Modern Worker Empowerment Act

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, this spring, just a few days before Congress enacted the last continuing resolution, which is the spending plan--this resolution that would extend the Biden-era spending levels-- President Trump said in a speech that he wanted to do something that hadn't been done in over 20 years: balance the budget. I fully commend him for that, and I am very supportive of trying to get there.

The difficulty is that the spending levels that we voted on in March and the spending levels we will vote on again this week don't balance the budget and don't come anywhere close. These are the spending levels that Biden put in place in December before he left office.

Most Republicans were critical and condemnatory. Many conservative Republicans, like myself, voted against these spending levels because they were such that they would lead to a $2 trillion deficit. Well, that is still true. This year, the deficit will be right around $2 trillion, and it is because we have continued the Biden spending levels.

To balance the budget, Congress needs a much stronger response than the legislation being presented. Critics of excessive Federal spending have rightly argued that Congress should return to prepandemic levels of spending. When the pandemic came in, spending went through the roof. The economy was shut down. They wrote free checks to all Americans. The problem is that all that was borrowed. There was no money. There was no rainy day fund.

Now, there is a way to tackle the budget and to try to balance the budget over time. I have a Penny Plan budget that I have been introducing for several years. We have not gotten any Democrat support, but we have gotten over half of the Republicans to support it. My Penny Plan would balance over about a 5-year period and would return spending almost immediately to what would be a prepandemic level.

Six months ago, though, when the current continuing resolution was passed, Republicans were told that we were just clearing the decks, that this was going to be temporary, and that we would then be bold and present budgets that would cut spending. Once President Trump was in office, with a Republican majority in the Senate and the House, we would finally address spending levels. And wouldn't you know it-- getting serious about a balanced budget is not on the agenda this week. There really isn't any serious change. What we are talking about is a continuing resolution that continues the Biden spending levels. These spending levels this year have led to almost $2 trillion in deficit and are projected next year to lead to $2.1 trillion in deficit.

In addition, we will also be voting on something called an automatic continuing resolution proposal. This is the idea that, rather than having the government shut down, it would just continue spending the same amount of money. In theory, I like the concept; I just don't really like continuing the Biden-era spending levels because they never balance--not over 5 years; not over 10 years; really, never. The lines never cross. So, sure, you would keep the government open, but you would keep the government open and spend the same amount we do currently, which is out of control and not defensible. So keeping the government open while continuing $2 trillion deficits hardly seems desirable.

Rather than the relentless fury to tackle the debt, which is what we were promised with a Republican majority, the powers that be have once again waved the white flag of surrender by failing to present the American people with legislation that would make the cuts necessary to balance the budget.

Under the proposed continuing resolution or the automatic continuing resolution we will vote on tonight, the budget never balances. Even if you take it out as far as the eye can see, revenue will never meet expenditures. So it is just not something I can support, and I don't think it is a conservative proposal. Spending has gotten so out of control that this freeze, even over a decade, doesn't put a dent in the deficit.

Presidents of both parties pay lipservice to the idea that the national debt must be addressed. Yet it gets worse under both parties. People ask me: Whose fault is it--Republicans or Democrats? And I just say: Yes, it is both parties. The right wants unlimited spending for the military, and the left wants unlimited spending for welfare. So you have guns and butter. You scratch my back, and I will scratch yours, and it all goes up.

Now, the reverse compromise could happen. You could actually cut a little bit from the military side and a little bit from the welfare side, and really everybody would get a little bit of a haircut across the board. You could balance your budget that way. But you can't exclude or exempt huge swaths of

government spending. You have to look at all spending, and if you do, the budget can be balanced by a 6-percent cut across the board, excluding Social Security.

I am proud of the President for what he has tried to do, though. Unlike past Presidents, Donald Trump has created the Department of Government Efficiency to identify and eliminate waste. DOGE has found billions of dollars of waste. Americans were rightfully appalled when they were told that your government has been spending $2 million on sex changes in Guatemala. I mean, it sounds like a bad punch line that, you know, you might hear from late night comics--$2 million on sex changes in Guatemala. Your government was spending that money, and the DOGE people came in and said: We shouldn't do it.

I have been talking about these things for years, but finally we have an administration that is interested in it.

There is $25,000 for an LGBT opera in Colombia and nearly $1 million to study the microaggressions among obese Latinx, whatever that means.

But it is just crazy wasted money. I mean, it would be one thing if it was from even a surplus of crazy wasted money, but we are doing this, and we have to borrow the money from China to send to all these crazy projects around the world. This doesn't even count the $200 billion we have sent to Ukraine. That is all borrowed as well.

This summer, President Trump sent Congress a special message identifying $9.4 billion in rescissions, and Congress, for the first time in a long time, did the right thing: We voted for and passed this rescissions package to cut $9 billion.

I supported, as I always do, cutting this foreign aid. With a deficit of $2 trillion a year, though, $9 billion is a drop in the bucket. We have to do more. Congress has to do more.

As much as I appreciate this, the power of the purse needs to be exerted more by Congress. We have let so many of these decisionmaking powers devolve to the President. The Founders, I think, would be appalled with Congress. They would be appalled with what Congress has become. Congress exerts no powers. It gives away its powers and does not seek a restoration of its powers.

Right now, we are living under emergency rule, where the President has declared emergencies on 160 countries and has declared that he has the right to declare whatever he wants through import taxes. Well, our Founding Fathers would be appalled. The Constitution is very clear: Taxes originate in Congress, and even more specifically, taxes originate in the House of Representatives.

Unfortunately, Congress has been all too happy to wither in the shadow of the Presidency that grows larger with each successive administration. Whether it be Republican or Democrat, the Presidency grows larger and stronger; to wit, the continuing resolution that we are considering--the spending plan that we are considering--maintains the Biden spending levels.

If you will remember, there was an election. Do you remember the Republicans all said: Bidenomics and Bidenflation and Biden spending-- we are against all that.

That was kind of what the election was decided on, and now you have a Republican in the White House, Republicans in the Senate, and Republicans in the House, and we are living under the Biden spending levels that they complained about.

The great irony is, the Democrats have now switched. The Democrats supported the Biden spending levels under President Biden. Now there is a President Trump and the spending levels are exactly the same, and all the Democrats are voting no. It makes no sense at all.

It is really ironic that every Democrat Senator supported the spending levels just 9 months ago that we are voting on now. So when they say ``continuing resolution,'' we are continuing the same spending levels that we started with in December of last year, and every Democrat voted for them.

Likewise, in December of last year, conservative Republicans voted against the Biden spending levels, and now they are poised to vote for the Biden spending levels. Both parties have completely flip-flopped to the opposite side of the same issue that hasn't changed. Congress has truly entered the upside-down world.

To add insult to irony, the CR before us adds the foreign aid dollars we canceled 2 months ago back into the baseline spending. So we, finally, for the first time and as long as I can remember, had a vote to get rid of this crazy foreign aid, this foreign welfare. We did the right thing. We got rid of $9 billion. There is still another 40-some- odd billion dollars in the budget. We got rid of $9 billion. By voting on this continuing resolution today, they are sticking the foreign aid back in. The foreign aid will be back part of the baseline again. We have to go through the whole thing again. It is almost as if DOGE never existed, as if DOGE never found all this stuff, criticized it, shamed Congress into doing the right thing, and we cut the foreign aid. It is going back in. So we are going to do a CR that doesn't lessen the foreign aid spending. It is going to have the same level of foreign aid spending we had last year.

I am not going to fall for this trick, and conservatives shouldn't either. As Jefferson tells us, our job is to be eternally vigilant. What the country needs is a bipartisan effort in Congress to reclaim the power of the purse and to do what is necessary to eliminate duplicative spending, wasteful spending, and spend only what we can afford.

We have some programs here that were begun 40 years ago, authorized. People said: We are going to solve the problem of homelessness, 40 years ago. The programs have been reauthorized, and we just continue living on and on. Then, every year or so, someone goes: Wow, we have a homeless problem. Why don't we get another government program to build homes?

They did this in California recently. They spent $27 billion over a several-year period. Do you know what the average unit cost for the affordable housing was? A million dollars a unit. That is the history of government, the incompetence of government; that they are going to build houses for poor people, and it turned out costing them a million dollars a unit to build houses for poor people.

Just 2 weeks ago, a majority of the Republican caucus actually did vote for my Six Penny Plan. The Penny Plan, as I have said, is to cut spending across the board. It is how we would actually finally balance the budget. It is this compromise that everything needs a little bit of a haircut. Unfortunately, we have gotten no Democrat support for it. We got a little over half the caucus, but probably a little over a third-- 30, 40 percent of the caucus--is still believing that we should just keep spending levels as they are or continue to increase spending. So we are not quite there yet. There is not quite enough fear of where we are.

But $37 trillion in debt is not something to be sneezed at. We are adding in $2 trillion a year. The interest alone is about $1 trillion. Some people have made the argument that a country can no longer remain strong when its interest payments on its debt exceed its actual spending to defend itself, the military spending. So I think we are really at a tipping point.

Everybody comes to us for money. Everybody has got their hand out. Everybody wants more out of us. From Israel to Israel's neighbors, everybody has got their hand out. Everybody wants more money from us. And I think it makes no sense for us to be borrowing it from China to give it to other countries, no matter how good the request is.

The plans that have been presented before us--we had two plans presented: a Republican plan and a Democrat plan. Which one adds debt? Yes, both of them. The Republican plan will add $2 trillion in debt next year if we continue spending at the same level. The Democrat plan said we want another trillion on top of that, so it would be a $3 trillion deficit next year. So neither party is serious about this.

But there is an alternative, when we get enough Republicans, and that is the Penny Plan that I have been offering for several years. It balances it by gradually reducing spending just a little bit each year.

But by supporting yet another continuing resolution at the current spending levels, Republicans are essentially signing off on the fiscal policies of the Biden administration--policies Republicans once rightly opposed.

Just a short time ago, virtually every Republican was saying the Biden

spending levels were too high. But given that this continuing resolution will add another $2 trillion deficit next year, this plan, at the Biden level, should be a nonstarter. However the legislation before us today is being presented as a solution to dysfunction, but in reality, it is just papering over the cracks.

This measure is not a reversal of the status quo; it is the status quo. It does nothing to address our debt. It does nothing to divert our trajectory that is bankrupting this Nation. This is not some theoretical debate; this is math. This is what will happen. This is what happened last year and is going to happen again--$2 trillion in additional debt.

We bring in about $4.7 trillion. We spend $6.7 trillion. We are spending $2 trillion more than comes in. This isn't like an emergency. This isn't even the excuse of the pandemic. This is routine business, routine status quo, $2 trillion in deficit every year.

If we stay on this path, we keep spending like we did during the pandemic or under the Biden administration, we are guaranteeing a future of higher inflation and crippling debt for our children and grandchildren.

We are running out of ways to fix this. We are running out of time.

The CBO projects that within the next 10 years, mandatory spending-- this is all the welfare programs--and interest alone will exceed revenue. We are getting pretty close to that now.

Think about that. We vote on a budget that is not mandatory spending. Military spending is considered to be discretionary, and then there is a bunch of discretionary welfare. Military is a little bit more than the welfare. That is the budget we vote on. Then you have mandatory spending, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and then interest on the debt. That, essentially, is equal to what comes in. The taxes that are coming in equal the mandatory spending. So when we actually do produce a budget, which isn't very often, the stuff we are spending is almost entirely borrowed.

If you look at the discretionary spending budget, it is about $1.8, $1.9 trillion. That is the debt. That is what the debt is. The debt is, essentially, equivalent to the discretionary spending. The mandatory programs, the welfare programs, have gotten so big, and they grow with such abundance each year. We have added in young, healthy, able-bodied people to these programs that really shouldn't be on welfare. You have added these people in, and it is consuming all of your taxes. So, really, everything else is being borrowed.

Entitlement programs and interest will consume every single dollar within a year or two that comes in, in tax revenue.

Imagine if you were running your household that way: no money left for food, clothing, shelter, unless you take out a loan every single year forever. That is what we are doing. You really can't live that way. You can borrow if you want to borrow to buy a house, but the bank holds the house. But you don't borrow money to pay rent for your apartment. You don't borrow money to pay for your groceries. You have to actually earn that money and have enough for your daily living expenses. We are to the point where we are borrowing for the daily living expenses of government.

My amendment that I have offered to this would take the automatic renewal that prevents us from shutting down--take the automatic renewal and put in the Penny Plan numbers so what you would actually have is not running the government at the same levels, at the Biden levels; you would actually reduce spending by 6 percent.

I am fine to make it automatic. I am fine to let it kick in and go on so we don't shut the government down, and we avoid the chaos and the discomfort of having the government shut down. But we shouldn't keep spending the same amount of money. That would be like abdicating our duty just to spend the same amount.

But if we were to use my Penny Plan budget, we would be returning to prepandemic spending levels, a significant cut that would put us on the path to balancing our budget within 5 years.

The government, though, has lost sight--lost sight--of its priorities. The American people are the ones paying the price. The big spenders don't tell you the truth. They don't tell you that it is all borrowed. They don't tell you that you are being ripped off by inflation. They don't tell you that well, gosh, we are going to give you all this stuff, but it has a cost.

Really, nothing really is free in life. There is really not any possibility of getting something for nothing. What you get from government through borrowed money you pay for through inflated prices.

The inflation of the Biden years didn't go away. Over the last 3 or 4 years in the grocery store, a lot of the meat and the different items in the grocery store went up 20 percent. When they say inflation is slowing down, that means we are just not adding more to it. But if you don't make 20 percent more than you made 4 years ago, you are being ripped off. You are being ripped off by inflation.

It wasn't that long ago that my colleagues, at least on this side of the aisle, stood united in opposition to this fiscal recklessness. It wasn't that long ago that we drew a line in the sand on debt and the debt ceiling; that we demanded spending caps; that we said we wouldn't mortgage our children's future to fund today's political convenience. Now, some seem content to roll over and lock in the very policies that we ran against.

I won't do that, and I won't urge my colleagues to do that either. We can't claim to be fiscal conservatives while voting for more and more debt. We can't claim to be this great opposition to the Biden spending levels and then vote the Biden spending levels in. We can't claim to not like deficit spending and then vote for spending that will inevitably lead to another $2 trillion in debt next year.

This country can't afford to write another blank check. We can't afford to lock in the fiscal mistakes of the past. We need real reform. We need it now. We need to return to the principles of limited, constitutional government. If we obeyed the Constitution--most of the nonsense, most of the spending that goes on up here really isn't authorized under the Constitution. If we return to the Constitution, the principles of limited government, responsible budgeting, and economic freedom, we would have a balanced budget again. We need to start today.

Mr. President, the Senator from Wyoming is a friend of mine, really. And though we may disagree on some political issues, I greatly respect him and am glad to call him a colleague. But we do disagree on this point that he just made, and it is a very important disagreement because it affects every family in America.

The decision was made, in the big beautiful budget bill by Donald Trump, to cut $1 trillion out of Medicaid. Medicaid is a program which helps people who have limited income have health insurance. It also takes care of your mother and grandmother when they are in the nursing home. It is a critical element of funding healthcare in America, and the Republicans cut $1 trillion out of it.

If you go to the hospitals in Illinois, some of them are great hospitals, others do great things, but you will find that the hospitals that struggle to survive are ones that have more Medicaid patients than paying insurance patients. It is a tougher margin, and many of them worry about it. And the notion of cutting $1 trillion out of this program worries me.

Don't take my word for it. Ask the Illinois Health and Hospital Association or even, if there is one--I am sure there is--the Wyoming Hospital Association what the impact of cutting $1 trillion out of Medicaid reimbursement is going to be: not good, particularly in rural areas.

Senator Barrasso made reference to his situation in Wyoming. In the State of Illinois, we have plenty of these rural hospitals, and if one closes, it means your pregnant wife who goes into labor now has to drive 70 miles instead of 20 for that delivery. I would hate to have to go through that. Yet that is what is going to happen. So the position we are taking is that that kind of cut from Medicaid is going to hurt hospitals and hurt people across America.

Secondly, there is a tax credit available for people in middle-income categories to buy health insurance. It is part of the Affordable Care Act, which was the Barack Obama plan that extended more health insurance coverage to America than we had ever had in our history.

How important is health insurance to you?

I had a personal experience as a law student at Georgetown. I had decided I couldn't wait, and I asked a young lady to marry me, and she did. And my second year in law school, we learned that God was sending us a little baby, and we were so happy about it. And she arrived with her share of difficulties.

I had no health insurance--none. What do you do--as a student with a wife and a baby, and the baby is sick--when you have no health insurance? Well, Children's Hospital here in Washington, DC, brought us into the so-called charity ward, and we waited to see who would walk through the door with the name ``Doctor So-and-so'' to take care of my daughter.

I never felt more inadequate in my life, as a father and a husband, than not having health insurance. We got through it. She got through it too and lived a good life.

But the point was there were moments when I worried that I couldn't provide the basics for my baby because I didn't have health insurance, and 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance because of this Republican budget that I just referred to, the big beautiful budget. Fifteen million will lose health insurance. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

So when the Democrats say there are healthcare issues that are part of this debate on funding the government, that is what we are talking about, keeping these hospitals open--critical hospitals in the inner city, as well as in rural areas--making sure that people have their health insurance.

And there is one third element I would add that I don't think will be able to be negotiated: medical research.

Did you ever hear of the National Institutes of Health? Why, sure you have. It is the best medical research Agency of any government in the world.

I went to the NIH about 12 years ago and met with Dr. Francis Collins, an amazing man, who was head of the NIH, and I said to him: I really believe in what you do. Your research in cancer and heart disease and so many other things makes a difference. What can I do to help?

Well, he said, thank you for asking. There have been some people who have done remarkable things.

I said: Oh, I remember. There was a bipartisan coalition, a few years back, that doubled the budget in medical research for NIH.

I said: I wish I could say I could do that again, but I don't think I can. What can I do?

He said: Give me and this Agency 5 percent real growth each year in medical research, and we will light up the scoreboard. We are so close--so close--to finding cures and new drugs in so many areas that if you can give us consistent research, it will make a difference.

I came back to the Senate. I sat down with my friends on both sides of the aisle. Roy Blunt, a Republican Senator from Missouri, was a leader in this effort. Lamar Alexander, a Republican Senator from Tennessee, was another leader. And Patty Murray is still serving as head of the Appropriations Committee and is one of the best when it comes to medical research.

We put our heads together, and over the span of 10 years, the budget for NIH medical research went from $30 billion to $48 billion. We got the 5 percent coming every single year. It was quite an achievement: a 60 percent increase in that budget. Things were happening--good news, good developments when it came to cures and treatments. I was so proud of that effort and glad that it was bipartisan from the start.

So what did the Trump budget suggest we do with medical research? Cut it back from $48 billion to $30 billion, where we started 10 years ago. Do you know what happens when you cut back on research that basic? You know what happens, and I do too. When that terrible diagnosis happens at the doctor's office, it breaks your heart. And you finally stop crying, and you say to the doctor: Is there anything you can do? Is there a surgery, a medicine, anything you can do for someone I love very much?

And they say: Well, there is a clinical trial. There is medical research underway. It is a longshot, but you have a chance.

It is hope. Medical research is hope, and it is one of the areas where I think Donald Trump's cuts are the most heartless cuts of all. Democrats care about this. I do. I am willing to fight over it.

I am not willing to say: We will just go on with business as usual. Let's accept this. Let's cut back a trillion dollars out of Medicaid. Let's take 15 million Americans and take away their health insurance. Let's cut back $18 billion of medical research each year. And we will say it is just a clean continuing resolution bill.

That is what we are fighting over. Is it important? For me, it is one of the most important things we can do in terms of helping families across America.

And let me tell you something that is going on, and you should know about it. You will soon, if you are covered by it. Health insurance has tax treatment

that helps you pay the premiums. It makes a dramatic difference. And now, in a matter of days--days--health insurance companies are going to announce what the new premiums are going to be because of the budget bill--the big beautiful budget bill--of President Trump. They are going to go up dramatically. And as these premiums go up, some people won't be able to pay for them, and they will be without health insurance. And others will see their family budget explode with an increased health insurance premium.

That is the reality of this debate. It is not about who gets bragging rights and gets to beat on their chest--Democrat or Republican. In my mind, it is a question of whether families across this country can count on us for the basics, and making sure that healthcare is there for America is one of the basics, as far as I am concerned.

Department of Justice

Mr. President, there is another issue I want to raise that relates to the administration, and you have to go back in history to appreciate it.

Richard Nixon--students of history, of course, know that name--was former Vice President of the United States, former Senator. He was a Senator and a Congressman, Vice President under President Eisenhower, and then President of the United States.

He went through a period we know as Watergate. It was controversial. Some people broke into the Democratic national headquarters. They were caught. They were prosecuted. When it was all over, we had the Watergate investigation, and, ultimately, President Nixon resigned. But before he resigned, he instructed his staff to give him background information on his enemies list, the people that he considered to be his political enemies. And the word was out that they were going to be treated harshly by his administration, whether it was the Department of Justice or the Internal Revenue Service.

Well, we went through that chapter. He resigned. And then Congress came together--Democrats and Republicans--and said: We can never let this happen again. We can't let a President put his finger on somebody and say: That is a political enemy. Go prosecute them. Try to find them guilty of a crime. Make sure they pay a fine. Give them bad publicity.

We agreed, on a bipartisan basis, for standards--between the White House, the Department of Justice, and Congress--when it came to these political decisions that could ultimately result in prosecution.

Well, under President Trump, we are back into the Nixon conversation about the ``enemies list,'' except President Trump's enemies list is longer than anything Richard Nixon ever dreamed of, and that is what we are looking at now.

On September 20, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, announced his resignation. The acting U.S. attorney, appointed by Trump, resigned. Mr. Siebert resisted President Trump's demands to bring charges without sufficient evidence against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

Mr. Siebert, a Republican appointed by Donald Trump just a few weeks ago, stayed true to his oath to the Constitution and his commitment to following the facts and the law, and for that, he was forced to resign his office. In his place, President Trump installed his personal attorney--an attorney with no experience as a prosecutor; never did it before--to indict James Comey in a politically motivated case considered by career prosecutors in that office too weak to bring charges.

This indictment represents the latest step in President Trump's long crusade to weaponize the Federal Government against his perceived political enemies--a return to the days of Richard Nixon.

We remember when the President was initially impeached in the first of his historic two impeachments after he attempted to pressure a foreign ally to dig up dirt against Joe Biden and his family. We remember when President Trump turned a mob of insurrections loose on our Capitol, where they violently attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, leading to his second impeachment.

I will never forget that day as long as I live--January 6. It has been my honor to serve in this Chamber 29 years. I have seen a lot. I am honored to represent a great State like Illinois. But I will never forget that moment when we were sitting here counting the electoral college votes as to what the American people had decided of the next President. Vice President Pence was presiding. We were seated in our chairs. I noticed something unusual: Those two doors opened, and four or five people walked in, up to the Vice President, and literally yanked him out of his chair and took him out the door. We knew there was a political demonstration outside, but all of a sudden, it turned bad and scary and dangerous.

Capitol Police came in and announced to us seated in this Chamber: Stay at your desks. We are going to make this a safe Chamber here in the Capitol. Don't worry about those people demonstrating outside. They are not going to get close to the Chamber. Just stay where you are.

We looked at one another and thought, what is next? Well, what was next was, 10 minutes later, the same policeman came in and said: Leave immediately. Don't take anything with you; just get out of the Chamber. It is too dangerous for you to stay here.

We all--Democrats and Republicans--filed out those doors.

You know what happened next: The insurrections took over this building. It was one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the U.S. Capitol Building.

Imagine, if you will, for a moment if you heard the news that the House of Commons in Parliament had its door broken down and people raided the chamber. You would say to yourself: What is going on in England, for goodness' sake? The House of Commons taken over by people in the street?

That is exactly what happened here, and it happened on January 6.

So this President, embarrassed by that moment, maybe--who knows if he is ever embarrassed--decided he would go after the people who prosecuted the insurrections, the people who were prosecuted for crimes like beating up policemen.

You all came here today, and we welcome you to this Chamber. The reason you are safe in this building today is a lot of women and men in uniform who are guarding you and me and all of our staff so we can do the people's business.

Those people were under attack by the January 6 insurrections. These were not curious tourists who came here. They ended up beating on these police, and 140 of them were seriously injured.

If you believe it, in his second administration, the President has gone further than Richard Nixon and what he has done before. His political appointees have fired FBI agents and Federal prosecutors who were called on to prosecute the insurrections. He has installed loyalists whose chief qualification is their loyalty to him, not their loyalty to the law or the Constitution.

We recently learned that a top Federal prosecutor in Sacramento was fired after she advised the Border Patrol to comply with a court order. Yes, the Trump administration fired a career prosecutor for following a court order.

Never in the history of our country has a President so brazenly demanded the baseless prosecution of his rivals, and he doesn't even try to conceal it or hide it. He glories in this constitutional outrage.

In a social media post, President Trump issued a command to Attorney General Bondi:

They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5times!), OVER

Madam President, I want to begin my remarks this afternoon by reflecting on the tragic shooting at the Dallas ICE Facility that happened this last week. One detainee was killed and two others were injured by a 29-year-old shooter who was later found dead on the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

This is not the first attack of its kind against the immigration enforcement officials in Texas. In fact, this is the fourth in as many months--four attacks against law enforcement officials in the last 4 months.

On July 4 in Alvarado, TX, assailants opened fire outside an ICE detention facility, wounding an Alvarado Police Department officer in the neck. Ten people were subsequently arrested and charged with attempted murder while six other subjects have been charged with related offenses.

Three days later, July 7, a man shot at a Border Patrol employee in McAllen as he tried to park his car. He then fired at the Border Patrol annex, attempting to break in, before finally being killed in a firefight with Border Patrol agents.

In addition to these attacks on law enforcement, we know our country is still reeling from the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk, whose life was taken from him simply for expressing his views and engaging in political dialogue on college campuses.

We are beginning to see in our country a level of political violence that is not and should not ever be considered normal.

But this is a warning signal about the direction we are heading in as a nation, and it is one we cannot afford to ignore. Many of us are asking ourselves, how did we get here? Well, the answer, it seems--or at least part of the answer--is simple and straightforward. It begins with the demonization of free speech and the vilification of those who are doing nothing more and nothing less than their duty, which is to enforce the laws on the books. Frequently, these are laws passed by Congress on a bipartisan basis and signed into law by the President. These law enforcement officials are simply enforcing the laws that we have written. The radical base of the Democratic Party seems to be at war with the men and women who actually enforce our laws, and with the same breath, they seem to, from time to time, celebrate mob violence. We all remember the so-called peaceful protests of 2020 that resulted in massive economic losses and harms to businesses, not to mention that many law enforcement officers were injured or even died as a result of mob violence.

Embarrassingly, it was a Texas Member of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who recently said on national television:

When I see ICE, I see slave patrols.

Not to be outdone, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described ICE as a ``rogue agency that should not exist.''

Then there is former Member of Congress Colin Allred, who called ICE ``un-American'' and ``harmful to our public safety.''

These attacks against the men and women who enforce our laws are simply unconscionable, and they have undeniably contributed to getting us in the dangerous place we find ourselves in today.

If these individuals and other Democrats truly cared about public safety, they would stand with Republicans. We would stand united as Americans in supporting our men and women in blue and green, and they would denounce the unprecedented rise in attacks against these law enforcement officers immediately. Instead, Democrats seem to endorse a complete inversion of how a just and ordered society functions.

Unfortunately, this is going to require some of our Democratic colleagues to swim against the tide of opinion among their radical base and show some leadership. But they have to decide as a party to move away from the dangerous and radical demands of their leftwing base.

Unfortunately, the Democratic leader in this Chamber, the Senator from New York, is showing anything but that kind of leadership right now. He has demonstrated a complete unwillingness to tone down the rhetoric of his party or to make actually even good-faith gestures toward good governance. In fact, this very week, he has demonstrated just how far he is willing to go to undermine basic governance in order to appease his radical base. He would rather shut down the government than work across the aisle for the benefit of the American people.

Senate Democrats have so far refused to even vote on a simple stopgap measure that will give us a little more time--about 9 weeks--to negotiate full-year government funding. If they do not relent in this partisan posturing, the result will be forever known as the Schumer shutdown.

You don't have to take it from me on what a government shutdown would mean for the American people; all we have to do is to read back to them the very words Senate Democrats have said in the past.

In September of last year, when the shoe was on the other foot, Senator Schumer said:

If the government shuts down, it will be average Americans

who suffer most.

He also said:

A government shutdown means seniors who rely on Social

Security could be thrown into chaos.

Is this even the same individual that is taking the position that is heading us toward a shutdown in the coming days?

Last September, he went so far as to even say:

Keeping the government open will mean no poison pills or

reckless partisan posturing.

This is what he said just last year about a government shutdown. Where is that man today? Today, I will tell you, he is engaging in reckless, partisan posturing while Republicans are proposing a responsible alternative.

Again, this is not a vote on a permanent policy but, rather, a stopgap measure to get us to a place where we need to be when it comes to the appropriations process.

But he is willing to impose the very costs that he warned about on the American people and our seniors in order to score political points with his progressive, radical base. The hypocrisy is obvious, and it is staggering.

It is a time for reckoning for our friends in the Democratic Party. They seem to not really know what they stand for these days except opposition to each and every thing that the majority party or the President wants, even when it is in their self-interest to do so. They need to look at themselves in the mirror and decide what and who they stand for. Are they going to be the party of violence and lawlessness and a degradation in public safety? Are they going to continue to what has been called frighteningly an assassination culture? Will they continue down this mad path of taking the lives of those they disagree with and siding with the criminals over law enforcement personnel that are simply enforcing laws they themselves have helped write? Will they continue on prioritizing their ideology ahead of responsible governance?

I often wonder how our friends on the other side of the aisle would react if they had to live--if they had to live--in crime-ridden neighborhoods overtaken by gangs and drug dealers and they had to wait 20 or 30 minutes before any police officer responded to their calls for help after an assault or a robbery. How would they feel? Well, I am quite sure, I am confident that they would change their tune. Just like current residents in blue cities who had to suffer under the weight of failed Democratic soft-on-crime policing policies, they would gladly welcome additional police protection and efforts to clean up and stabilize their neighborhoods.

Sadly, most Democrats--at least so far here in Washington, DC--have appeared to be completely tone-deaf and rarely hear the true voices of the people whose lives they assume they represent, people living in these inner cities.

Well, regardless of what Democrats decide to stand for, Republicans will continue to be the party that respects free and open discussion of ideas. We will continue to support our law enforcement officers, men and women who risk their lives day in and day out so that Texans and all Americans can sleep soundly in their beds. We will continue to be the party that opposes reckless partisan tactics that put ideology ahead of the needs of the American people.

Republicans have made it clear under President Trump that we will enforce the rule of law. That is nonnegotiable. So it is no surprise that the American people overwhelmingly voted for Republican leadership last November.

If Democrats continue to head down this path of violence and division, they should not be surprised if they continue to experience the same outcome at the ballot box in the upcoming midterms as they did last November in the general election.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, the government is on the verge of a Democrat-caused shutdown, a shutdown of the Government of the United States of America.

Senator Schumer has sent us a ransom note. It is not about a negotiation; it is about a shakedown. That is what we are facing here today in the U.S. Senate. Schumer's ransom note, it is not about keeping the government open; it is about caving to the far left, the radical wing of his party. It is pure politics; it is political theater; and every Democrat in this body knows it.

This afternoon, my colleagues are going to be meeting at the White House with the President of the United States. The American people deserve to know what the Democrats are demanding. So let's take a look at this trillion-dollar demand note.

They are demanding more than a trillion dollars in new spending to keep the government open for just 4 weeks. They want permanent new spending to continue the Biden COVID bonus payments.

If you could believe it, they want sanctuary cities to continue to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants. At the same time, they threaten to defund the Border Patrol.

They want to send billions of dollars to foreign countries, but they want to slash billions of dollars to help rural hospitals right here in America. That is what the Democrats are proposing in their ransom note.

They want to subsidize free healthcare for people who refuse to work, who are working-age individuals and are healthy and ought to have a job. Yet they threaten the paychecks of the people whose job it is to keep our country safe.

They demand this far-left wish list or else, they say, they are going to shut down the government at midnight tomorrow.

The biggest scam in this ransom note is the COVID-era Biden bonus payments. Democrats are demanding $400 billion to continue these subsidies forever. Let's remember that Democrats created these Biden bonus COVID subsidy payments during COVID in 2021. It was part of their reckless tax-and-spending bill. They passed it when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House.

At the time that Biden started these bonus payments, most people realized that COVID was already behind us, but that didn't stop them. Democrats extended the payments again in 2022, and they set the expiration date for December of 2025. That is about 3 months from now.

Democrats promised at that time, when they put them into place, that the Biden COVID bonus payments would be temporary. They weren't intended to last forever. Now the Democrats, in their ransom note to the Republicans and to President Trump, say they want these temporary payments to go on forever.

I have here the House report that came out on this 2021 reckless tax- and-spending bill. It is called ``American Rescue Plan of 2021.'' This is a report of the Committee on the Budget, House of Representatives, H.R. 1319, dated February 24, 2021.

Instead of going through the whole thousand-page document and bringing it here and throwing it on the floor, which is where it belongs, I copied pages 215 and 216. What does it say about these bonus payments? They say right here, it applies ``during the public health emergency.'' The public health emergency is over. And it says in the payments, when you turn to the next page, they would go ``temporarily''--``temporarily.'' That is their word, not mine. Well, COVID is over. Joe Biden lost. Democrats are in the minority. These Biden COVID bonus payments, they need to go away as well.

They were just one more part of a big government giveaway, and now Chuck Schumer is here demanding that we make these bonus payments permanent. To me, ``temporary'' means ``temporary.'' That is what the Democrats are demanding just to keep the government open for 4 short weeks. It is preposterous.

Twelve years ago, in 2013, America faced another shutdown. At that time, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut sent out a press release-- 2013, 12 years ago. In his press release, Senator Murphy of the minority from Connecticut said this:

There is a time and a place to debate healthcare--

He went on to say--

but not when the funding of the federal government--and all

the lives that are impacted by it--[are hanging] in the

balance.

He is not here today to hear those words, but his party needs to recognize that is exactly what they said 12 years ago. And, today, Democrats like Senator Murphy are doing the very thing that he condemned in his press release 12 years ago.

Stunningly, the Democrats want to eliminate, of all things, the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund. This is the fund that Republicans created to keep rural hospitals open.

I am a doctor. I practiced medicine in Wyoming for more than 20 years. I know what affordable, reliable, quality care means to our communities. They are lifelines to small communities.

Yet, yesterday, on ``Meet the Press,'' the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said rural hospitals are closing. So he wants to put the noose around their neck. This makes it worse. He is threatening, as part of his demand, to eliminate the $50 billion set aside for rural hospitals in America.

Last week, I was at home in Wyoming. I attended a ribbon cutting in Pinedale for a new hospital. This is the first hospital ever in Sublette County, WY. The nearest hospital is 85 miles away. There is another one 100 miles away. Depending on, in the winter, which roads are open, people in that community had to either drive 85 or 100 miles seeking healthcare.

This is going to help the communities in Pinedale. It is going to save lives. It matters to those people.

Yet the ransom note from Senator Schumer and the Democrats would shut it down, prevent all of these rural hospitals that are struggling that we have provided for in our comprehensive economic plan that we passed in July. Schumer wants to pull the plug on all of it. It is part of their bill. It is part of the ransom note. It is what the Democrats are trying to do.

Let's be honest. The Democrats have a political problem. The far left, their radical wing, is demanding a shutdown of the government. Their caucus is divided. The American people overwhelmingly want the government to remain open to provide vital services to the people. They know that it costs

money to shut down the government. It costs even more to reopen the government. Democrats don't seem to care.

What we have here is a clean, bipartisan, continuing resolution to fund the government for the next 7 weeks. The House of Representatives has already passed it with a bipartisan vote, and it keeps the government open for 7 weeks at the current funding levels. So it doesn't cut anything.

It says: Let's just continue to work on appropriations bills. It gives Republicans and Democrats an opportunity to work on the budgeting for next year, the appropriations process, to keep the government open for the next year. President Trump is ready to sign it. It is here before the Senate, and it is time to pass it.

Senator Schumer has repeatedly bragged that Democrats never shut down the government when they were in the majority. I would remind the minority leader today that 13 times under Joe Biden, the Senate passed a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open. We should do the same right now. Senator Schumer ought to remember those 13 times. Today should be no different. If this government shuts down--and it should not--it will clearly be a Schumer shutdown.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I expect the distinguished minority leader, my friend from New York, will speak possibly after the first vote and report that we are still at an impasse on funding the government, which, of course, expires at midnight tomorrow night.

At that point, I want to implore my colleagues on this side of the aisle, and particularly the Democratic leader, to agree that while we are at an impasse, there is still very, very important business to attend to, and that is the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, which, as the President knows, has been reported from the Senate Armed Services Committee, some months ago, by an overwhelming majority vote, with only one dissenting vote. I think it was a vote of 24 to 1. That bill was reported to the floor.

Our side of the cloakroom has run several hotlines, and we have been ready to go now for several days. Our disappointment has been that while the distinguished ranking member of the Armed Services Committee has been willing to proceed and a number of our friends on both sides of the dais, Republicans and Democrats, on the Armed Services Committee have been willing to proceed, we don't have engagement yet from the minority leadership.

So I simply want to express aloud what I hope I can engage the Senator from New York about when he does speak. While we are at an impasse and the Senate is still in session, it seems to me a reasonable thing to do to bring this bipartisan, noncontroversial, but highly significant bill to the floor.

We have agreed to a managers' package on our side. We actually have 985 Member-driven items already in the National Defense Authorization Act. We have agreed to a number of amendments and a second managers' package.

There is very little difference on what will be brought to the Senate for votes, and it just seems to me that we don't need to sit around idly while negotiations perhaps are going on with the White House, with the House, and the Senate. We need to proceed to this very essential legislation--the national defense bill.

If we could get that done this week, I think it would show to our constituents back home in both parties--Independent, Republican, and Democrat--that we are serious about the business of protecting the United States, enacting this very important legislation and the changes we need so that we are not doing last decade's type of national defense but doing our job under the Constitution to make sure the United States is strong.

So I would make that request to my Democratic friends and to my Republican friends, most of whom, on our side, are ready to proceed and have been ready to proceed on the National Defense Authorization Act.

I yield the floor.