Extend the TikTok Deadline Act

Madam President, we are in a climate emergency. Over just the past few months, powerful hurricanes and severe wildfires have caused nearly one-half of a trillion dollars in estimated damage.

The Los Angeles fires are estimated to be the costliest blaze in the history of our country. Insurance is becoming unaffordable. People have lost their lives. People have lost their livelihoods.

Rather than address our climate catastrophe, Republicans' highest priority is passing a new $5 trillion tax scam to subsidize the ultrawealthy at the expense of working families.

Now, in Massachusetts, per capita, we are the wealthiest State in America. We are very proud of that. We believe in capitalism. But I haven't had one millionaire come up to me and say: I need a tax break-- because they know they don't.

To pay for their tax scam, Republicans propose slashing Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, ripping away food security and other supports that parents rely on to feed their children and keep a roof over their head, and ending support for clean energy, which would only add more fuel to the fires raging across our country. Los Angeles is just the most recent example.

House Republicans have said they want to pay for their tax cuts for the ultrarich with $300 billion in ``the Green New Deal Provisions in the 2021 Infrastructure Bill.''

I don't know if that means cutting programs to get lead out of our drinking water or stopping programs to help struggling school districts buy new clean energy buses to cut costs and keep kids healthy. Maybe they have a problem with programs that let people walk and bike and live safely in communities across the country.

But we are watching hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-fueled tragedy in the past few months alone. The Green New Deal is a systemic response to this crisis.

I will give you a couple of numbers. Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Helene--remember them last fall--two storms, 2 weeks? It was $300 billion worth of damage--$300 billion.

They are saying: Let's cut the $300 billion for clean energy programs.

Oh, sure, let's have the storms cost $600 billion worth of damage, $1 trillion worth of damage each time they come to shore. Sure. Why put prevention in place? Why have wind and solar ever be deployed?

That is what they are coming for. It is outrageous.

Donald Trump and Republicans would rather trade programs to help communities survive the climate crisis for tax cuts that help their ultrarich donors survive tax season.

This week, in a response, I will be introducing legislation to make polluters pay by increasing taxes on private jet fuel to $2 a gallon. Do you know what these billionaires pay for their private jets today? Twenty cents. That is the tax on the jet fuel they put in their luxury jets to travel around America and the world. So we are just going to bump it up to $2 a gallon.

That will ultimately raise $1.8 billion. I think they can afford it, given what we are seeing happening in L.A. or Florida or North Carolina or State after State in the last 6 months.

The tax-dodging ultrawealthy need to stop fanning the flames and start supporting first-class solutions.

To tackle the climate crisis and to have a fair Tax Code, we need to ensure that those doing more than their fair share to fuel the problem are paying the bare minimum and are held accountable for contributing to the solution.

So if Donald Trump and his Cabinet of fat-cat billionaires and the three richest people in the world want to fly private jets to Monday's inauguration to pay tribute to Donald Trump, the very least they can do is to pay for the damage they are doing to our environment.

Per passenger, private jets pollute up to 14 times more than commercial flights, and they pollute 50 times more than trains, producing as much emissions as 5 million cars every single year. Do you hear that? Private jets emit as much pollution as 5 million cars a year.

Just a few hours of flying private offset the benefits of an entire year of driving an electric car. That is not fair.

In just 1 year, Elon Musk's two private jets produced nearly 5,500 tons of carbon emissions. That is more than 300 years' worth of emissions for the average American.

Everyday Americans should not have to subsidize the lavish lifestyle of the ultrarich. The world's wealthiest 1 percent burn through their entire carbon budget for the year in the first 10 days of January--10 days. So let's not let the 1 percent blow a $5 trillion hole in our Federal budget as well.

Republicans just spent the past 2 years complaining about the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet Republicans are preparing to spend trillions on tax breaks.

They want to feed billionaires' greed instead of the families who will go hungry when they cut SNAP. They want to grow billionaire excess while they cut people's healthcare, including the two-thirds of nursing home patients and 40 million children on Medicaid, and pursue work requirements that do little.

Let me just say this. Ronald Reagan, 1981? He set the playbook. Who followed it? Newt Gingrich, 1995. Who followed him? George W. Bush, 2021. Who followed him? Donald Trump, 2017. They each had the same plan because the Republicans have a remarkable ability to harness voluminous amounts of information to defend knowingly erroneous promises, and the central erroneous promise is that it is possible to dramatically increase defense spending, which they want to do and which those others guys did; cut taxes for the richest people in our country--that is what all these other guys did--and then to pretend with crocodile tears that they want to balance the budget because all that is left are the programs for regular families, for poor families.

We call it Medicaid. Do you want to hear another way of describing Medicaid? Two-thirds of all people in nursing homes are on Medicaid. Two-thirds of all people who are in nursing homes are being paid by Medicaid.

Do you want to know another number about them? Fifty percent of them have Alzheimer's.

How can families keep them in a nursing home? Medicaid.

Do you know another name we have for them? They are called Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa are in nursing homes with Alzheimer's because of Medicaid.

They want to cut that? Good. Come for it. We are ready for this discussion.

The poorest children in our country, 50 percent of all children in our country--50 percent--are on SNAP, on food stamps, at some point in their life. That is the poorest children in our country. That is who they are.

That is Medicaid. That is another way of talking about Medicaid--the poorest children, the most vulnerable seniors. That is the piggy bank they are going to use for tax breaks for billionaires. And they are then going to turn and say: We are going to the Affordable Care Act.

Do you know another way of talking about that? That is how people get the funding for opioid treatment and for mental health treatment. That is the Affordable Care Act. That is millions of people.

Yes, just slash it. Sure. Who needs to help families with mental health issues? Who needs to help families who have opioid addiction? Why do that?

Then they say: We are going to go to wind and solar, and we are going to cut that too. And we are going to keep the tax breaks for the oil and gas industry.

Kick them in the heart; you are going to break your toe. That is what this plan is all about. It is what the plan has always been about since 1981.

So we just can't let the ultrawealthy play while leaving hard-working Americans to pay with their healthcare, their financial security, and bearing the brunt of the climate atrocities.

We need economic justice. We need climate justice. We need wealthy polluters to pay, especially jet-setting billionaires who are polluting right now. And we need a system that works for the American people, not for the billionaire excess that the Republican Party is going to bring out to the Senate floor.

I yield to my friend from Rhode Island, a great leader, Senator Whitehouse.

Mr. President, I rise today to stop the unnecessary and devastating consequences that will result from a ban on TikTok in the United States. In a few moments, I will ask unanimous consent that the Senate pass my legislation with Senator Wyden and Senator Booker, the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, to extend the deadline by which ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, must sell TikTok or face a ban in 270 days.

This simple, one-sentence bill would avoid significant harm for TikTok's creators, who depend upon the app to make a living, to find community, to share resources during emergencies such as the Los Angeles wildfires, and to discuss everything from the latest pop culture trends to controversial political topics.

It is the home to 170 million American users--170 million American users. That is over half of the U.S. population and 65 percent of the United States adult population. It is 50 percent higher than the number of Americans who watch the Super Bowl.

Those 170 million Americans will be devastated by a TikTok ban. Many make their living on the app and could face difficulties paying for groceries, rent, or medical care. Others may lose contact with a crucial support system, leaving them isolated and scared.

If you don't believe me, then I encourage my colleagues to view the thousands of videos posted by TikTok users over the past few days explaining why TikTok is so important to them. These testimonials are powerful evidence about TikTok's economic, social, and cultural importance, and I implore my colleagues to listen to these users.

Now, supporters of the TikTok ban will claim that any delay will threaten national security and allow China to, supposedly, indoctrinate the youth with anti-American views.

First, I stand behind no lawmaker here in my commitment to protecting children online. I am the original author of the only Federal online protection for children today: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. And I have authored legislation to update and modernize those protections. My Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act to lift it up to age 16, that was blocked here on the Senate floor just 1 month ago in December. We had it out of committee. We could not get it passed.

And I repeatedly sent letters to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice urging them to investigate and impose penalties on TikTok for putting their younger users at risk. When TikTok violates the law and puts its users at risk, I will call them out and I will demand accountability. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission has fined TikTok for violation of my law, so, obviously, I am concerned.

But I am also concerned about what American social media companies do to teenagers. They do the same thing. I am very concerned about what they do to young children. According to the Surgeon General, we have a mental health crisis in our country, pointing the finger at social media--not one company, but all the companies that are targeting teenagers and children in our country.

As for the national security arguments, I recognize that ByteDance's ownership of TikTok poses security risks. I do not want China to have significant influence over an important communications channel in the United States and access to Americans' data, but Congress must appropriately balance those risks with the serious hardship imposed on TikTok's 170 million American users and the unintended consequences of a nationwide TikTok ban.

With the impending TikTok ban, Congress has gotten that balance wrong, and most importantly, the proponents of the ban have repeatedly argued that TikTok is ``brainwashing Americans,'' but these claims are, at best, just speculation. At worst, they are a disguised effort to target Americans' speech.

So don't take it from me. In an affidavit in the District of Columbia Circuit, a senior intelligence officer stated that the government has ``no information'' that China coerced ByteDance to covertly manipulate content on TikTok. That is coming from our own government. That alone should make us pause.

This is in the DC Circuit Court. They are not lying to a circuit court. So they don't have any information with regard to that accusation.

Even worse, rather than addressing China's supposed influence over a key communications channel, the TikTok ban appears to be driving users to alternative Chinese applications which we know even less about. In fact, on Monday, RedNote--a China social media app--became the No. 1 most downloaded app on the Apple app store.

Is that the outcome that the law's supporters were seeking or thought about?

The TikTok ban not only threatens to shut down a platform critical for 170 million Americans, but also, 7 million American businesses use TikTok. They use it as part of their business. All of that will shut down on Sunday, 4 days from now--just shut down--7 million businesses who use it.

And it is taking effect, at least in parts of America, at the single worst period of time, a moment when TikTok creators in Los Angeles are using the app to share their stories and find resources during the tragic wildfires; a moment when a new President is set to take office with different views on the ban--and President-elect Trump is asking for a pause right now, asked the Supreme Court of the United States for a pause--Donald Trump--a moment when the Supreme Court is still considering the case, hasn't even rendered a decision yet; a moment when the first official bid for TikTok was just submitted last week.

It is time for Congress to acknowledge that the rushed passage of this law was a mistake. There were no hearings in the Senate. There were no witnesses in the Senate. No one got to hear anything about this ban because they put it into the bill that was going to provide military aid for Ukraine, for Israel--humanitarian aid--and they just stuck the TikTok ban into the legislation over in the House of Representatives to send it over here.

We never had a hearing. We never had any consideration. And it is time for Congress to acknowledge that the rushed passage of this law was a mistake, that we need more time to let the courts and outside parties consider this issue. We need to do a better job of understanding the importance of the TikTok community and the impact of a TikTok ban.

That is why I introduced the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act. This bill does not repeal the underlying act. It simply gives TikTok, Congress, the people here in the Senate, parties that might want to buy TikTok, the incoming Trump administration--he himself

is asking for an extension--and outside stakeholders additional time to get this right.

We need time. We need time to figure this out. The court process is still going on for something that started last April. That would never have been expected to have occurred. We don't have any certainty as to the outcome, one way or the other.

If this had happened in September, October, or November--out of the courts--we could have then deliberated before the deadline on Sunday, 4 days from now. But it didn't happen that way.

So to the millions of creators who have bravely shared their stories and explained why TikTok is important to them, I hear you, I am listening, and I encourage my colleagues to listen as well and to give a short reprieve to TikTok's death sentence.

TikTok is far too important to let it die like this on Sunday without having given the extra time which is needed--time for President-elect Trump, time for everyone to think about what an alternative pathway could be to letting TikTok die.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 103, introduced earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am disappointed that my colleagues have objected to this simple legislation. I recognize the national security risk here. But the fearmongering about the supposed anti-American content on TikTok is the exact type of government overreach that has left tens of millions of Americans furious. The hyperbolic statements made by my colleagues are especially concerning, given that the intelligence community itself has acknowledged that it has no information that China is covertly manipulating content on TikTok--no information.

Let me say that again: In the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the government was asked to present evidence that ByteDance was covertly manipulating content on TikTok for the benefit of the Chinese Government, and the intelligence community submitted an affidavit saying that the government has no information that it is being manipulated.

So as we are out here today--by the way, that would change the whole debate. If they had information, we would be having a different debate. If there were proof that they were manipulating, provided by the intelligence community, we would be having a different debate. They don't have any information.

And I sat in the same intelligence briefings that my colleagues did, and I kept waiting to hear that information. I never heard it. I don't think it is giving up secrets to say: I didn't hear any secrets.

I didn't hear them because there weren't any. And they made that filing in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. They have no information.

And I have read the reports and news articles. I have tracked the court case closely. I am clear-eyed about the risk. But unlike many of my colleagues, I am also clear-eyed about the profound economic, political, and social importance of TikTok to 170 million users and 7 million businesses in the United States, and I understand how many creators depend on TikTok to find community, share their story, find resources.

So my ask again here is simple: 270 days, and we can try to find a resolution of this issue that doesn't have a draconian cutoff on Sunday afternoon.

So this is the issue that we are confronted with at this point. We don't have the evidence that is being cited by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It doesn't exist. They may believe it, but they don't have the evidence to present to this body because the intelligence community has not provided it. Otherwise, again, as I am saying, we would have a very different debate.

And this is a very important issue because the Supreme Court just had a hearing--it is unbelievable that it is 9 months later--on the constitutionality of your ban. So I think that the colleagues of mine who spoke on the other side, they are saying: Well, they should have already sold it.

Well, they took it to court to find out if this law was constitutional. They have a right to do that. They have a right to go to the Supreme Court. They have a right to have a hearing. They have a right to make their case. They have a right to say it is unconstitutional. It hasn't been ruled on yet. It hasn't been ruled on.

And so because of that, all I am asking for is more time.

Listen to Donald Trump. He is saying: Give it more time.

That is all I am asking for.

And I will say, as well, when my friend cites suicides and other incredible consequences of social media in our society, I do agree with him 100 percent. But it is not just TikTok. It is Instagram. It is Facebook. It is company after company after company that is targeting 14-year-old girls with bulimia, with anorexia, with information that is making them even sicker and sicker and sicker. That is why, when my bill was killed here in December to pass a law which said that parents can just say: Erase all that information you are gathering about my daughter--and it is the third Congress in a row that happened. Yes, TikTok should be stopped, and so should Facebook, and so should Instagram--so should all of them.

But just don't raise it in a TikTok context. Raise it in a Senate context.

That law should have passed. That should have already been on the President's desk. And it was bipartisan. It was bipartisan. You want to talk about lobbyists. You want to talk about stopping legislation.

So I agree with the gentleman on the fundamental fact that TikTok is a contributor to this problem, but it is a part of a larger problem. And I also want to make the point that there is no imminent threat of a compromise of this information that we are talking about here today because the intelligence community does not, in fact, have the information to say that that is accurate.

So I agree with Donald Trump. Give it more time. Allow for the process to play out. Allow for the Supreme Court to make a decision. Allow for potential buyers to step forth. Allow for the users of TikTok, the 7 million businesses that use it for their own families-- allow for the families in the fire zone in L.A. to continue to use it to build community, to run their small businesses, and not cut it off on Sunday. And that is what I have been asking the Senate to do.

So I regret that the objection has been raised by my colleagues. But I tell you there is going to be real harm, and my hope is that I can partner with President-elect Trump to try to find a resolution of this issue so that we do it with the information that, right now, we do not have to take such an action.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, as we go forward in this new session of Congress, I would hope very much that there will be a serious focus on the crises facing the working families of our country. We are the wealthiest nation on Earth. In fact, we are the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. Yet, today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had. Sixty percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck. The life expectancy of working people is far below that in other wealthy countries. Eighty-five million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Some 800,000 Americans are homeless. Twenty-five percent of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on Earth. Further, we remain, shamefully, the only wealthy country not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.

Meanwhile, while working families struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills, the wealthiest people in our country have never, ever had it so good. We are now in the absurd situation, the grossly unjust situation, where the 3 wealthiest people on top own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, some 170 million people. The 3 people on top have more wealth than 170 million on the bottom. That is not what America is supposed to be about.

In truth, there are a number of reasons why we are living in a nation today where the wealth of the billionaire class is exploding while the working class of our country struggles to keep their heads above water. There are many causes as to why, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, real weekly wages for the average American worker are less today than they were 50 years ago--real weekly wages are less than they were 50 years ago--and why, during that period, there was a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent.

Now, a lot of the reasons as to why the very rich are becoming richer and working-class families are struggling have to do with disastrous trade policies which have resulted in the loss of millions of good- paying jobs. The failure of Congress to raise the minimum wage to a living wage is another reason why millions and millions of workers today are forced to try to survive on starvation wages. Furthermore, we are seeing and have seen aggressive and often illegal union-busting activities on the part of major employers. All of those reasons, and more, are issues that we have to deal with.

Today, I want to focus on one more reason as to why the working class of this country is struggling, and that has to do with the H-1B guest worker program.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, with a net worth of nearly $430 billion, and other multibillionaires in the high-tech industry claim that the H-1B Federal guest worker program is vital to our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled engineers and other technology workers in the United States. In other words, what they say is that they are trying desperately to find highly skilled American workers to do their jobs; just can't find them; just not there.

In my view, Musk and the other billionaires who are strongly supporting the H-1B Program are dead wrong. American workers are there; they are just not looking for them.

In my view, the main function of the H-1B Program is not to hire the best and the brightest. That is the theory--we have to bring in the best and the brightest to help our companies function and grow wealth in America. That is the theory, but in truth, the reality of what the H-1B Program is, is to replace good-paying American jobs with hundreds of thousands of lower paid guest workers from abroad who are often treated as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers, the more money the multibillionaire owners of large corporations make. In other words, this program is not only grossly unfair to American workers; in many ways, it is unfair to foreign workers as well.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 2022 and 2023, the top 30 companies using the H-1B Program laid off 85,000 American workers while simultaneously bringing in over 34,000 guest workers from abroad.

In 2019 and 2020, 85 percent of H-1B visas were awarded to entry level and junior guest workers, who are paid between 20 to 40 percent less than American workers in similar occupations.

So, No. 1, it is simply not true that the H-1B Program focuses on the very rare and highly skilled workers that American companies cannot find. Eighty-five percent, to repeat, of H-1B visas were awarded to entry level and junior guest workers, and they are paid 20 to 40 percent less than American workers in similar occupations.

Let me just give you a few examples as to how unfair the H-1B Program is. In Dallas, TX, H-1B software developers are making $44,000 less than American workers doing the exact same job. This is information from the U.S. Department of Labor.

In Houston, TX, H-1B accountants--I did not know, to be honest with you, that we had a scarcity in accountants, but be that as it may, H-1B accountants are paid nearly $40,000 less than American accountants doing the exact same work.

In Santa Barbara, CA, H-1B workers who are hired as computer system engineers make just $45,000 a year. Does that sound like the kind of salary that would bring forth some extremely, highly skilled people for jobs that American workers cannot fill? Madam President, you tell me. Why would a corporation hire an American computer systems engineer at a salary of $110,000 a year when it is $65,000 cheaper to hire an H-1B worker for that same exact position?

That is basically what this whole debate is about, and that is that large corporations are paying foreign workers substantially lower salaries than they are paying American workers. Madam President, if you want to know why multibillionaire owners of high-tech companies love the H-1B Program so much, that is the reason why. They are using this program to substantially undercut the wages of American workers.

Moreover, there are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new information technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers. According to the Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions. In other words, we tell kids ``Go out and get involved in STEM work. Become a scientist. Become an engineer. Become a mathematician,'' whatever, and then we bring in people from abroad to fill the jobs they were educated to do.

Adding insult to injury, half of the top 30 H-1B employers are companies whose major function in life is to outsource jobs, known in the industry as body shops. In other words, the same companies that are involved with supplying American companies with cheap foreign labor at home are the same exact companies that provide even cheaper labor to corporations when they move abroad. They are two sides of the same coin.

Madam President, if there is truly a major shortage of skilled tech workers in this country, as Elon Musk and others have argued, why did Tesla lay off over 7,500 American workers last year, including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, TX, while, at the same time, applying to hire thousands of H-1B guest workers? If these jobs are only going to the ``best and the brightest,'' why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000 a year, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year?

I will admit, I am not a rocket scientist. But, to my mind, those occupations don't sound like highly specialized jobs that are primarily for the top 0.1 percent, as Mr. Musk claimed last month.

If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as fashion models, lawyers, dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers? One might think that, in the United States of America, we could find English teachers and not need to bring in people from abroad. Further, does anyone really believe that in America we do not have enough lawyers and need to bring in more attorneys from abroad?

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we need fundamental changes in our economic policies. We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one small but very important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms to the H-1B Program in order to benefit American workers.

That is why I have filed an amendment to the Laken Riley bill that we are debating this week that will do just that. I hope very much that the leaders agree on allowing that amendment to be debated and voted upon. Let me very briefly describe what this amendment does in terms of reforming the H-1B Program.

First, this amendment would double the major H-1B fee that corporations pay before they can hire guest workers from abroad. This provision would generate over $370 million in revenue each year. And what would we use that revenue for? Well, it would be used to provide nearly 20,000 scholarships each and every year for American students pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, math, and other fields vital to the competitiveness of our Nation.

If the Members of this body truly believe we need H-1B visas in order to compensate for a shortage of skilled American professionals, this amendment will attract tens of thousands of America's best and brightest young people into those fields.

Second, this amendment requires corporations to substantially increase wages for the jobs they need before they would be allowed to hire H-1B guest workers. Specifically, this amendment would raise the prevailing wage for the H-1B Program to at least the median local wage. In other words, if the H-1B Program is truly meant for ``the best and the brightest,'' it should not be used as a tool to undercut the wages of highly skilled American workers. And that is what this amendment would prevent.

Third, this amendment would prohibit corporations from replacing laid-off American workers with H-1B guest workers from overseas. Corporations that are engaged in mass layoffs should not be allowed to replace American workers with guest workers.

Finally, this amendment would prevent corporations from treating H-1B guest workers, for all intents and purposes, as indentured servants.

Under current law, H-1B guest workers are often locked into lower paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair, or illegal working conditions. That is unacceptable, and that has got to change. This amendment would make H-1B visas portable and give guest workers the ability to easily change jobs.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy and others have argued that we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce. I agree. But the answer is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad through the H-1B Program. The answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future.

The bottom line: It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker at home. And that is what this amendment is all about.

Let's be clear. Thirty years ago, the leaders of corporate America, the political establishment in both major parties, and the editorial boards of the most influential papers in our country told us not to worry about the loss of millions of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of unfettered free-trade agreements like NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China: Don't worry about the loss of those jobs.

And the reason they told us not to worry is that that job loss would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States.

Yes, they said, you lose blue-collar manufacturing jobs, but not to worry. We will create zillions of good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs.

I, personally, was a Member of Congress at that time and never believed that. And I helped lead the effort against NAFTA and PNTR with China. Unfortunately, I and the many others who opposed those trade agreements were proven correct. NAFTA and PNTR cost us millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs as large corporations shut down here in America and fled to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries in search of cheap labor.

And what about all of those great high-tech jobs that supposedly were going to be created? Well, that didn't quite happen either.

As a result of the H-1B guest worker program and other guest worker programs, major corporations are now importing hundreds of thousands of lower paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are currently available.

In other words, heads, billionaires wins; tails, American workers lose.

In my view, we can and must change that reality. A good place to start

would be to pass this amendment and put American workers first. Multibillionaires and Big Tech should not be allowed to hire guest workers to fill entry-level and mid-level information technology jobs. Those jobs should be going to American workers who have, among other things, the constitutional right to form unions and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Madam President, I will be asking for a rollcall vote on this amendment, and I hope very much we can get it to the floor. In my view, the time has come for the American people to know which side their Senators stand on this issue.

In order to accomplish that goal, I very much appreciated the statement Majority Leader Thune gave on the floor of the Senate last November about the need for more amendment votes in the Senate. Here is what the majority leader said on November 14 with respect to the amendment process:

[A]ll Members of the Senate--and not just the Members of a

particular committee--should have a voice in final

legislation through amendments on the floor. Members should

assume that amendment votes will be the norm. That will mean

taking tough votes at times, but that is part of our jobs.

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

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join my colleagues on the same topic to talk about the forthcoming debate that we will have about tax policies in this Chamber. Since coming to Congress--really before, when I was a mayor and Governor--I advocated for smart, simple pro-growth and pro- family tax reform. Taxes should be fair. They should be consistent. They should be predictable. And they should generate the revenue that America needs to fund Social Security, Medicare, education, roads, national security, and the other critical investments that matter to our constituents.

I repeat what some of my colleagues said. In 2017, during the first Trump administration, after the failed effort to take health insurance away from more than 20 million people and deprive all Americans of being protected from discrimination by insurance companies if they had preexisting conditions--and thank goodness that reconciliation effort failed when three Republicans joined Democrats to block that effort-- the Trump administration colleagues turned to the idea of tax reform.

Democrats were very willing to work on deficit-neutral, pro-growth tax reform. But instead, Republicans chose: We don't want to have a committee process. We don't want to include Democrats. We want to write a bill, and we will write a bill that will pass partisan tax cuts that will dramatically expand the deficit.

At this time--and I know my colleagues remember this--economists were saying that America's corporate tax rate of 35 percent was high compared to global averages. So there was some suggestion that what we should do is lower the corporate tax rate to put it more in tune with what other nations were charging. There is a little bit of an apples to oranges difficulty in doing that because other nations use a VAT tax that we don't use.

Most economists said if we wanted to make our corporate tax rate equivalent to other nations, we should try to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to, like, 28 percent. And many of my businesses in Virginia were coming to me saying: We have to be more competitive. We have to have a corporate tax rate that matches up more with global norms. Cut the global tax rate to 28 percent.

Instead, even though companies were only asking for that reduction, our Republican colleagues plummeted and slashed the corporate tax rate not to 28 percent, not to 25 percent but to 21 percent. And they didn't even pay for it--didn't even pay for it. As Senator Murphy said, just racked up higher deficits.

There were a few individual tax cuts in this bill. If you look at the bill from 2017, it was mostly corporate tax cuts. There were a few, in that pie chart, individual tax cuts. But they were heavily tilted toward the wealthy, as my colleagues have described. Analysis at the time showed households in the top 1 percent would get an average tax cut of $60,000, while households in the bottom 60 percent averaged only $500 each.

The bill also left out our Nation's poorest children. Nearly 20 million children were left out of the full value of the child tax credit because it was not made refundable. Democrats demonstrated in the American Rescue Plan that when you expand the Child Tax Credit and allow it to be refundable, you could lead to a revolutionary drop in child poverty when it was in effect. But Republicans took a different route.

And on top of these inequities, that the bill was too heavily weighted toward corporations, too light toward individuals, and with individuals, too heavily weighted toward the wealthy

rather than lower and middle-income people, the Republican bill in 2017 did another thing that was entirely unjustified. The bill made the corporate tax cuts permanent and the individual tax cuts temporary. So big, permanent corporate tax cuts; tiny, temporary, heavily skewed individual tax cuts.

During the debate, I offered a simple amendment that virtually all my Democratic colleagues voted for. And we said: Hey, look, let's go ahead and reduce the corporate tax rate, but let's not reduce it to 21 percent. If we reduce it to 25 percent, which is a big reduction, we can make these individual tax cuts for everyday people permanent, so at least the individual tax cuts to everyday people would be permanent, like the corporate tax cuts. All of my Republican colleagues opposed it. The Senate was majority Republican so we were stuck with a bad bill.

And that brings us to today. Republicans are debating how to ram another $4.6 trillion tax cut through the Senate. I will remind my colleagues that when the Senate Republicans did this in 2017, they were really proud because they thought it would help them in the 2018 midterms. I think it was heavily driven by an electoral strategy. What they found is after about 90 days of talking about it, the American public was so mad that these tax cuts went to the wealthy rather than everyday people that they dropped it as a campaign issue to talk about other things and still lost badly in those midterms.

The proposed extensions are going to tilt toward the wealthy, as my colleagues indicated. But get this, the deficit effects that are likely to be felt in some of these distributional effects President Trump is proposing, why not mitigate those by jacking up tariffs? OK. So we are going to do tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, but we are also going to do tariffs. And whom will tariffs impact? President-elect Trump often says tariffs won't affect Americans; it will hurt China and Mexico. But once the election was over, he acknowledged that he can't guarantee American families won't be affected by costs of tariffs.

I am going to guarantee this. If President Trump moves forward with broad-based universal tariffs, and they are not defeated in this body, American families will suffer. American families will pay the cost. We know it because we have seen it before. Study after study shows American consumers bore the brunt of Trump's first trade war, and this time it will be even more. Projections suggest that the tariffs will impact American families to the tune of either between $2,500 and $4,000 per American household in additional costs. So $2,500 compared to this tiny, little tax benefit that everyday Americans will experience.

Talk about salt in a wound.

We are going to do a tax bill for the wealthiest when they don't need it, not do much for everyday people who do need it but put on the shoulders of those same people tariffs that are going to increase the cost of goods. Imagine coming out of COVID and other things and having this kind of burden put on your shoulders.

There is a better path. Let me give you an example. Democrats are going to work with Republicans to do tax reform that will be fair. Just last year, we saw bipartisan negotiations in the House and how those negotiations can lead to more balanced, more smart, better for the deficit, bipartisan priorities.

Our colleague Senator Wyden was able to reach a deal with House Chair Jason Smith on a bipartisan tax package that would have lifted children out of poverty--the child tax credit--that would have incentivized investment into research and development, good for companies who then innovate, and that is good for jobs.

And also the third piece of this tax bill that was bipartisan would have expanded our ability to build affordable housing. And it was fully paid for.

This bill got 357 votes in the House. We can't get that for a Mother's Day resolution in the House of Representatives. But then it died here in the Senate because Republicans didn't want to take the bill up because they wanted to wait to do a bill that would benefit the wealthiest.

I urge my colleagues: You made a mistake before in 2017 by going down a path that busted the deficit and made the American voters really mad. Don't go down that path again. Work with us to find a tax bill that will appropriately prioritize the needs of everyday American citizens and small businesses.

I yield the floor.

I would yield for a question from my colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I will just direct it, and my answer is going to reveal my naivete because my corporate sector in Virginia--and my companies were like everybody's companies--were saying: Hey, drop that 35 percent rate to 28. I may have had one that said to 25, but they were basically saying: If you do it at 28, we are going to be equivalent to other nations.

When the bill was put on the table--and, remember, we got it with handwritten interlineations late in the evening when we didn't even have an ability to even decipher what some of the handwritten interlineations were, but we realized they had dropped it to 21 percent. I almost thought it was a typo. It was one of these handwritten things. I thought it was a typo because the companies were only asking for 28 percent. Then I looked further in this massive bill, and I realized that all the individual tax cuts were tiny, temporary, and expiring rather than being big and permanent.

So I went to my colleagues, and I said: Have I got a great idea for you. You can take all of these individual tax cuts, if you shave off some of the ones to the most wealthy, and you can make them permanent and still do what the corporations had wanted us to do by having a corporate tax rate equivalent to other nations.

I thought I was being helpful. I had a solution to a math problem that I thought they were going to like. Instead, what they said is, no, it has got to be 21 percent and these individuals are going to be weighted to the wealthy and they are going to be temporary.

I would be glad to yield.

I hope we can take this up in the Budget Committee. I have some Budget Committee colleagues who are here on the floor. Senator Whitehouse has been the lead Democrat on the Budget Committee for some time and is now at the helm of another committee. But Senator Merkley, who spoke passionately a couple of minutes ago, is now the lead Democrat on the Budget Committee. We need to take up the issue of these tax cuts as proposed and explore what the long-term consequences will be.

The consequence will be to bust the deficit. The consequence will be to put dollars in the hands of those who don't need them and take dollars out of the hands of those who do when you combine it with the tariff effect, but the consequence will also be significant on the national debt.

As Senator Murphy said during his comments, the national debt gets financed, and it gets financed in ways that ends up coming back. And who pays for it? Everyday folks. So you will have a compounding effect on everyday folks where they will not get tax relief. They may see their taxes increase. They will see their prices go up with this tariff blitz, and then they will end up being saddled with the consequences of debt.

We should take the time to do this right. We should take the time to do--again, I use the example of what the Finance Committee did last year on the R&D tax credit, the child tax credit, and the low-income housing tax credit. It is not that that bill was perfect, and it is not that it included everything that you might want to include, but it is an example of you don't have to jam this through with one party holding the pen and excluding the other party. You can do a tax bill that can get 357 votes in the House of Representatives on something that will be paid for, not increase the deficit, that will help businesses innovate, help children get a good start in life, and help people afford affordable housing. If you do it the right way, we will come up with a good plan, and I hope that we will.

I will yield for another question.

Precisely zero, even though that phrase that ``they will pay for themselves'' or that ``they have paid for themselves'' was used all the time, but no one would, under oath, say that that actually happened.

It reminds me of a great political maxim. I think it was Eugene McCarthy, a former Senator, who once said the issues candidate is the one who says the word ``issues'' the most times.

Just saying these cuts will pay for themselves is not the same as its being true. It wasn't true in the 2017 tax cuts, and we could never find any credible witness who would come and testify to that effect.

With that, I have other colleagues on the floor who are ready and raring to go, and I yield to them.

Mr. President, President Biden's open border policies have created a national security, humanitarian, and drug catastrophe in our country. In 2023, law enforcement encounters at the border found 169 people on the FBI's Terrorist Watchlist. In previous years, under the Trump administration, that number was in the single digits. We have had 10.5 million border encounters since Biden took office.

On a single day in December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 12,600 people trying to illegally enter into our country. That is just along the southern border--12,600. It set an alltime, single-day record for the number of people trying to break into our country.

In years past, administration officials have said: If there are 1,000 people encountered at our southern border trying to get in, that is a crisis.

So 12,600 is a catastrophe.

Record amounts of deadly drugs have also flown into our country since President Biden opened our borders. We experienced this directly in Nebraska. In 2019, when I was Governor, Nebraska law enforcement took 46 pills laced with fentanyl off of our streets--46. Then, after Biden became President, in just the first 6 months of 2021, Nebraska law enforcement took 151,000 pills off our streets--from 46 to 151,000.

While I was Governor, after Biden became President, we saw that our law enforcement started confiscating twice as much methamphetamine, 3 times as much fentanyl, and 10 times as much cocaine because of our open southern border and the cartels taking advantage of it.

And just like all around the country, our young people paid the price as well. Taryn Lee Griffith was a young mom of two who took a pill that was laced with fentanyl and died because of it. The single largest killer of Americans 18 to 45 is fentanyl overdose, all facilitated by President Biden's open border policies along our southern border.

Jose Ibarra was a different kind of problem. Jose Ibarra was a Venezuelan national who crossed our border illegally in the Texas area and asked for asylum.

His wife said he just wanted a better job, but regardless, the Biden administration released him into this country. He was bused to New York City, and there he was arrested for ``acting in a manner to endanger a child under the age of 17.''

However, New York City is a sanctuary city. He was not detained or deported, as he ought to have been. He was released. He made his way to Georgia, and once again he was arrested; this time for shoplifting. But once again he was not detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

And because he was not, he went on to brutally murder Laken Riley. This

tragedy could have been avoided if President Biden had been protecting our southern border, if illegal immigrants were being detained and deported. People who break the laws in our country need to be held accountable. That is what the Laken Riley Act does.

It requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain people who are breaking our laws. When people come here illegally, and they are breaking our laws, they need to be held accountable. With the Laken Riley Act, if you are committing theft, burglary, shoplifting, you will be detained and tragedies like Laken Riley can be avoided.

This is just common sense that we need to enforce our laws. To me, it is common sense that we need to protect our borders. And thank goodness, starting in a few days, we will have a President who understands the safety of the American people is the priority, and President Trump will secure our borders.

The election results were overwhelming; President Trump has a mandate to secure our borders. Senate Republicans will stand up to help him do just that. The Laken Riley Act is our first step to be able to help him do that. And I call upon my colleagues from the other side of the aisle to continue to support this bill as they have done on the previous votes.

Let's get this bill passed. Let's make sure other families don't have to live through the tragedy that Laken Riley's family had to live through.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object. The Chinese Communist Party is our chief foreign adversary in the world and the only external existential threat to our Nation.

They threaten our freedom, our prosperity, our security, and our very way of life. When I was Governor of Nebraska, I was the first Governor to ban TikTok on State devices because of the threat it posed. Why did I do that? Well, because Xi Jinping said that he wants to replace us as the world leader. Dictators tend to say what they are going to do and try and do it. We should take him seriously.

TikTok is one of the ways that he is trying to do it, trying to undermine what we do around the world. The Chinese Communist Party wants to replace us; TikTok is one of the ways they are trying to influence our downfall.

As many as 150 million Americans use TikTok. Fifty-two percent of them say they regularly get news through TikTok, and we know that the CCP uses TikTok to slant the news. This is part of their propaganda.

Data shows, for example, my esteemed colleague from Arkansas referenced it, the anti-Semitism on TikTok. If you go back and look, you can see 50 times the posts on pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian content, 50 times the views, despite the fact that overwhelmingly Americans support Israel--the polling shows it--and that is just one of the issues that they get involved with.

We wouldn't allow any foreign adversary, TV stations, radio stations, or newspapers to reach 150 million Americans. Why are we allowing our chief adversary in the world, one that seeks our downfall, to have that kind of access? It makes absolutely no sense.

And, of course, the Chinese Communist Party has no free rights in America. Those belong to American citizens. We need to make sure we take a step against this. And last April, we did, overwhelmingly, bipartisan, bicameral because this Congress saw the threat that TikTok poses by the Chinese Communist Party being able to influence ByteDance because they have to. ByteDance is a Chinese company. It has to do whatever the Chinese Communist Party says. That is their law. They have to do what the Chinese Communist Party says, so, therefore, they push the propaganda.

As my colleague from Arkansas pointed out, they spy on Americans, collect data on Americans. So we saw a bipartisan effort, over 350 votes in the House, to pass this bill and, by the way, the same bipartisan support here in the Senate, passing 79 to 18.

The law gathered so much bipartisan, bicameral support because we recognized this was about keeping America and Americans safe; that ByteDance needed to divest TikTok so that we could be assured that the Chinese Communist Party wasn't pushing its propaganda or spying on us.

We acted with conviction against that threat, and of course we know from our classified briefings what that threat for TikTok was. And this threat is not something far off or imagined. We have seen TikTok's interference in elections elsewhere around the world, most recently in Romania. The European Commission just opened an investigation on TikTok's failure to limit election interference in Romania's election, and that has caused all sorts of disruption in that country.

India has banned TikTok for the very same reason that they are seeing the push of Chinese propaganda slants on their news media the same way we see it here in America.

Albania, worried about Romania, banned TikTok. We passed a law that did not ban TikTok. We passed a law that said you have to have an American owner like, I don't know, radio stations, TV stations, newspapers. The Senator from Massachusetts would like to give us a 270- day extension. What is going to be different? What is going to be different?

ByteDance has had 270 days, and rather than making legitimate attempts to find a buyer--and, by the way, you all recall the news stories when this law was being discussed and being passed. There were a number of Americans who said they would be interested in buying them. ByteDance didn't do anything.

Rather than looking for an American buyer, they decided to hire an army of lobbyists and lawyers to try and subvert the will of the Congress. They spent the last 270 days trying to avoid being sold. As my colleague said, the Chinese Communist Party will not let them be sold.

That, in and of itself, should tell you everything you need to know about this. If the Chinese Communist Party is refusing ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American buyer, you know they are using it to push their propaganda and to collect data on us. They don't want those algorithms coming to America because then they will be exposed. That is what this is about.

This is a national security threat. That is why we took action last April. They have had these 270 days. They did nothing with them. To extend would mean nothing as well, except give the Chinese Communist Party another 270 days to push their propaganda and to spy on more Americans.

Finally, today, in our Foreign Relations Committee hearing, we had the confirmation hearing for Senator Rubio, who has been nominated for Secretary of State.

I asked him in his confirmation hearing earlier today why average Americans in Nebraska should care about the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to our way of life, and he had a great response, and I want to read it here.

He said:

If we stay on the road we're on right now, in less than ten

years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will

depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not.

Folks, this is a clear test of whether America is going to get off that road. Are we willing to change direction? Are we willing to say to the Chinese Communist Party enough, no further, not now? We are changing. We are getting away from the bad practices of the past that the Chinese Communist Party is taking advantage of.

Let's send a clear signal to Beijing that America's national security is going to take priority. Let's stand strong. Let's remember, we passed this law for a reason, and it is to keep Americans safe, and, therefore, I object.

I just want to briefly build upon my colleague from Arkansas.

Two quick points: One, our colleague from Massachusetts has called this a TikTok ban. That is inaccurate. The law that was passed, as my colleague pointed out, was about foreign adversaries and required TikTok to be sold to an American owner.

If it had been sold, TikTok could continue to be in operation. And my understanding is, even if it is forced to close down because it hasn't sold by Sunday, if it is sold in the future, it will be able to reestablish operations, as long as it is to an American buyer.

So it is not a ban.

The reason it is a ban is because TikTok and the Chinese Communist Party chose to make it a ban. ByteDance has not tried to parallel-path this, which was my colleague from Massachusetts' point. They could have been trying to sell it, the same time they were going through the court, and had that ready. In fact, they could have written a document saying: I am only going to sell if the Supreme Court says I have to. They could have found a buyer and written a contract that way-- absolutely. They didn't have to make this a ban.

And with regard to my colleague from Massachusetts' other point, I did offer a proof point based upon data here in the United States about how TikTok pushes a Chinese Communist Party agenda to push their propaganda. In this case, it was anti-Semitism against Israel by promoting pro-Hamas, the terrorist group, posts--its posts--and then pro-Palestinian posts versus Israeli pro-Israel ones. So I gave data there.

But this is exactly the same kind of pushing of propaganda which has led, I presume, India to ban TikTok, as well, because the Chinese Communist Party is doing the same thing to them.

So a couple of points on this, and, again, I don't think anything will be different 270 days from now because the Chinese Communist Party will not allow TikTok to be sold because their algorithm would be exposed.

With that, I would just end by saying that China must be deterred.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, yesterday I came to the floor of the U.S. Senate to talk about the importance of promptly confirming President Trump's Cabinet. The American people having voted for President Trump, having said that they are unhappy with the direction the country is going in is entitled to his team to help him actually do what he said he would do during the campaign.

Well, today I would like to reiterate that message; but, in particular, I want to highlight some of the hypocrisy of our Democratic colleagues on this important matter as it pertains to our country's democratic processes.

We know that our colleagues are frequently warning that ways of the Republicans are allegedly undermining democracy, but this is like the little boy who cried wolf. If you cry wolf often enough, the people begin to believe that it is not really serious; and, indeed, it shouldn't be taken seriously in the case of the allegation that Republicans are somehow trying to undermine democracy.

Let me give you an example. Back in 2022, when Republicans passed State laws that included commonsense election integrity measures, like voter ID, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer criticized these initiatives, which were intended to ensure the integrity of our elections.

You would think that would be a no-brainer, that everybody would want to embrace measures that would protect the integrity of our elections. But he claimed somehow there was an attempt to suppress people from voting. Well, I remember it wasn't that long ago when Barbara Jordan, a Democrat from Texas, revered justly as an incredible leader for our State and country, along with James Baker III cochaired a commission that came out with voter ID as one of the consensus recommendations.

But now Democrats claim making sure that people are who they say they are and using the same sorts of things that you need in order to get on an airplane or to buy tobacco or a six-pack of beer, somehow that undermines democracy. It just doesn't make any sense.

But here is Senator Schumer on the Senate floor. He said, ``Republicans across the country are trying to stop the other side from voting. That tears apart, rips apart, the very fabric of our democracy.'' I can almost see him crying crocodile tears as he says that.

Well, I did a rough check a moment ago, and 152 million Americans voted in 2024. If Republicans were trying to suppress the vote, we are doing a lousy job because you are seeing historic numbers of people, a lot of whom have not made a practice of voting before, showed up at the ballot box this time because they hated the direction our country was going in and they felt like this was our last chance, perhaps, to save our country as we know it.

Well, the Senator from New York used this argument to advocate for changes to the Senate filibuster rule--the requirement you get 60 votes to close off debate--in order to pass what he called Federal voting rights legislation. Well, first of all, what it would have done, it would have preempted the States' laws when it came to voting practices and created a single uniform standard here at the Federal level, which would have prevented some of these commonsense measures like voter ID from taking place.

Well, President Biden also expressed the same sentiment. He pressed for the filibuster to be changed to advance the so-called voting rights package, saying that the package must be passed ``to defend our democracy.'' Well, actually, it would have made it easier to cheat.

Now, ironically, they used the same argument for democracy to undermine the Senate filibuster, which is one of the bedrocks of this institution. But what I have noticed is that if an issue can be framed as a threat to democracy, Democrats throw any other concerns out the window; hence, the sky is falling.

More recently, in 2023, Democrats brought up this same question of protecting democracy as a reason to advance legislation addressing artificial intelligence. Well, as it turns out, artificial intelligence has been around for decades. It has recently captured the popular imagination because technology has taken us to places we never dreamed we could go.

Well, in 2023, the Committee on Rules and Administration held a hearing on AI, and the Democratic leader said this:

If left unchecked--

Here he goes again. He said:

If left unchecked, [artificial intelligence]'s use in our

elections could erode our democracy from within and from

abroad, and the damage, unfortunately, could be irreversible.

That is a pretty common scare tactic. You scare people enough, well, maybe they are willing to let you do things that they, otherwise, wouldn't do upon calmer reflection.

He went on to stress the importance of Republicans and Democrats working together to protect and reinforce our democracy. We are for that. But here is what he said:

I can think of few issues that should both--unite both

parties faster than safeguarding our democracy . . . It will

take all of us, the Administration, the private sector,

Congress working together to protect our democracy, ensure

robust transparency and safeguards, and ultimately keep the

vision of our founders alive in the 21st century.

Well, taken at face value, that sounds pretty good until you start beginning to look at the details about what he says we need to do in order to accomplish that goal. That is where you see--begin to see the huge disconnect. It is in pursuit of another agenda.

Democrats have become the party that cried wolf--or excuse me--threat to democracy; and the more they say it, the less meaning it actually holds. For what it is worth, I agree that the administration of private sector and Congress should work together to protect rather than undermine democracy. But we do have some different perspectives or points of view about how we might do it. That is a laudable goal, but not in pursuit of a fairly cynical and partisan policy agenda.

There is a very tangible way that Democrats can join with us to do this, this week. They can cooperate with the President that the people elected as Commander in Chief of the United States by confirming his Cabinet. How is that for protecting democracy?

The opposite, which is to stonewall the President's Cabinet nominees, to burn as much time as possible before we are able to get that done, is not preserving and protecting democracy; it is undermining it.

Our Democratic colleagues never seem to lose an opportunity to say that whatever the subject, it is a threat to democracy. But here they are today participating in a campaign to stonewall President Trump's nominees, which I would argue is undermining the democratic process. It is denying an elected President of the United States, who won not only the electoral college vote but the popular vote as well--to deny him his team so he can actually get to work on January 20th doing what he was elected to do.

Just yesterday, Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader, came to the

floor to air his grievances on each of the President's nominees for the Cabinet. He argued that many of the policies they would implement would be disastrous. But the fact of the matter is the American people have chosen. They did that on November 5 when they went to the polls and they gave President Trump a substantial majority and even a mandate for a new direction in the country.

They repudiated the failed policies of the Biden administration, starting with what has been happening at the border, which is an unmitigated disaster from a public health and public safety point of view. And it would, indeed, be a threat to democracy if our Democrat colleagues chose to ignore the will of the voters and deny the President his Cabinet or delay it for no good reason and prevent these nominees from going to work to implement the policies that the American people elected President Trump to enact.

Unfortunately, this is sort of reflexive, it is kind of what our Democratic colleagues do. I have been amazed to listen on television and hear in-person for the last--however it has been--hour, Democratic colleagues who came to the floor to speak, but they didn't talk about the pending business, the Laken Riley Act.

This young woman was killed by an illegal immigrant who should not have been in the country. I asked Pam Bondi, who is the nominee for Attorney General, this morning during her confirmation hearing, I said: If President Biden and Harris had secured the border, do you think Laken Riley would still be alive? And she said, yes, together with many others who have been victimized by illegal immigrants who come across the border to do Americans harm in one way or another. Not all of them. But when you open the border to 10 or more million people with 2 million of them ``got-aways,'' evading law enforcement, you don't know what you are going to get.

Well, I take that back, you do know what you are going to get. You are going to get some people who do not intend to come here for a better way of life; they come here to rape and pillage and rob and to commit crimes.

Well, Republicans are tired of hearing excuse after excuse from our Democrats, some of these hearings are being delayed due to incomplete background checks, but ask yourself who is responsible for the background checks? Well, it is Joe Biden's FBI. The FBI owes it to the American people to work around the clock, 24/7, to get these background checks done on a timely basis.

Otherwise, we are, literally, undermining a democratically elected President.

So I would urge our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to heed their own words when it comes to confirming President Trump's Cabinet.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to talk a big talk about defending democracy, but I would like to see them put these commitments into practice by ending the undemocratic obstructionist tactics that they are using to deny this President his team.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we just locked in a vote on my amendment.

I would like to call up my amendment No. 14 to Senate amendment No. 8 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, I want to offer an amendment that would add one more crime to the list covered by this legislation, and that would be assault of a law enforcement officer.

Anyone who comes into the country illegally and harms these brave men and women in uniform is dangerous, and dangerous not only to our first responders but also to the safety and security of all Texans and communities all around the country.

Unfortunately, we know, under the Biden-Harris administration, these people who are committing these kinds of crimes are routinely being released back into the streets, as we saw last February in New York City when seven people were arrested for assaulting a police officer-- assaulting multiple police officers--outside of a migrant shelter in Times Square. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made the decision to release five of these criminal suspects without bail.

There is no question that these criminals should have been detained and removed before they could go on and commit other crimes against innocent victims.

My amendment simply would require ICE to promptly take migrants who assault law enforcement officers into custody and ensure that illegal migrants who commit crimes against the men and women in blue are swiftly detained so they can be removed from our country.

I urge adoption of my amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask for the yeas and nays.