Scarper Ridge Golden Gate National Recreation Area Boundary Adjustment Act

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, it is a shame that we don't have more of an opportunity to pass more bills, particularly bills that are not controversial. This is an opportunity that we should take to pass noncontroversial bills every time we get the chance.

We have four bills coming out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that we can, and I believe we

should, pass today--bills with no substantive objections that I am aware of, bills that have been cleared by both parties in the Senate, bills that will have positive impact for Americans--Americans that the bills themselves were designed to serve.

And yet, sadly, I am anticipating an objection today when I offer those up for passage. So why am I anticipating an objection? Well, I am looking forward to hearing from my colleague--my friend and colleague from New Mexico--Senator Heinrich, on what objections he might have to a bill from Senator Hawley that would designate America's National Churchill Museum in Missouri as a national historic landmark. I am looking forward to hearing from him what problems he might have with Senator Padilla's uncontroversial bill to adjust the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I am looking forward to hearing what changes he would propose to Senator Husted's bill, which simply adjusts the boundaries of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, or what he thinks would be harmed by passing a bill from Senator Gillibrand and Minority Leader Schumer, his own colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that would establish the Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historical Park.

All the bills that I am offering have passed out of this body and did, in fact, pass out of this body last year with unanimous support-- not just bipartisan but unanimous support. All are locally supported. All should be passed today.

And I fear they might not be, and I am really looking forward to why--looking forward to hearing why my colleague might want to stop these--because if there are real substantive objections to these bills, to any of them, bring them forward. I will be the first to work with him or others who may have concerns on those. Perhaps, then, we can work to improve the bill and resolve what concerns might exist around it to get it to a place where everyone is happy with it and where we could get something done for the American people.

After all, this is the business of law making. But I don't think we are likely to hear substantive objections today, based on what I have heard. I don't anticipate that my friend and colleague Senator Heinrich will offer substantive objections or changes that he wants made to these particular bills. I hope I am wrong.

But if he doesn't have any problems with the substance of the bills, then why not let them pass? Well, there is a tendency sometimes exhibited in the Senate, and I have seen it done by people of both political parties and by Members at different ends of the political continuum, from time to time. When Members want leverage, sometimes, they will reach for whatever is popular, in some cases even what is uncontroversial.

During the shutdown, we saw a parallel use of the technique with some using air traffic controllers, TSA officers, and Coast Guard families as pressure points because the public trusted those people and needs the services that they routinely and uniquely perform.

And, sometimes, Members--again, of both political parties and of every political persuasion--will sometimes use popular bills the same way. In other words, they will oppose popular, noncontroversial bills not because they are controversial or unpopular but because they are uncontroversial and popular. They are blocked because their broad support makes them useful cargo for a lands package or another aggregated legislative vehicle packed with measures that might not withstand scrutiny under the light of day if they were considered on their own or even when paired with a small handful of other bills.

Instead of moving bills off the floor one by one or two by two in a transparent, bipartisan process, some would prefer a really big omnibus package, often prepared by staff behind closed doors, where only a few Senators and no members of the public are participating or even allowed to participate. Then Members are told to take it or leave it in its entirety--up or down, binary choice, no other option, no amendments, no adequate time for debate. Simply, take it all or leave it all, even the uncontroversial and the popular.

Now, this puts many of us--particularly, those of us from public lands States, like Utah, where the Federal Government owns two-thirds of the land--in a difficult position. In States like mine, almost every action requires some sort of ``Mother, may I'' from the Federal Government.

This is not a process that can continue, at least not one that can continue without causing a lot of other problems. So as chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, I have set out to change that. I have set out to--at least with regard to noncontroversial bills that have passed the Senate in the last year, unanimously, it is a good place to start--where there is consensus, because there is consensus.

My aim is to build on the progress from last year, when this body passed out 41 bills, and to that end, I have suggested that we start by passing the bills, at least a few of them, paired Republican and Democrat bills at the same time--bills that passed the Senate unanimously last year, including bills that the ranking member himself agreed to less than a year ago.

And, again, if there is a policy objection, then let's hear it. I am more than willing to work with you to address whatever substantive objections there might be.

But these bills should pass in the light of day, where every Member-- Republican or Democrat or Independent--could be part of the process.

This has been going on, back and forth, in one way or another for a few months. In May, I came to the floor and asked unanimous consent to pass two Republican bills alongside two Democrat bills, both of which, like the bills that are at issue today, passed the Senate unanimously last year. Now, this drew an objection from the other side of the aisle.

And in July I came to the floor again and offered to work with the ranking member on these bills. I offered two additional Republican and two Democrat bills that passed out of this body last year, also with unanimous support, and it drew the same objection.

Now, as always, I have offered to work with the ranking member and the minority if they have any substantive concerns on any of these bills, and I make that offer again now. But as you may see in just a moment--as I suspect we will see; I can't tell the future--I haven't heard any substantive policy concerns with them.

Now, a small minority of Members who want to block bills--including bills supported by, introduced by, sponsored by Members of their own caucus--just because they want them in a broader package isn't going to cut it.

Now, 2 weeks ago, you had the junior Senator from Alaska, Senator Sullivan, who came to the floor and asked consent to pass his bill to give Alaska Native Vietnam veterans the land they earned and have long been owed. At the request of Senator Padilla and the ranking member, Senator Sullivan paired his bill with the bill from Senator Gallego, keeping it bipartisan.

However, to the surprise of Senator Sullivan and the Native Vietnam veterans who were relying on the legislation, this, too, drew the aforementioned objection, moving the goalpost again.

That process isn't defensible. It is not sustainable. It is not going to work. It is not going to work for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that I have heard from our counterparts in the House of Representatives--including in a conversation as recently as just a couple of hours ago with Chairman Westerman, my committee chairman counterpart on the House of Representatives side--that this is problematic. They want them to come over not as a big, sewn-together package but as bills, even if passed while paired over here. They will also be paired over there.

Sometimes, the concern is raised: Well, then Democrat bills will suffer and atrophy over there, while Republican bills are prioritized and passed to the exclusion of the Democrat bills.

This is not true. In fact, because these bills are passed as a matter of course--routinely passed--under suspension of the rules on the House side--and I believe suspension of the rules requires a super majority, about 290 votes--these always end up getting paired together. You end up with Democrat-Republican balance as they submit them on the floor.

So, today, I will again ask the minority to work with me to pass both Republican and Democrat bills--bills that, yet again, are noncontroversial and have passed this body unanimously within the last year.

These four bills are just the start. I have a list of 19 bills that Republicans are prepared to pass today. My staff has shared the list with the ranking member's staff. In fact, we did so weeks ago. And yet we continue to hear talk of an objection today.

I am willing to commit to working with my colleagues on the lands bills they wish to pass, with the understanding that, as we bring them to the floor to try to pass them by unanimous consent, we will continue to pair them so that there is balance.

So, please, let's work together. We can do this. This isn't hard.

There is a lot in the legislative process that is difficult. The last thing we ought to be doing is making the areas where we do agree, where there is unanimity, to make that, too, part of the unresolvable conundrum of bills.

And another thing happens. If we do this, it tends to slow down the process. Last year, there was an effort to try to sew a bunch of these together for some sort of year-end lands package. One thing led to another, and we got to the end of the year, which was the end of the Congress, and as the list got bigger, it got more and more difficult to sustain it. Whereas, if we go a little bit at a time, pair a few Republican bills and Democrat bills, bring them forward, pass them by unanimous consent, little by little, throughout the 2-year Congress, we are much more likely to be able to achieve passage, not just in the House but also here. That is a recipe for success.

But when we box stuff that has been passed unanimously, where there is no substantive policy objection, it is not the best way to serve those who elected us.

Our country faces huge challenges. And in many of those challenges, public policy consensus can be difficult--not impossible--to achieve but much more difficult than it is with these bills, these unanimously passed bills from just last year.

We have health prices that are soaring. Our national debt is out of control. How can we come together as a legislative body to tackle these more vexing issues if we can't even agree to something as unanimously supported, as totally noncontroversial, as a proposal to adjust the boundaries of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Dayton Aviation Heritage National and Historical Park?

The American people deserve a government that tells them what it is doing and why. The American people deserve bills that succeed or fail on their own merit in a digestible format. They do not deserve a process in which someone can slip a controversial idea past the public without debate by smuggling it into a much broader package, consisting mostly, but not entirely, of completely uncontroversial bills? This Chamber should reject that approach. If nothing else, then, because it has failed. It brought us to failure in the last Congress at the end of last year, just as it will end in failure if we try to do that again.

We have been told--we have been reminded by our counterparts in the House of Representatives as recently as a few hours ago--it will also contribute to failure over there. We can do better. This is a start. This won't solve all of our problems or resolve all of our disagreements, but it will bring this one to a close because there is no disagreement here.

At the end of the day--this should end today but only if we insist bills be able to stand on their own two feet and that we are willing to bring them forward one by one, two by two, with Democrat and Republican balance.

To that end, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc; further, that the bills be considered read a third time and passed en bloc, and that the motions to reconsider these bills be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc: S. 650, America's National Churchill Museum National Historic Landmark Act from Senator Hawley; S. 432, Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historic Park Establishment Act from Senator Gillibrand; S. 2434, to amend the Dayton Aviation Preservation Act from Senator Husted; and S. 1142, Golden Gate National Recreation Area from Senator Padilla.

Reserving the right to object.

Look, the package just proposed by Senator Heinrich harkens back to a time when a Senate sometimes did those things. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. More recently, it doesn't work. More recently--as recently as a year ago--it proved not to work right here in the Senate and has proven not to work over in the House.

My friend and colleague insists that this process isn't working. It is not working only because of this particular objection. It is not working here only because of these specific pairings--pairings suggested to us by the ranking members' own staff a matter of weeks ago.

It is not just that he has voted for these within the last year, 11 months ago; these specific pairings were suggested by his own team to mine. I don't understand why this means that we should put them all together.

Now, let's take it at face value. We received word that this was happening just a few hours ago. Just a few hours ago, we got the bill that, to my knowledge, hasn't been read yet. Let's assume for a second all that this does is to put the exact text in each of those four bills into one large bill introduced in Senator Heinrich's name, then brought to the floor. I struggle to understand why that is acceptable, but passing them in one fell swoop, in one unanimous consent request on the floor of the Senate, is objectionable to him.

We heard a moment ago an argument that I foreshadowed a moment ago-- the argument that somehow this would result in Democratic bills in the other Chamber being neglected while Republican bills were expedited. Were this a concern that were borne out, in fact, it would be a reasonable and legitimate

one. But we have been told by the House not only that they will pass these, if at all, on the suspension calendar, which requires a supermajority vote, about 290 votes, as I recall, but that because it has to be passed that way over there--they pair them just as we pair things here quite frequently with uncontroversial bills like this to make sure we have party balance between Republican bills and Democratic bills.

We have been told it will cause problems and likely signal doom. The two bills, when we sewed them all together in one package, that is not how they like to do it over there and, in many cases, not how our Members want to do it here--from our own colleagues today, some of whom are affected by these bills who are concerned about what this practice will do to them.

So, look, we tried to do this. We paired these according to suggestions made by the ranking member's own staff. We requested a meeting with him in September. We were rebuffed, declined. We remain ready to meet at any time to discuss how we can do them. I am simply trying to move bills that have been sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats in a fair and balanced fashion, in a way that everyone can understand in the Member-driven process for which this body was built and rather uniquely designed.

Yet my colleague, the ranking member, continues to object. It makes me wonder what the end is here. If the end is passing good legislation, legislation that we can all agree on, then why not pass these now? It isn't always possible to present bills like this. It is not on every issue, which is not lost on any of us, but on most issues we don't have unanimity. We pass a lot by unanimous consent, but not everything can pass that way.

These bills, individually, are uncontroversial here, and they are in the House. But they become controversial the minute someone insists that they be sewn together in one package where you have to vote for all of them or none of them in order to get them through. That kind of practice--used by Members of both parties at times in the past with varying degrees of success but less success more recently--is a type of extortion for bills imposed on the bills that have no opposition and that have no substantive objections. There is no legitimate reason to not pass these here today.

I can't, in good conscience, let that process continue. I will work with any Member, Republican or Democrat, including the ranking member, to move noncontroversial bills and get them across the finish line for our constituents. I will be happy to do it with packages like these that are fair and balanced between the two parties.

It is not an objection that is rooted in anything about these bills. It is just a vehicle by which they are presented. But if we have to sew them all together in one package, that is not going to work. It is not going to work here. It is not going to work on the other side of this building.

So I will continue to come to the floor and try to move these, particularly these noncontroversial bills that have passed unanimously within the last year. We will be back to do this.

On this basis for the reasons articulated, I object.

Mr. President, the American people understand to varying degrees but have a general understanding of the fact that the work we do here in the Senate is a combination of things.

Some of the things that we address are controversial. Some of them make the daily or evening news or the cover of the newspaper the next day. Those tend to be the things that are more controversial, things on which there might be sharp disagreements, sometimes sharply divided down partisan lines, reflected based on where one's desk sits in relation to the center aisle of this Chamber.

Other times, there might be controversy, but the controversy doesn't cut cleanly across party lines. We might have some Republicans and some Democrats on one side or the other.

In many instances--maybe not enough but, mercifully, there are many instances--there is not only not much controversy but no controversy at all.

There is a significant amount of legislation that passes through this Chamber every single year unanimously, without a single ``no'' vote. Some of this, to be sure, might recognize the naming of a post office or it might recognize--I don't know--``National Sofa Care Month,'' if there is such a thing. Others deal with discrete, local issues--issues that, while important to a select few people who live around, for example, a particular piece of land owned by the Federal Government and might be affected by the land management policy associated with that parcel, are very important to that local population but might be completely unknown not only to people on the other side of the country but even to people in other parts of that same State.

There is a fair amount of legislation that moves through the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources--a committee that I currently chair--that fits into each of these categories: controversial bills where there is a sharp Republican-Democratic divide; bills that have some controversy that cut across party lines; and, yes, mercifully, this other category of noncontroversial votes without a single substantive objection.

The American people understand that there will be opposition to a lot of pieces of legislation, but they also, justifiably, expect us to consider and pass bills on their merits. As to this category of bills that are important to some, unknown to most, and controversial to no one, well, they expect us to get those passed in a timely fashion.

I am trying to do this quickly, expeditiously, and to do it in the right way.

Now, I tried doing it the right way--the same way I am going to try today--back in May, on the 22nd of May. I tried to do it the right way again on July 29. I tried doing it the right way again, 2 weeks ago. This will be my fourth attempt to try to pass a small handful of extremely noncontroversial bills that already passed this Chamber unanimously, without a single ``no'' vote in the last Congress, at the end of last year, and that have moved forward from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--again, without opposition from either side of the aisle, from any Senator--earlier this year.

Each of these times, I have received an objection from the Democratic side of the aisle. At no point have I heard a single substantive objection to any of these bills in this category that I have tried to pass through this procedure--a procedure which is well-worn and which exists for exactly this circumstance. You know, across multiple committees--certainly within the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--there is a lot of legislation that falls into that category.

We are told repeatedly that there are simply too many bills for the Senate to consider individually. This is often the case. And it is often the case, in particular, that for a bill that has no opposition, for a bill that is very important to a population of people within a particular State as to a discrete issue--it might be important or interesting to literally no one else in any other State or in other parts of the same State--we are told that these bloated bills that sometimes get combined, which are multiple pieces of legislation, sometimes amounting to thousands of pages at a time, can become a necessary evil to accommodate all of the small lands bills important to our States.

I am here to tell you that this is simply not the case. It certainly need not be the case here, and it isn't.

Now, had we moved these bills each time I have been on the floor this year, we certainly would have already been able to make significant progress in clearing the backlog, so that we could deal with this problem that many people cite as a reason we would need a massive, all- or-nothing, bloated, sewn-together lands package--take it or leave it, all or nothing.

If we really need the bills passed, why can't we start, at least, with the low-hanging fruit?

I have no delusions that this makes everything easy. It certainly doesn't, as there is a lot of this process that can be difficult. But we ought to start with the bills that are noncontroversial,

that have yet to receive a single substantive objection on their merits, and that are things that we all agree on.

Why can't we move the bills that have already passed unanimously, that have already been vetted in committee this year and last year, and that passed on the Senate floor without a single ``no'' vote last year?

Why come down here and object, over and over again, to bills that are noncontroversial?

Well, sometimes this is the muscle memory that can start to evolve, that can start to take hold within this body. But it need not be this way; it ought not be this way, as it doesn't lead to good decisions. If this is how we treat the things that are noncontroversial, it is going to make the things where there is some debate, some opposition, some dissent more difficult and, as to the stuff that is sharply partisan, impossible.

If you have a bill that you know can't pass on its own, well then, what do you do?

Well, perhaps what you want to do is pair it with a bunch of other bills that are themselves noncontroversial, hoping that it won't get noticed or hoping that there will be enough other Senators who will say: I guess we have to take it or leave it; so let's let it all pass.

They might say: Are you really going to sink all of this important work just for one section of this much larger bill that you disagree with?

Well, look, taken to its logical conclusion and repeated, over and over again, and applied even to noncontroversial bills, this ends up being sort of extortive in its effect, and it doesn't produce a good outcome--not for people of either party, not for people of either legislative Chamber, and, certainly, not for the American people.

Just yesterday, we were able to do some things on the floor the right way. Senator Sullivan came to the floor and passed his bill to extend the deadline for Alaska Native Vietnam-era vets to claim the land allotments that they earned through their service. This was only after Democrats--including my friend and colleague the distinguished senior Senator from New Mexico, Senator Heinrich--had objected to it twice. But his bill--Senator Sullivan's legislation that I just mentioned--is now headed to the President's desk to be signed into law. Now, there is no reason that that success that we tasted, just yesterday afternoon, can't continue here with similarly situated, similarly noncontroversial, unanimously passed bills.

So, again, I have got four bills that I will be asking unanimous consent to pass here today. They include S. 1084, which is the North Dakota Trust Lands Completion Act of 2025. This bill, sponsored by Senator Hoeven, passed last year with unanimous support and would authorize equal value exchanges to enable the State of North Dakota to manage its own State lands.

S. 1142 is the Scarper Ridge Golden Gate National Recreation Area Boundary Adjustment Act. This bill, sponsored by Senator Padilla, passed last year and would make a minor boundary adjustment to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is entirely noncontroversial.

S. 1016 is the Vicksburg National Military Park Boundary Modification Act. This bill, sponsored by Senator Wicker, is a minor but important boundary adjustment to the park, and it passed last year with unanimous support.

S. 603, sponsored by Senator Kaine, designates the George C. Marshall House in Virginia as an affiliated area within the National Park System. It is simply allowing them to be affiliated with the National Park Service. This bill also passed with unanimous support.

What do these bills have in common? Well, they are bipartisan. They all passed the body unanimously, without a single ``no'' vote in the last Congress. I have heard zero substantive objections on the merits to any single one of these bills.

I stand ready to work with any Member--Republican or Democrat--to move their bills off the floor, especially with regard to these noncontroversial bills.

We can get this done. We can work through this broken process. It need not be broken, especially as to this category of bills. This is the easy stuff. Let's not make the easy stuff hard, lest we incur the risk of making the harder stuff impossible.

So to that end, Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc; further, that the bills, as amended, if amended, where applicable, be considered read a third time and passed en bloc and that motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc: S. 1084, North Dakota Trust Lands Completion Act of 2025 from Senator Hoeven; S. 1142, the Scarper Ridge Golden Gate National Recreation Area Boundary Adjustment Act from Senator Padilla; S. 1016, the Vicksburg National Military Park Boundary Modification Act with a substitute amendment from Senator Wicker; and S. 603, to designate the General George C. Marshall House in the Commonwealth of Virginia from Senator King.

Mr. President, I appreciate my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, who has a genuine concern. It is a worthy concern, and it is a concern that I share in the sense that I want to make sure that both Democrats and Republicans serving in this body on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, when they submit these bills--particularly bills in this category that I described that have passed unanimously in this body--be given ample opportunity for consideration and passage over in the House of Representatives.

He is understandably concerned about the possibility of Republican and Democratic bills being sent over together, only to discover after the fact, that the Democratic bills would languish. I understand that concern. I am deeply sympathetic to it.

And it is because I share that concern--and not in spite of it--that I believe this is the way we ought to do things. This is the way we do things elsewhere in the Senate where we have got noncontroversial legislation. Let's move them forward. Now, we have moved them forward. You have seen pairings here; Democratic bills brought to the floor, not stitched together surgically in one legislative package but paper- clipped together in one stack so that we are presenting them for unanimous consent passage at the same time but not as part of the same legislation.

Why do we do this rather than the other way?

Understanding the legitimacy of his concerns, we want to make sure that bills in this category, in particular, receive fair consideration regardless of whether there is a Democrat or Republican sponsor of the bill.

No. 1, our House counterpart committee and others within the House of Representatives have told us that not only is this their preference-- that they would rather have them paper-clipped and not stitched together as one bill but sent over as separate bills--they

said this will actually expedite, facilitate their ability to get them passed, whether they are introduced by Republicans or Democrats in the House or in the Senate.

Not always, by the way, is a Democrat bill here a Democrat bill on the other side of the Capitol. Sometimes it switches. But regardless, even for the bills that are introduced by a Democrat here and a Democrat there, these bills are considered--and we have been told over and over again by those with responsibility over this, they have got a better chance of passing separately than they would if we start stitching them together.

In their view, as they have told me repeatedly, it will hinder--not expedite or facilitate--their chances of being passed if we surgically stitch them together in one bill.

There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that the laws of gravity don't always operate the same way here as they do on the other side of the Capitol. Sometimes a bill that can move through over here without a single objection might draw some opposition on the other side of the Capitol for reasons that can be difficult to predict.

In any event, there is a great safeguard in all of this in the way the House of Representatives passes this--and I think this is inherent in why it is that they want them as separate bills that can be paper- clipped together for purposes of getting it passed by unanimous consent over here--over there.

When they do it over there, they use a procedure in the House known as suspension of the rules. Under suspension of the rules, you have got to have 290 votes to pass it rather than a simple majority of 218 votes. That feature ends up replicating, to a significant degree, the effect of the cloture standard over here such that it has got to be bipartisan. So they can't afford to--and therefore don't on bills like this--favor Republican bills over Democrat bills.

Now, my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from New Mexico noted a moment ago that his concerns are already materializing and that they are neglecting Democrat bills in the House while preferencing Republican bills.

I don't see this. In fact, to the contrary. Within the last week, the House of Representatives has passed multiple bills--I believe it was three or four bills--introduced by Democrats; Democrat bills run through the suspension of the rules calendar passed this week.

They are not depreferencing them. And from what I have heard from multiple credible sources on the other side of the Capitol, this is because of the way the suspension of the rules practice works over there. They don't, in part, because they can't get these passed if they preference Republican bills and depreference Democrat bills in this respect.

Look, at the end of the day, we have to remember that a lot of what this Chamber does operates by means of unanimous consent, certainly in scheduling votes, scheduling just about anything. Heck, scheduling what time we are going to go to lunch or adjourn for the evening until the next day requires unanimous consent.

But a lot of legislation we pass gets done that way, too, and thank Heaven above that it can. If we can't do the easy stuff this way, the harder stuff becomes much more difficult. And the really tough stuff, the stuff that still needs to get done--things like permitting reform, for example, where on both sides of the aisle you have strong opinions, you have a strong desire overall to see that permitting reform gets accomplished, you have somewhat differing ideas on what must be in there and what must not be included--things like that that are very important to the public but that are by no means noncontroversial become far more difficult to impossible.

Let's get the easy stuff done. We did it yesterday afternoon. We can do it again. I will be back as I am determined to push these bills forward, Republican and Democrat. And if we tie them together surgically in one bill, it will impair their passage, Republican and Democratic alike. We don't need to do that here. We ought not. This is unfortunate, but I will be back soon.

Mr. President, Juan Orlando Hernandez is the former President of Honduras, a country I lived in when I worked with Jesuit missionaries in 1980 and 1981. In a landmark criminal prosecution, he was convicted by a jury in an American Federal court of a massive conspiracy to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States while he was President of this very poor country.

Trial testimony included a witness who quoted Hernandez saying that he wanted to ``shove drugs right up the noses of the gringos and they're never even going to know it.''

The case against Hernandez began when Donald Trump's Department of Justice prosecuted his brother Tony in 2019. During that trial and the subsequent trial of the former Honduran President in 2024, evidence showed that President Hernandez led a conspiracy to distribute cocaine in the United States, engaged in serious firearms offenses, and collected millions of dollars in bribes from some of the most dangerous criminals in the world, including Joaquin ``El Chapo'' Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel. These actions coincided with a spike in violent crime in Honduras, rendering it, for a time, the most dangerous nation on Earth, forcing many Hondurans to leave their country, some coming to the United States.

The jury that heard the 3-week-long case against the disgraced former President convicted him on multiple offenses. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, President Trump announced that he would pardon this notorious narcotrafficking kingpin after just 1 year of serving his 45-year sentence in a Federal penitentiary in West Virginia. Hernandez was released from prison yesterday.

The unconscionable Hernandez pardon followed another Trump pardon of another notorious narcotrafficker. On January 21, 2025, the day after President Trump's inauguration, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht was convicted in a Federal court after a 4-week jury trial in 2015 of seven serious charges stemming from his operation of a criminal enterprise known as Silk Road. Silk Road, for those not familiar, was an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and other criminals conducted more than $200 million in illegal drug trade and other unlawful activities. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison by an American jury.

President Trump is claiming to be taking action to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States. Yet these two outrageous pardons show that he is willing to excuse and free the worst narcotraffickers in the world. How does this protect Americans from the flow of narcotics entering our country?

As someone who knows this region very well because of my time spent living there and my subsequent work in this body as chairman and ranking member of the America subcommittee of Senate Foreign Relations, I can tell you that the decision with respect to ex-President Hernandez will severely tarnish our reputation with our regional friends and allies. Pardoning him sends a message of impunity to those involved in drug trafficking, violent crime, and corruption, which are often clear causes of irregular migration to the United States.

Why pardon a crook who successfully ``shoved'' 400 tons of cocaine right up the ``noses of the gringos''? Why pardon a criminal who established the largest underground illegal drug market in the world? How come President Trump is willing to ignore the American juries who looked at the overwhelming evidence against these narcotraffickers and convicted them?

It is hard to see any reason for these pardons except that Hernandez and Ulbricht are megarich. Their bank accounts are stuffed with millions from illegal activities, which gives them the means and the motive to pump large sums of money into downtown DC to get out of jail.

It is true that a President has expansive pardon authorities. But it is also true that American politicians have been successfully prosecuted for selling pardons. I can't say for sure what is going on here, but the pardon of Hernandez is so bizarre, so counter to the President's stated priorities, that it is difficult for me to fathom any reason why this would happen, other than that someone in the administration was benefiting from it. None of it makes any logical sense.

I hope that our justice system is up to the task of finding the real story behind these pardons, especially since President Trump has a track record of pardoning those who have contributed to him.

Drug kingpins who become rich by profiting off the addictions of everyday Americans shouldn't be allowed to get away scot-free, and Federal officials who facilitate the pardon of these individuals have to be held to account.

Now, the pardon of disgraced former President Hernandez and Russ Ulbricht also raises serious questions about the Trump administration's ongoing war against boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and the threatened war against Venezuela. The President and his Secretary of Defense claim that these actions, taken without congressional authorization, are designed to stop narcotics flows into the United States.

Is that the real story?

Even before we get to the question of what is motivating the President to kill unknown civilians on boats and threaten to start a costly war of choice with Venezuela, the serious legal questions about these military actions continue to multiply. The U.S. military began to strike boats in the Caribbean and Pacific on September 2. So far, the United States has engaged in more than 20 known strikes, killing at least 83 people. The first strike happened on a boat in the Caribbean on September 2, based on public reporting.

We now know--we now know--that the initial strike killed most on board, but two survivors were left clinging to wreckage in the water. The U.S. Defense Department rules about war make plain that it is illegal to kill wounded survivors under these circumstances. International law commands the same. Those surviving cannot be wantonly slaughtered. Yet acting pursuant to an alleged order from the Secretary of Defense to ``kill everybody,'' U.S. Special Forces returned to kill the two survivors and hid the fact from Congress and the American public for more than 2 months until enterprising journalists broke the story last week.

On September 10, I led a letter with 25 Senate colleagues directly to the President asking basic questions about the military strikes. We saw no evidence that those on board the boats were combatants or narcotraffickers. We asked for the legal rationale justifying such military action without congressional approval. We inquired why the military was striking boats to kill all on board without interdicting the traffic and using the arrest of the civilians and the seizure of drugs to build criminal cases against drug kingpins. We have not yet received sufficient answers to these basic questions.

The Armed Services Committee held a single classified briefing with administration officials on October 1. As a member of the committee, I attended the briefing. I am not allowed to discuss the facts that I learned in that briefing, but I can say the following: The briefing did not provide us with the legal rationale justifying the strikes. The briefers did not provide us with concrete information about the identity of the individuals killed or the groups targeted with the strikes. The briefers would provide no information about the policy for determining when boats would be attacked rather than interdicted.

Eventually, after weeks and weeks of pressure, the administration finally allowed Senators to read in the SCIF a classified legal rationale it prepared to justify these military actions. By the time Senators--charged with overseeing military operations and providing the budget for national defense--were allowed to review the legal rationale, the strikes had been underway for nearly 2 months.

I reviewed the legal rationale, but because the administration continues to call it classified, I am not allowed to disclose its contents. But I can say the following: The legal rationale is weak. It misinterprets and misuses historical materials regarding the Constitution's allocation of war powers. Its analysis of the domestic law allowing Presidential action is flimsy and would essentially repeal the careful language used in the Constitution and further

clarified in the War Powers Act vesting Congress, the article I branch, with the power to initiate war. And its analysis of international law justifying these military strikes is, frankly, embarrassing.

I can also say this. Nothing in the rationale that Senators can read in a classified setting would allow any military action against the nation of Venezuela. The dangerous nature of the administration's legal rationale and strategy are magnified by a series of events that have happened in the last 3 months. Before the strikes even began, public reporting has it that the senior Judge Advocate General, the chief legal officer in SOUTHCOM, raised serious concerns about the legality of these strikes in August.

On October 1, when the Department of Defense briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee about these strikes, they neglected to bring any uniformed officers or personnel from SOUTHCOM to the briefing. This fact was an immediate red flag and tipoff that there was deep division within the ranks about the legality of this current military operation.

On October 16, the military struck a vessel and recovered two survivors. The survivors were then returned to their homes in Colombia and Ecuador and released.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. If they were narcotraffickers, why weren't they arrested and prosecuted? If they weren't narcotraffickers, was a mistake made? Were mistakes made in the other strikes? Were they innocent of wrongdoing? Was the case against them so flimsy that it wouldn't stand up in a court and that is why they were not arrested but instead released in their home countries?

The administration's refusal to share any information about who has been killed, paired with the lack of prosecution of these two individuals, raises serious concerns over exactly who is being killed and why.

In mid-October, SOUTHCOM Commander, Admiral Holsey, announced his premature retirement from the military. A posting to be head of SOUTHCOM would normally go for 3 years. Admiral Holsey was confirmed less than a year ago, and he announced he was prematurely retiring at the peak of his career--a three-star admiral being given command of this important COCOM. Reporting suggests that the retirement followed tense argument between Admiral Holsey, Secretary Hegseth, and Chairman Dan Caine over the legality of these military strikes.

At around the same time, the Pentagon announced that the operational responsibility for the military strikes was being transferred from SOUTHCOM--where their chief legal officer and apparently their Commander had raised questions about the legality of killing civilians on open seas--the responsibility was being transferred from SOUTHCOM to the Special Operations Command. My read of this shift, together with the other evidence about the JAG opinion in SOUTHCOM and the premature retirement of the SOUTHCOM Commander, is that it signifies a deep concern within the Pentagon leadership over the legality of the ongoing military action.

On November 11, we learned that one of our closest allies, the United Kingdom, was restricting traditional information-sharing with the United States in the SOUTHCOM area due to its concerns about the legality of the U.S. military actions. The UK has fought alongside us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world, but they are not participating in intelligence-sharing on this particular American military mission.

Just last week, we learned that the first strike left survivors who were then killed on orders from Secretary Hegseth. The United States has, in the past, prosecuted such actions as war crimes, beginning with the Nuremberg trials and heading forward into the current era.

Over the weekend, President Trump announced that he was closing Venezuelan airspace. Where is his authority to close the airspace over a sovereign nation? Did the Pentagon even know that he would announce such a policy via his social media account? Do we even know whether the airspace has been closed or whether any flights are still occurring?

Most recently--most recently--our Secretary of Defense, who likes to cosplay by giving himself the fake title ``Secretary of War,'' posted an image on Twitter of Franklin the turtle firing missiles at narcoterrorists.

Pete Hegseth's social media account:

For your Christmas wish list. . . . Franklin Targets Narco

Terrorists.

This is the Secretary of Defense, folks, of the greatest Nation on Earth, and to him, this thing is just a big joke.

Think about that. America's Secretary of Defense has enough time on his hands that he and his minions get to come up with cartoon memes to make light of the fact that the United States is killing people in international waters. He is spending his time and energy thinking about cartoons rather than keeping us safe.

I just have to ask this. I was intrigued at this particular detail. There is a great Biblical phrase that says, ``From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.'' So something that you are feeling inside tends to come outside of your mouth even if it is somewhat unintentional.

Why Franklin? I mean, if you are going to do a cartoon--like, Franklin is a Canadian cartoon. Why not Scooby-Doo or Peanuts or, you know, Snoopy? I mean, why Franklin? Of all the cartoon figures that Pete Hegseth could spend time imaging into an AI-generated cartoon making fun of killing narco--why Franklin?

Well, I don't know the answer to that. Secretary Hegseth does. But I have an intuition. Check and see the name of the Special Forces commander whom Secretary Hegseth is now trying to blame for the second strike killing struggling civilians in international waters.

This is no way to wage war. This is no way to wage war.

Orders of dubious legality offered by civilian leaders of questionable judgment are leading to dozens of anonymous deaths, division within the U.S. military, and tension with our allies. The administration's actions are risking the careers of officers and troops, many having served for decades with great distinction, who face the life-and-death question of whether to obey a superior or follow the law--follow the clear law.

All this is occurring with an administration hell-bent on hiding from Congress and the American public the actual facts, strategy, and legal justification for its actions. America is not supposed to be at war based on a Presidential say-so.

Abraham Lincoln said it well when he was a Member of Congress in 1848:

The reason why the Constitution has given the war-making

power to Congress was because Kings had always been involving

and impoverishing their people in wars. This our

[constitutional] convention understood to be the most

oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so

frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power

of bringing this oppression upon us.

No one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

It is past time for Congress to reclaim its role in the decision on whether to initiate war. The Framers in 1787 wouldn't allow George Washington to make these decisions on his own. We shouldn't allow our current President--a man perfectly comfortable pardoning a convicted criminal who boasted about shoving drugs up the gringos' noses--to make such a decision on his own.

It is time for Congress to reassert the role that was handed to us in a sacred way in the Constitution in 1787 and exercise oversight over this mushrooming military operation in the Americas.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last year, this body unanimously passed 41 bills from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Now, 16 of those bills, for one reason or another, didn't end up getting signed into law last year. Some of those bills perhaps were casualties of the legislative calendar but for one reason or another didn't make it through but remained undisputed and remained noncontroversial. They have been reintroduced by Republican and Democratic Senators and are cleared on the Republican side of the aisle.

It is important to note here that these noncontroversial, bipartisan bills all remain completely unchanged. Not a single letter, not a single period, comma, or exclamation mark has been altered on them. They remain utterly noncontroversial--not a whiff of partisan dispute between them.

In the past, these bills were, in many circumstances, packaged together. It has been something of a custom in the Senate to package together groups of bills. Lands bills in some cases were paired together as part of much larger bills.

In some instances, parts of some of those bills were themselves controversial--larger bills, bills that were sometimes written in secret and not available to individual Members to review prior to the time that they were propounded for a unanimous consent request on the floor.

So today, I am going to make an entirely reasonable offer to move four bills off of the floor from among that group that passed last year by unanimous consent in the Senate. They are unchanged, they are still noncontroversial, and they carry no substantive policy objections, no objections to the merits of the bill and what they do. They are bills that are locally supported, bills that have been thoroughly vetted by the committee of jurisdiction and that are ready to move today.

In short, they are bills that are ready to move in the same type of open, Member-driven process that the Senate was built for and that the Senate, quite frankly, prides itself in fostering and encouraging rather than being held hostage for a larger backroom deal negotiated in secret.

The first is a bill from Senator Barrasso that would provide commonsense flexibility for ranchers during natural disasters to help ensure rangeland health on Federal lands.

The second is a bill that I have introduced called the Utah Wildfire Research Institute Act, which would add Utah as a fourth location for the Southwest Ecological Research Institutes, which would be housed, for the Utah portion of it, at Utah State University. This institute would foster collaboration to promote healthy forests, wildfire prevention, and resilient water supplies. Utah is well positioned and ready to work with the other institutes, including the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, to protect the unique landscapes and communities across the Western United States.

The third bill is one from Senator Cortez Masto, the Sloan Canyon Conservation and Lateral Pipeline Act.

This bill would make certain boundary changes and would authorize a right-of-way for the Horizon Lateral water pipeline in Nevada-- something important to Nevadans as a desert State like mine. Water for Nevadans is very important.

The fourth bill is one from Senator Padilla which would adjust the boundary of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Now, again, just to reiterate, all four of these bills have certain things in common. They do different things. They operate in different parts of the country. They have different sponsors from different political parties. But they all have a few features in common: They all passed by unanimous consent in this body just a few months ago. Not a single Republican, not a single Democrat objected to any of them. They remain entirely unchanged and entirely noncontroversial.

If there is any outstanding policy issue, I would love to be made aware of it and would love to address it, but as of this moment, I am not aware of one--not on the House side and not even on the Senate side.

So to that end, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc: S. 211, Resiliency For Ranching and Natural Conservation Health Act from Senator Barrasso; S. 457, Utah Wildfire Research Institute Act of 2025 from myself and Senator Curtis; S. 1142, Golden Gate National Recreation Area from Senator Padilla; S. 392, Sloan Canyon Conservation and Lateral Pipeline Act from Senator Cortez Masto; further, that the bills be considered read a third time and passed and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

Mr. President, I appreciate the characteristically thoughtful and thorough remarks by my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from Washington. I do want to be clear about a couple of things.

No. 1, this has been the product of a lot of effort on our part, good-faith efforts that we have made to work with Ranking Member Heinrich and Members of both political parties to move these bills to the floor to get them passed over many months.

Now, again, I want to reiterate that if there are substantive policy concerns with any of the bills in this package, understanding that these are only four bills--those four bills don't comment on--they neither preclude nor prejudice in any way, shape, or form our ability to pass other bills.

Anytime you are choosing a finite group of legislative proposals to be considered for adoption by unanimous consent or through any other expedited process, you are necessarily excluding others that are not on that list. And so it becomes incumbent upon those involved in the effort to decide which ones belong.

Let's talk a little bit about how we go about that, how we went about that here with these bills. These are four of the bills that, again, passed the Senate unanimously just a few months ago that remain unchanged in this conference; that didn't draw a single ``no'' vote, a single objection from any Republican or from any Democrat. In that respect, they all have things in common, even though they operate in different States, have different sponsors from different political parties and do different things.

The bill of which my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from the State of Washington, refers does quite opposite of those things. I am sure she put an enormous amount of effort into it. I am sure it is important to her. And I am sure it has been carefully drafted because my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from the State of Washington, is thorough.

But there are some things that bill doesn't have in common with these. In fact, harkening back to childhood, there is a song called ``One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.'' If you were trying to include that bill in a list of these bills, that would be the clear standout. Why? No. 1, it hasn't passed the Senate; No. 2, it was considered in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and it resulted in strict party line votes--Democrats vs. Republicans, Shirts vs. Skins. There was not a single vote overlapping between the two parties.

That doesn't mean it is not a good bill. It doesn't mean it is not important to her or the people in the State of Washington. But it does mean it lacks the core characteristics held in common by each and every one of the bills I just offered by unanimous consent.

If that is going to be the standard, that anytime there is any package of bills--a package consists of two paired sets, a Republican and Democratic legislation brought forward together; in this case, bills that drew not a single ``no'' vote, not a single objection from Members of either party and remained unchanged since that last happened. If anytime we try to offer those bills, it is appropriate to object in the absence of any substantive on-the-merits objection or concern with the legislation, it is going to be very difficult for us to get this done.

Now, none of this means we couldn't find a way to pair that with something that would make sense, coupled with any changes that Members of both parties might insist on in order to make them comfortable with moving it forward. But it does mean that it would be incongruous, illogical, counterproductive, and destructive to the effort to pair that bill with this bill.

That is a wilderness bill. By definition, by its very nature, it designates large tracts of wilderness and large scenic rivers. It is not something inherently repugnant to either party, but it ended up drawing objections and ``no'' votes from literally every Republican on the committee. That suggests to me that before it is ready to be included in a unanimous consent request, it might need some additional work.

I am confident we can get it there. Most types of legislation can get to the point where objections can be addressed through some combination of

modifications to the legislation itself and the legislation that it might be paired with in order to help offset those objections.

But, nonetheless, I will keep working to pass bipartisan bills that have unanimous support. I hope and expect and respectfully request that my colleagues across the aisle would take into account these dissimilarities. If they want to add others that meet similar characteristics, let's have that conversation. If they want to get to the point where we can pass Senator Murray's bill, I am sure there is a way that could be considered and we could possibly get there.

But we can't assume that you can pair something that is that dissimilar; that is, by its very nature and according to the legislative record, it is the very definition of partisan and not the kind of thing that one can expect. We would be crazy to assume that something that resulted in a party line committee vote last year would suddenly get to the floor and not draw a single Republican objection.

I would also hope that next time, when we add pairings to the floor-- Democrat and Republican bills--I would love to see those hotlined on the other side of the aisle in the same format of which they were hotlined on our side. My understanding is they were not; and they should be. There should be an apples-to-apples comparison. If they are given the opportunity, I can't imagine that many, if any, of my Democratic colleagues would object to any of these bills in isolation. If they wouldn't object to them in isolation based on their substantive policy merits and if they were given that in a hotline request, I think this would have turned out differently.

I do think it is important we should pass bills expeditiously and in the light of day. These bills have gone through public examination in the light of day, and they have been found not wanting for bipartisanship. They have been found richly blessed with bipartisanship through a proven, undisputed track record.

So, look, I think it is a big mistake to hold noncontroversial bills put forward by Senators in good faith--to hold those hostage in order to perpetuate a broken and sometimes corrupting process from a bygone era, one in which bills were prevented from passing, not because they were controversial but because they were popular and being used as bait in order to bring about the passage of other bills that were controversial. That makes no sense.

What makes the Senate work best are those moments when we can identify things as to which we do not disagree. This, Mr. President, is one of those things. This, Mr. President, is where we can do better; and do better we must.

I am not going away. I will be back. I will be back soon--hopefully, successful next time--and we will do what we have to do in order to move the legislative process.

I humbly implore my friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Let's not take these moments where we do agree for granted. Let's not assume that just because anytime--by definition, anytime you come up with a list of four bills offered at once, that necessarily excludes the thousands of others that may be submitted during the course of any particular Congress in that legislative Chamber.

You can't get everything all at once. Why not take the things that we know can pass and have passed in the past? Let's get that done.

Mr. President, last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. I have been to the event a few times before. It is a beautiful setting. The library is such a great tribute to one of our greatest Presidents, Ronald Reagan, who is known for his efforts to rebuild the military through peace through strength in the Reagan years that we often think about and talk so much about today.

The forum has been around for 12 years. This was the 12th annual event, and I have been able to attend the incredible event a few times early on in my time in the House, serving in the House of Representatives. It has been a few years since I have been there.

The event is filled with some of our Nation's top military leaders, Cabinet officials, administration officials--much of the leadership of the Pentagon. It is also a bipartisan event with a congressional delegation from both sides of the aisle. It also includes leaders and innovators in our national defense industry who join the event every year as well.

At this past forum, I participated in a panel discussion about recruitment and retention in our military. I was actually joined by a former Democrat colleague of mine in the House, Jimmy Panetta, a Democrat from California.

Coincidentally, his father, the former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, was sitting in the audience to hear his son and myself and the other members of the panel talk about this important subject.

The panel got me thinking, though, as we close out 2025, about how far we have come in just 1 year on this subject--recruitment and retention in the military. As we close out 2025, I can think of many big wins that have come out of the Trump administration but none as significant as what President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth have done to repair the recruitment crisis that took place on Joe Biden's watch. This unbelievable accomplishment doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, and that is why I wanted to come down to the floor today and talk about that incredible success story and share with you some of what I talked about in that panel a little over a week ago.

When I served in the House of Representatives before I got to the Senate, I chaired the Military Personnel Subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee, so I saw up close how bad things got under Joe Biden--especially at the Pentagon and in our military.

When Joe Biden was President, he presided over the worst recruitment crisis in the over 50 years of an All-Volunteer Force of our military. In 2022, the Army set a goal to recruit 60,000 new soldiers but only managed to recruit 45,000. That is 15,000 soldiers short. The same thing happened again the following year, in 2023, when the Army was again 15,000 soldiers short of its 65,000 soldier recruitment goal.

When you add up the recruitment losses under Joe Biden, between 2021 and 2025, the Army shrank by 40,000 soldiers due to a lack of new recruits--that is as much as 4 divisions of troops in the U.S. Army.

The same story, Mr. President, happened to the Navy, which I know is important to you, and it is important to me. In 2023, the Navy was 7,500 short of its goal to recruit 37,000 new sailors. In 2024, it was nearly 5,000 short of its goal to recruit over 40,000 new sailors. So between 2021 and 2025, the Navy shrank by 16,000 sailors, which is about 3 aircraft carriers' worth of U.S. sailors.

That is how bad the recruitment crisis got on Joe Biden's watch.

How did this happen? I think this is an important context in history when we evaluate where we are today. It is clear to everyone that the Biden administration treated the military as a political experiment. I don't think, Mr. President, we have seen the military politicized in a way that it was under the 4 years that Joe Biden was President ever before in American history.

The Biden Pentagon dropped physical fitness standards to promote equity and supported woke DEI initiatives throughout the armed services.

As a side note, by the way, the marines were the only good news on recruitment during those 4 years because the Marine Corps never dropped their standards.

You had former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who immediately, after Joe Biden was sworn into office, ordered a 60-day stand-down to ``combat extremism'' in the military. They spent nearly 6 million man- hours militarywide on that stand-down. Those are hours, Mr. President, that could have been spent on training our troops to combat our biggest enemy, our biggest threat--that being China--or, I would contend to you, those 6 million man-hours could have been spent

on preparing to evacuate and leave Afghanistan in a much more responsible way than what the military did. Instead, they focused it on politics at the beginning of the Biden administration.

Then you had Gen. CQ Brown, who at the time was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, who issued racial quotas for the U.S. Air Force. You had Joe Biden's Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth arguing that it was a bad thing that more than 80 percent of our recruits come from military families. Think about that for a minute. She said there was ``a risk of developing a warrior caste'' in America. When the Secretary of the Army should have been trying to boost recruitment, she insulted patriotic Americans who are inspired by their parents to serve and suggested that the Army didn't want them. It is no wonder that we had a recruitment crisis in the U.S. Army.

Mr. President, when you combine all of these factors, it is no wonder that the military under Joe Biden failed to meet its recruitment numbers.

Simply put, fewer young Americans wanted to serve because they stopped believing in the mission.

I often think back to an article from the Wall Street Journal that I read back in 2023. It had a poll that showed that patriotism among Americans, especially young Americans, had plummeted to historic lows.

Again, in 2023, Joe Biden is the President; the aftermath of what happened in Afghanistan; all of this other foolish experimentation; the politicization of our military.

According to that poll, only 38 percent of Americans in 2023 said that patriotism was very important to them. That is down from 70 percent in the 1990s.

To this day, this story astonishes me. I would love to see an update from the Wall Street Journal on that poll to show what those patriotism numbers look like today.

Mr. President, I know you know this: You can't build a military without patriots. You can't ask young men and women to put their lives on the line when the culture tells you that the country isn't worth fighting and dying for. You can't expect the next generation of Americans to raise their right hand--Mr. President, like you did, like I did, like so many of our colleagues did in the U.S. Senate--to protect this Nation when so few believe that America is the greatest country in the history of the world.

Something else that I think about is how the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan played a huge part in the shortage in military recruitment under Joe Biden as well. Americans saw 13 brave servicemembers killed at Abbey Gate, including a Hoosier, and American guns and vehicles were abandoned to the Taliban on that embarrassing and disastrous and deadly day. It didn't exactly inspire people to serve. Young Americans asked themselves ``Who wants to be part of that type of military?'' and they said ``Not me.''

Mr. President, the good news, though--and I want to get to the good news because this is really good news. The good news is that this has all been fixed in a really short period of time. President Trump changed everything. In fact, it changed immediately on election day just a little over a year ago. Military leaders testify to the fact that military recruitment increased dramatically the day that Donald Trump won the election. The Army met its 2025 recruitment numbers 4 months early. The Army reached its retention goals for the whole year in just 6 months. Navy recruitment hit a 20-year record.

How did all of this happen? President Trump and Secretary Hegseth inspired young people to serve again because President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are restoring our military's strength and greatness. They cut away the woke DEI initiatives throughout the Department of War and focused on what really matters to our military--patriotism, a sense of mission, and lethality.

Under Joe Biden, young Americans saw the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. Today, they see a military that puts America first--taking out narcoterrorist drug boats before they can bring deadly drugs into our country.

Seventy-one percent of Americans say they support these strikes on these drug boats. When you ask young men and women if that is the type of military they want to be part of--one that is stopping drugs from flooding into America and killing our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our friends--you get an overwhelming yes.

When America is strong, when America is competent, when America wins, our young people want to be a part of that. They want to serve.

Patriotism isn't dead; it was just dormant during those 4 years, waiting for leadership that America can believe in, like what we have in the White House today in Donald Trump.

Secretary of War Hegseth is doing an extraordinary job. He is the exact leader at the Department that we need to restore the focus on lethality after 4 disastrous years under Joe Biden when the focus was on anything but that. He has brought back the warrior ethos to our military and has worked hard to ensure that America's military can meet tomorrow's challenges. Our enemies have been put on notice under Pete Hegseth's leadership at the Department of War.

Mr. President, the path forward is clear: We must continue supporting this administration's efforts to restore our military and make our military as great as it can be again.

Our All-Volunteer military depends on Americans who choose to serve, and Americans will choose to serve when they believe in the mission, trust their leaders, and take pride in this great country. President Trump is giving them that, and America is stronger for it. That is some great news, Mr. President.

As we close out 2025, there are so many things to talk about, but this accomplishment in and of itself--what President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have done to restore recruitment, save our military-- is really good news, and I wanted to come to the floor and talk about it as we close out this year, on the eve of going home for this Christmas break.

Mr. President, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year. I am looking forward to a lot more good news like this to come in 2026.

I yield the floor.