, really, really hurt the American people. It is going to really, really hurt the real estate industry. It is going to really, really hurt folks out there who have saved money, and they are ready to buy a home, but they can't do it because they can't purchase flood insurance.

For that reason, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 2968--that is my bill that would just extend the current program for flood insurance, imperfect as it may be, until December 31, 2023. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Reserving the right to modify or not modify.

Senator Paul, as usual, makes some very good points. I agree with him wholeheartedly that the National Flood Insurance Program is a mess. It needs to be fixed.

I want to make the record clear that in Louisiana, my people are working people. My coast is a working coast. My people aren't wealthy millionaires who have three or four homes on the beach. These are ordinary people who get up every day, go to work, obey the law, pay their taxes, and try to do the right thing by their kids.

They can barely afford one home. It is not only the coast that we are talking about. In 2016, in the middle of my State--again, not mansions, just working-class people--we had 24 inches of rainfall in about a day and a half.

The homes that flooded--and many of them did--were not anywhere near a body of water. If you get 24 inches of rain in a day and a half, your home is going to flood. I don't care if you are living on Pike's Peak. So this program is meant to help those people as well.

But in pointing that out, I don't want to take anything away from Senator Paul's excellent points. He is, however, mistaken in one critical respect: When you buy flood insurance through the Federal National Flood Insurance Program, the most you can collect on your home as a result of one flood is $250,000. It is not accurate to say that a million-dollar home can collect a million dollars in damages from a flood. That is just not true. If there is a flood and you own a million-dollar home and you own a $250,000 home and the owners of those two homes both have national flood insurance, the most under the policy they can collect is $250,000.

So why do you want to tell a person who owns a million-dollar home that they can't insure their home? You are just telling them they can't buy flood insurance, so the flood insurance program has less money to cash flow. It makes no sense.

Now, Senator Paul is correct, and it is one of the things we are trying to fix, that there has been abuse in terms of some homes. Senator Paul mentioned the example of Louisiana; but there are other States, many others, where homes have flooded three or four times, and they keep getting flood insurance.

If I can say anything good about the current National Flood Insurance Program today, I would say that FEMA has taken steps to try to prevent that from happening so that if you flood a certain number of times, you have to move. And I know the Senator didn't--I don't think I am disagreeing with him on that. I think we are in agreement.

But let me tell you the second and main reason I can't accept Senator Paul's change. For me, it has to do with what is right. There are probably 20 different Senators--well, there are a hundred Senators who care about flood insurance, but there are about 20 different Senators who want to be involved in any changes made to this program. And I dare say there are 50 to 100 members of the House.

Now, as the Presiding Officer knows, when we bring a bill to the floor for unanimous consent, we don't just walk down here one day and do it.

We let all of our Senators--fellow colleagues, our fellow Senators-- know what we are about to do. So if they want to come down and object, they can do that. And that is what I did with my bill, which just keeps the current program and extends it until December 31, so we will get past the shutdown and we won't keep people from buying homes.

But Senator Paul's changes have not been sent to all members of the Senate. It is called a hotline. And I anticipate that the Senator will have other changes, and that is fine.

The easy thing for me to do today would be to agree with one of his changes. I am not sure it makes that much difference because the amount of damages you can claim on a flood is $250,000, but the easiest thing for me to do today would be to agree to one of Senator Paul's changes, but that would be stabbing my colleagues in the back.

Because I can assure you, knowing how many of my colleagues feel about the National Flood Insurance Program, they would want to be here today to weigh in. And I just can't do that to them, even though it would allow me to get this passed.

I also think that if we make changes to the National Flood Insurance Program, those 50 to 100 House members that I am talking about are likely--some of them are likely not to allow the changes, and that is why they would object to it. And that is why my objective has been--and I need to stand behind it--to just take the current program and extend it to December 31.

So for that reason, I don't agree to the modification.

Reserving the right to accept or not accept. Again, Senator Paul--I understand his points, and they are very good ones. I would point out that his proposal--we have about 84.7 million owned or occupied homes in the United States. Let's call it 85 million homes in the United States.

Senator Paul's amendment would exclude 52.5 million of them. Five hundred thousand dollars on a home is a lot of money, but I think in places like California and Connecticut and New York, where we have seen cost of living different from my State, there are plenty of ordinary Americans, middle-class Americans, who have scrimped and saved to put together the money to borrow $500,000, and I don't want to hurt them.

But the second and the main reason I can't agree to Senator Paul's proposal: I am just not going to stab my fellow Senators in the back. They do not know about these changes that are being proposed. They may be good changes, and I like the way Senator Paul is thinking. But let me say it again, I know of at least 20 Senators, some of whom are not in Washington who care about flood insurance. And if I started agreeing to changes for the short-term satisfaction of getting to pass a bill, it is just not worth it to me.

And I am not going to stab them in the back. They have the right to be here and participate in these changes, and they are not here because they don't know about it. So for that reason, I do not concur in Senator Paul's amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I fear I am not being clear, and I am sorry for that. Let me say it again. If you own a $250,000 home and you own a $750,000 home, neither one of you can buy more than $250,000 worth of insurance, because the maximum amount of insurance that you can buy through the National Flood Insurance Program is $250,000.

So what is the point of excluding someone who owns a $750,000 home? I realize it is in vogue to denigrate rich people, but they can't buy any more insurance. It would be different if someone could buy $750,000 worth of flood insurance who owned a $750,000 home, but they can't. It is capped at $250,000.

So I have to respectfully disagree with my friend on that. And, No. 2--I don't want to belabor this--I am not going to stab my fellow Senators in the back. The 20-plus Senators with whom I have spoken to try to negotiate a new

and better Flood Insurance Program do not know about these changes.

And I would like to agree to Senator Paul's suggestions, but if I do, I am stabbing my fellow Senators in the back, and it is just not worth it to me because they don't know about any of this.

For that reason, I respectfully object to Senator Paul's amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, if I own a $10 million home--and I assure you I do not--and my neighbor's home is $250,000, that is its value, which is more like it in Louisiana. And we both go to an insurance agent, and we say: We want to buy national flood insurance because we can't get a mortgage without it. Then the insurance agent is going to say: OK. Neighbor whose home is worth $250,000, I can write you a policy, maximum $250,000.

And then they are just going to turn to me with my $10 million home-- which I can assure you is fictitious--and the agent is going to say, I can only sell you $250,000.

The suggestion that somebody with a $10 million home is being insured for $10 million is just not accurate. It is just not accurate.

So what good is it going to do to tell someone in a $10 million home who wants to buy $250,000 worth of flood insurance--the same amount as his neighbor--what good is it going to do to exclude him?

Some can beat themselves on the chest and say, boy, we stuck it to those rich people. But they are not getting any more insurance. And what it is going to mean to the program is there is going to be fewer and less premiums coming into the program, which will make it insolvent.

You can see the difficulty in trying to reach agreement on the forms.

That is why I am going to say it again. And I have proposed a clean, if you will, proposal that will just extend the current program, imperfect as it may be, until December 31.

If we don't do this, it is going to really, really, really hurt. It is not going to hurt the rich folks. It is going to hurt the ordinary, middle-class Americans who are trying to buy a home.

And the second and final reason, if it were, or the third and final reason, frankly, if it were up to me to get this passed--because I am really worried about it, as you can tell--I would probably agree to Rand's proposal, but I am just not going to stab my colleagues in the back.

They don't know about this proposal, and I think that of the 20 or so of my colleagues whom I have met with about changing the Flood Insurance Program, I know they would like to have their say. And if I agree to the Senator's proposal today--because they don't know about his proposal--I would be stabbing them in the back, and I just can't do it, Mr. President. It is just not worth it to me.

For that reason, I respectfully object.

Mr. President, you are getting tired of my saying this, I know. This rich $10 million American that Senator Paul keeps talking about can't buy any more insurance than the American who owns the $250,000 home. He just can't.

And I am going to try again. I will be back tomorrow, and like the terminator, ``I'll be back.''

Because in trying to punish the rich, when they can't buy any more insurance than the ordinary American, Mr. President, like you and me-- 250,000, that is the limit for the rich American and the middle-class American--this is going to put the entire real estate industry in jeopardy. And it is also going to put a lot of ordinary, middle-class Americans out there who have scrimped and saved, and they have got the money for the downpayment, and they are ready to buy a home, but they are not going to be able to buy it because they can't get flood insurance, and their mortgage lender requires it.

And by the time government opens back up--I hope it is a short period of time, but we don't know--those interest rates instead of 7.5 percent could be 8 percent.

And look, I get the politics of beating up on the rich, but the rich have nothing to do with this. This is about ordinary Americans.

But I appreciate, Mr. President, your patience in listening to me today. And with that, I think I need to yield the floor, do I not, Mr. President?

To whom should I yield it?

Senator Hirono from the great State of Hawaii or Senator Schumer?

Are you seeking recognition, or are you just waving at each other?

Of course. I just work here. I am not management.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, as I have said, I share my colleague's concern with making sure that our servicemembers do not miss a paycheck because of a potential government shutdown. In fact, I do not want any of our Federal workers to miss a paycheck, whether they are cancer researchers whose work saves our lives or brave firefighters who risk their lives for us, and I don't want any programs families rely on to be undermined: counseling and transition assistance for new veterans adjusting to civilian life, nutrition assistance for 7 million moms and kids who need a hand up. And that includes our servicemembers' families.

Several years ago, I worked to save a WIC clinic which was going to be kicked off a Navy base in my home State of Washington that hundreds of military families counted on. None of those paychecks for any of these workers and none of those programs should shutter because of a completely unnecessary shutdown, which is why I am working around the clock with the majority of our colleagues to make sure that we do pass a bipartisan CR, which we released this week, because that is the only serious solution here. That is the only way that we will make sure everyone is able to keep doing the work that the American people count on and getting that paycheck that they do deserve.

If the Senator from Alaska or the Senator from Texas are serious about making sure our servicemembers get paid, I hope they will get serious in a way that matters the most, and that is their votes. I hope they will work with us to keep the government open. And I hope they will reconsider their recent votes against the CR to fund the government in a bipartisan and timely way.

Let's be real. You cannot grandstand about wanting to make sure that servicemembers get paid during a shutdown and then vote against the very bipartisan bill that prevented a shutdown.

I also hope the Senators will understand that our servicemembers will see the harm of a government shutdown in so many other ways. Permanent change-in-station moves will be significantly curtailed, meaning that some of our families could be left without a place to live if they have already sold their house or broken their lease or they could be forced to pay for two homes at once. For the Army alone, this means approximately 2,100 moves every week. And if you do not work with us to keep the entire government open, servicemembers' elective surgeries and procedures at DOD medical and dental facilities would have to be postponed. And, by the way, an elective surgery could be anything from removing a kidney stone to a mastectomy for breast cancer.

Essentially, post and base services will be closed or severely limited. That is everything from our commissary statewide to childcare our military families count on.

So not only do I want to make sure that our servicemembers don't miss a paycheck, I want to make sure that our servicemembers don't miss out on any critical services they rely on every day.

The Senators should also understand that their focus and support of the military cannot end with those who are currently in uniform. And they should remember, 47 percent of Department of Defense civilians are veterans. And for that matter, one in every four employees across the entire Federal Government are veterans. We can't leave anyone behind.

So I will say it again for my colleagues who raise their voices here on the Senate floor but have not cast their votes to prevent a shutdown: There are a lot of programs I care about, a lot of programs we all care about that would be hurt by a shutdown. But we are not going to solve this problem one by one, carve-out by carve-out. The best solution is to stop a shutdown in the first place. That is something we can do. And I bet we could do it a lot more quickly if the Senators from Alaska and Texas would earnestly work with us.

This isn't complicated. We have a straightforward, bipartisan CR package that will avoid that shutdown, keep our military paid. So let's get our jobs done and get that passed. I object.

Madam President, Americans across the country are watching us now, as we near the brink of an entirely pointless and absolutely devastating government shutdown and wondering: How in the world did we get here? It is a great question and an infuriating one.

So I want to take a few minutes to walk through exactly how we did get here, because the plain truth I want the American people to recognize is, it did not have to be this way. But a number of House Republicans, who have been working from day one of this Congress to hold our government hostage, pushed the most extreme partisan agenda imaginable and set us on a collision course for a government shutdown.

You don't have to take my word for it. Just listen to what some of them have been saying:

If a shutdown occurs, then so be it.

We should not fear a government shutdown.

It is ``not the worst thing that could happen.''

And this quote:

[M]ay be what it takes.

Last week, of course, former President Trump--the same guy responsible for the longest shutdown in history--called for Republicans to shut down the government again.

Unfortunately, it sure seems like these are the sorts of people Speaker McCarthy has been listening to--the most extreme, fringed voices in his party--when he should be listening to the overwhelming majority of people in our country who do not want a shutdown, because, let's be clear, most Members of Congress--like most Americans--on both sides of the aisle here, in both Chambers of Congress, do not want a government shutdown. They do want to see us working together to get our jobs done.

This is something I have heard from so many of our colleagues when I became chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee at the beginning of

this year: We need to get back to regular order. No more omnibuses. No more chaos. No more government shutdowns. I heard it from across both parties here in the Senate.

So I have been working with the senior Senator from Maine to deliver on just that: to make our appropriations process work better, to get our bills done, and to ensure that all Members do have a say in the process.

We have made some concrete progress; but over and over, extreme Republicans in the House have put up roadblocks and done everything they can to prevent Congress from getting even the most basic things done.

The vice chair of the Appropriations Committee and I held nearly 50 hearings this past spring to evaluate what resources our communities need in the year ahead. But, then, instead of being able to get right to work and negotiate top-line spending numbers and writing those bills as we finished those hearings this spring, we had to press pause to contend with extreme Republicans who were then holding our Nation's credit hostage and threatening a devastating default if they did not get their way with unrealistic, draconian cuts to programs that this entire country relies on.

It was a full-blown crisis. It was created by extreme House Republicans who ground Congress and almost our economy to a halt.

Finally, after their dangerous brinksmanship caused so much unnecessary drama and delay, President Biden and Speaker McCarthy struck a deal on spending levels that rejected the deepest, most damaging cuts. Now, it was not a deal I would have written myself-- absolutely not--but a deal is a deal.

The Speaker and the President shook hands. We all voted on it. It was signed into law. We had an agreement so we here in the Senate could finally get to work writing our bipartisan spending bills.

And in the Senate, that is exactly what we did. The senior Senator from Maine and I said: Okay, let's get things back on track. Let's get back to regular order. Let's write serious bills that can actually be signed into law.

We agreed to work off that Biden-McCarthy deal in a bipartisan way to avoid partisan poison pills and give all of our colleagues input on those bills. We held televised, bipartisan markups with amendments, with debate. And, for the first time in 5 years, we passed all 12 bills out of the committee, and those bills passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support. We then got a resounding 91 votes to start work on three appropriations bills that passed unanimously out of committee on the Senate floor.

As we know, a few holdouts slowed things down. But I want you to know we are going to keep working together to return to regular order so Members can debate appropriations bills and offer amendments, and we can get them passed.

Now, compare that to the House. Did they work to produce serious, bipartisan appropriations bills that can be signed into law? Nope. They wrote extreme partisan bills--extreme--that are not going anywhere.

Did they keep out provisions that they knew would be nonstarters? Absolutely not. Their appropriations bills are a far-right wish list chock full of extreme policies that would undermine our response to the climate crisis, embolden bigotry against the LGBTQ community, weaken commonsense gun safety regulations, and, of course--of course--impose extreme abortion restrictions.

I mean, the list of extreme far-right policies that were slapped onto the government spending bills in the House is astounding. If you want to get something done for your constituents, you need to get serious, and those bills are not serious.

Did House Republicans, at least, stick to the bipartisan top lines that President Biden and Speaker McCarthy agreed to and we all voted on? Not even in the slightest. Before the ink was dry on that deal that he shook hands on, Speaker McCarthy caved to demands from the far right to ignore those agreed-upon spending levels and take a hatchet to programs that our families rely on.

In those spending bills, House Republicans want to cut 80 percent--8- 0--80 percent, that is $14.7 billion from title I funding our public schools rely on. It supports nearly 90 percent of our Nation's school districts. That includes rescinding funding that Congress provided last year that schools have worked into their budgets and are using for this school year.

They want to cut grants that keep our drinking water safe by more than half.

They want to slash nearly $4 billion from lifesaving research at the

Madam President, reserving the right to object, we can't be back here in the same situation in 2 weeks. We need a CR that gives us the actual time to get through our bipartisan spending bills. Believe me, I would love to say we could get this done in 2 weeks. But we know that is not realistic, because even the three that passed unanimously out of my committee have run into delays, as the Senator from Wisconsin knows all too well.

And, just as importantly, this bill does nothing to reauthorize time- sensitive programs. It does not reauthorize the FAA, which means chaos for air travelers. It doesn't reauthorize our community health centers and other critical primary care programs, which means patients in our underserved areas will lose access to programs they need.

And it doesn't protect our wildland firefighters from a drastic pay cut. It doesn't extend disaster relief funding or Ukraine's aid.

We have before this body a carefully negotiated bipartisan CR that does include all of those absolutely essential policies, that has already garnered more than enough support to pass here in the Senate, and that I am confident will pass the House as soon as Speaker McCarthy actually puts it to a vote.

That is where our attention needs to be, not on a slapdash bill that puts us back here in 2 weeks and completely leaves air travel, health care providers, firefighters, and so much more in a lurch.

I object.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the Senate's need to swiftly confirm any U.S. attorney nominees.

Two days ago, I came to the floor to request unanimous consent for the Senate to take up and confirm four pending U.S. attorney nominations that were being held up by one U.S. Senator, the junior Senator from Ohio, Senator Vance.

Two days ago, he said:

My position is we should have a full Senate vote on each

one of these . . . Justice Department nominations.

He also said:

[I]f it's so important to confirm these folks, bring them

to the floor for a vote.

But now that is exactly what he is attempting to prevent today.

For decades, the Senate confirmed U.S. attorney nominees of both political parties by voice vote or what is called unanimous consent in the Senate after they had been reported by the Judiciary Committee. Before the beginning of the Biden administration, the Senate had not required a rollcall vote on the confirmation of a U.S. attorney since 1975--almost 50 years. In fact, during the Trump administration, Senate Democrats allowed every one of Trump's U.S. attorney nominees--all 85-- to move through the committee and be confirmed by voice vote, unanimous consent.

Let me tell you, as a Democrat in those days, I knew what I was getting with these U.S. attorneys working for Jeff Sessions, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and William Barr. I knew what was going to happen, but I respected the tradition of the Senate.

Now Senate Republicans have decided to change the rules and are blocking the confirmation of these critical law enforcement officers.

I have faced this before. Republicans had said they were going to object to U.S. attorneys but fortunately had better thoughts on the subject as time progressed.

Now, this year, the Senator from Ohio has proudly announced that he will--I will quote him, in fact: ``I will hold all [DOJ] nominations. . . . We will grind [the Justice Department] to a halt.''

Grind the Justice Department to a halt.

U.S. attorneys are too important to be used as political pawns in a national debate. They lead our Nation's effort to prosecute violent criminals.

Don't tell me that you are for law and order, but you want to stop criminal prosecutors from being appointed to the job. They lead our Nation's effort to protect our communities from drug trafficking.

I quoted some numbers the other day about drug trafficking and fentanyl deaths in the State of Ohio, the State where one of these U.S. attorneys would be going to work, in the Cleveland area. Ohio runs fourth in the Nation in narcotics deaths, and for the Senate to respond by having one Senator from Ohio stopping the appointment of a criminal prosecutor to go after these cartels or drug gangs is not explainable.

So I offered Senator Vance the opportunity to allow us to schedule confirmation votes on all pending U.S. attorneys. I want to read exactly what he said from the Congressional Record,

which, of course, is the permanent record of the Senate and will be read by future generations.

This was on September 27, 2 days ago. Here is what Senator Vance said:

I am the new guy, and I recognize that I am a little naive

when it comes to matters of the procedures in the U.S.

Senate. But I have had a lot of jobs in my life; and

yesterday we passed one vote and today we have passed zero

votes. The time that we have spent debating whether we should

have unanimous consent over these nominations, we could

actually use to vote on these nominations and end this

charade and call it out for what it is. If we believe that

these nominees must go forward, let's just have a vote on it.

Allow me to scrutinize them. Allow my colleagues to vote them

up or down. That is a totally reasonable thing to ask of this

Chamber and to ask of this leadership; and because of that, I

object.

Well, I accepted his challenge. I took his words to be heartfelt and truthful, that he wanted votes. So today we had two votes on two of the U.S. attorneys, considered by the Senate, which is exactly what the Senator from Ohio asked for.

But there are two more on the calendar that he held up initially. He said on the floor during our debate that these weren't people he was necessarily objecting to but that somebody else in the Senate might be objecting to. I didn't know what that meant, but I wanted to give him the time to find out who that might be. It turns out there is no one else--he is the only objector--even though he said on the record, in the Congressional Record, that all he wanted was a rollcall vote on these nominees.

Well, he is going to get the chance to keep his word that he put in the Congressional Record, and he is going to get a chance to have the vote he asked for. It is only fair. If we did it for the first two, we will do it for the others.

Let me repeat it again. Senator Vance did not only refuse to move these nominees by voice vote, as the Senate has done for decades, he is now backtracking on his own words from 2 days ago and is refusing even to allow rollcalls on these nominees.

This kind of obstructionism is becoming commonplace, I am afraid. If you take a look at this Executive Calendar that we have here, there are pages and pages of military officers who have served this country nobly and honorably who are asking for a simple promotion they are entitled to. They are being held up by another Republican Senator who doesn't want to move forward on this, holding them for 6 months from promotion. Is this the new way of doing business under a MAGA regime? I hope not.

Rebecca Lutzko is nominated to be U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. She is a longtime Federal prosecutor who has served as assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio for nearly 18 years. As a Federal prosecutor, she handles cases involving prescription drug trafficking, gun crimes, and corruption. Important? You bet it is.

April Perry is nominated to be U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. She has significant experience in the private sector and as a Federal prosecutor. She served in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois for over a decade, where she handled narcotics, gang violence, public corruption, and fraud. Important? You bet it is. Ms. Perry specialized in child exploitation prosecutions and spent 6 years as the office's Project Safe Childhood coordinator.

Are you concerned, as I am, about the exploitation of children, the trafficking of children, the terrible sexual abuse that is taking place on the internet? Do you think we ought to have the Department of Justice on that case? Of course we should.

One week ago, Senator Vance was quoted as saying, ``My objection is not to the specific qualifications of these particular individuals who have been nominated.''

So, here, he is not complaining about any of their resumes or their capacity to do the job and do it effectively. His concern--and he said it publicly, so I think I am going to accurately quote him--his concern is that the former President of the United States was indicted, and he is very concerned about a Department of Justice that would even let that happen.

For goodness' sake, things happened in the Department of Justice's activities during the administration of Donald Trump that I objected to, but I didn't stop the appointments of U.S. attorneys under Trump. I didn't stop the people in law enforcement, who are keeping us safe in our communities.

These are ably qualified individuals. I am asking Senator Vance: In good faith, keep your word. What you said in the Congressional Record is a matter of record, and you should stand by your word.

For that reason, I make the following motion: I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 314 and 315; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the Senate resume legislative session.

Madam President, it is interesting that we have got a new argument.

Previously, he said: I have no objection to these nominees. I just don't like the process. I want a vote.

I said: Fine. You can have a vote.

Now when we ask for a vote on the two remaining nominees for U.S. attorney, he is finding fault with those individuals.

I hope he will take the time--and I know he is a fair person--to read the record about what Ms. Perry did when she worked for the State's attorney, Kim Foxx. It is true there was a controversial case before her office and that she was the chief ethics officer in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. She served in that office at the time the Jussie Smollett matter was being investigated, but Ms. Perry' role as chief ethics officer was limited to recommending that State's Attorney Foxx recuse herself and that the office seek the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Notably, Ms. Perry resigned from that office a few weeks after the prosecutors initially agreed to drop the charges against Mr. Smollett. She has never been implicated, and to throw her name into this situation is unfair. I am sure the Senator from Ohio doesn't want to do that.

So listen to what he suggests--and I am glad Senator Reed is on the floor, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Does it sound familiar?

We have a group of people--of nominees--who have come before us who have been considered throughout history in a routine, unanimous consent way, and now the Senator from Ohio says we have to go one by one and have a cloture motion on each one of them. You and I both know, having been here a few years, what that means. It is physically impossible, whether we are talking about officers in the military or U.S. attorney nominees, to say we will just stack them up on the calendar and go through cloture votes, and it is unnecessary.

If we didn't single out a single U.S. attorney nominee in the Trump administration but gave voice votes to all 85, it is an indication of an effort of good will and bipartisanship even when we are suspicious of what the political agenda may be of that Department.

To hold some of these people--the U.S. attorney for his own home State, the city of Cleveland--to hold this person to this kind of scrutiny that goes way beyond anything we usually have been involved in is unfair to her, and it is unfair to the process and the system.

I am going to return to the floor. The Senator from Ohio and I are going to be pretty familiar fixtures on this floor because if you say something in the Congressional Record, as he did--that all he wants is a rollcall, and we offered a rollcall, just as I did, and he denies it over and over--he has some explaining to do.

If he thinks that standing up for the MAGA process here is something the American people admire, I beg to differ with him.

We understand that the Department of Justice has an important job to do to keep us safe in our communities, and for someone to say--for a Senator from the U.S. Senate to say, ``I will hold all [DOJ] nominations. . . . We will grind [the Justice Department] to a halt,'' really? That is your agenda? That is why you came to the Senate?

If the Department of Defense is being ground to a halt because of the promotions of officers and to do the same thing at the Department of Justice, and we are facing a government shutdown because of MAGA Members of the House of Representatives, the American people have a good picture, a good photograph, of the future if we go down one particular path in terms of the future of politics in America.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am very glad that you have taken the chair to preside because I want to talk about something I think is kind of near and dear to your heart. This is something that I passed in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate back in 2019, and this was passed with bipartisan support. I am talking about a bill called the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act.

Following passage, I wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal. I just want to read the first two paragraphs of that column, published on September 22, 2019:

If the Legislature in my home state of Wisconsin fails to

pass the next year's appropriation bills, we don't shut

government agencies down. We fund them at the previous year's

appropriation levels. Doesn't that make sense?

That common-sense approach should apply in Washington, but

it doesn't. By the time I arrived in 2011, Congress's

appropriations process was completely broken.

It still is.

The United States has since had--

Again, this is as of September 2019.

--the United States has since had three government shutdowns,

passed 34 continuing resolutions to avoid shutdowns, raised

or suspended the debt ceiling nine times and--

Again, this was just 4 years ago.

--increased the federal debt $8.5 trillion.

So here we are, a couple days before the end of the fiscal year, 4 years later--our debt, by the way, has more than doubled; it stands at $33 trillion now--and we are facing a shutdown.

Isn't this ridiculous? There is no reason for this.

Again, back in June of 2019, I tasked up my committee members. I said: OK. I want to pass a bill that will end all government shutdowns forever. Take it off the table.

Now, there have been a number of bills designed to do that offered in both Chambers, both the House and the Senate.

I have three members of the committee--four members of the committee have their own bills.

The bill I selected to debate, mark up, and pass was one offered by Senators James Lankford and Maggie Hassan.

I chose that bill because--one bill actually increased spending; one bill decreased spending. But the Hassan-Lankford bill did what we do in Wisconsin: You don't shut an agency down; you don't shut the government down; you just keep spending at last year's level until the legislature can get its act together and appropriate the funds.

So that bill that I chose that we passed--by the way, on a bipartisan basis. I believe every Democratic Senator on the committee voted for it because Senator Hassan, Senator Lankford did a good job of coming together in a bipartisan fashion. They put some disciplines in there.

But what it does, it just creates rolling 14-day CRs. With those disciplines, Members can't travel back on the government dime. You only have a 24-hour shutdown, I believe. There are other disciplines there that put pressure on the process to get our act together and start appropriating bills.

If you don't get it done in the first 14 days, you have another 14- day CR, you do another 14-day CR, until we complete the appropriations process.

Again, not an efficient way of doing things. I think the reason most Members say that they don't want to shut down the government is we realize it is a very inefficient process, and it hurts people. It hurts people.

So why haven't we passed this in the last 4 years? Why haven't some of these other preventing government shutdowns acts passed in the past? Why not? It is ridiculous we haven't done it yet.

The result, by the way, has been what this chart demonstrates. Again, I already mentioned we are at $33 trillion in debt. It is very important to recognize how out of control spending is here in Washington, DC.

When we were debating the omnibus last year, I asked my Republican colleagues at the Senate lunch: Does anybody know how much the Federal Government is going to spend this year?

I didn't get any answers. Maybe somebody knew, but they didn't volunteer to answer.

I went out and asked the Washington press corps, the folks who are supposed to be reporting on this to our constituents and to the American public: Does anybody know how much the government spent last year?

Well, it is over $1 trillion. Well, that is true in terms of discretionary spending--less than 30 percent of the budget.

By the way, I granted them immediate absolution. I said: I wouldn't expect you to know how much the Federal Government spends in total because we never talk about it.

Think of it. The Federal Government is the largest financial entity in the world, and, in December of 2022, the people I was asking--the people who should have known this--had no idea what in total the Federal Government spent. Well, the answer was about $6.2 trillion.

Let me put that in context. That is what this chart shows. The numbers are pretty small. So I will describe them. This column is fiscal year 2019 spending. This is the fiscal year before the pandemic and the pandemic recession.

This column is this fiscal year, fiscal year 2023 estimated spending. We don't have hard figures yet, but we have a pretty good idea of what we are going to be spending.

Just 4 years ago, in just the year 2019, total Federal Government spending was $4.446 trillion--$4.4 trillion. Let me put that in perspective. In 2002, it was the first time we passed the Rubicon of spending over $2 trillion in total. Seventeen years later--it took us 17 years to more than double that to $4.4 trillion.

This fiscal year that we are closing out in a couple of days, we will spend over $6.3 trillion. We are spending $1.9 trillion more this year than we spent just 4 years ago. This is completely out of control.

By the way, if you put us on a baseline, based on just population growth and inflation--in other words, take out the massive out-of- control spending during the pandemic and just put us on a reasonable baseline--last year, we spent a little more than $5 trillion.

But in the debt ceiling deal--which, by the way, didn't raise the debt ceiling by a given amount--but House conservatives basically gave the Speaker to negotiate $1.5 trillion. We have done one of these Washington games, which is suspending debt. It will probably result in a debt ceiling of $4 trillion, which will accommodate this massive-- massive--deficit spending.

So again, just to repeat: 4 years ago, $4.4 trillion; 4 years later, $6.3, almost $6.4 trillion. That is an increase of more than $1.9 trillion. And the deficit this year will be somewhere between $1.7 and $2 trillion. We need to get this under control.

But I want to make an important point here. As dysfunctional as Washington, DC, is--it is grotesquely dysfunctional. I come from the private sector. This would not happen in the private sector. You wouldn't take 72 or 73 percent of what you spend in your private sector budget and say: That is on automatic pilot. We are never going to look at that. We are only going to look at 27 percent of the budget and try to control that. That is basically what we are doing here with discretionary spending this year. Twenty-seven percent, we will focus on that, and we will ignore 73 percent and let it grow out of control.

But again, this is a well-honed process. This isn't--it is dysfunctional, but the process is in place, and it is a well-honed process to mortgage our children's future, and we are witnessing that process.

Again, this is my 13th year. I think every year, at least, a shutdown has been threatened, as we are threatening this one--again, disquieting people, worrying people, because if a shutdown does occur, people will be hurt. We can avoid it.

But this well-honed process is playing out as it has ever since I have arrived here. Basically, you don't do appropriation bills without the House, without the Senate. You might start. You might start the charade, like we did this year, and start passing them in this Chamber, in September, a few weeks before the fiscal year. Obviously, you don't have enough time to pass all of them. So then you threaten a government shutdown.

You predict calamity, and then you load onto a continuing resolution spending that may or may not be controversial. It is not where you increase spending. It is not where you put supplemental spending. But that is what

we do. So it becomes controversial, and, all of a sudden, here you are threatening shutdown.

Now the proposal on the table right now in the Senate is: Let's do a CR with some controversial spending, and we will have that CR end the day before the Thanksgiving recess--a little pressure on our Members, just in case we can get our act together to come up with a couple of massive minibuses or just one massive omnibus to drop on everybody's desk. And if they want to go home for recess, you had better pass that now.

Now, my guess is we probably won't be able to get that done in time, and so we will end up with another CR. This one will probably be scheduled to expire--oh, I don't know, pick a date. My guess would be December 23 and December 24--the same process. That is what happened last year.

Then we get it, again, dropped on our desk--about a 2,000-plus page bill. Nobody has time to read it, other than the people who wrote it. And you get the Hobson's choice--vote yes or no. The problem with that, in addition to just the grotesque dysfunction of it, is the individual appropriation bills do not get the scrutiny that they deserve.

If you bring up every appropriations bill--12--you have got to start somewhere around May. You bring up each individual appropriation bill. Now you can actually scrutinize it. The public can see it. We can offer amendments.

Again, it is not a panacea. I am not going to say it is going to completely stop this runaway spending train, but it will be some constraint. It restores some function to this very dysfunctional place.

So what I have been pushing for, for 4 years--and it is one of the reasons I withheld my consent on the minibus. And I appreciate the fact that the chairman and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee were willing to work with me and offer me an amendment on the minibus to try and get a vote to maybe pass the Preventing Government Shutdown Act, but other people are objecting, and we haven't got that vote yet.

So here we are, a couple days before a shutdown, and we need to do something. The House is having, obviously, a difficult time coming up with a solution. The Senate may pass something that really has no chance of passing in the House. I think we have to be honest about that.

So, again, in order to prevent a government shutdown, what we ought to do is do something that people agree on. You know, rather than trying to use this moment to jam something through that people don't all agree with, let's try and pass something people agree with, which is a bill that will prevent a government shutdown.

Now, I chose a 14-day clean CR--because that is pretty much the structure of the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, rolling 14-day CRs, giving both Chambers the time to act to start passing these bills with a little bit more scrutiny than what minibuses or an omnibus would afford. It is a very commonsense approach. It is something we all ought to agree on. It would prevent a shutdown. It would prevent pain to real people. And all we have to do is agree to do what we all say we want to do, to avoid what we all say we want to avoid--a government shutdown.

So, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Reserving the right to object, once again, we are asked to extend the flood program without any reforms to protect the taxpayers. Like many Federal programs, this Federal program is well-intentioned, but it may very well be the best real-life example of moral hazard.

We are told that the program is funded through insurance premiums, but the premiums are below the market rate, and so the program is eternally and consistently short of money.

A 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office found the flood program collected $17 billion less than the market would have required. For all practical purposes, the flood program is insolvent.

Just a few years ago, the flood program owed $30 billion to the taxpayers. Congress later cancelled $16 billion of that debt, but the flood program has not made any progress in repaying the taxpayers. The total now stands that the flood program owes $20 billion to the taxpayers with no way of repaying that money.

Perhaps the greatest insult to the taxpayers, though, is the lack of true limits on this delinquent program. There are no limits on how many claims can be filed or how much money can be received for a policyholder. So it isn't that I have a $3 million flood policy. You could have a $3 trillion policy. There are no limits. There are also no limits on how big your house could be. You could have a $10 million house, a $20 million house, a $50 million house, and the taxpayers subsidize your house.

Rather than encourage people to leave flood-prone areas, this program encourages people to stay and rebuild time and time again. In thousands of instances, the program encourages people to rebuild and rebuild and rebuild.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, over 150,000 properties have been rebuilt over and over again. In fact, 25 to 30 percent of flood program claims are made by the policyholders whose properties have flooded time and time again. Over 2,000 properties have flooded more than 10 times. One home in Batchelor, LA, flooded 40 times and received a total of $428,000 of flood insurance payments--40 times. No one should keep rebuilding in a house that floods 40 times. But the record, if you can believe it, isn't Batchelor, LA. It is Virginia, where one home flooded 41 times and received payments of over $600,000, all subsidized by the taxpayer.

Adding insult to injury, the Congressional Budget Office found that the flood program tends to benefit the wealthy and that 23 percent of the subsidized coastal properties were not even policyholders' primary residences.

Realize what this program is doing. It is subsidizing insurance for the rich and famous for their beach houses. There are no limits. It subsidizes people who have $10 million homes to get subsidized government insurance. It is true. The government forces the taxpayers to pay and rebuild the summer homes of the rich. In fact, sometimes it seems that the flood program caters directly to the wealthy. Nearly 80 percent of the National Flood Insurance Program policies are located in counties that rank within the top 20 percent of income.

Enough is enough. It is an insult to rob the taxpayers to give to the rich. This is why I offer an amendment that, if we could come to an agreement today, would require that the Federal program not insure your second house, not insure your beach house. If you live there--it is your only house--it will be included. If it is your second house, your beach house, it is not going to be included.

And we would set a cap on the amount. Who in their right mind thinks we should be subsidizing insurance for $10 million mansions? It is crazy that anybody would think that is what we should do.

I offer a compromise today. Extend the program. Let's keep the program. We will keep the program open. We won't miss a beat. But we will set some limits on the houses.

So what I would like to start with would be a cap of $250,000. Those houses below 250 would be subsidized, would get subsidized insurance. Up to 250, you buy your own.

Also my proposal would not allow you to use the insurance if this is your vacation home--if this is your secondary home.

So, Mr. President, I ask the Senator to modify his request so that the Paul amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the process is similar to what has been described but not exactly as has been described. The bill is sent out, everybody gets a chance to object. People who choose to object can come, that is also announced.

The objections are announced, and we come to the floor. If the Senator wanted to work together on this, this could be modified today and someone else would have to come to object, and that is announced to all 100 Senators and often works that way. But, today, what we have is a situation where I am offering an amendment to reform taxpayer- subsidized insurance, and it is being rejected by one Senator, not by all Senators, not in place of all Senators. They have a chance to come, it has been announced, they can come and object to this if they wanted.

But here is the thing, what I am trying to do is modify a program so that the average ordinary taxpayer does not have to pay for rich people's flood insurance for their beach houses.

About half of the houses that are insured in this program that loses billions of dollars every year, that is $20 billion in the hole, about half the homes are worth $500,000 or more.

Do you know any regular working folk that have $500,000 homes on the beach? No. If you have a $500,000 house on the beach, buy your own damn insurance. The taxpayer should not have to buy your insurance.

So I would ask the Senator--we can do this today; there are other Senators on the floor; they can come running from hither and yon, and they can object to this--but I would ask the Senator, let's modify the program so rich people don't get their houses insured by the government and subsidized by the taxpayer. We can change the limits to $500,000. That would cut out half of the homes in the United States, half of the beach houses, half of the rich people in our country who are getting subsidized insurance.

Make the limit $500,000. If we make it $500,000, the program will be half as big, and it will lose half as much money. Let's modify this program. So I would ask the Senator to modify his proposal with my amendment, and my amendment would say: You can't use the insurance for your second home, only your primary residence, and if you have a half- a-million-dollar mansion on the beach, guess what? You get to buy your own insurance. That is my modification, and I would ask the Senator to accept the Paul amendment that is at the desk.

Reserving the right to object. What I am trying to find here, is there a compromise? Is there some level of rich person that maybe the taxpayer could say: Enough is enough; they ought to pay their own way? Is there some level of rich person's mansion that maybe the average, ordinary taxpayer should not have to subsidize their insurance?

So we have tried a half a million, which is about half the homes the ordinary working class people in our country have to insure, why don't we try--if we can't do a half a million, let's try mansions of $750,000. You would say, well, how many are there? Twenty-five percent of the national Federal subsidized insurance are homes of $750,000 a year. We are not talking about ordinary people now, we are talking about rich, rich, very rich people getting subsidized insurance from a program that loses billions of dollars and has to be bailed out every year. We have a government with a $1.7 trillion deficit. It goes on year after year. Nobody does anything. Just reauthorize it. Today we can make a compromise. So I offer the Senator a compromise: If $500,000 is too cheap and you want to insure half-a-million-dollar mansions, will you, at least, modify it to exclude mansions of $750,000 or more? I think that is the least we can do.

And I would ask unanimous consent to accept the Paul motion at the desk that indicates $750,000 as the limit for the insurance.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. It is certainly not my intention to denigrate rich people. I aspire to be one someday. But I don't aspire to ask for free stuff from the government if I ever become a rich person.

Why would we subsidize insurance of rich people? Is there no limit-- is there no limit--is there no possibility of compromise on some mansion that is too large to be in this program?

What about $10 million? We have tried $250,000. That was too little. You know, the insistence is we must insure these homes. We tried a half million. But the insistence is, no, everybody should get it.

I don't think rich people need subsidized insurance. The program loses billions of dollars every year. We have tried 750,000, but apparently there still is this need and this desire to insure rich people's beach houses.

Why don't we try one last time. We will try something that I think anybody could compromise to and anybody would accept, and certainly I wouldn't want to be the one justifying a program that gives people who have $10 million mansions insurance. Why not accept it and make someone on the other side support such a ridiculous policy?

So my final proposal today will be to ask unanimous consent that the Paul amendment at the desk would exclude $10 million mansions from government-subsidized insurance.

I think that is the least we can do. If we can get that compromise, it would bring at least some sense of sanity to this crazy program.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. Let the record show from this discussion today that the Senator has objected to any limits on taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance, any limits: 250,000; 500,000; 750,000, even 10 million.

This is a program that loses billions of dollars every year. This is a program that can't work for the poor people because we have got so many rich people in it.

Half of the homes in the program cost over a half million dollars. So this is a problem. This is a program that loses money every year, and the Senator is unwilling to accept any limits on this.

There is this argument that somehow he is defending all the Democrat Senators who can't come here, but he could easily have said: I am not willing to object to this because these are reasonable proposals and force the Democrats to object to this.

But he has taken this upon himself to defend the status quo, to defend the inclusion of $10 million mansions in this program.

So I do object.